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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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deathofrats0808 said:
Not really? Like, Marienburg dies a lot of trade, but the only foreign relationship they really have apart from the Empire is Ulthuan. They're also pretty quiet internationally. Although I think it's worth pointing out that that's far more the norm through history than the very high level of communication we have today. Globalization is a thing.
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On the other hand, actual history doesn't really have the expectation that every so often you're all going to have to band together to fight the literal end of the world.
 
Mopman43 said:
On the other hand, actual history doesn't really have the expectation that every so often you're all going to have to band together to fight the literal end of the world.
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True. Not sure how much communication that encourages, rather than just quieting international conflict, but I'd imagine it certainly shifts everyone's priorities.
 
deathofrats0808 said:
I suspect Ulthuan might take note of an uptick in Druchii ships heading to the Empire and also an uptick in Druchii ships being destroyed by the Empire. They might not link to the fact that there's a deal, but it's not unreasonable for them to come to that conclusion.
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It'd be, in fact, extremely strange for them to reach such a conclusion. Imagine that the Empire got better at repelling Druuchi raids... Should the Empire start worrying about Ulthuan suddenly having reached the conclusion that the Empire is in a deal with Naggaroth and are just hiding it very well? It's a really strange conclusion to reach.

But besides that how would Ulthuan know those factors? Do they happen to run across Druuchi vessels in the sea and not intercept and attack them and just record them? Cause that doesn't sound like something the Asur would do

Do they also spend the time counting the number of boats that have raided the Empire that return to Naggaroth?
 
No one is really going to blame the empire for paying off some druichi to get a chance to murder other druichi. It's not like Mathilde is going to be selling elves into slavery. Negotiating with the druichi is not an instant Mathilde needs to be put to death. The druichi are not a monolith people who just plot evil every day. I trust in Boney in actually being able to write them well.
 
I'm also not so sure of the conclusion that Ulthuan will be pissed about a deal with the Druchii if in the end it ends up hurting the Druchii overall. The Empire dealing with the Druchii might be a bad thing in a vacuum but the result is that more Druchii ships are being sunk that they don't need to sink themselves. Is that really something they're going to protest?
 
Yeah, even if Ulthuan did look and find out, what are they going to say? "Don't defend yourself against Druchii slavers"? Nah.

They either won't care because it's a net neutral for the strength of the Druchii (+some dead Druchii/-some enriched Druchii) and a net positive for the Empire, or they'll look the other way because there's certain political realities that take precedence.

Now, if we negotiate for something else like trading magical knowledge? Somewhat more sketchy unless it's not weaponizable against Ulthuan or its allies.
 
Even if Ulthuan wanted to do something what would they do?

I have been thinking about it and honestly I am not sure. Ulthuan doesn't trade with the Empire directly but through Mariemburg, they could apply pressure to the Empire through it I guess but I am not sure they'd go for it.

It'd be a pretty disproportional response for starters... In fact if they would do something like this why wouldn't they already done so to pressure the Empire to pressure Laurelorn to drop their Druuchi deals (because they are in fact dealing with them right now and there hasn't been a big response from Ulthuan).

It could also risk the Empire to potentially decide that the Druuchi are more reliable than the Asur and throw their lot with them... Or other lot of undesirable results.


I think a much more reasonable and logical approach would be to try to sign a treaty with the Empire to not deal with the Druuchi in any way by giving the Empire something in exchange of not doing so. In fact we already know this is the way they tend to do things like when they came to negotiate for Waystone knowledge (we got the passwords, but we could also have gotten, idk, Teclis to come back for some time, or fucked Marienburg, or other many shinies). And Ulthuan is more than rich enough to convince the Empire to stop.


In fact I feel this would be the approach chosen no matter what kind of deal we are doing (including deals that would actually increase the Druuchi military power) unless it's something really heinous.
 
According to existing precedent as set by the current Phoenix King, the things it would apparently be fine to do to Ulthuan goes up to blockading, bombarding, sacking, and burning Lothern, supporting Lothernian oligarchs in seizing control of Eataine, stealing half of Ulthuan's navy, and slaughtering an entire army of Asur. I haven't seen anyone suggesting any Druchii deals that come remotely close to any of that.
 
Not that 'an eye for an eye' is the best measure of things that are okay to do, but certainly, this is nowhere near those levels.
 
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Boney said:
According to existing precedent as set by the current Phoenix King, the things it would apparently be fine to do to Ulthuan goes up to blockading, bombarding, sacking, and burning Lothern, supporting Lothernian oligarchs in seizing control of Eataine, stealing half of Ulthuan's navy, and slaughtering an entire army of Asur. I haven't seen anyone suggesting any Druchii deals that come remotely close to any of that.
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Wait what? When did all that happen? Sounds like terrible precedent.
 
Talon TigerDino said:
Wait what? When did all that happen? Sounds like terrible precedent.
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As dinomannitro6 says, Marienburg was blockaded, bombarded, sacked and burned by Ulthuan, because a Marienburg pirate somehow got through Ulthuan's mists one time and took some stuff before fucking off back home. This could be called somewhat deserved if not for the fact that the elf in question was described (and decried by other elves) as having been excessive in his retribution and ruthlessness: he could have caught up to the pirates at sea and sunk them, but he deliberately chased them back to Marienburg to send any would-be pirates a lesson.

Later, Dieter IV (the same guy who outlawed the Colleges, as you may recall) gave Marienburg their independence in exchange for a massive bribe. Ulthuan (or at least, some of Cothique) supported this and probably gave some hidden aid long before the bribe took place.

The Emperor after Dieter decided 'fuck that' and tried to get it back, but Ulthuan (or at least just Cothique) sent an army to support Marienburg. This was the Battle of Grootscher Marsh and the Imperial army got devastated because the Colleges were still outlawed at the time, giving Ulthuan complete magical supremacy over the battlefield. Bad stuff.

And although people usually talk of Marienburg as the only part that matters, technically speaking it's the Westerlands. And as such, they took along two thirds of the Empire's coastline when it seceded. Neues Emskrank in Nordland (also the location of a nexus, by the way) is the only meaningfully large settlement in the Empire's coastline - the Empire tried to establish two others but Marienburg decided to sabotage them.

If Marienburg hadn't seceded and taken those two-thirds of the coastline, the Empire would see Druchii more often and have more port towns/cities, and definitely be able to protect itself better from such. In a very real sense, Ulthuan has contributed to this potential deal being appealing.
 
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Concerning support to Marienbourg, the Asurs were just helping a very old ally against their former overlord, whose ruler gave them the right to secede. I'm on Marienbourg's side on this one.
 
Marienburg isn't a democracy, it didn't exert it's "right to secede" or a right to self rule or anything like that—it was usurped and stolen by a cabal of ultra wealthy nobles. There's a reason Ranald is honoured in the city.

I'd call it an illegitimate government if that didn't open up the very ugly question of "what even is a legitimate government anyway?"
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
Marienburg isn't a democracy, it didn't exert it's "right to secede" or a right to self rule or anything like that—it was usurped and stolen by a cabal of ultra wealthy nobles.
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That's not what was said: the provinces don't have an inherent 'right to secede', true. The legitimate, universally recognized (by the Electors) Emperor, however, gave them that right, as he let them do so.
Who ultimately decided to secede doesn't really matter, the oligarchs were the legitimate rulers as far as I can tell, and the Emperor was the legitimate ruler of the Empire. No laws were broken. Mostly because there are no laws concerning this, sure, but that's the way the Empire is run.
 
Boney said:
According to existing precedent as set by the current Phoenix King, the things it would apparently be fine to do to Ulthuan goes up to blockading, bombarding, sacking, and burning Lothern, supporting Lothernian oligarchs in seizing control of Eataine, stealing half of Ulthuan's navy, and slaughtering an entire army of Asur. I haven't seen anyone suggesting any Druchii deals that come remotely close to any of that.
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When you think about, managing to pull off neocolonialism in a pre-renaissance setting is kind of impressive.
 
Marienburg is led by the will of the people, which by some crazy coincidence has a ninety-five election streak of only placing the heads of the ten wealthiest merchant families on its executive council.
 
Parabola said:
Would Settra agree on signing the Accords? This might just be my knee-jerk reaction to a guy whose arrogance can be described as "Alexander the Great meets Qin Shi Huangdi", but I feel like he'd be skeptical. However, for quest purposes, he may be willing to do so if it means restoring more of Nehekhara and culling the Dhar in the land, and perhaps he's politically savvy in his own way. We're not gonna ever convince him to not attack Altdorf in case they decide to find some more mummy gold and put it in a museum, but that has a different solution - getting it through the archaeologists' thick heads not to rob Nehekharan tombs.
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It doesn't necessarily have to be Settra- iirc, each of the Tomb Kings are largely independent of each other, and would sign on independently if they did so.
 
Parabola said:
Neues Emskrank in Nordland (also the location of a nexus, by the way) is the only meaningfully large settlement in the Empire's coastline - the Empire tried to establish two others but Marienburg decided to sabotage them.
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Not quite right on this part- Neues Emskrank is one of the two ports that were attempted to be built up to match Marienburg, the other being Salkalten in Ostland.

It's a miserable fishing village, at least as far as canon describes.

Probably the two largest ports in Nordland are Dietershafen and Norden, the former being the berth of the Second Fleet, the latter being the location that in Karl Franz's time was assigned as the berth for the expansion of the Second Fleet.
 
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