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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Rafin said:
Is Filuan is not the Queen's own House, right? Does the Queen's House have a name and a role/pastime? I assume so, since she's bound to have siblings and cousins and maybe also aunts/uncles and her own children.
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The Queen doesn't have a House. 'Major House' has a specific definition in Tor Lithanel and the Queen's family doesn't match it. Also, there's only been four generations of her family in the entire history of Laurelorn.

Rafin said:
I'm not quite sure I understand Roswita's initial plan. Was it to seem childless and hand the Electorship of Stirland to a new dynast that passes her muster (or the muster of whoever she placed in a good position to make such a choice should she have an untimely death)? What would happen to her kid in such a case? Adopted without knowing their mother? Groomed somewhere else to be this heir?
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No, her plan was for some other family to become the Elector Counts of Stirland, since she'd die without any known children and therefore the other Electors would elect a new Elector Count.

Rafin said:
Does this mean that she still plans on hiding her child? Or at least disown them? Else one could say that the marriage wouldn't really be a dynastic marriage, since the resulting children would not be expected to inherit, should everything go well for her firstborn. It might also paint a target on said firstborn's back. But marrying and then revealing her firstborn later would be a serious betrayal to her husband and his House.
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Why would anyone need to know about the firstborn ever? If the Van Hals couldn't keep the existence of their children secret, then they would have been wiped out somewhere in the thirteen centuries they've spent pissing off every Vampire on the continent.
 
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DeadmanwalkingXI said:
Rizz is just short for charisma. Gyatt I was not familiar with, but a quick Google search indicates it as an expression of excitement, especially after seeing a large butt.

I...don't think that phrase is saying what you want it to say.
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It's AAVE slang for "god". as in saying "Gyatt Damn" is basically just saying "God Damn", and it's typically an exclamation of surprise. It was often used by a popular streamer that many young kids watch, and whenever he saw a particularly sizable posterior he would shorten it to "gyatt". It caught on, and the meaning has been entirely stripped to the point that some even use it to just refer to butts.

Thank you for the update @Boney for the update. Don't have much to add aside from just saying that I like the Roswita scene. I guess we're not quite so close with her that she would voluntarily spill the beans about who her partner was, if she even had one. There are plenty of ways to get pregnant, and not all of them require getting intimate. It certainly doesn't seem like she has any particular attachment to marriage at least.
 
Parabola said:
House Filuan, originally from Avelorn, is a house of boatwrights - we visited their facilities as they're being refurbished. They're the ones that are going to supply the stone from Vlag that will be used to erect Tor Lithanel's new city blocks. The notes we have say they follow Isha and are possibly loyalists to the Queen.

I don't know if the Queen properly has her own house, but I have to imagine her role is properly considered "herding elves", politicking and trying to keep everything together.
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She almost certainly has her own house, with its own businesses, direct vassals and various forms of hard and soft power. Crown lands tend to be a vital part of a monarch's power base, after all.
 
Ergosum said:
Still, knowing and having good relations with 3-4 out of the 5 potential future Emperors, all of whom (except Mandred) already are Elector Counts, is the kind of thing that many nobles would kill (and worse) for. That's not even counting the ones outside the Empire, like the Tzar of Kislev, the Queen of Laurelorn or the Kings (and ruling council) of at least four Dwarf Karaks. Mathilde is genuinely one of the most well-connected people in the Old World.
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"The average Grey Wizard is a diplomat" factoid is actualy just a statistical error. The average Grey Wizard is a Perpetual Apprentice running a spy-rings and libraries. Mathilde Weber, who knows approximately every major noble in the Old World, is an outlier adn should not have been counted. :V
 
Parabola said:
A valid point, but it'd be better to take out some of those vampires while they still think that they're safe rather than when they're on the attack.

...Also, we don't really need any excuses to do something that'd be cool as hell. Why not have the Dammerlichtreiter and the Ghostpuncher to do their thing in Sylvania again?
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Action economy. :V

But my real answer? Action economy. Like, what is there to go around and deal with? Sylvania has been won. There's enemies there, but there's enemies everywhere else. There's probably some impressive enemy there, but it's something Boney will have to invent for the action. I'm not opposed to that, but it takes a lot of the enthusiasm out of me. Like we could investigate Mordheim instead. Or create another waystone. Book mining was cool. The fight has been won already. This is just scrounging around for scraps. The enemies can be dealt with by Stirland.
 
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Boney said:
With the brazier lit, the High Priests of the city's Temples intone an incantation in a tongue even older than Eltharin, inviting the Gods to give their blessing, and you can feel something change in the air as their prayer is heeded. It isn't quite the attention of the Gods, but it is a conduit such that the attention of Them, and if need be Their direct intervention, could be here at Their slightest whim. An expression of interest and a warning against interlopers - a deific equivalent of a gang or a beast marking its territory, one more cavalier than you about making such base parallels might say.
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So elves do have divine magic after all.

Adrian XXIV said:
There is certain "meta-irony" in this, given that Mathilde is Main Character of an AU
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What's the irony here?
 
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Boney said:
Oriouloc but apparently Kadoh's built different
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Guy brought boxing to a halbard and fight and won.
I'm curious why there were no modifiers. Were there modifiers but they were hidden, or this was meant to be an even fight so they were simplified, or finally was this a roll like when Deathwing's elf fought the chaos champion, and if it had gone longer and not been so overwhelming from the start the modifiers would have been rolled out?
 
Dark as Silver said:
I'm curious why there were no modifiers. Were there modifiers but they were hidden, or this was meant to be an even fight so they were simplified, or finally was this a roll like when Deathwing's elf fought the chaos champion, and if it had gone longer and not been so overwhelming from the start the modifiers would have been rolled out?
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The event is theoretically supposed to be a level plane, so that the will of the Gods might be known without confounding factors. Whether or not that was actually the case is between Asuryan and House Malforric.
 
Boney said:
The event is theoretically supposed to be a level plane, so that the will of the Gods might be known without confounding factors. Whether or not that was actually the case is between Asuryan and House Malforric.
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Not sure I understand. Are you saying: "there may or may not have been modifiers but I am making the executive decision to hide that so we don't know if there was interference"?
 
Given how the dicerolls outright called Oriouloc "Jobber", I have to imagine skill played some part in it.
 
Boney said:
(Whether that means that there was a God demoted from the Cadai, or whether the Pantheonic Mandala once changed size as needed, is a very significant question you've yet to receive a straight answer to.)
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This seems like a job for BOOK! To the library!

The Eonir, who have a strong taboo against leaving Laurelorn and its oversoul dominated by the Grey Lords, have removed Ereth Khial from the mandala entirely in favour of Ulric, relegating her to a minor god.
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This suggests, but does not prove, that the mandala's size is set and Mathlann bumped someone else from the big kids table.

Phoenixes of all sorts are an extremely rare sight outside of Ulthuan, and normally a sighting of them would have the Colleges rifling through their vaults to for an appropriate Scroll of Binding
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What, they can't just pokaball it with their soul?

the Elector Countess
very heavily pregnant
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Well congrats to her. Hope she is willing to have healing magic on-hand for the birth. Even a decent (non-Sigmar) priest would help.

when you enter the room she puts away the blunderbuss she'd levelled at the door
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I suppose she does have rather a lot of enemies. Just because the land-owning vampires are dealt with doesn't mean the rest have been. To say nothing of less deceased opposition.

"Father's ambition was to finally bury the Vanhel legacy for good, to free the rest of the family from the grip it has always had on us. I've come to believe that replacing Vanhaldenschlosse with Eagle Castle doesn't achieve that. What needs to be done is that Sylvania needs to be brought down to the point where it can be kept suppressed by any competent administrator, and then allow the position to pass to someone with a blank enough slate that their victories will earn them glory, rather than just paying the interest on thirteen centuries of inherited shame."
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That works for Stirland but the only way future generations of the Vanhel family are going to get rid of that legacy is to change their name. There will always be those eager to dredge up ancient history for a social or political advantage.

"Okay, but why in the world would..." she falls silent, then sighs. "Because I'm an unmarried and apparently childless woman with an inoffensive pet cause. The ambitious think they might be able to marry me into their dynasty, the unambitious think that the power of the Emperor stamping down on Sylvania is preferable to the usual political or religious pet causes of nobility, and everyone thinks that if they put me on the throne, they or their heir will get another chance to properly exercise that power before too long, whereas anyone else as Emperor would have the inheritance locked down for their preferred heir. I'm a perfect compromise candidate if none of the others can get a clear lead."
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Good to see she hasn't been neglecting the political side of her on-the-job training. She probably would be a fine empress.

it would also be one that would expose the person you used to be. You quite like being the highly-skilled Wizard with the ear of many of the continent's movers and shakers, the shadowy figure only glimpsed out of the corner of one's eye as she watches events unfold with a knowing smile. You know that whatever it is that Roswita is imagining, it stars a slightly younger version of that take on yourself, rather than the fumbling, coltish young woman that Abelhelm was much more of a mentor to than anything else.

Part of you still flinches at the memory of Roswita so summarily banishing you from what had become your home, and that part of you quite likes that part of Roswita is still intimidated by what she imagines you to be and to have been. You don't want to give Roswita the ability to treat the younger version of yourself with the same contempt that part of you does.
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Deep character there. Rarely do we see those vulnerabilities and fragilities of her self-image.
 
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Boney said:
He looks at you, then looks around him. "If Abelhelm wasn't enough, Roswita would have been. If two Elector Counts died to Vampires back-to-back, the third would have pulled out, and things would have returned to the way they once were. Instead we're still pruning bloodlines that have grown in Sylvanian soil for centuries."

"But not uprooting?"

He gives a bleak smile. "Not in our lifetimes."
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DragonParadox said:
I mean is there anything meaningful to even pacify at this point? No doubt there are some ghosties and ghoulies, but I don't think any of them are worth the Dammerlichtreiter coming out to play.
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Yeah, there is plenty to still pacify if Codrin is right. I assume he and his order would do a very good job of knowing these things.
 
Boney said:
She looks at you for a long time, and you look back. There is a possible version of this conversation where you actually speak up here, and you have a very long and awkward conversation about what her father actually did mean to you, and what he might have meant to you if things had not gone so terribly wrong at Drakenhof, and, let's be honest here, if he also had a hitherto unsuggested predilection for insecure young Wizards who had only just begun to come into their own. But not only would that be an agonizingly awkward conversation to have, it would also be one that would expose the person you used to be. You quite like being the highly-skilled Wizard with the ear of many of the continent's movers and shakers, the shadowy figure only glimpsed out of the corner of one's eye as she watches events unfold with a knowing smile. You know that whatever it is that Roswita is imagining, it stars a slightly younger version of that take on yourself, rather than the fumbling, coltish young woman that Abelhelm was much more of a mentor to than anything else.
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View: https://youtu.be/fg32xFIJ-uI?feature=shared&t=133
(Ïm sorry i could not help myself)
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
I'm choosing to believe that house Malforric dumped bricks on the scale.

it just didn't matter.
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I suspect that any thumb they might have had on teh scale was mostly in preparing their champion and not direct intervention. I feel like Asuryan, Keeper of Balance might have been a little annoyed otherwise. And he had a direct link, and if necessary he has an army.
 
deathofrats0808 said:
I suspect that any thumb they might have had on teh scale was mostly in preparing their champion and not direct intervention. I feel like Asuryan, Keeper of Balance might have been a little annoyed otherwise. And he had a direct link, and if necessary he has an army.
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I mean, Asuryan is neither nice or fair god. Kadoh just does not give two fucks. He said he would be the greatest there ever was and anyone, god backed or not, can go suck eggs.

(Little did they know that him exercising his diplomatic duties involved training with a man that ended skaven fortress with a single hit. )

[Yes, that was meant to be funny]
 
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