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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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"Well the brain scans say she read the liber mortis, so she auto fails the loyalty test, but she also played the get out of jail free card! We have no choice but to elevate her to power."
 
So I'm about to head to sleep soon, so let me try to articulate why I think being part of the Sylvanian campaign is important for us. First of all, let me clarify my belief that Sylvania is officially done after this. Whether we help or not, we won't have anymore fires to put out in Sylvania. No more action sink. It is done.

Now that being said, this is a full mobilization of the colleges of magic. The campaign goal is the goal we ourselves chased for half the quest. It's the goal that Abelheim literally died for. It's in the area that was ours to govern for half the quest and it was started because of us. So now we bugger off? That feels deeply unsatisfying to me narratively. Can we not spend a turn more to properly conclude this portion of the quest? The last time Mathilde was in a campaign in Sylvania, her lord died and even though she won, she lost. This is the sort of campaign where upon it's conclusion we can go to Abelheim's grave, stand with our heads held high and not just say we changed the world but that we've accomplished his dream. No ifs or buts.

It's also her duty to go and help in a way. No one would call her out if we decided to rest and her oath is now to K8P not Stirland. But if we go there, we won't just be Magister Weber. We'll be Dowangr Weber who was the cause of the entire gathering and everyone will know it. We'll be Dame Weber who ran a successful spy network in Stirland and collapsed Castle Drackenhof. We'll also be Shareholder Weber who owns the company that'll likely be supplying the entire army. This is the situation where our presence is worth far more as a political entity and commander than as a individual magister, though that is also important. We are the one person who knows the most about a Stirland and Sylvanian campaign, far more so than Roswita. We are the best person to help coordinate all of these disparate factions, so as a grey wizard shouldn't we go? No one would blame us if we decide not to, of course.

Let's look away from the narrative for a second and look at what concrete we can gain. I would say that being part of such a gathering always has something for us to gain, but this is a bit special. We'll be rubbing shoulders with Matriarchs and Elector Counts. We may even be called upon to speak to the emperor as the local expert. In terms of name recognition, rep boosts and overall usefulness to an empire campaign we will never get anything better than this. We'll get a chance to work with and observe the best mages in the business. We can learn from them and teach them too. Mechanically, this is also the kind of victory we'd get traits for having a hand in. Getting advanced greatsword got us a trait? This is far more narratively intertwined with Mathilde's past and the shadow of Abelheim's death still haunts her in her disdain for Sigmar and her choice of bound spells.

Besides narrative and mechanical reasons, let's look at pure cool stuff. There are battle wizards here. The best of the empire. We'll get a first hand view of what they can do. Just imagine the pure sheer awesomeness in text present here and how it'll be represented in text. I really want Boney write that.

Overall there are many reasons for Mathilde to go for Stirland for at least one more turn and I'd personally would find it incredibly unsatisfying if we couldn't. It'd be a final thematic book-end to our links to Stirland and would also help us a lot in our future career.

EDIT: Also? It gets us more chances to get Great Deeds. I don't think I need to say more on that.
 
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BoneyM said:
The Wiki is impressively exhaustive, but sometimes you read something that really seems off tone-wise and scroll down to see the source is a 3rd edition WFB armybook. They err on the side of including everything, which is normal for a wiki but would mess up a quest pretty bad.
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There are also times when the information is just wrong, like the section that said Arabyan traders had peaceful relations with Lizardmen, when the truth is more that they had a one-off alliance of convenience.
 
veekie said:
I wonder how the Lahmians are going to take it. They won't even have much warning of this, with their informant networks temporarily broken by the ledgers.
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I don't think the Lahmian Sisterhood's intelligence network is generally mercantile. They work by marrying in and honey traps, I think.

Generally, the way pre-modern trade works means that we're talking about chains with multiple links, with one merchant having no idea who the next link in the chain is selling to, and the next link in the chain being in the next market town.
 
This is a joke, do not take it seriously, no really, don't:

How many Great Deads does it take to forgive a single breach of the Articles of Imperial Magic?
See, this dusty old book fell off a truck and as it fell it opened and I just happend to look into it...
 
ctulhuslp said:
not saying right now, we can cash in on that when we are ready


ehhh....what's to say P/Matriarch won't look into it on their own? like, Mathilde may well earn position purely on merits at some point
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I'm basically certain at this point we're already at the point where Boney is rolling for that kind of thing. I don't see the need to spend the Deed on Wizard Lord.

Or much of anything else right now for that matter, since we're by de facto building a college chapterhouse in K8P already. Give that a few more years of work and we can spend it on the College permission and have a ready made college chapterhouse to hand.
 
ADarkerPorpoise said:
"Well the brain scans say she read the liber mortis, so she auto fails the loyalty test, but she also played the get out of jail free card! We have no choice but to elevate her to power."
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Brain scan you say?

*Spellburner rune activates*

"AHH... AHH... The pain! I forgot the spell!"

*awkward silence reigns*

Seriously though I do not think there is any magic that can brain-scan, just make people forget stuff with programed triggers.
 
DragonParadox said:
It's rather hard to think of it as a serious flaw when it never had any serious negative consequences in character.
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A lot of things can be said about the Disdain for Sigmar trait, but this has to be the single most damning.

If a flaw doesn't have any negative consequences, what's the bloody point of it?

I don't believe that people deliberately took a flaw they knew they could work around by leaving the borders of the Empire, but that is effectively what has happened. It brings to mind how some tabletop RPGs warn the GMS that people will try to cheese the system and have rules against flaws that aren't actually flaws.

That the trauma which left Mathilde with a grudge against the premier protective god of humanity in what might be the single worst event in her life hasn't had any real impact on her is absolutely a bad thing.
 
in regards to teh Great Deeds rewards, while founding a branch of the college here in K8P would be cool, right now it's still an active war zone; and we'd basically need to read everyone that comes here in on the Conspiracy of Silence. On top of that, we're still getting our feet wet with our Ducklings. Running a College would be vastly different from running a spy network, especially when we're also nominally still working on Weird Shit for Belegar as needed. So I'm onboard for Wizard Lord, once we get our fundamentals sorted.
 
Ashmaker said:
A lot of things can be said about the Disdain for Sigmar trait, but this has to be the single most damning.

If a flaw doesn't have any negative consequences, what's the bloody point of it?

I don't believe that people deliberately took a flaw they knew they could work around by leaving the borders of the Empire, but that is effectively what has happened. It brings to mind how some tabletop RPGs warn the GMS that people will try to cheese the system and have rules against flaws that aren't actually flaws.

That the trauma which left Mathilde with a grudge against the premier protective god of humanity in what might be the single worst event in her life hasn't had any real impact on her is absolutely a bad thing.
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It's a flaw with no negative consequences because we acted to ensure that IC by separating Mathilde from the object of her disdain. Are we to no longer be allowed to take IC action to mitigate flaws?
 
We should totally found the most honourable order of halfling spider cavalry; Wizard Lord promotion will almost certainly be on the patriarch's mind within the next five years even without spending the Deed, but knightly orders and college outposts are probably things we can only get by spending Deeds,
 
Ashmaker said:
That the trauma which left Mathilde with a grudge against the premier protective god of humanity in what might be the single worst event in her life hasn't had any real impact on her is absolutely a bad thing.
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Narratively it works that she's left areas where she has to face Sigmarites after she began to hate them. When she has to return for some purpose - or when they start coming to her - then the flaw will have to be properly faced.

Avoiding your problems is often a key stage in the narrative of overcoming a flaw.
 
Ashmaker said:
A lot of things can be said about the Disdain for Sigmar trait, but this has to be the single most damning.

If a flaw doesn't have any negative consequences, what's the bloody point of it?

I don't believe that people deliberately took a flaw they knew they could work around by leaving the borders of the Empire, but that is effectively what has happened. It brings to mind how some tabletop RPGs warn the GMS that people will try to cheese the system and have rules against flaws that aren't actually flaws.

That the trauma which left Mathilde with a grudge against the premier protective god of humanity in what might be the single worst event in her life hasn't had any real impact on her is absolutely a bad thing.
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The flaw is only to leading primarily Sigmarite organizations. Even if we stayed in the empire it still wouldn't come into effect unless they made us the boss of a bunch of them.

What you're describing is the major version of the flaw we could have taken at character generation, which would have been as bad as being hunted by a mirror daemon.
 
Harried said:
We should totally found the most honourable order of halfling spider cavalry; Wizard Lord promotion will almost certainly be on the patriarch's mind within the next five years even without spending the Deed, but knightly orders and college outposts are probably things we can only get by spending Deeds,
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I mean, yea. But then we have to spend our time running that organization. Ill pass.

use it to guarantee our wizard lord promotion.
 
kingreaper said:
Narratively it works that she's left areas where she has to face Sigmarites after she began to hate them. When she has to return for some purpose - or when they start coming to her - then the flaw will have to be properly faced.

Avoiding your problems is often a key stage in the narrative of overcoming a flaw.
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We don't hate Sigmarites, we like them mostly. We think Sigmar isn't deserving of their worship.

This is the 'don't talk about Ranald' thing all over again.
 
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