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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Plan Heretek
[X] Drakenhof. You almost hesitate to suggest it, but... surely this must be investigated.
[X] The disappearance of your predecessor is very concerning, especially since he's actively trying to sabotage the hunt for him. He must be found, and I've got a lead: Julbach.
[X] The Stirlandian League is a cancer eating at Stirland's economy, and it must be destroyed.
[X] The Stirlandian League is a gold mine of information, and it must be yours.
[X] There is a risk of enemy agents infiltrating the castle staff - they must be watched.
[X] Seriously what is up with the East Wing.
 
[:V] "I'll cut this one short. I admit the decision to attack the mound was a bit of a stab in the dark, but it seems like the whole swordid affair is now over and done with. Kidnapping the count could've led to some instability if someone found out, but luckily my plan was truly a cut above the rest and went off without a hitch. I haven't really established my spy network yet, but I've only just gotten started with it, so you should really cut me some slack. It was, in short, a good plan whichever way you slice it. Even if the professor didn't quite make the cut."
 
[X] Drakenhof. You almost hesitate to suggest it, but... surely this must be investigated.
[X] The disappearance of your predecessor is very concerning, especially since he's actively trying to sabotage the hunt for him. He must be found, and I've got a lead: Julbach.
[X] The Stirlandian League is a cancer eating at Stirland's economy, and it must be destroyed.
[X] The Stirlandian League is a gold mine of information, and it must be yours.
[X] There is a risk of enemy agents infiltrating the castle staff - they must be watched.
 
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Holy shit. "He knows he's being watched, he surely wouldn't be so stupid to pull the same trick twice, with his ass being saved by Imperial Intelligence" turned out to be one hell of a wrong assumption. By Ranald that guy was juggling around burning pouches of gunpower thinking he'd walk away whistling.

On the Stirlandian League, I had a thought. Controlling the flow of information is what our trade is all about, right? The previous spymaster (who we really need to find) wanted all trade to pass by one route through the Stirlandian League because it gives him an easily tapped vein of commerce and information and a gross cut out of the imposed taxes. Having an alternative route over Lammer and Olsdorf cuts both into this monopoly on information and taxes, and becomes the most attractive route for anyone who's got something to hide from the authorities.

Rather than disband the League, we could take it over with the same pretence that our predecessor did and make it appear to everyone that this is still under our firm control. But instead we shift our attention toward the secondary route instead, as anyone who's got something to hide will avoid the main north-south route and will try to ship their goods through an alternative route instead. A route where we have our eyes and ears planted.

It would require the Barony of Purgg to be given as a fief again though, so we don't appear transparent in trying to set up a second route.
 
So Mathilde can now turn into a centaur that's awesome and she is using an appropriate weapon to since greats swords have good reach and power on a horse
 
Neptune said:
@BoneyM - is it down to use to follow up on the next set of Count actions, or tax records?
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Tax records are being dropped in Wilhelmina's lap, while Van Hal is performing the interrogation of the Count personally. You've got time to consolidate or backtrack, instead of new fires cropping up.

Exmorri said:
This update we acquired a discretionary budget of 150/turn, so reduced embezzling will presumably go down to 37 (a quarter), not 50.
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Technically 35 - for the sake of my own sense of neatness it'll be rounded down.
 
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Also a side-vote for the next update to help with characterization: how does Mathilde feel about the execution of the Professor? This is a pivotal moment for her development and I feel she could go a few different ways here, so I'd like to leave it in the hands of the thread.
 
I strongly suggest not giving Van Hal the Drakenhof option. Whoever is holed up in there has some serious magical oomph. We ain't remotely ready for doing shit around a Vampire or Necromancer powerful enough to reanimate an entire mound of wights from hundreds of klicks away and basically as soon as we activated the trap, meaning no time for a ritual setup. That guy is a true magister. I am loath to try and set our parlor tricks against that sort of arcane might. Especially since I doubt mind hole works on zombies and skeleton guards. This is a problem for the army or disposable agents, neither of which we have right now.
 
[x] The disappearance of your predecessor is very concerning, especially since he's actively trying to sabotage the hunt for him. He must be found, and I've got a lead: Julbach.
[x] The castle staff can be a great source of information and first line of defence - they should report to you.
[x] I need a proper information network. Please fund me wandering around making friends.
[x] react to the count intterogation results ?
 
We did the information network thing last turn. There was even a snippet in the update where van Hal agreed to the budget. Is the option to do it again for a larger network @BoneyM ?
 
BoneyM said:
Also a side-vote for the next update to help with characterization: how does Mathilde feel about the execution of the Professor? This is a pivotal moment for her development and I feel she could go a few different ways here, so I'd like to leave it in the hands of the thread.
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Well, I don't think she's at the stage of hard woman making hard decisions yet that she'd consider the execution of the Professor as a sad but necessary event, and the inevitable fate of traitors. I think she's got a rather breezy and playful outlook on things combined with some youthful innocence and "omg secret rooms in a castle, this is just like the Roseheart trilogy of romantic adventure novels!". I think that she'd be pretty shaken to the core by it. Even though on some rational level she knows that committing treason on the scale that the Professor did has this outcome, she'd perhaps naively think there might have been some other way to resolve this, and feels sorry for him because of it.
 
Siual said:
On the Stirlandian League, I had a thought. Controlling the flow of information is what our trade is all about, right? The previous spymaster (who we really need to find) wanted all trade to pass by one route through the Stirlandian League because it gives him an easily tapped vein of commerce and information and a gross cut out of the imposed taxes. Having an alternative route over Lammer and Olsdorf cuts both into this monopoly on information and taxes, and becomes the most attractive route for anyone who's got something to hide from the authorities.
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Agreed, destroying it is utterly wasteful. Stirland can't afford waste.
Chronic said:
I strongly suggest not giving Van Hal the Drakenhof option. Whoever is holed up in there has some serious magical oomph. We ain't remotely ready for doing shit around a Vampire or Necromancer powerful enough to reanimate an entire mound of wights from hundreds of klicks away and basically as soon as we activated the trap, meaning no time for a ritual setup. That guy is a true magister. I am loath to try and set our parlor tricks against that sort of arcane might. Especially since I doubt mind hole works on zombies and skeleton guards. This is a problem for the army or disposable agents, neither of which we have right now.
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Agreed. This sounds suicidal.

Everyone knows Drakenhoff is always home to scary shit. Should round up a couple armies and the Grand Theogonist and go dismantle it to its very foundations.

Not tell a barely journeyman grey wizard to poke around.

I'm wait for @Alectai to write a cheeky report.

[X] [Options] Plan Sanity
-[X] The disappearance of your predecessor is very concerning, especially since he's actively trying to sabotage the hunt for him. He must be found, and I've got a lead: Julbach.
-[X] The Stirlandian League is a gold mine of information, and it must be yours.
-[X] The castle staff can be a great source of information and first line of defence - they should report to you.

[X] [Execution] The Professor's actions were foolish in the extreme. He learnt nothing from being caught once, didn't appreciate his luck in being sent to a higher position still, and thought he could keep his presumably outrageous embezzling while working for a retired Witch Hunter. One should know the difference between acceptable, frowned upon and forbidden. And one should also have more good sense than a suicidal horse. He had it coming.
 
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[X] [Options] Plan Sanity
-[X] The disappearance of your predecessor is very concerning, especially since he's actively trying to sabotage the hunt for him. He must be found, and I've got a lead: Julbach.
-[X] The Stirlandian League is a gold mine of information, and it must be yours.
-[X] The castle staff can be a great source of information and first line of defence - they should report to you.

[X] [Execution] The Professor's actions were foolish in the extreme. He learnt nothing from being caught once, didn't appreciate his luck in being sent to a higher position still, and thought he could keep his presumably outrageous embezzling while working for a retired Witch Hunter. One should know the difference between acceptable, frowned upon and forbidden. And one should also have more good sense than a suicidal horse. He had it coming.
 
SAGrognard said:
We did the information network thing last turn. There was even a snippet in the update where van Hal agreed to the budget. Is the option to do it again for a larger network @BoneyM ?
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It does need to be tweaked to reflect the new budget, but it'll still be an option - it'll just be you dedicating time to instead of asking for a budget as well. It'll be edited to reflect this in a minute or two.
 
The Stirland League is a prime-quality, ready-made information network.

We need to tap that, which involves finding our predecessor because he sure as shit sounds alive and treasonous, and then patch up the holes his greed left on it.
 
[X] [Options] Plan Sanity
-[X] The disappearance of your predecessor is very concerning, especially since he's actively trying to sabotage the hunt for him. He must be found, and I've got a lead: Julbach.
-[X] The Stirlandian League is a gold mine of information, and it must be yours.
-[X] The castle staff can be a great source of information and first line of defence - they should report to you.

[X] [Execution] The Professor's actions were foolish in the extreme. He learnt nothing from being caught once, didn't appreciate his luck in being sent to a higher position still, and thought he could keep his presumably outrageous embezzling while working for a retired Witch Hunter. One should know the difference between acceptable, frowned upon and forbidden. And one should also have more good sense than a suicidal horse. He had it coming.
 
Chronic said:
I strongly suggest not giving Van Hal the Drakenhof option. Whoever is holed up in there has some serious magical oomph. We ain't remotely ready for doing shit around a Vampire or Necromancer powerful enough to reanimate an entire mound of wights from hundreds of klicks away and basically as soon as we activated the trap, meaning no time for a ritual setup. That guy is a true magister. I am loath to try and set our parlor tricks against that sort of arcane might. Especially since I doubt mind hole works on zombies and skeleton guards. This is a problem for the army or disposable agents, neither of which we have right now.
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See, I agree, but...
BoneyM said:
Suggest courses of action for the next six months; the Elector Count is likely to choose one of them. You can use this to your advantage. One possibility is to suggest things that align with your personal goals, another is to suggest things you can do easily and have plenty of time left over to spend elsewhere. However, if there's a pressing concern the Elector Count has that is not covered by what you put forward, he may 'write in' your orders, and cause a relationship hit due to losing respect for your abilities. Votes for this will be in plan format - the more options you give the Elector Count, the greater chance he'll pick one, but the less you can steer his instructions.
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I have no confidence that he wont just order us to do it anyways. This is a big deal. He can't afford not to worry about it.
 
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[X] [Options] Plan Sanity
-[X] The disappearance of your predecessor is very concerning, especially since he's actively trying to sabotage the hunt for him. He must be found, and I've got a lead: Julbach.
-[X] The Stirlandian League is a gold mine of information, and it must be yours.
-[X] The castle staff can be a great source of information and first line of defence - they should report to you.

[X] [Execution] The Professor's actions were foolish in the extreme. He learnt nothing from being caught once, didn't appreciate his luck in being sent to a higher position still, and thought he could keep his presumably outrageous embezzling while working for a retired Witch Hunter. One should know the difference between acceptable, frowned upon and forbidden. And one should also have more good sense than a suicidal horse. He had it coming.

Yeah it seems like an ideal time to find the previous spymaster, and handle the Stirlandian league. We should also take the laying groundworks for the surroundings, given it explicitly mentions Julbach. If we have any actions left over we can finish off the plot hook about the undead within the dungeons which should help us given we've got a magic sense in the future, and do the Stirlandian research on undead. That's a bare necessity before doing anything about investigating Templehoff, and I'd argue doing something about Templehoff afterwards almost certainly requires Imperial help.

For the report I've left it blank as really there's not much need to add spin to our actions given the vast success, so they can easily speak for themselves.
 
Gotcha thanks Boney.

[X] [Options] Plan Sanity

[X] [Execution] White-faced, shaking, muttering to herself 'I killed him'.

The thread thought he would be warned and watched, preventing peculation.
Meaning that's what Matilda thought.
And she is very young.
Yes it wrecks our image of the cold, professional spymaster, but is that such a terrible thing?
 
Oppose Plan Sanity as written, it's going to get snarled up with what we said previously.
BoneyM said:
"Why no mention of the Stirlandian League?"

[THINK FAST: Req 50, Stewardship, 97+10=107. Thought fast.]

You don't hesitate for a moment. "Both possible approaches for the League would be premature. If we wish to take over the League, we need to find my predecessor first and make sure he's not still controlling it from the shadows. And if we want to destroy it, it would be orders of magnitude easier with the tax records from the archive - if we can lay down a detailed record of every unpaid toll and evaded tariff, we could seize every asset the League owns without a murmur of protest from anyone."
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Now that we have the ledgers, we should offer/propose to crack down on it if anything, not suggest taking it over before we find said predecessor.

BoneyM said:
Also a side-vote for the next update to help with characterization: how does Mathilde feel about the execution of the Professor? This is a pivotal moment for her development and I feel she could go a few different ways here, so I'd like to leave it in the hands of the thread.
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[X] While the Professor got what was coming to him, both for his crime and his stupidity, Mathilde is surprised by the casual manner in which van Hal carried it out. She'd expected a trial, or at least some kind of official statement before a formal execution, not just shooting him during the reports.

(will work out a full vote later)
 
[X] [Options] Plan Sanity

[X] [Execution] [Shaken] The Professor's actions might have been foolish, but surely there must have been another way than a summary execution? Was I so mistaken in hoping that he'd learned his lesson the first time around? I did the right thing by informing Van Hal, but he is dead because of it...
 
Night_stalker said:
And you want to take the chance our orders won't change to feature that?

Because he just retired the martial advisor right in front of our eyes. I'm not keen on that befalling us.
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Well, if we do tell him about the whole us being an informant thing and he doesn't kill us and keeps us on the job, and our orders change like that, we could always just tell him and ask him what he want's us to do.

Just tell him "hey, the grey tower, and possibly the Emperor, are asking me to do something that could jeopardize things? What do you want me to do? Play along but work to reduce the damage this could cause? Tell them no and pray? Set things up so it looks like I made a serious effort to do what they asked and failed? You are the boss here, all I can do is lay out options for you, what do you want me to do?"
 
I agree with Lupercal, Mathilda may seem playful, but she is pragmatic and sane enough to consider the professor's actions a height of idiocy, them not being only treasonous but very stupid as well.
 
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