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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Seriously, why is the actual task he is doing the afterthought here? A full study on skaven warptech would be a rare, revolutionary, and tactcally relevant publication, very worth investing an action on.
 
Valarauko said:
I will echo earlier comments in being rather confused why a lot of people seem really worked up about Johann.

Yes, he lied about being a magister. What of it? He's read into the Conspiracy and is trusted by his College to go and poke skaventech and warpstone. That's no small thing. It seems clear to me that Johann is here undercover on a sanctioned mission with the full backing of the Gold Order.

The only reason the Bursar told Mathilde to get involved is because the Grey Order got wind of it and were concerned for the potential diplomatic fallout from the deception. Notice that the Bursar (and by extension the Grey Order as a whole) has no problem with the mission itself, merely blowback.

Johann didn't tell us because we didn't have need to know; he was somewhat surprised we even knew of the skaven, meaning that not every magister is read into the conspiracy. Most gold wizards probably have little reason to be read in because they have no reason to know.

We're grey. Operational security and need to know are everyday things we fully understand. I'd say it's out of character for Mathilde to be upset by his deception for any reason other than Grey Order institutional pride in knowing all the things.
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Mathilde doesn't need to be upset about it. I do though, because he made us waste an action "promoting" him to Magister.
 
DragonParadox said:
Here's why I have an issue with him, though it is by no means massive:

He hid some of his abilities during battle, which means the high command could not use him to best effect which probably cost lives. One could argue that he knew better and did not hide anything important, but he is a wizard not a general so his martial probably does not come up to snuff compared to the people eho should have been making the decisions on how to deploy him.
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What abilities did he hide? As far as I remember, he only hid his rank but was pretty open about abilities.

In fact, he was so open about them, that some people immediately guessed his rank.
 
Urgh how long must we supervise Johann.
I really prefer we just help him get his tech as soon as possible with papers to our name then kick him out.
 
Jrin said:
Urgh how long must we supervise Johann.
I really prefer we just help him get his tech as soon as possible with papers to our name then kick him out.
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If you go for the Citadel Focus vote, then we're doing the first right this turn, and hopefully also learning whether we need to kick him out.
 
So I'm not worked up about Johann. Hell, I want him to succeed in his research. But it's still true that there is a lot of stuff hanging between Johann and us. Stuff us players are obviously hung up about. This can't go on if we want him to be an effective subordinate.

The choice to go skaven-stalking with him is useful but it's also a social link action where we can actually see what he's like when he does what he'd actually come to K8P to do. Ideally we'd come to an understanding.
 
Between the two frontrunner plans, I think Citadel Focus is better. I don't like the EIC action, as I've posted about extensively, and I think it's a little redundant to spend a personal action on supporting Johann's expedition, but it has Max doing something useful (I don't see much point in getting publications done right now, we have so much College Favour), it holds off on snek juice until we have a really good lab for it, and it starts rehabilitating Ranald in the public eye.

I don't much trust Johann, but Citadel Focus's write-in at least gives us more information we can use for that assessment.
 
Quest said:
So I'm not worked up about Johann. Hell, I want him to succeed in his research. But it's still true that there is a lot if stuff hanging between Johann and us. Stuff us players are obviously hung up about. This can't go on if we want him to be an effective subordinate.

The choice to go skaven-stalking with him is useful but it's also a social link action where we can actually see what he's like when he does what he'd actually come to K8P to do. Ideally we'd come to an understanding.
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What better ways to bond with a co-worker than fully indulging in Ranald's portfolios? We could even free some skaven slaves as a diversion at some point.

I do wonder if he's heard the good word though. Given how wealth focused Gold WIzards are, and how their rational mind sets might make them willing to play long odds when they see a positive expected return, then Johann, who's also an accomplished liar, might make a good member of the Cult of Ranald, helping (very slightly) advance the idea of Ranald the Magician. He has the Deceiver aspect down already, and he's clearly very dedicated to the Night Prowler if he's willing to risk stealing from a skaven settlement, which probably includes a prayer to the Gambler as well...
 
NavySeel said:
I really don't get how so many people have this massive issue with Johan, he told one lie which was honestly fairly innocent and hasn't done anything wrong since but some people just seem to hate him.
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I don't have an issue as in "I am salty".

I have an issue with not making him work for his pay, his lodgings and his everything. He is not being housed here as a charity, he is an employee of the hold. There is no reason to treat him as some nobility who is to be worshipped and catered to.

The fact we then go out of our way to help him with his personal project should be good enough way to start off already. Just letting him do the equivalent of going off and writing his personal projects at his working hours makes no sense to me.
 
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ctulhuslp said:
I don't have an issue as in "I am salty".

I have an issue with then not making him work for his pay, his lodgings and his everything. He is not being housed here as a charity, he is an employee of the hold. There is no reason to treat him as some nobility who is to be worshipped and catered to.
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Note that Magisters are literally considered reasonably senior nobles of the Empire. In rank he's probably something like a dwarven Thane of a minor clan.
 
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ctulhuslp said:
I don't have an issue as in "I am salty".

I have an issue with then not making him work for his pay, his lodgings and his everything. He is not being housed here as a charity, he is an employee of the hold. There is no reason to treat him as some nobility who is to be worshipped and catered to.
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And how is him studying our enemies technology not him working, I want to see the results of it it could be incredibly useful.
 
I think we should speak with either Gotri or Dreng about how to make sure our scouting actually helps out the invasion plans. We could definitely get along with Dreng, who was/is a ranger.
 
ctulhuslp said:
I don't have an issue as in "I am salty".

I have an issue with then not making him work for his pay, his lodgings and his everything. He is not being housed here as a charity, he is an employee of the hold. There is no reason to treat him as some nobility who is to be worshipped and catered to.
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He is nobility. He's a magister. But that's neither here nor there.

You act like he can't afford to pay for those himself. He's a magister. Even if he's broke, he can pay us in college favor.

The problem is that we forced him to be our employee and now you expect him to be grateful for that.

Instead I suggest spending an action with him to work out our differences.
 
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NavySeel said:
But he lied unlike... Mathilde the completely honest Grey College magister who was a Spy mistress and follows Ranald.
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We didn't lie about our position as a magister, took our position as a commander, and when we were given the chance to tell Belegar the truth about the events in the temple, events that could have led to us being shipped off to Karaz-a-Karak for soul examination, we chose to tell him.

Mathilde lies. But her lies to the dwarves are irrelevant to the expedition's chances of success. We had a chance to lie about something major and passed it up.
 
Alratan said:
Note that Magisters are literally considered reasonably senior nobles of the Empire. In rank he's probably something like a dwarven Thane of a minor clan.
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True, and we should treat him with respect, alright.
But his position as our subordinate - one which comes with dwarf money as in salary and likely dwarf funding for expenses that are part of his job - implies responsibility, no matter how "noble" he might be.

There are a couple of literal Dwarf Nobility on the Council. If they were to slack off and not do their job, they'd get the boot. That's not a matter of hostility, it's a matter of, pretty literally, doing your job.

NavySeel said:
And how is him studying our enemies technology not him working, I want to see the results of it it could be incredibly useful.
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Pretty literally? Skaventech is his personal pet project/thesis/etc.
Demon blood and Ranald coin are not our job as a Council Wizard either, even though they may be incredibly useful.

If, at work, I went and ignored the company project for half a year and instead decided to work on some Totally Useful Library, then I'd get the boot because, however useful the library might be, it is literally not my job.


edit: really, there is nothing complicated about the concepts of "professionalism" and "doing your job". When Belegar expected results from us on spiders, we did not whine about everything else also being potentially incredibly useful, we did what he asked and did our pet projects in other timeframes. Johan is a big boy, he can do the same.
 
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Codex said:
We didn't lie about our position as a magister, took our position as a commander, and when we were given the chance to tell Belegar the truth about the events in the temple, events that could have led to us being shipped off to Karaz-a-Karak for soul examination, we chose to tell him.

Mathilde lies. But her lies to the dwarves are irrelevant to the expedition's chances of success. We had a chance to lie about something major and passed it up.
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How would him being a magister have changed anything from what I can tell he was completely upfront about his abilities.
 
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