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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Insult Everyone! said:
This is a good one, but it's also grossly overpaying. We could probably get that dispensation on our rep alone. If we convinced them we could.
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Maybe we could get a dispensation on rep alone, but I'm also thinking about how one of the things about Dhar dispensation is that they get harder to get successively, and how when you bring back anything to do with Dhar you get scrutinised; not just the circumstances around it but also your history for the possibility that you might be trying to eg hide that you have 'get burned at the stake' type stuff there. Doing this all this way we could probably get a wider scoped or longer term dispensation than rep alone, or maybe we could get an enthusiastic dispensation (which might mean the Light College sharing Jovi Sunscryer's work with us for instance, rather than stonewalling us; or it might allow us to more overtly bring in other people and share stuff with them - it could be the seed of cooperation if we can bring disparate groups with their own secrets together again - so many cool possibilities) rather than a wary one (that means we have to maintain deniability and wariness ourself; would still be fun and I'd still be keen but a very different kind of thing).

Edited to add: if we get the wide/enthusiastic dispensation, it could be the kind of thing we use the Waystone institution to bootstrap - the Waystone network depends on Dhar for its function, everyone used to have secrets for how to deal with it, but we have all lost enough stuff that those secrets are not things we can just use anymore. But it shows a way we have been successful in clawing stuff back through cooperation, and we also have a group of people who we know, who know us, and where we all know the others are legit. But instead of tiptoing around that (so we don't get burned at the stake) this might let us try to eg help the Ice Witches more widely deploy their 'transmute Dhar into uncorrupted frozen power' stuff and maybe in exchange be able to learn enough to help the Ulricans develop something similar. Or some collaboration between Runepriests and the Light College to build choruses of the smaller conversion runes to increase their conversion power the more of them that resonate together. Like, no guarantees we can get people to even say 'yes' to trying, let alone that it would work, but the big dispensation is more likely to allow us to attempt asking the question (and having those cool conversations and cool scenes) rather than having to do everything by stealth and by ourself. And also, it would be really cool if we could get a wide enough dispensation that we could (for example) actually discuss stuff with Seliph and Sarumar in a way that lets us open up a bit more.
 
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Mathilde hasn't had a flying tower because she hasn't been in the financial position to have a flying tower -- Belegar doesn't count because we had to juggle his mindset with not breaking his wallet in a way that we're not concerned with for the colleges (on account of them being able to say no if we would break the bank).

Let's not ascribe a characterization of not liking flying towers to our character when we find them so clearly appealing.
 
picklepikkl said:
Has been raised.

(Not to pick on you specifically, but I strongly suggest people with clever ideas use the Search Thread feature and search a keyword for the idea in posts by Boney to see if they've said anything about it already. I know the thread moves fast and reading everything is an unreasonable expectation, but Search is really useful.)
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Rats, I missed that - thank you. Neat that the Nordland Hedgewise are getting something though :). I suppose in that case, count me pre-emptively as a vote for the Aspect of the Father the next time we meet them.

I stand by my opinion on the armor and flying tower/ship, though. They're just not Mathilde imo. More fitting for It Belongs In A Museum, I think, and Doctor Who-Mo-Tep or whatever we're going to call him, which feels like a wackier and zanier quest already.
 
@Boney would it be possible to get the Golds to teach Eike secrets about enchanting materials or alchemy-adjacent things that would help develop her natural alchemist trait, or is that too close to the red line of teaching Alchemy?
 
picklepikkl said:
So we can assume we have it for dangerous things we plan on doing, accept that we don't have it during unplanned moments of crisis, and narratively leave it available for other swordwizards to enjoy when we're heads-down on research.
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Having the big boon we get for the Orbs being the ability to rent some armor thats not available in emergencies (even if its very good armor) is very unsatisfying to me. Whatever we get I want it to be something permanent. First choice is still flying ship/tower, but I'd go with secrets or something over this.
 
Boney said:
The Eyes of Grimnir, thousands of scattered monitor runes throughout Silver Pass, lost, and with them the ability for Karaz-a-Karak to safely project power along the pass, which lead to the loss of what was now Mount Grimfang.
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lead should be led
Boney said:
There's two worlds here.

There's one world where I just say the favour system is broken, and people nod, and they bring in the most applicable expert with a level of expertise commensurate for the task at hand, and everything works fine.

There's another world where I just say the favour system is broken, and someone immediately tries to get seven Lord Magisters in to do the laundry, one for each day of the week, and I tell them no, and then someone else goes "ooh, there's a line! that means that what I need to do is ask five thousand questions until I learn exactly where the line is! and then we can extract maximum utility from each technically allowed wizard deployment!" and gets fifteen questions deep until I snap at them, and then someone else starts picking at the thread and I end up spending a very resentful hour working out the exact checks and balances.

I don't know if we're in the good place where we can have nice things, or if we're in the bad place where I need to specify the exact height of the bar to the nearest millimeter. I do know I'd rather not predestine us towards the latter.
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I think you might be worrying too much about this. When the Dwarf Favor system was broken, it didn't (as far as I know) lead to this kind of continuous abuse. I think if you outline what "within reason" means in understandable terms, unlimited CF won't be a big problem.

Stuff like "you can't just borrow LMs whenever, it has to be for a task worthy of their expertise and time, and only occasionally tap the same resource/person". Make it clear that it, like Algard's open-door policy, is something that can be rescinded if abused but is available when you think you have a good reason.

So if we need a power stone for making an enchanted item, that's fine; if we are going to borrow LM expertise for inventing a new spell, it has to be something done on rare occasion and not a repeated action. We've earned a blank check but not infinite spending, in other words.

You've been pretty successful in the past about putting general guidelines and limitations in place for systems, and I don't think those have caused serious problems. Stuff like spell creation, for example.
 
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Lammen Gorthaur said:
Rats, I missed that - thank you. Neat that the Nordland Hedgewise are getting something though :). I suppose in that case, count me pre-emptively as a vote for the Aspect of the Father the next time we meet them.
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Given that it's Nordland, I'm worried that the change in status is going to be more along lines of "the Elector Count has declared a purge of unsanctioned magic users to steal their land".
 
redpotato4 said:
Having the big boon we get for the Orbs being the ability to rent some armor thats not available in emergencies (even if its very good armor) is very unsatisfying to me. Whatever we get I want it to be something permanent. First choice is still flying ship/tower, but I'd go with secrets or something over this.
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Yeah, if we're obsessed enough to be so granular about the reward we could also just like. Temporarily give back the armor when we're in a research arc for if any battles pop up. This is a megareward I'm not interested in putting asterisks on it.
 
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picklepikkl said:
Proposed wording for this:
[*] Priority requisition access to Armor of von Tarnus

So we can assume we have it for dangerous things we plan on doing, accept that we don't have it during unplanned moments of crisis, and narratively leave it available for other swordwizards to enjoy when we're heads-down on research.
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We'd still need to invest the same amount of time/narrative space wordsmithing/AP as required for the 'can move and fight in armour' requirement, now for a more conditional benefit.
SaltyWaffles said:
I think you might be worrying too much about this. When the Dwarf Favor system was broken, it didn't (as far as I know) lead to this kind of continuous abuse.
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To me, breaking the favour system mostly meant I felt heavily restricted in what we could ask for, as opposed to the clarity which existed around what was as I recall a substantial bank of Dwarf favour. Not any strict restriction, but the combination of the explicit 'good for the Karaz Ankor' and the implicit 'be a good citizen about this' left me with that feeling.
 
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Hmm, the option to get rid of the Vow of Poverty for Mathilde and Eike seems like the only one that does something for Eike.

A gift for our adopted daughter Eike would be really nice.

We could even reveal it to her on the day she becomes a journeyman.
 
You know, I wonder if anyone has taken a look at Mathilde's somewhat extravagant living conditions and reported suspicions of her violating the vow of poverty to the grey order? If they did, they were probably laughed out of the building since only a poor person wouldn't have silk sheets :V
 
Alliterate said:
We'd still need to invest the same amount of time/narrative space wordsmithing/AP as required for the 'can move and fight in armour' requirement, now for a more conditional benefit.
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I mean, would we? You can learn on the job when the worst the common enemy can give is a bruise. I really need to restate the everliving shit out of that statement. Wade into horde of orks and not worry too much. Like jesus fuck. We would be a mobile fucking fortification all of our own. Forget a tower. Just teleport to a point, slaughter shit until siege weaponry or elite of elites get rerouted(as its the only thing that could scratch us) and repeat. We could defeat entire waaaghs on our lonesome potentially. I would not for it but on paper thats a feasible outcome. Like holy shit its busted.

Its the sword that cinches it. In the end, most knights in plate mail are invulnerable to damage either way but they can get pulled down by the masses and pulled apart, armament and weaponry both. But Mathilde can summon and leverage a sword that can never be taken from her. Tactics like mass and pull apart would never work even if she did get caught. She's slaughter on two legs with something that lets her ignore most forms of conventional damage.
 
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I don't see what the point is in getting out of the Vow when we barely acknowledge it even exists half the time anyway. There's so many loopholes it basically only serves as a reminder to not be stupid and to provide an excuse if needed to check up on a Wizard.
 
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So when we're talking about a knight order, are we talking about a knight order of perpetuals from all the colleges with runed equipment from vlag and war mammoth battle altars? Or are those separate suggestions?
 
Honestly, can I put in a vote for just a banking of this one? We've got plenty of irons in the fire but it's not feeling like many that would benefit directly and specifically from a Joint 8 Colleges megaboon. I'd love to save this for a rainy day (like, say, the beginning of some other Waystone Project equivalent magical project and instantly getting total buy in) rather than on armor or a floating ship/tower.
 
pucflek said:
I mean, would we? You can learn on the job when the worst the common enemy can give is a bruise. I really need to restate the everliving shit out of that statement. Wade into horde of orks and not worry too much. Like jesus fuck. We would be a mobile fucking fortification all of our own. Forget a tower. Just teleport to a point, slaughter shit until siege weaponry or elite of elites get rerouted(as its the only thing that could scratch us) and repeat. We could defeat entire waaaghs on our lonesome potentially. I would not for it but on paper thats a feasible outcome. Like holy shit its busted.

Its the sword that cinches it. In the end, most knights in plate mail are invulnerable to damage either way but they can get pulled down by the masses and pulled apart, armament and weaponry both. But Mathilde can summon and leverage a sword that can never be taken from her. Tactics like mass and pull apart would never work even if she did get caught. She's slaughter on two legs with something that lets her ignore most forms of conventional damage.
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The orks can't cut us, true... They can bludgeon us death easy as any. This doesn't remove the weakness to blunt force trauma it just means we don't get hacked into pieces...
 
I'd rather just use it to not have another thing that keeps haunting us.
Get a flying boat, a slightly used armor, tenure, something, and then never think about it again.
 
I'm inclined towards taking the Von Tarnus armor, I think. We may not do swording all that often as a rule, but the thing about swording events is that they're always definitionally potential quest-ends in a way that most other events aren't, and I don't think we'll ever be in a position where we'll never be doing swording about it again (it's not Peacehammer, after all). So something that permanently moves the needle away from quest-end that we probably can't otherwise plausibly get feels like a good investment.
 
Lammen Gorthaur said:
Honestly, can I put in a vote for just a banking of this one? We've got plenty of irons in the fire but it's not feeling like many that would benefit directly and specifically from a Joint 8 Colleges megaboon. I'd love to save this for a rainy day (like, say, the beginning of some other Waystone Project equivalent magical project and instantly getting total buy in) rather than on armor or a floating ship/tower.
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We already have two great deeds banked. At what point does it stop being banking and start being a vault with forgotten treasures...
 
Tobtorp said:
We already have two great deeds banked. At what point does it stop being banking and start being a vault with forgotten treasures...
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In that case, I will put in a rare, solitary vote for book - the Book of Volans, specifically, since I don't see us becoming Supreme Matriarch as our character direction any more than the airship and armor and this would be one of our few, if only, chances.

EDIT: I know it's already been mentioned this time, to be clear. I'm saying it's a good one.
 
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