Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

[Kornet]

I understand perfectly well that with some luck torq could become a part/ of regalia and symbol of power. This is precisely why I would rather not give it - and thus give legitimacy - to anyone we are not yet sure in.
Let any new leader prove themselves and if they do, we give them this as a proof of them passing the probation.

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I don't think it will work this way. The thing is, we are trying to create a perception that it is within our power to give or take authority over undumgi, when it actually is not so - and if we give them time, they will understand it. The fact that he will be executing his duties, for however small amount of time, without any kind of affirmation from us means no affirmation is needed. if we give it immediately and after making him know that it wa we who chose him, it is regalia, and we have established the perception that his power stems from us. If we do not, it's just a trinket, and his power and legitimacy is established to stem from another source.

We can remove him if he proves unworthy. We can't un-establish precedent that our decision is not needed.

This sort of thing can be done only in the beginning, when the power structure is wonky and nobody has a clear idea who answers to who.

 

[Prospalz]

Is that clear enough?

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Yeah, sort of. To be perfectly frank, I am really not feeling your position. You made a lot of dubious claims about Mathilde's accomplishments and in-story reputation that do not really seem to be congruent with how other people in-story perceive her.

I considered writing a longer post on this, but I really do not feel like doing the egostroking that would be inevitably involved in seriously arguing about Mathilde's career and accomplishements.

I'll just settle with the statements contained in the first paragraph of this post, for as long as people do not attempt to seriously argue, all worried and serious, about how Mathilde's Stewardship/Martial/Intrigue is "only" 16/20/19 and how that makes her incompetent.

 

[vsh]

Lets face it, during the expedition we were very loosly his boss by virtue of talking to Belegar first. If this was Johanquest, would we see that as anything meaningful?

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We just argue about hiring him. Not being hired because at some point you choose to lie about a few things to a prospective boss and were caught later would be understandable even to questers, I think.

 

[Glau]

Roswita laments the fact we are cursed with wizardry, says she can't take the risk but offers us a glowing letter of recommendation so another Count of our choice would take us in? Try to spite her at every turn.

Johann doesn't want to muddle the chain of command, or plain doesn't want to wrangle journeymanlings (which is referred to as wrangling cats) when someone already stepped up to do it, and thus allowing us to reap enormous benefits from sitting on the War Council, and now he is as trustworthy as a Skaven used-carriage salesman.

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I mean, we did vote 'be the bigger witch' he did lie to dwarves. That he was intending on spending a lot of time around. That suggests it's more serious than just an internal wizard matter, regardless of what happens next. We mention his real rank to Belegar, he's out on his ass for being untrustworthy, regardless of how useful he is to us.

I'm thinking three options:
- wash our hands of him. Tell the dwarves what's up, make it clear that we don't like him, let the problem solve itself.
- trade fixing his shit for him accepting our authority. This is the 'go home and pass your "tests", then we can talk' option. He agrees to do what we tell him, we agree not to burn him with the dwarves.
- cover for him and hope for good will. Let him do his own thing but don't tell dwarves anything. This is what he wants, but I see no reason to give it to him without him bribing us somehow.

Let any new leader prove themselves and if they do, we give them this as a proof of them passing the probation.

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Problem is that if they screw up, we probably have a bunch of greenskins knocking on our door. The torq is more useful to us if it is in use than as a prize to be awarded, we are just trying to leverage the giving for more narrative benefit.

 

[Pyrelight]

[X] Plan 2 wizards
-[x] Recruit Panoramia
-[x] Recruit Maximilian

[x] Take an active hand in the EIC

[x] Infiltrator: Nobody seems to guard anything well enough to keep you out. +2 Intrigue, +10 bonus to infiltration.
[x] Polyglot: Your time with the Dwarves has revealed that you have an ear for languages, and learn new languages much faster.
[x] Marksman: Blackpowder is a wonderful thing. +2 Martial, +10 to attacks with blackpowder weapons.
[x] Collegiate: They say managing Wizards is like herding cats. Herding cats isn't actually that difficult. Can manage three other wizards per action spent.
[x] Magical Duellist: Anyone unwise enough to try to cast spells you don't want them to will quickly regret it. +2 Learning, +10 bonus to dispelling and inducing miscasts.

[x] Wolf Familiar > Winter Wolf Familiar: Turns out Wolf is a late bloomer. Wolf will grow large enough to ride upon.

Man, look at the size of the paws on him!

[x] Bureaucrat + Practical > Warrior of Paperwork: Scholarship is just a specific form of paperwork. You can live with it. Combines the two traits, +2 Learning, remove penalty to writing papers yourself.
[x] Disdain for Sigmar > Polytheist: Your bitterness towards Sigmar has softened with time and distance. You're still not thrilled with him, but as long as his followers are coexisting with those of other Gods, you can deal with it. +1 Piety, removes anti-Sigmarite penalty except when dealing with Sigmarite supremacists and monotheists.

[x] Return it with your thanks to the Bright College. +2 College Favour.
[x] Donate it to whoever ends up leading the Undumgi.

Ranald's neat but the avatar thing doesn't grab me.

 

[ctulhuslp]

That's why we should make sure they are good.

Passing it to him after he proves himself has completely different optics, because the authority isn't seen as inherently ours to bestow as of yet.

Also, you seem to want Johann, why not Fields of Gold?

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Collegiate means its worthless to pick only two wizards.

 

[Alliterate]

*starts making stuff up*

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Same as most everyone else, then!

Understanding of Ulgu? Probably above average, though it's not super-clear.

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This seemed pretty clear.

What you quickly learn is though you don't quite have the proper jargon vocabulary, you do have a grasp of the nature of Ulgu that matches many and exceeds some that are giving these lectures; the conversations you have are interesting but often not educational, as those giving the talks spend several hours to get to a point that you grasp on an instinctive level.

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This isn't your average Wizard, these are ones who are lecturing on their pet topic, which we frequently grasped instinctively.

Question: What are the chances that 'Disdain for Sigmar' will negatively affect our ability to influence the EIC?

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Obviously I can't answer authoritatively, but this vote is certainly "taking control of an institution"
and the trait is unambiguous—
will not let Sigmarism flourish in institutions she controls - penalty to institutional actions unless worship of another god is instituted.
-the trait as described won't let us tolerate strong Sigmarism in the EIC, and we'll be hampered in dealing with the EIC until we promote an alternative.

 

[Nix's Warden]

You know, considering Windsage explicitly says we get more information from our magical senses then our mundane ones, I wonder if it changes the appearance of our eyes at all?

 

[torac]

If. And if they are suitable for those actions - if there's urgent need to assassinate some master moulder or whoever, it's squarely our job and we cannot delegate, for example.

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Let's speculate on possible "tasks"

- Liaison to / Manager of local wizarding population.
- Investigate and deal with magical phenomena: "broken" Waystones, Dhar accumulation, aftermath of miscasts, Warpstones…
- Investigate and find ways to deal with exotic fauna and flora: Magical Mushrooms, Spiders, Dragon-Ogres etc.
- Provide assistance to the Kingdom: Rejuvenating barren fields, Counter enemy casters, Help the war effort…
- Help other advisors with their tasks.

Several of these are already taken care of by others. For example, I speculate that if Panoramia wasn't already doing that, and was part of Mathilde's staff, she would be tasked with helping rejuvenate the fields. Likewise, having the Amber wizards help with the spiders would be a task we are already doing. I also assume that keeping track of all the local wizards would be a task that is automatically completed by having them work for Mathilde. (Though that would probably only take one action for all of them every few turns or so.)

There are many things Mathilde specifically can do well, mostly around helping the war effort. I still think the other wizards will be useful.

---------

On Johann specifically: I want to keep a close eye on him anyway. First, because his research is interesting and Mathilde is well-suited to helping mitigate its dangers. Secondly, because I don't trust not to think he is too smart for playing by the rules and will end up with a case of warp-corruption if we leave him alone too long.

 

[agumentic]

Collegiate means its worthless to pick only two wizards.

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We can always pick up more wizards, either from here or just generally. Also, the odds of Collegiate or 3-wizards plan winning seem slim, so you might want to approval vote a 2-wizard plan you like more.

 

[Sinsystems]

You know, considering Windsage explicitly says we get more information from our magical senses then our mundane ones, I wonder if it changes the appearance of our eyes at all?

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It will probably result in a situation where it looks like Mathilde is looking directly into your soul and her being able to even more eerily figure out what you are thinking.

 

[Cathon Grimeye]

I really don't understand what the problem is with giving the torc to the leader of the Undumgi, beyond the obvious benefits to the guy, think about the situation:
Do you even realize what will happen to the poor guy who has to lead the Undumgi? Just after being given the job, a fucking Grey Wizard will come up to him/her and give a torc as "emblem of office" with some nifty effect and probably say some ominous words like "It's just a gift". Sure it's nice but anyone who knows what the Greys are about will be fucking terrified that there isn't some other effect, like a "decapitate with a word" effect or "kill when you lie to Grey Wizard" effect. Make it be analyzed by a wandering mage and said expert finds nothing but the spoken about enchantment? Of course he didn't find anything, it must be because it is super well concealed! It's a fucking Grey Wizard gift after all! Moreover, the guy will be living and working in Karag Nar, now what is visible to everyone that takes the central stairway above everyone's heads? A fucking Grey Wizard Tower. If the guy is not totally super competent, it's even better: the constant silent pressure of the scary wizard could potentially drive him/her to excel in order to not anger the scary Grey wizard and he/she would too stupid to realize that there is nothing wrong with the torc.
Grey wizards are paranoid, but they also engender paranoia and fear with even the most benign of gestures and that fear should be used at the Grey wizard's advantage whenever possible.

 

[TotallyNotEvil]

Collegiate means its worthless to pick only two wizards.

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It's also not likely to win, so we ought to pick the best two minions we can.

@Glau I'm not opposed to punishing him. But we want to get him under our thumb first.

The Bursar all but gave us the leverage to do so. Let's use it.

How much did it cost to hire a Magister again? Four favors a turn?

 

[Briefvoice]

So I went back to early turns to remind myself of what a turn action choice actually looks like. It's... a little less binary than I recalled.

It's not that Belegar is necessarily going to give us two to four separate things to do each Turn. It's more that he gives assignments and we can spend multiple actions to try different approaches so as to have greater odds of success. Like, here's what our orders from Trun 2 looked like:

"Then that will be our priority. Journeywoman Weber, find those documents by whatever means necessary. I'll put a platoon of Greatswords at your disposal. Get me those books."

[ ] As Per Orders: Perform your current assignment.
-[ ] Money Solves Problems: You've got a discretionary fund, Wurtbad has town criers. Put out word of a reward and see if anyone knows anything about a cartload or five of books wandering off.
-[ ] Record-Keeping: The Wurtbad Watch keeps a record of every cart that goes through the gates. See if there's any useful information to be found in their record books.
-[ ] Straight to the Source: Or you could ask the Watchmen directly. Human memory is more fallible than written records, but it would be a lot faster and there might be something that wasn't written down.
-[ ] Door Kickers: Wilhelm von Tarshof is one candidate for the theft, and though he's nowhere to be found, the Stirlandian League is a public organization. Start kicking down some doors.
-[ ] Or You Could Ask Nicely: Or, I guess, you could knock politely on those doors and ask them about it.
-[ ] Wilhelmina says that most of the nobles are unknowingly helping with rebuilding the tax code. Maybe those that aren't are hiding something.
-[ ] While the Greatswords are at your disposal, have one of them train you in the art of Greatswording.

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[zup]

[X] Avatar: You're growing worryingly familiar with being used as a conduit by deities. ???

Maybe it's the awesome scenes and events the QM writes, but I want Mathilde to be involved in further divine shenanigans.

[X] Windreader > Windsage: Your magical senses see more than your normal ones. +2 Learning, even more able to see and understand emotion and magical effects in others.

Seems like a trait useful for both scouting for threats and a step to more fundamental understanding of magic.

I want to take all the wizards but is much action sink. And if not all, too hard to choose.

 

[Kornet]

I really don't understand what the problem is with giving the torc to the leader of the Undumgi, beyond the obvious benefits to the guy, think about the situation:
Do you even realize what will happen to the poor guy who has to lead the Undumgi? Just after being given the job, a fucking Grey Wizard will come up to him/her and give a torc as "emblem of office" with some nifty effect and probably say some ominous words like "It's just a gift". Sure it's nice but anyone who knows what the Greys are about will be fucking terrified that there isn't some other effect, like a "decapitate with a word" effect or "kill when you lie to Grey Wizard" effect. Make it be analyzed by a wandering mage and said expert finds nothing but the spoken about enchantment? Of course he didn't find anything, it must be because it is super well concealed! It's a fucking Grey Wizard gift after all! Moreover, the guy will be living and working in Karag Nar, now what is visible to everyone that takes the central stairway above everyone's heads? A fucking Grey Wizard Tower. If the guy is not totally super competent, it's even better: the constant silent pressure of the scary wizard could potentially drive him/her to excel in order to not anger the scary Grey wizard and he/she would too stupid to realize that there is nothing wrong with the torc.
Grey wizards are paranoid, but they also engender paranoia and fear with even the most benign of gestures and that fear should be used at the Grey wizard's advantage whenever possible.

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To elaborate: it's not just a grey wizard. It's a grey wizard he heard stories about from his comrades, speaking about carnage at Und-Uzgar, it is the grey wizard publically known to assasinate several warbosses over several days, it is the grey wizard he personally saw turn a savage horde of orcs (which was charging him) into a bunch of all-but-mannequins.

It is a very, very scary grey wizard, who thankfully is on his side. For now.

 

[TotallyNotEvil]

I want to take all the wizards but is much action sink. And if not all, too hard to choose.

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Johann and Max via Plan Fields of Gold is likeky the best pick for 1 action commitment and no Collegiate trait. Maximum analysis and research power (and that's the Court Wizard's job) , Panoramia is already doing great where she is, Ambers like to wander about.

 

[Strange9]

Honestly, Johann is suffering from the same thing Roswita is: deal however small a slight to the players, and he is immediately put into the "enemy" camp.

Roswita laments the fact we are cursed with wizardry, says she can't take the risk but offers us a glowing letter of recommendation so another Count of our choice would take us in? Try to spite her at every turn.

Johann doesn't want to muddle the chain of command, or plain doesn't want to wrangle journeymanlings (which is referred to as wrangling cats) when someone already stepped up to do it, and thus allowing us to reap enormous benefits from sitting on the War Council, and now he is as trustworthy as a Skaven used-carriage salesman.

Seriously, the man is a Magister. Whom both the Gold and the Grey Colleges, at least, know is here and what for.

I think people are underestimating what the title means.

If we recruit him, we recruit him. Something like "disregard our orders, do his own thing and lie about it" would, at least, see him banished from K8P, reputation forever tarnished with dwarves, and a truly severe rebuke from the College because he, an acknowledged Master Wizard, made the Colleges look horrendously bad in front of the dwarves.

We are the motherfucking Court Wizard of K8P, if he is in our payroll and commits mutiny for the freaking lulz, he is fucked.

He is more than smart enough to realize that. He likely doesn't need to, because that sort of impulse is unlikely to go through the head of someone trusted to work with warpstone.

You don't appreciate the misdirection, hire him and give him some shit duty for a turn as implicit punishment. Don't cut the nose to spite the face by forgoing hiring what's head and showers the best underling we could hope for when our job is "poke weird magical shit". An underling that'd be ruinously expensive to hire with favors.

@edit:
We were loosely in charge during the Expedition. Him keeping cards close to his chest isn't remotely close to disobeying direct orders and lying about it.

A Lord Magister of the Grey College deemed his behavior as "being silly", and all but told to give him a slap upside the head for it.

It's drastically different from being officially in our employ, under the Court Wizard of K8P, and then committing what might charitably be called mutiny, and easily deemed treason.

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Worth noting, though, that this post has waaaay more likes than the generic 'screw johann/roswita' ones. I think it's largely a vocal minority thing? It's not as though the thread has ever actually voted to screw over roswita, for instance.

 

[Briefvoice]

To elaborate: it's not just a grey wizard. It's a grey wizard he heard stories about from his comrades, speaking about carnage at Und-Uzgar, it is the grey wizard publically known to assasinate several warbosses over several days, it is the grey wizard he personally saw turn a savage horde of orcs (which was charging him) into a bunch of all-but-mannequins.

It is a very, very scary grey wizard, who thankfully is on his side. For now.

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Ugg, this is something I see in quests where way more weight starts getting put on a vote than probably should be put into a vote, and we spiral our into elaborate potential consequences that have little to do with the immediate situation.

My favorite example in the Threads of Destiny quest where there was this vote in the middle of a battle about whether to kill this guy or set our liege up to kill this guy. And huge amounts of the argument went on about the political implications of who actually killed him. Which turned out to not be what the vote was about at all. It was about whether the protagonist flinched at killing someone.

So like, this vote about the Torc is whether we want to try and curry a little favor with someone by giving them a minor magical item. It's not some fourth dimensional chess scheme to dominate this guy. If that were the intent of the vote, then the vote would say so.

 

[Sinsystems]

Johann and Max via Plan Fields of Gold is likeky the best pick for 1 action commitment and no Collegiate trait. Maximum analysis and research power (and that's the Court Wizard's job) , Panoramia is already doing great where she is, Ambers like to wander about.

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I think the main argument is a balance between Sheer power and Versatility. While the double Gold Wizard offers more power it's knowledge is very focused, mostly around artificial structures and the like, while it can be argued that a having Panoramia allows us to call upon her to help with anything that involves more organize things like strange plantlife or possibly poisoned water sources or stuff like that.

 

[TotallyNotEvil]

I think the main argument is a balance between Sheer power and Versatility. While the double Gold Wizard offers more power it's knowledge is very focused, mostly around artificial structures and the like, while it can be argued that a having Panoramia allows us to call upon her to help with anything that involves more organize things like strange plantlife or possibly poisoned water sources or stuff like that.

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Eh, perhaps, but I see the potential for weird Skaven things as far, far higher than that, and plain and simply having a Gold Magister to throw at a problem is priceless.

Honestly, I feel like all four is the best option, the Ambers can likely find plenty of work studying Moulder creations, come to think of it.

 

[Kornet]

Ugg, this is something I see in quests where way more weight starts getting put on a vote than probably should be put into a vote, and we spiral our into elaborate potential consequences that have little to do with the immediate situation.

My favorite example in the Threads of Destiny quest where there was this vote in the middle of a battle about whether to kill this guy or set our liege up to kill this guy. And huge amounts of the argument went on about the political implications of who actually killed him. Which turned out to not be what the vote was about at all. It was about whether the protagonist flinched at killing someone.

So like, this vote about the Torc is whether we want to try and curry a little favor with someone by giving them a minor magical item. It's not some fourth dimensional chess scheme to dominate this guy. If that were the intent of the vote, then the vote would say so.

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This action by itself does not do it. It might do it in combination with meddling about who gets to be the leader of Uzumgi (WOG that we will be able to meddle and WOG that there is synergy)

 

[Sinsystems]

Eh, perhaps, but I see the potential for weird Skaven things as far, far higher than that, and plain and simply having a Gold Magister to throw at a problem is priceless.

Honestly, I feel like all four is the best option, the Ambers can likely find plenty of work studying Moulder creations, come to think of it.

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Yeah honestly if the trait that made having Wizards more action efficient has a snowball's chance of winning I would be all over having them all. Honestly if I had my way we'd have one of each College (minus Grey since we fill that slot) underneath us. But that is a future thing to worry about.

 

[Alliterate]

So I went back to early turns to remind myself of what a turn action choice actually looks like. It's... a little less binary than I recalled.

It's not that Belegar is necessarily going to give us two to four separate things to do each Turn. It's more that he gives assignments and we can spend multiple actions to try different approaches so as to have greater odds of success. Like, here's what our orders from Trun 2 looked like:

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Yeah. E.g. at some point Belegar might task us to "dispose of the Wyrdstone on Kvin-ryr."
Johan, for example, probably knows quite a bit about safe handling of Warpstone.

 

[TotallyNotEvil]

You know, I really want to hit up the top of Troll Mountain to see what exactly is going on there.

Because there might well be gromril available if a big chunk of warpstone fell into the peak, and we don't want to lose that to Skaven. Yeah yeah, it could have been sitting there for a while, but it might very well be sufficiently recent that they either don't know about it, or do but haven't managed to get in and out. Who knows what the new balance of power in K8P will do to the situation?

If every peak got a time-sensitive plot, I'm betting that one is something of the sort.

@BoneyM if we go with two minions for now, and see it's working out very well for us, would it be too hard to hire more?