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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Mopman43 said:
I'm not sure if the Karaz Ankor wants to judge worthiness by support for Belegar's expedition.

Or at least, I don't think the Old Holds want that to be the standard.
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Belegar having no help initially, eh. Shit happens.


Belegar having no help for years afterwards, getting some side eye.


Belegar having no help for more years afterward after handing out gromril swords, iirc at least two of them runed to the parties responsible for actually showing up? You can't even show up in token numbers to shore up your internal political infighting?

At this point the Elgi have possibly done more to assist the Karaz Ankor in recent(to a dawi, so decades) memory than the entire Sigmarite church. Which is one Elgi. Doing it for a paycheck.

The Old Holds may have failed by their own measure, but they failed to the tune of quite a lot of material support and more than a few bodies in the end.
 
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Lokimotion said:
Since most people in the Empire are Sigmarites, that would just engender a lot of ill will towards the elves if they said it (as it would be viewed as a foreign polity trying to hinder the dominant faith of the Empire) and confusion if the dwarves said it (since dwarves are big on venerating their ancestors and Sigmar is pretty much the ancestor god of the Empire, and they have a lot of respect for Sigmar himself for the alliance between the Empire and Karaz Ankor, which marked the end of the Time of Woes).
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Eh, the elves are ulrican, they're regarded with ill will by the sigmarites just for that I bet. And yeah, it would be taken as shade towards the dominant religion, but given that religion is dominant largely because of the electoral council advantage, I don't think the other cults are going to get on Sigmarites' side. I don't buy that most people in the empire are sigmar-primary, it's too much of a religion of generals and rulers. Like Odin vs Thor before Christianity.

As far as the dwarves go, it would not be hard to pitch the council situation as umgak backfill that has led to shoddy outcomes. Them grumbling about it is as good as anything else for applying pressure.
 
Glau said:
Eh, the elves are ulrican, they're regarded with ill will by the sigmarites just for that I bet. And yeah, it would be taken as shade towards the dominant religion, but given that religion is dominant largely because of the electoral council advantage, I don't think the other cults are going to get on Sigmarites' side. I don't buy that most people in the empire are sigmar-primary, it's too much of a religion of generals and rulers. Like Odin vs Thor before Christianity.

As far as the dwarves go, it would not be hard to pitch the council situation as umgak backfill that has led to shoddy outcomes. Them grumbling about it is as good as anything else for applying pressure.
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I'm not sure who you imagine would be taking the votes from the Cult of Sigmar, if their support is among the 'generals and rulers'.

I think the Dwarfs are far more likely to support replacing the Grand Theogonist than to get involved with weakening the Cult in general.
 
Glau said:
You know, we can use dwarves and elves to launder our perspectives. So they come in and say 'huh, as third parties with a new era of engagement encouraging us to take a closer look, it seems a bit weird for one cult to have so many votes. Maybe you should rebalance a bit.' And they say it to Heidi and Leopold in semi public. Let the rumors spread a bit.

So it's not coming from us, and we stay apolitical. We just give a Ranaldite empress casus belli to trim the sails of an institution likely to be hostile to the interests of her son.
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You do remember the fact that it was Magnus who gave them 3 votes as opposed to 1 they had before 3 Emperors. The very idea is to centalise the empire and any rebalancing would risk another religous split like time of 3 emperors.
 
Dark as Silver said:
Thats never happening.
I thought the idea was replacing one of the other sigmarite captured votes, not the designated sigmarite vote.
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I meant 'getting a new Grand Theogonist'.

Yorri won't be in there forever.


Though I would find it funny if we actually met the guy and the thread started to come around on him, as it has on a number of other characters over the years.
 
IronFist said:
What are you talking about :V? Yorri has been around since before the First incursion
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Boney has indicated that the current Grand Theogonist is Yorri XV.

warhammerfantasy.fandom.com

Yorri XV

Yorri XV was the Grand Theogonist during the reign of Emperor Luitpold von Holswig-Schliestein as well as the early reign of the Emperor's son, Emperor Karl Franz. Not much is known about Yorri XV, other than his positions within Imperial bureaucracy. As the head of the Church of Sigmar, Yorri...
warhammerfantasy.fandom.com warhammerfantasy.fandom.com
 
Personally I'd give some power to the guilds. Maybe like a 'guild of guilds' seat, so the non-nobles have some representation beside cults.

The other seat I'd hold open for the one to bring Marianburg back into the empire, along with a runefang, and see how long it takes an ambitious house in the city to make a play. It sets up around fun incentives, and will eventually get us the port back without armies fighting.
 
Glau said:
Personally I'd give some power to the guilds. Maybe like a 'guild of guilds' seat, so the non-nobles have some representation beside cults.

The other seat I'd hold open for the one to bring Marianburg back into the empire, along with a runefang, and see how long it takes an ambitious house in the city to make a play. It sets up around fun incentives, and will eventually get us the port back without armies fighting.
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The problem is that the rulers and people of Marienberg have no particular reason to want to be part of the Empire, and good reasons not to be subject to the sometimes arbitrary whims of the Emperor.

It's hard to give them a positive incentive to do something that is bad for them.
 
Now if the people of Marienburg could get rid of the sometimes arbitrary whims of the elected representatives who most certainly were not "elected" for being the richest and most ruthless bastards in the city.
 
Valmond said:
Now if the people of Marienburg could get rid of the sometimes arbitrary whims of the elected representatives who most certainly were not "elected" for being the richest and most ruthless bastards in the city.
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It's certainly no worse and arguably significantly less bad than a hereditary aristocracy, as at least there's a mechanism for regime change without violence, as less successful members of the Directorate fail commercially they automatically fall from political power. Given how inherently risky long distance trade is, you're almost guaranteed churn within the oligarchs' power structure, as houses go bust when a trade expedition gets earn by a sea monster or similar.

An urban mercantile oligopoly of nominal peers almost inherently depends more on the consent of the ruled than a majority rural military aristocractic hierarchy.
 
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Alratan said:
It's certainly no worse and arguably significantly less bad than a hereditary aristocracy, as at least there's a mechanism for regime change without violence, as less successful members of the Directorate fail commercially they automatically fall from political power. Given how inherently risky long distance trade is, you're almost guaranteed churn within the oligarchs' power structure, as houses go bust when a trade expedition gets earn by a sea monster or similar.

An urban mercantile oligopoly of nominal peers almost inherently depends more on the consent of the ruled than a majority rural military aristocractic hierarchy.
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I am probably somewhat less optimistic in how the actual changes in power among the merhcant houses happen.
Or how the said houses gain and keep their wealth.
For the average citizen, oligarchs and hereditary aristocracy will be more or less the same, and both rely on ability to employ people with weapon to enforce their will.
 
Valmond said:
I am probably somewhat less optimistic in how the actual changes in power among the merhcant houses happen.
Or how the said houses gain and keep their wealth.
For the average citizen, oligarchs and hereditary aristocracy will be more or less the same, and both rely on ability to employ people with weapon to enforce their will.
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I think it's very different, mostly down to the means of production.

A hereditary aristrocrat makes their money by appropriating the productivity of their own subjects on the basis of the explicit or implicit threat of violence.

A trading house makes its money by providing services to people they largely don't rule and earning a spread on the difference between the price they buy and sell at. Their citizens are largely valuable to them as potential employees and as some part of their customer base.

That means the two sets of rulers' material incentives and so cultures are completely different. This means the nature and extent of exploitation is different. A merchant needs his customers to be able to buy the luxury goods he imports. An aristocrat just needs the number of peasants who die of malnutrition or its side effects to only be high enough to maintain a stable population.

The culture and power relations of seventeenth century Amerstdam are completely different to those of the contemporary German states for a reason.
 
Alratan said:
I think it's very different, mostly down to the means of production.

A hereditary aristrocrat makes their money by appropriating the productivity of their own subjects on the basis of the explicit or implicit threat of violence.

A trading house makes its money by providing services to people they largely don't rule and earning a spread on the difference between the price they buy and sell at. Their citizens are largely valuable to them as potential employees and as some part of their customer base.

That means the two sets of rulers' material incentives and so cultures are completely different. This means the nature and extent of exploitation is different. A merchant needs his customers to be able to buy the luxury goods he imports. An aristocrat just needs the number of peasants who die of malnutrition or its side effects to only be high enough to maintain a stable population.

The culture and power relations of seventeenth century Amerstdam are completely different to those of the contemporary German states for a reason.
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While you are not, technically, incorrect on the difference between hereditary aristocrat and a trading house.
I think you are ignoring lot of details and context on just how the said services are provided, and over stating the hereditary nobles exploitation (not because of any moral character of the aristocrat, but due to ability to do the said exploitation before a revolution starts) in comparison to how trading houses treat their workers (and customers, if they manage to get a monopoly).
 
My bet is it's trajectory is Venice's: starts out as a Republic, calcifies into an aristocracy. It's sort of a natural progression, blocked only by killing laws that would insure inheritances.

But the idea behind offering an EC seat and a runefang is to create a dynamic where a single family *can* win the game of status competion forever. We don't need it to be good for Marianburg. We don't even need it to be popular. We just need an ambitious merchant family to screw everyone else for their own advantage.

Which is a reliable bet, tbh.
 
I don't think Imperial pride could tolerate giving a Marienburger merchant family a runefang and Elector-Countship. The Empire is ruled by aristocrats, so they aren't going to want to cede power to burghers especially with the example of Marienburg failing.

It also has downsides for whichever family decided to go for it. They would have to pay taxes to the Empire. They seceded so they didn't have to do that. Many people would also prefer being a big fish in a medium pond rather than being a moderately sized fish in a lake.

If Marienburg is ever reclaimed, it will be by force, not diplomacy.
 
I don't see why Marienburg would ever take the offer of a runefang and a seat, what advantage would that get them that they don't have now?
Because currently they still sit on a major trade route while being a semi monopoly on elven goods. The only thing a electorship would bring are a bit more political power and having to pay taxes.

(Edit) I got eshined
 
I don't think Marienburg has, at any point, been a democracy (though it does make some vague mouth noices towards that end), it's an oligarchy, except it has been one for so long that it already was basicly an aristocracy before becomming independent in all but name.

Also, yes, i don't see Marienburg voluntarily ever rejoining the empire.
Not without wild changes in how, and by whom, it is run.
 
Tobtorp said:
I don't see why Marienburg would ever take the offer of a runefang and a seat, what advantage would that get them that they don't have now?
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Nothing. It would make the city and most of the families in it worse off.

It'll happen because it makes one family much better off.

This is just divide and conquer.
 
Orbmorb said:
And surely no problems will arise from empowering someone willing to screw over their peers and subjects, and skilled enough to come out on top of everyone else in Marianburg who fits that description
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The question is whether those consequences are better than a war.

Personally, I think yes.
 
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