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Uhh... maybe you should check how long Invisibility and these other spells last...
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
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- Fantasy Users' Choice!
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- warhammer warhammer fantasy fantasy be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist pansexual protagonist ck2 quest divided loyalties mountain vietnam ranald is real this is a dwarf quest (dwarfs) this is maybe an elf quest this is not a vampire quest this is not an empire quest try it and find out open voting
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Purge of the Haunted Hills - Ulriczeit, 2475
Winning vote:
---
It's not difficult to find your way to the former peak that hosted the Blasphemy of Blood. The passage of ten thousand men leaves quite a trail, and all you have to do is follow it before the snow buries it. You and your Greatsword bodyguards venture out into the grip of winter and make camp at the foot of the demolished peak. And demolished is, if anything, an understatement. Boulders the size of cows litter the landscape everywhere you look, and all around the base is chalk rubble that fell in giant landslides from the former peak.
The trail up to the peak was one of the casualties of the bombardment, so every morning you have to clamber your way up over sliding gravel and unsteady rock, and every evening you have to fight gravity every step of the way to keep your descent from occurring at literal breakneck speeds. And the time in the middle is an endless lesson in frustration. You had one of the officer sketch the peak as it appeared before Gustav happened to it, and as far as you can tell the top tenth has been completely removed. The only remaining landmark is the spring in the middle of it all, happily burbling up from the rubble and then pouring back down the mountain in an innocent little stream. You spend days examining the stream, even excavating all the loose scree until you uncover the natural fissure that the spring emerges from, and nothing about it is anything but completely innocent. You brought a chicken along for the trip, one of the leftovers from your previous experiments, and for the entire month you water it on nothing but springwater, and by the end of it it's just as lively as ever and is showing no evidence of any sort of bloodthirstiness.
You go over the rubble yard by yard, searching for any evidence of malign magical energies, but if the cause of the bloody water had soaked into the rock you can't find any of it, seeing as it's spread across an enormous area. Towards the end, you have to brush falling snow off every pebble just to examine it.
But in the end, it's not the rapidly worsening weather that puts an end to the expedition. You're right on the border of the 'pacified' Wold, and with the troops bunking back in Fort Redemption, either some malign force or just the natural ebb and flow of Sylvania decides to take back some of the purged land, and one morning as breakfast porridge is boiling, the crunch and click of bony feet approaching at speed is the only warning you get before the white of falling snow gives way to the white of gleaming bone.
Even now your Greatswords stand ready, and steel meets ancient bronze as the initial attacks are parried. You are less aware, and all that saves you as you clamber for the flamberge you left in your tent is that the skeleton - the wight, because you can see the terrible glow in its eyes as it approaches - stumbles on a tent rope, giving you the precious seconds you need to reach your weapon. You tear it free from its scabbard and turn and meet your attacker, and moments later it is bearing down on you with a sequence of attacks the equal of any you faced on the training ground, backed with the terrible strength of the dead. You parry each blow sent your way just as the skeleton rebuffs each you attempt upon it, fighting with the martial skill of a warrior dead for millennia.
But while the wight's bones may be stronger than flesh, bronze is no match for steel - especially bronze after thousands of years of corrosion. A mighty blow from the creature is met by a textbook parry, and against ancient bone and trained muscle and forged steel, bronze stands as the weak link in the forces brought to bear, and the blade shatters. The skeleton has barely a moment to look at the hilt that remains in its hands, the skull unable to show whatever emotion it could be feeling, before your blade impacts it in the temple and shatters the skull as surely as it did the sword.
All around you the battle is already dying down - the wights attacked in numbers such that there were two Greatswords for every wight once all the men had been roused from the tents, and with those odds the results were a foregone conclusion. But one man lay dead nonetheless, the one who had been standing watch in the direction the wights had came from and apparently had not seen them coming through the snow until it was too late.
With a heavy heart, you order the men to break camp. If there are secrets left to be found here, the snow will soon bury them.
[Study the pulverized fragments of the general area: Req 100, Learning, 29+17=46.]
[Initial assault: You 29+12=41 vs Wight 12+15=27]
[First round: You 66+15+10(Ranald's Blessing)=91 vs Wight 79+15=94]
[Second round: You 57+15=72 vs Wight 2+15=17]
[Seize the advantage: 53+15=68 vs 19+15=34]
[Greatsword reaction: Roll, 66.]
---
You had thought that when you returned to Wurtbad two months ago, you were relieved to escape the chill of late autumn. Having just subjected yourself to the grip of Ulriczeit, you feel like you may never be warm again, and are eternally grateful when the hot springs of Wurtbad prove you wrong. In a blatant sin against the Colleges, you linger in the baths for days as you read through the books the libraries sent. The Amber and Jade Wizards provide a few useful scraps, but the books are clearly transcripts of oral lessons and suffer for it. The Celestial Wizards have a few more pieces of the puzzle, but their focus on curses limits how much use they can be. In the end it is the Gold Wizards, as focused on measurable, recordable and replicable results as they are, that provide the bulk of your education in the vocabulary of magical matrices.
The problem is an obvious one - how do you record a three-dimensional shape on a two-dimensional piece of paper? And it's a problem that's been solved. You learn of x, y and z, of the bizarre and aggravating art of trigonometry, of angles and sines and tangents. By the end of a month of study, you're far from an expert, but you've picked up enough of the concepts to know how to communicate the shape of the magical lattice that holds the spell captive in the chicken roaming freely through the tunnels of your buried palace, still showing no negative effects of the magic within her.
[Trig 101: Req 60, Learning, 94+17=111 - bonus to next step of writing the paper]
---
As the year draws to a close, you check in with your staff - so far it's just Julia and Jack, but you like the sound of having a staff, so you refer to them as that in the privacy of your own mind.
Julia reports on her forays into Flensburg politics with glee, how a great deal of money had been made selling information on the trade families to each other so that everyone had paid quite a lot to end up no better off. She had apparently been stockpiling secrets for this for years in the anticipation of one day selling them. This single-handedly brought the budget for the half-year into the black. She also passes on news from the military - as Spring sets in, they're going to march in force to Vanhaldenschlosse, and if nothing unexpected is found there, then the army will separate by Division and sweep the northwestern Hills between the two rivers.
Speaking of the military, the information of the beginning stages of the Purge have been properly sorted, organized, compiled and distilled, and the end result is three pages of raw data. Almost entirely skeletons, some wights, a handful of zombies - not enough 'fresh' bodies in the area to result in them, it's theorized - and the occasional ghoul either too stupid to run or unlucky enough to have encountered the knights or pistoliers. You encode the information and pass it on to your Master, to be passed on in turn to Sigmar knows who.
Jack has settled in as best he could, but there's tension in the Watch - there's a number of Watchmen with a decade or more of service under their belt who are unhappy with the direction the Watch, with the resignation of the former head, with the association with the dregs of society that hunt rats and shovel waste, and with the requirement to go marching through the sewers on a regular basis. You're not sure if this has been simmering below the surface all this time and Jack has been able to pick up on it, or if taking over the Watch has inflamed matters, but either way it's bad news. Perhaps things will blow over on their own, or it might be better to directly address the troublemakers - either gently or firmly.
In brighter news, the gong farming expansion went quite well. The dregs of society in every population center covered by the Watch now have a final recourse other than crime to provide an income, and many of them have taken that opportunity. Human waste is a rarer sight than ever on the streets, and the financial burden of the Watch on Stirland's treasury has been lessened somewhat. There's still a great deal of room for improvement, but then, there always is.
---
PLAN FOR THIS PURGE TURN
ORGANIZATIONAL ACTIONS - pick ONE from 'Information Network' and 'Stirland Watch'. These will last for the next three Purge Turns.
Information Network - pick ONE (no action expenditure required):
[ ] Expand your information network into another province (choose one)
[ ] Expand your information network into another county or barony (choose one)
[ ] Expand your information network into the military (choose a Division)
[ ] Expand your Intelligence Attaché program to another Division (choose one)
[ ] Off the Leash: Let Julia handle the network without your micromanagement from now on.
Information Network finances - can be chosen INSTEAD of a selection from the above.
[ ] Gossipmongers: Hire a number of informers specifically for their ability to pass on saleable information.
[ ] Attaché Paperwork: The Intelligence Attachés are your biggest expense by far - see if you can have them paid for by the Army of Stirland instead.
[ ] Fixer: Work with the Wurtbad Thieves Guild, supplying them information in exchange for a portion of profits.
[ ] Special Branch: Pull some financial trickery to get the information network classified as part of the Watch, so that their costs are covered by the Stirlandian treasury.
[ ] Trade Delegation: Convince Wilhelmina and Markus to partner your network with the EIC based on the value of market information.
Stirland Watch - pick ONE (no action expenditure required):
[o] Expand the ranks of the Watch, so that they're able to start covering even the poorer parts of their covered area. (cannot be taken until army retirement resumes in six months)
[o] Expand the Watch into a new county or barony (choose which) (cannot be taken until army retirement resumes in six months)
[ ] Expand the Special Branch into areas already covered by the Watch, so you have an additional pool of manpower you can call upon to supplement the full-time Watchmen.
[ ] Improve the training of the Watch, hiring trainers and dedicating paid time each week to sharpening skills.
[ ] Integrate the Roadwarden network of covered areas into the Watch.
[ ] Investigate the possibility of adding a River Warden branch of the Watch.
[ ] Headhunt administrators from other organizations in Stirland.
[ ] Try to soothe those in the watch upset by recent changes.
[ ] Force out those that would resist your changes to the Watch.
Stirland Watch finances - can be chosen INSTEAD of a selection from the above.
[ ] Formalize and organize the payments people make for the Gong Farmers to perform their service, as well as having the Watch start enforcing existing laws against dumping human waste in the street or the Stir.
[ ] Currently, solid waste is sent by cart and wagon out to the fields for a pittance. It could instead be used to create market gardens along the banks of the Stir (hopefully downwind) and increase revenue and provide jobs for the desperate by growing a variety of cash crops.
[ ] Tanneries have a seemingly limitless demand for urine, which explains a lot about the smell. A bit of fragrant research would allow you to identify how much demand there is and how much of a profit you can wring from this.
[ ] In Wissenland, there are a number of techniques in use to derive saltpeter from urine. It would take a great deal more effort than selling to tanneries, but saltpeter could be exported to Nuln for fantastic profit, or used to start gunpowder production in Stirland.
---
PERSONAL ACTIONS - CHOOSE BETWEEN TWO AND THREE. ANY CHOSEN BEYOND THE FIRST TWO WILL COME WITH RISKS - PLEASE SPECIFY THE 'ADDITIONAL' TASK:
Genießt den Krieg - join the divisions entering Sylvania:
[ ] Attach yourself to the general staff, so you can be present for anything interesting that might happen and keep a finger on the pulse of the war.
[ ] Attach yourself to a specific regiment so you can spend some time in the thick of things.
Miscellany:
[ ] Hang Out A Shingle: Spymasters don't advertise, but wizards sometimes do. Make an official announcement that there's a wizard in residence, and see who comes out of the woodwork.
[ ] Formal Proposal: Your idea for an undead research team was received poorly, but Van Hal is still open to the idea in theory. Write in details: Name, who it is technically a part of (Watch, Witch Hunters, Military, College, none), and whether it reports directly to you (becomes a new Organization you command) or, if not, who it would report to.
[ ] Gun Shopping: You're currently using a pistol that was a spare for the pistoliers. Visit Nuln to upgrade. (Choose: dueling pistols for accuracy and range, repeater pistols for weight of fire, dragons for hand shotguns. Choose: whether you will acquire and use two pistols at once or keep one hand free.)
[ ] Write up a proposal for Wilhelmina to approve a short-term increase in Discretionary Income, for the duration of the crisis.
Self-Improvement: Things have been going well so far, but the skills of a Journeyman Grey Mage can only go so far.
[ ] Practice, Practice, Practice: Having been thrown into the deep end of imperial politics, it would probably be a good idea to brush up on your skills and internalize the lessons you've learned (choose which trait; can be taken multiple times; will be more effective if you've used the trait a lot lately).
[ ] Tutoring: One of your fellow councillors may be willing to teach you in their chosen field (choose who; can choose which, or you can let them decide).
[ ] Really Good Swords: You have achieved proficiency with the Greatsword. Future progress is possible, though it will take more effort to see results.
[ ] Combat Training: You're virtually surrounded by armed warriors of various sorts. See if you can convince one to teach you (choose who).
[ ] Combat Training, In The Free Market: You haven't made many heavily armed friends yet, but gold is good for that. Go out and buy some training. (-personal gold)
[ ] Enchantment: You're naturally talented at enchantment; so far, this just amounts to being able to make your desk meow for about an hour. See if you can improve on that, or at least figure out a way to make that useful.
Home Comforts: Your Palace-Shrine is bursting with potential. And also mud.
[ ] Diggy Diggy Hole, Remixed: You're getting sick of having workmen tramping in and out of your abode. Recruit an entire team and personally oversee them to clear out all of the reachable portions of the Palace-Shrine and be done with it. (-personal gold)
[ ] Enchantment: You've finally got the equipment, now you've just got to unpack it all and set up your laboratory.
[ ] Filled with Potential: You've got a room cleared out and ready to be put to use. Decide what you're going to put there and get started on equipping it. (write in the purpose of the room)
Research:
[ ] Undead Research: You know the basics, now. Perhaps a great deal of effort will allow you to advance further.
[ ] Snooping: Van Hal gave you a key to his Study. It's been a while since he's been in Wurtbad; he probably forgot he did so, and won't remember until he returns. And he didn't specifically say not to poke around and see what you could find.
[ ] Shyish-kebabs: The Shyish swords are hideously dangerous as weapons, but fascinating as a subject of study. Try to reverse-engineer the lost enchantments woven into them.
[ ] Publish Or Perish, Part 2: With a mindful of trigonometry, it's time to formally record the process for creating 'Bound Spells'. And, optionally, pick a catchier name for it than that. (Optional: Write in name) (NEW)
[ ] Qhaysh Juice: Whatever it is, it's dripping out of the box at a steady rate. You've got several gallons of the stuff and it's still coming out. It's got to be good for something.
[ ] Qhaysh Skunkworks: It would take careful study to unlock the secrets of the liquid. It would take considerably less time to find out if it can be made to burn, or explode, or do something militarily useful.
[ ] As a Journeywoman, the path to Magister is marked by mastering more than the two shadow spells you already know. Send to the Grey Order for the basics and work on figuring out one of the others.
Influence:
[ ] Information Network: Work alongside to Julia to administer the network. Choose another Organizational Action for the Network.
[ ] Stirland Watch: Work alongside Jack to administer the Watch. Choose another Organizational Action for the Watch.
[ ] Financial Jargon: Everything with the EIC flew right over your head last time. Try again. Succeeding here will mean that you can take a more active hand in the company, adding it to the organizational actions; failing or not attempting means Mathilde will remain a silent partner.
[ ] Thieves Guild: It's currently little more than a church group, albeit of a very unconventional god. If it could be expanded under your aegis, it could be a powerful tool.
[ ] Biderhof: This village based on woodcutting and agriculture, has adopted you as one of it's own. Maybe you should adopt it as your own, in a literal sense.
[ ] Non-Thief Guilds: Wurtbad, like all major cities, is home to a number of guilds. Reach out to them and enforce your will.
Relations:
[ ] Getting To Know You: Spend time with one of your fellow councillors or your liege, offering your help in their tasks and generally getting a feel for them (choose one).
[ ] Getting To Know You Whether You Like It Or Not: Though you no longer mistrust them, perhaps you should see what your fellow councillors spend their time doing anyway (choose one).
[ ] Letters Home: You might be able to wring more information out of your Master, or you might just be able to get news, information and guidance in general from the Grey Order.
[o] Free Time: Now well-established in Wurtbad, you can spend some time in your scant off hours getting to know someone better. Pick one character. (not possible during Purge Turns)
---
Discretionary Income: +200g
The Flensburg (Metaphorical) Coup: +150g
Information Brokerage: +50g
Regional informants: -90g
Watch informants: -10g
EIC informants: -20g
Julia: -30g
Townhouse staff: -20g
Literacy lessons: -10g
Attaché program: -120g
---
Net: +100g
Personal Income: +50g
Estate Profit: +10g
Tithe: -6g
Student Loans: -35g
Elf Stories: -70g
---
Net: -51g
Bills will be paid every third Purge Turn. You can go into 'debt'; normally this would draw negative attention as you defer payments and take on loans in Stirland's name, but during the Purge it is to be expected; if you make good by the end of the turn immediately following the end of the War, all will be well.
[ ] Begin plumping the informer rolls (choose ratio of real:fake informers. Almost impossible to detect, but also very difficult to increase or decrease the amount quickly)
[ ] Change tithe payment/loan payment/embezzlement (specify)
[o] These agents are getting expensive. Write up a proposal for your discretionary budget to be increased, instead of waiting for Van Hal to decide to increase it. (Van Hal does not have the attention to spare)
---
- Don't forget Ranald's Blessing.
- There was a chance of finding something interesting re: the Blasphemy of Blood, but the chance was very, very slim after Gustav spent months hurling boulders at it. If you really, really want to, you can write in trying again, but the odds of finding anything will be even slimmer.
---
It's not difficult to find your way to the former peak that hosted the Blasphemy of Blood. The passage of ten thousand men leaves quite a trail, and all you have to do is follow it before the snow buries it. You and your Greatsword bodyguards venture out into the grip of winter and make camp at the foot of the demolished peak. And demolished is, if anything, an understatement. Boulders the size of cows litter the landscape everywhere you look, and all around the base is chalk rubble that fell in giant landslides from the former peak.
The trail up to the peak was one of the casualties of the bombardment, so every morning you have to clamber your way up over sliding gravel and unsteady rock, and every evening you have to fight gravity every step of the way to keep your descent from occurring at literal breakneck speeds. And the time in the middle is an endless lesson in frustration. You had one of the officer sketch the peak as it appeared before Gustav happened to it, and as far as you can tell the top tenth has been completely removed. The only remaining landmark is the spring in the middle of it all, happily burbling up from the rubble and then pouring back down the mountain in an innocent little stream. You spend days examining the stream, even excavating all the loose scree until you uncover the natural fissure that the spring emerges from, and nothing about it is anything but completely innocent. You brought a chicken along for the trip, one of the leftovers from your previous experiments, and for the entire month you water it on nothing but springwater, and by the end of it it's just as lively as ever and is showing no evidence of any sort of bloodthirstiness.
You go over the rubble yard by yard, searching for any evidence of malign magical energies, but if the cause of the bloody water had soaked into the rock you can't find any of it, seeing as it's spread across an enormous area. Towards the end, you have to brush falling snow off every pebble just to examine it.
But in the end, it's not the rapidly worsening weather that puts an end to the expedition. You're right on the border of the 'pacified' Wold, and with the troops bunking back in Fort Redemption, either some malign force or just the natural ebb and flow of Sylvania decides to take back some of the purged land, and one morning as breakfast porridge is boiling, the crunch and click of bony feet approaching at speed is the only warning you get before the white of falling snow gives way to the white of gleaming bone.
Even now your Greatswords stand ready, and steel meets ancient bronze as the initial attacks are parried. You are less aware, and all that saves you as you clamber for the flamberge you left in your tent is that the skeleton - the wight, because you can see the terrible glow in its eyes as it approaches - stumbles on a tent rope, giving you the precious seconds you need to reach your weapon. You tear it free from its scabbard and turn and meet your attacker, and moments later it is bearing down on you with a sequence of attacks the equal of any you faced on the training ground, backed with the terrible strength of the dead. You parry each blow sent your way just as the skeleton rebuffs each you attempt upon it, fighting with the martial skill of a warrior dead for millennia.
But while the wight's bones may be stronger than flesh, bronze is no match for steel - especially bronze after thousands of years of corrosion. A mighty blow from the creature is met by a textbook parry, and against ancient bone and trained muscle and forged steel, bronze stands as the weak link in the forces brought to bear, and the blade shatters. The skeleton has barely a moment to look at the hilt that remains in its hands, the skull unable to show whatever emotion it could be feeling, before your blade impacts it in the temple and shatters the skull as surely as it did the sword.
All around you the battle is already dying down - the wights attacked in numbers such that there were two Greatswords for every wight once all the men had been roused from the tents, and with those odds the results were a foregone conclusion. But one man lay dead nonetheless, the one who had been standing watch in the direction the wights had came from and apparently had not seen them coming through the snow until it was too late.
With a heavy heart, you order the men to break camp. If there are secrets left to be found here, the snow will soon bury them.
[Study the pulverized fragments of the general area: Req 100, Learning, 29+17=46.]
[Initial assault: You 29+12=41 vs Wight 12+15=27]
[First round: You 66+15+10(Ranald's Blessing)=91 vs Wight 79+15=94]
[Second round: You 57+15=72 vs Wight 2+15=17]
[Seize the advantage: 53+15=68 vs 19+15=34]
[Greatsword reaction: Roll, 66.]
---
You had thought that when you returned to Wurtbad two months ago, you were relieved to escape the chill of late autumn. Having just subjected yourself to the grip of Ulriczeit, you feel like you may never be warm again, and are eternally grateful when the hot springs of Wurtbad prove you wrong. In a blatant sin against the Colleges, you linger in the baths for days as you read through the books the libraries sent. The Amber and Jade Wizards provide a few useful scraps, but the books are clearly transcripts of oral lessons and suffer for it. The Celestial Wizards have a few more pieces of the puzzle, but their focus on curses limits how much use they can be. In the end it is the Gold Wizards, as focused on measurable, recordable and replicable results as they are, that provide the bulk of your education in the vocabulary of magical matrices.
The problem is an obvious one - how do you record a three-dimensional shape on a two-dimensional piece of paper? And it's a problem that's been solved. You learn of x, y and z, of the bizarre and aggravating art of trigonometry, of angles and sines and tangents. By the end of a month of study, you're far from an expert, but you've picked up enough of the concepts to know how to communicate the shape of the magical lattice that holds the spell captive in the chicken roaming freely through the tunnels of your buried palace, still showing no negative effects of the magic within her.
[Trig 101: Req 60, Learning, 94+17=111 - bonus to next step of writing the paper]
---
As the year draws to a close, you check in with your staff - so far it's just Julia and Jack, but you like the sound of having a staff, so you refer to them as that in the privacy of your own mind.
Julia reports on her forays into Flensburg politics with glee, how a great deal of money had been made selling information on the trade families to each other so that everyone had paid quite a lot to end up no better off. She had apparently been stockpiling secrets for this for years in the anticipation of one day selling them. This single-handedly brought the budget for the half-year into the black. She also passes on news from the military - as Spring sets in, they're going to march in force to Vanhaldenschlosse, and if nothing unexpected is found there, then the army will separate by Division and sweep the northwestern Hills between the two rivers.
Speaking of the military, the information of the beginning stages of the Purge have been properly sorted, organized, compiled and distilled, and the end result is three pages of raw data. Almost entirely skeletons, some wights, a handful of zombies - not enough 'fresh' bodies in the area to result in them, it's theorized - and the occasional ghoul either too stupid to run or unlucky enough to have encountered the knights or pistoliers. You encode the information and pass it on to your Master, to be passed on in turn to Sigmar knows who.
Jack has settled in as best he could, but there's tension in the Watch - there's a number of Watchmen with a decade or more of service under their belt who are unhappy with the direction the Watch, with the resignation of the former head, with the association with the dregs of society that hunt rats and shovel waste, and with the requirement to go marching through the sewers on a regular basis. You're not sure if this has been simmering below the surface all this time and Jack has been able to pick up on it, or if taking over the Watch has inflamed matters, but either way it's bad news. Perhaps things will blow over on their own, or it might be better to directly address the troublemakers - either gently or firmly.
In brighter news, the gong farming expansion went quite well. The dregs of society in every population center covered by the Watch now have a final recourse other than crime to provide an income, and many of them have taken that opportunity. Human waste is a rarer sight than ever on the streets, and the financial burden of the Watch on Stirland's treasury has been lessened somewhat. There's still a great deal of room for improvement, but then, there always is.
---
PLAN FOR THIS PURGE TURN
ORGANIZATIONAL ACTIONS - pick ONE from 'Information Network' and 'Stirland Watch'. These will last for the next three Purge Turns.
Information Network - pick ONE (no action expenditure required):
[ ] Expand your information network into another province (choose one)
[ ] Expand your information network into another county or barony (choose one)
[ ] Expand your information network into the military (choose a Division)
[ ] Expand your Intelligence Attaché program to another Division (choose one)
[ ] Off the Leash: Let Julia handle the network without your micromanagement from now on.
Information Network finances - can be chosen INSTEAD of a selection from the above.
[ ] Gossipmongers: Hire a number of informers specifically for their ability to pass on saleable information.
[ ] Attaché Paperwork: The Intelligence Attachés are your biggest expense by far - see if you can have them paid for by the Army of Stirland instead.
[ ] Fixer: Work with the Wurtbad Thieves Guild, supplying them information in exchange for a portion of profits.
[ ] Special Branch: Pull some financial trickery to get the information network classified as part of the Watch, so that their costs are covered by the Stirlandian treasury.
[ ] Trade Delegation: Convince Wilhelmina and Markus to partner your network with the EIC based on the value of market information.
Stirland Watch - pick ONE (no action expenditure required):
[o] Expand the ranks of the Watch, so that they're able to start covering even the poorer parts of their covered area. (cannot be taken until army retirement resumes in six months)
[o] Expand the Watch into a new county or barony (choose which) (cannot be taken until army retirement resumes in six months)
[ ] Expand the Special Branch into areas already covered by the Watch, so you have an additional pool of manpower you can call upon to supplement the full-time Watchmen.
[ ] Improve the training of the Watch, hiring trainers and dedicating paid time each week to sharpening skills.
[ ] Integrate the Roadwarden network of covered areas into the Watch.
[ ] Investigate the possibility of adding a River Warden branch of the Watch.
[ ] Headhunt administrators from other organizations in Stirland.
[ ] Try to soothe those in the watch upset by recent changes.
[ ] Force out those that would resist your changes to the Watch.
Stirland Watch finances - can be chosen INSTEAD of a selection from the above.
[ ] Formalize and organize the payments people make for the Gong Farmers to perform their service, as well as having the Watch start enforcing existing laws against dumping human waste in the street or the Stir.
[ ] Currently, solid waste is sent by cart and wagon out to the fields for a pittance. It could instead be used to create market gardens along the banks of the Stir (hopefully downwind) and increase revenue and provide jobs for the desperate by growing a variety of cash crops.
[ ] Tanneries have a seemingly limitless demand for urine, which explains a lot about the smell. A bit of fragrant research would allow you to identify how much demand there is and how much of a profit you can wring from this.
[ ] In Wissenland, there are a number of techniques in use to derive saltpeter from urine. It would take a great deal more effort than selling to tanneries, but saltpeter could be exported to Nuln for fantastic profit, or used to start gunpowder production in Stirland.
---
PERSONAL ACTIONS - CHOOSE BETWEEN TWO AND THREE. ANY CHOSEN BEYOND THE FIRST TWO WILL COME WITH RISKS - PLEASE SPECIFY THE 'ADDITIONAL' TASK:
Genießt den Krieg - join the divisions entering Sylvania:
[ ] Attach yourself to the general staff, so you can be present for anything interesting that might happen and keep a finger on the pulse of the war.
[ ] Attach yourself to a specific regiment so you can spend some time in the thick of things.
Miscellany:
[ ] Hang Out A Shingle: Spymasters don't advertise, but wizards sometimes do. Make an official announcement that there's a wizard in residence, and see who comes out of the woodwork.
[ ] Formal Proposal: Your idea for an undead research team was received poorly, but Van Hal is still open to the idea in theory. Write in details: Name, who it is technically a part of (Watch, Witch Hunters, Military, College, none), and whether it reports directly to you (becomes a new Organization you command) or, if not, who it would report to.
[ ] Gun Shopping: You're currently using a pistol that was a spare for the pistoliers. Visit Nuln to upgrade. (Choose: dueling pistols for accuracy and range, repeater pistols for weight of fire, dragons for hand shotguns. Choose: whether you will acquire and use two pistols at once or keep one hand free.)
[ ] Write up a proposal for Wilhelmina to approve a short-term increase in Discretionary Income, for the duration of the crisis.
Self-Improvement: Things have been going well so far, but the skills of a Journeyman Grey Mage can only go so far.
[ ] Practice, Practice, Practice: Having been thrown into the deep end of imperial politics, it would probably be a good idea to brush up on your skills and internalize the lessons you've learned (choose which trait; can be taken multiple times; will be more effective if you've used the trait a lot lately).
[ ] Tutoring: One of your fellow councillors may be willing to teach you in their chosen field (choose who; can choose which, or you can let them decide).
[ ] Really Good Swords: You have achieved proficiency with the Greatsword. Future progress is possible, though it will take more effort to see results.
[ ] Combat Training: You're virtually surrounded by armed warriors of various sorts. See if you can convince one to teach you (choose who).
[ ] Combat Training, In The Free Market: You haven't made many heavily armed friends yet, but gold is good for that. Go out and buy some training. (-personal gold)
[ ] Enchantment: You're naturally talented at enchantment; so far, this just amounts to being able to make your desk meow for about an hour. See if you can improve on that, or at least figure out a way to make that useful.
Home Comforts: Your Palace-Shrine is bursting with potential. And also mud.
[ ] Diggy Diggy Hole, Remixed: You're getting sick of having workmen tramping in and out of your abode. Recruit an entire team and personally oversee them to clear out all of the reachable portions of the Palace-Shrine and be done with it. (-personal gold)
[ ] Enchantment: You've finally got the equipment, now you've just got to unpack it all and set up your laboratory.
[ ] Filled with Potential: You've got a room cleared out and ready to be put to use. Decide what you're going to put there and get started on equipping it. (write in the purpose of the room)
Research:
[ ] Undead Research: You know the basics, now. Perhaps a great deal of effort will allow you to advance further.
[ ] Snooping: Van Hal gave you a key to his Study. It's been a while since he's been in Wurtbad; he probably forgot he did so, and won't remember until he returns. And he didn't specifically say not to poke around and see what you could find.
[ ] Shyish-kebabs: The Shyish swords are hideously dangerous as weapons, but fascinating as a subject of study. Try to reverse-engineer the lost enchantments woven into them.
[ ] Publish Or Perish, Part 2: With a mindful of trigonometry, it's time to formally record the process for creating 'Bound Spells'. And, optionally, pick a catchier name for it than that. (Optional: Write in name) (NEW)
[ ] Qhaysh Juice: Whatever it is, it's dripping out of the box at a steady rate. You've got several gallons of the stuff and it's still coming out. It's got to be good for something.
[ ] Qhaysh Skunkworks: It would take careful study to unlock the secrets of the liquid. It would take considerably less time to find out if it can be made to burn, or explode, or do something militarily useful.
[ ] As a Journeywoman, the path to Magister is marked by mastering more than the two shadow spells you already know. Send to the Grey Order for the basics and work on figuring out one of the others.
Influence:
[ ] Information Network: Work alongside to Julia to administer the network. Choose another Organizational Action for the Network.
[ ] Stirland Watch: Work alongside Jack to administer the Watch. Choose another Organizational Action for the Watch.
[ ] Financial Jargon: Everything with the EIC flew right over your head last time. Try again. Succeeding here will mean that you can take a more active hand in the company, adding it to the organizational actions; failing or not attempting means Mathilde will remain a silent partner.
[ ] Thieves Guild: It's currently little more than a church group, albeit of a very unconventional god. If it could be expanded under your aegis, it could be a powerful tool.
[ ] Biderhof: This village based on woodcutting and agriculture, has adopted you as one of it's own. Maybe you should adopt it as your own, in a literal sense.
[ ] Non-Thief Guilds: Wurtbad, like all major cities, is home to a number of guilds. Reach out to them and enforce your will.
Relations:
[ ] Getting To Know You: Spend time with one of your fellow councillors or your liege, offering your help in their tasks and generally getting a feel for them (choose one).
[ ] Getting To Know You Whether You Like It Or Not: Though you no longer mistrust them, perhaps you should see what your fellow councillors spend their time doing anyway (choose one).
[ ] Letters Home: You might be able to wring more information out of your Master, or you might just be able to get news, information and guidance in general from the Grey Order.
[o] Free Time: Now well-established in Wurtbad, you can spend some time in your scant off hours getting to know someone better. Pick one character. (not possible during Purge Turns)
---
Discretionary Income: +200g
The Flensburg (Metaphorical) Coup: +150g
Information Brokerage: +50g
Regional informants: -90g
Watch informants: -10g
EIC informants: -20g
Julia: -30g
Townhouse staff: -20g
Literacy lessons: -10g
Attaché program: -120g
---
Net: +100g
Personal Income: +50g
Estate Profit: +10g
Tithe: -6g
Student Loans: -35g
Elf Stories: -70g
---
Net: -51g
Bills will be paid every third Purge Turn. You can go into 'debt'; normally this would draw negative attention as you defer payments and take on loans in Stirland's name, but during the Purge it is to be expected; if you make good by the end of the turn immediately following the end of the War, all will be well.
[ ] Begin plumping the informer rolls (choose ratio of real:fake informers. Almost impossible to detect, but also very difficult to increase or decrease the amount quickly)
[ ] Change tithe payment/loan payment/embezzlement (specify)
[o] These agents are getting expensive. Write up a proposal for your discretionary budget to be increased, instead of waiting for Van Hal to decide to increase it. (Van Hal does not have the attention to spare)
---
- Don't forget Ranald's Blessing.
- There was a chance of finding something interesting re: the Blasphemy of Blood, but the chance was very, very slim after Gustav spent months hurling boulders at it. If you really, really want to, you can write in trying again, but the odds of finding anything will be even slimmer.
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Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
With Ranald's blessing that roll had a 27% chance of passing. While low I've certainly seen worse odds happening in Quests, and seen them beaten.
^^
We just got valuable information from the Watch informants about dissent in the ranks. They proved their value. We can head it off before it gets worse.
Just glad it's stable and unlikely to get worse
Note that after the initial chaos settles out we'd only have a bare surplus
We just got valuable information from the Watch informants about dissent in the ranks. They proved their value. We can head it off before it gets worse.
Damn, there was something, but as far as we can test, its just gribblies now. Oh well.
Just glad it's stable and unlikely to get worse
Mathilde is going to be CURSED by future apprentices
Okay, things are in the green again, but we should hold off on non-profit expansions for a while.
Note that after the initial chaos settles out we'd only have a bare surplus
Thats...good I guess. Wights, skeletons, no ghosts, and some ghouls.
Okay, need to address this before it has time to brew.
And more money! We'd probably need to consult Wilhelmina to see what exactly is up with the budget now though.
If you think the midst of widespread discontent is a good time to stop paying your informants within the Watch... sure. You absolutely could do that.
- Location
- The underworld
i wonder if we will see an impact from the elf novels soon
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Guile
Having a really great time right now
How many Watch informants are we paying for, anyway? Going by what we're paying the veterans, I assume it's like, 2?
- Location
- Estonia
Well doing the saltpeter thing seems like a idea to do for max money to be honest for the watch and soothing feathers aswell so it doesnt become a problem.
and i still think that selling the eic our intel seems like a good action to do for some cost issues?
And wouldnt mind training actions after the publishing is done for both story and our new spell.
and @BoneyM if we succesfully publish the binding thing would that give us magister title since it should apply to every wind more or less?
and i still think that selling the eic our intel seems like a good action to do for some cost issues?
And wouldnt mind training actions after the publishing is done for both story and our new spell.
and @BoneyM if we succesfully publish the binding thing would that give us magister title since it should apply to every wind more or less?
- Location
- Madness realms
So we should name the spell "Mathhilde's Magic Lattice" just for the renown.
[X] Plan Intellectual Arts
-[X][Info] Gossipmongers: Hire a number of informers specifically for their ability to pass on saleable information.
-[X][Watch] Try to soothe those in the watch upset by recent changes.
-[X][Personal] Publish Or Perish, Part 2: With a mindful of trigonometry, it's time to formally record the process for creating 'Bound Spells'. And, optionally, pick a catchier name for it than that. (Optional: Write in name) (NEW)
--[X] Name: Weber's Web
--[X] Name: Mathilde's Matrix
--[X] Ranald's Blessing
-[X][Personal] Practice, Practice, Practice: Having been thrown into the deep end of imperial politics, it would probably be a good idea to brush up on your skills and internalize the lessons you've learned (choose which trait; can be taken multiple times; will be more effective if you've used the trait a lot lately).
--[X] Learning
Okay, we've rolled a crit on learning last turn, we'd done a bunch of magic research and we did a lot of practice on writing Eltharin.
Good time to raise Learning. We ARE a wizard after all!
Oh and probably defuse the Watch disaffected. I'd prefer to try soothing before firing. We don't have much spare manpower.
The spell web is a reference to her name of Weber.
Open to suggestions there
-[X][Info] Gossipmongers: Hire a number of informers specifically for their ability to pass on saleable information.
-[X][Watch] Try to soothe those in the watch upset by recent changes.
-[X][Personal] Publish Or Perish, Part 2: With a mindful of trigonometry, it's time to formally record the process for creating 'Bound Spells'. And, optionally, pick a catchier name for it than that. (Optional: Write in name) (NEW)
--[X] Name: Mathilde's Matrix
--[X] Ranald's Blessing
-[X][Personal] Practice, Practice, Practice: Having been thrown into the deep end of imperial politics, it would probably be a good idea to brush up on your skills and internalize the lessons you've learned (choose which trait; can be taken multiple times; will be more effective if you've used the trait a lot lately).
--[X] Learning
Okay, we've rolled a crit on learning last turn, we'd done a bunch of magic research and we did a lot of practice on writing Eltharin.
Good time to raise Learning. We ARE a wizard after all!
Oh and probably defuse the Watch disaffected. I'd prefer to try soothing before firing. We don't have much spare manpower.
The spell web is a reference to her name of Weber.
Open to suggestions there
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FlyingScanian
Tea Addict
- Location
- Land of Eternal Night
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Not "Weber's Web"? (add additional W if you can think of suitable word... wizardly?)
You're not paying for them to act in your interests as their full-time job, you are paying them a little on the side for them to pass on information.
How many are you paying for? You are paying for 10g worth. You are paying for enough of them that you have a good general idea of what is going on in the rank and file. That's all the information you'll get on them, because I'm trying to keep the amount of overhead required to a minimum so that this remains something I enjoy doing and not a chore.
No, you can't skip straight to Magister. There's still a lengthy testing process to go through. Publishing it would be solid proof that you're ready to begin it, though.
Weber's Wonderful Web of course !
If theres more support for this I'll go ahead and use STEAL
Option breakdown
-[][Info] Gossipmongers: Hire a number of informers specifically for their ability to pass on saleable information.
Its a source of informant cashflow, and offloads the burden on our REAL agents from being caught for passing gossip. Easily positive investment, and well...even gossip is real intel.
-[][Watch] Try to soothe those in the watch upset by recent changes.
--[] Ranald's Blessing
Unhappy Watch is a bad time. They think its undignified, or maybe theres deeper issues. This can be dealt with in time, but first we need to find out if it's really just people unhappy about being associated with the street cleaners, or if someone is spreading dissent. Blessing as it is the most important item we're doing this turn.
-[][Personal] Publish Or Perish, Part 2: With a mindful of trigonometry, it's time to formally record the process for creating 'Bound Spells'. And, optionally, pick a catchier name for it than that. (Optional: Write in name) (NEW)
Best done while its still fresh.
-[][Personal] Practice, Practice, Practice: Having been thrown into the deep end of imperial politics, it would probably be a good idea to brush up on your skills and internalize the lessons you've learned (choose which trait; can be taken multiple times; will be more effective if you've used the trait a lot lately).
--[] Learning
One of the woes of our job is that its really hard to justify doing Learning most of the time, since we are very busy with the actual work of spycraft. But since we did a lot of spell research recently, including a crit reading up, a crit on burning shadows, reading up on undead, writing/scribing history, etc.
Good time to boost one of the stats we rarely do eh? The success rate should be quite good.
As I understand it we're basically paying for a couple of the watch sergeants or even the janitor to keep an ear open for any gossip in the Watch and passing it along to us. Possibly buying a couple of extra beer rations to loosen tongues when they are off duty.
And really, it pays off because just imagine if the Watch went on strike because we didn't realize they were unhappy...
Very well, moving it to the writing roll.
Sinsystems
Patron Librarian
I support the Weber's Web.
Done.
Also I just realized we can never publish Weber's Box under that name.
The
Guile
Having a really great time right now
As Darklight once pointed out, we don't actually want anyone to know about the Box. Because it's a crazy rare item created from incredible circumstances, and people get interested in stuff like that. If we can use the Bound Spells proposal as our masters project, that's what we should do.
It was a crappy joke about genitals
Guile
Having a really great time right now
The current vote doesn't do much to advance either the war or Weber's personal might on the battlefield (Van Hal's edict to us). Could I suggest replacing one of those with Qhaysh Skunkworks as a quick and dirty potential increase in war potential?
I know
Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
[X] Plan Intellectual Arts
I can get behind this.
I can get behind this.