"They are stronger than us, smarter than us, live longer than us, and are far better looking than us. They are our superiors in every respect, and the taxes are lower when they rule. When they come back I will be the first to welcome them."
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
"They are stronger than us, smarter than us, live longer than us, and are far better looking than us. They are our superiors in every respect, and the taxes are lower when they rule. When they come back I will be the first to welcome them."
King Arthur
The Once and Future King
If they knew literally everything going on in this place they would have no reason to blackmail us to spy on them.
Get our boss somewhere private, make sure no one is around, and tell him then and continue to only talk about this in the most stealthy manner possible and the risk of them finding out should be decently low.
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DarkLight140
Credit to Team
- Location
- Lost in my thoughts
Good to know, thanks!
In that case, is there any specific mechanic that we should use to go "I believe this problem is now in X's department" if, say, we think that the appropriate response to circumstances is something more like "lead an army to sack Drakenhof" (Martial) than "poke about Drakenhof and get eaten" (Intrigue)?
- Location
- Brazil
Did he? Did he really?
Or did he take advantage of lack of copyright laws to say he did, in fact, write this suspicious, sandy old tome?
Also, is your real name Dan Abnett?
- Location
- Memphis, TN
And what do we do after that? We have no follow up plan and we don't know who is even pulling the strings so all this would be doing is jumping the gun before we even have anything to work with
bookwyrm
Doom of Public Libraries
- Location
- Wichita, Kansas
Well sometimes it's easy to overstate how loved Vlad was, he will always be an inhuman dhar-soaked predator whose only redeeming feature was his mutual lovesickness with Isabella and how freely is his service really when the option is join the theocratic Cult of Blood of your grandparents or become lunch?
DocMatoi
Theoretical Lover of Girls
- Location
- within 2 hours of the White House
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Agreed. Honesty is the ONLY policy, when it comes to employer relations. Better that we tell van Hal that we have mysterious masters then for him to find out on his own.
Their agent can't see everything. If they could read our mind at a distance, they wouldn't need to send fuckface McGee the roadwarden to pick up our reports.
We.
Need.
To.
Tell.
The.
Boss.
[X] Plan Reasonable
[X] [Execution] The stupid son of a .... Really? He barely escapes with his head attached once, and decides to try it again, right under the noses of a Witch Hunter, the Emperor's own spymaster and, hell, me? I'll probably feel bad later, but right now the level of stupid inevidence has me practically apoplectic
[X] [fess up] fess up in very secret to having secret Masters and secret orders. Make sure to emphasize their hold on us and our loyalty and eagerness to do a good job
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- Location
- Memphis, TN
And then what? How do you plan to hide we don't who it is or what their resources are.
He could have a wizard or be a wizard himself for all we know and he is powerful enough to move a grey mage to work with an Elector Count.
Why don't we just wait until have something to go on before we do anything rash
Say so in the report and don't list 'get eaten' in the options you present.
- Location
- Brazil
Sylvania is the place there the wizards help the Witch Hunters carry the kindling.
You do realize we have an unkown spell currently attached to our fucking eyelids.
- Location
- USA
Totally unrelated to the Van Hellsings btw
anyways, thanks for the 101, the way you wrote it is really really funny too.
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Okay so lets see, now that I got a bit of time.
I suspect this trick would work better if we were rocking impenetrable shadow armor to not break our hand.
I want to continue to spend an action training up for a few turns to get better, but we'll see how the action economy goes.
They don't want to sabotage us, because if they wanted to all they needed was to BURN the ledgers. Wouldn't even take long.
They don't want to take over, because that means they'd take and KEEP the ledgers, rather than leaving them in a place that's JUST far enough to need searching but not far enough to avoid being found.
They are not USING the ledgers, on the basis that there's literally nothing done with the ledgers other than left in a cool dry space for a few years.
Thankfully we spotted the encounter or this could have been pretty bad, but for an assassination its a little...overcomplicated and unlikely to have drawn the Count out to begin with.
So what this tells me is that Drakenhof is here to scry us, in a prepared site, so they can learn about us.
-You can embezzle, he doesn't really care as long as it doesn't hurt your work.
-You can spy, he expects it, he'd be working to counter it, but he probably won't kill you for it.
-If you SABOTAGE, you'd burn.
The most important part of this is that he did further investigation and found something to kill the prof over.
[] Drakenhof. You almost hesitate to suggest it, but... surely this must be investigated.
This one must go in. Not even bringing it up will need very good excuses after the last turn.
[] 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.
A bit of a priority for us.
[] The Stirlandian League is a cancer eating at Stirland's economy, and it must be destroyed.
[] The Stirlandian League is a gold mine of information, and it must be yours.
He's a Witch Hunter, he understands the value of taking it over, but we do have to address it. I personally want to offer both options and let him decide.
[] There is a risk of enemy agents infiltrating the castle staff - they must be watched.
[] The castle staff can be a great source of information and first line of defence - they should report to you.
[] Seriously what is up with the East Wing.
These should be done at some point, but not immediately with current information.
[] I've got the budget for a proper network of informants, now it just needs building.
This must be done. We asked for the budget earlier. If we DON'T do it that looks fishy as fuck.
[] If I had proper facilities, I could do better work. Please fund me renovating my secret underground palace.
Not urgent, and we'd be doing it ourselves to preserve security anyway.
As for our opinion on the kill. I think we'd be mostly surprised...not at the kill, but at WHY he was killed.
...oh look Plan Reasonable is pretty much it.
[X] Plan Reasonable
[X] [Execution] Surprised and curious. While you had raised the issue of embezzlement and divided loyalties, the Count had also noted and accepted both. You want to know what did he actually do to cross the line, from the implications, he had sabotaged the army in some way for an outside party. Both for your own interests and for national interests, you want to know what the Count found.
I dislike both the leading execution votes alas, so here's my take.
Seems the right-ish choice for us, considering none of the other weapons(other than possibly Anton) really work that well for us anyways!
...wow, he had a hard head. We punched his head, broke our hand and he isn't even stunned!
I suspect this trick would work better if we were rocking impenetrable shadow armor to not break our hand.
We have a name! Markus! And he likes us!
I want to continue to spend an action training up for a few turns to get better, but we'll see how the action economy goes.
Okay...this is bait.
They don't want to sabotage us, because if they wanted to all they needed was to BURN the ledgers. Wouldn't even take long.
They don't want to take over, because that means they'd take and KEEP the ledgers, rather than leaving them in a place that's JUST far enough to need searching but not far enough to avoid being found.
They are not USING the ledgers, on the basis that there's literally nothing done with the ledgers other than left in a cool dry space for a few years.
Thankfully we spotted the encounter or this could have been pretty bad, but for an assassination its a little...overcomplicated and unlikely to have drawn the Count out to begin with.
So what this tells me is that Drakenhof is here to scry us, in a prepared site, so they can learn about us.
Also Mindhole is best spell.
So what did the good Count say here?
-You can embezzle, he doesn't really care as long as it doesn't hurt your work.
-You can spy, he expects it, he'd be working to counter it, but he probably won't kill you for it.
-If you SABOTAGE, you'd burn.
The most important part of this is that he did further investigation and found something to kill the prof over.
[] Drakenhof. You almost hesitate to suggest it, but... surely this must be investigated.
This one must go in. Not even bringing it up will need very good excuses after the last turn.
[] 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.
A bit of a priority for us.
[] The Stirlandian League is a cancer eating at Stirland's economy, and it must be destroyed.
[] The Stirlandian League is a gold mine of information, and it must be yours.
He's a Witch Hunter, he understands the value of taking it over, but we do have to address it. I personally want to offer both options and let him decide.
[] There is a risk of enemy agents infiltrating the castle staff - they must be watched.
[] The castle staff can be a great source of information and first line of defence - they should report to you.
[] Seriously what is up with the East Wing.
These should be done at some point, but not immediately with current information.
[] I've got the budget for a proper network of informants, now it just needs building.
This must be done. We asked for the budget earlier. If we DON'T do it that looks fishy as fuck.
[] If I had proper facilities, I could do better work. Please fund me renovating my secret underground palace.
Not urgent, and we'd be doing it ourselves to preserve security anyway.
As for our opinion on the kill. I think we'd be mostly surprised...not at the kill, but at WHY he was killed.
...oh look Plan Reasonable is pretty much it.
[X] Plan Reasonable
[X] [Execution] Surprised and curious. While you had raised the issue of embezzlement and divided loyalties, the Count had also noted and accepted both. You want to know what did he actually do to cross the line, from the implications, he had sabotaged the army in some way for an outside party. Both for your own interests and for national interests, you want to know what the Count found.
I dislike both the leading execution votes alas, so here's my take.
- Location
- United States of America, Michigan
[X] Plan Reasonable
[X] [Execution] Surprised and curious. While you had raised the issue of embezzlement and divided loyalties, the Count had also noted and accepted both. You want to know what did he actually do to cross the line, from the implications, he had sabotaged the army in some way for an outside party. Both for your own interests and for national interests, you want to know what the Count found.
[X] [Execution] Surprised and curious. While you had raised the issue of embezzlement and divided loyalties, the Count had also noted and accepted both. You want to know what did he actually do to cross the line, from the implications, he had sabotaged the army in some way for an outside party. Both for your own interests and for national interests, you want to know what the Count found.
- Location
- Brazil
Magic is sort of important, too.
Except investigating that is a suicide mission for someone on our level.
Drakenhoff is the capital of Sylvannia. We are a level zero wizard.
Heretek
Techpriest of Tzeentch
I'd be very surprised if our only option was to immediately go poking around ourself. Dumbfounded is a better word. Van Hal is more than experienced enough to know that it'd take a miracle for us to pull that off on our own, especially without any prep work.
DarkLight140
Credit to Team
- Location
- Lost in my thoughts
While I like most of the rest of Plan Reasonable, I don't think any of the currently proposed plans handle Drakenhof well. Every action I've seen with regard to that is flawed.
We ultimately bounce back to the same question of "how do we solve this problem", and the answer is not "stay at a distance" or "learn more about it". There's clearly a necromancer, they're clearly in Drakenhof, and they've clearly been moving as part of some large plan since before the Count took power. They now know that their plan is screwed up because the ledgers were obviously found and the Count was not reported dead; therefore, to spend time on slow investigations is only dithering and giving them more time to act and gain power.
No, the only useful action to take as far as the ledger/Drakenhof plot goes is to recommend that the only lead we have be investigated with enough force to not have the people who go in die- which means an army. We can accompany them if needed to poke around the area in a wizardly way and help out a little in battle, but there's a time to stop doing intrigue and start sending in troops and that time is now.
Edit: Even if we don't actually find whatever necromancer plotted this, we'll at least kill off whatever nasties in Sylvania come out to fight and it's clear that they need periodic purging anyway- it might as well be now, when we have a useful direction to send our purge in.
How exactly are we going to investigate this? If we go to Sylvania, we get killed because we're not good enough at wizarding to slip through a net of vampires and undead untouched, gathering information as we go. If we stay in Stirland, we have none but the sparsest leads to follow- maybe the noble that we kidnapped will spill something, but we don't have the information that he spilled yet to work with and without that we have basically nothing to investigate Stirland-side.
If we research necromancy and write wizard friends, we learn... that yes, it was a skilled necromancer or vampire, and yes, they're clearly based in Drakenhof. Nothing we don't already know. Beyond that, maybe we pick up a few details that might cough up another lead, but maybe not.
We ultimately bounce back to the same question of "how do we solve this problem", and the answer is not "stay at a distance" or "learn more about it". There's clearly a necromancer, they're clearly in Drakenhof, and they've clearly been moving as part of some large plan since before the Count took power. They now know that their plan is screwed up because the ledgers were obviously found and the Count was not reported dead; therefore, to spend time on slow investigations is only dithering and giving them more time to act and gain power.
No, the only useful action to take as far as the ledger/Drakenhof plot goes is to recommend that the only lead we have be investigated with enough force to not have the people who go in die- which means an army. We can accompany them if needed to poke around the area in a wizardly way and help out a little in battle, but there's a time to stop doing intrigue and start sending in troops and that time is now.
Edit: Even if we don't actually find whatever necromancer plotted this, we'll at least kill off whatever nasties in Sylvania come out to fight and it's clear that they need periodic purging anyway- it might as well be now, when we have a useful direction to send our purge in.
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- Location
- USA
He also has a title, champion of stirland. This basically means he is officially recognized as the strongest knight in stirland
The issue is that we are simply not built to go spy/assassinate a high level vampire-necromancer. This is not some human lordling we can mindhole.
We have to address it, but we can address via the report instead of via suggesting a mission where we go in along to spy/assassinate an older vampire-necromancer. There are also other avenues of investigation. namely the noble we captured, and IIRC the fact that the spy our predecessor sent to sabotage us we captured IIRC came from that noble's fief which suggests he had connections with the former spymaster. combined with the deaths of the previous elector counts... and it suggests the former spymaster was subverted by said vampires as a part of a plot to subtly capture stirland
... incidentally, the fact that it was clearly vampires that stole the ledgers (spooked horses, night job), and that the necromancer-vampire is using intrigue to take over. I am concerned that even if we don't go into sylvania to investigate his agents will come after us. So, we should start preparing some anti vampire countermeasures
temporary vote while I look up some stuff
[X] Plan Reasonable
[X] [Execution] Surprised and curious. While you had raised the issue of embezzlement and divided loyalties, the Count had also noted and accepted both. You want to know what did he actually do to cross the line, from the implications, he had sabotaged the army in some way for an outside party. Both for your own interests and for national interests, you want to know what the Count found.
King Arthur
The Once and Future King
I'm not actually arguing in favor of telling him here, not sure what we should do honestly, but that's a bit of a weak argument.
First, if we IC thought it might do anything else I feel like there would have been some mention of it.
Second, OOC, if Grey Wizards had a spell that let them know everything it's target see's or hears, and this spell can apply via envelope, and it lasts forever, I feel like someone here would have heard about it by now and been like "yeah, this is the spell right here." This spell would also be used on someone a hell of a lot more important than us, like, say, leaders of whole nations like the Emperor, as long as they remove the little seeing stuff when we close our eyes problem it'd would be impossible to know about. This is, as far as I'm aware of, far and away beyond anything that Grey Wizards have shown to be capable of elsewhere.
Thirdly, the spell is on our eyes, not our ears. Just don't write anything down.
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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.
-[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.
In this context, it means that he's the best of the Stirlandian Greatswords, an honour that comes with a knighthood.
Yes. I'm tentatively penciling in as:
-2 actions towards our job or supporting the job
--One of these would be the Count's orders that turn.
--One would be for independent or supporting initiatives. Because our Count is a Witch Hunter he is likely to spend his actions ALSO doing intrigue actions, so we should back him up on those.
-2 actions improving our lair and/or network
--Since it's secured now, we just need to move in the furniture
--And we should hook up the village networks.
-2 actions improving ourself
--1 towards continuing the sword training until we at least reach a respectable level of skill. As we're going to be sneaking into hostile areas fairly often, being able to carve our way out is rather valuable(and even a level 0 Wizard is a substantial combatant)
--1 towards improving our magic ability in some way, I lean towards refining our enchanting first, but am open to ideas.
And the Count is aware.
There is investigating and penetrating.
One is gathering up the rumors from the surrounding area, observing the magic from a distance and checking for recent movements to and from.
Refusing to do this is either cowardice(which anyone paying attention would know we don't suffer from it when we opted to shank undead with a weapon our size) or else being under their thrall. We're a local, peasant origin. Everyone knows the locals liked their vampire counts.
The other is going to the epic level dungeon by yourself at level 0.
There is a difference.
- Location
- USA
It's not refusing to do so unless he orders to do so and we say no
we have limited slots of missions to plan and propose, and we can't really afford to waste some slots on an impractical suicide mission that won't really get us anything.
Also being brave is not the same as not knowing your capabilities. Why not suggest we just ride into sylvania alone to purge it of all vampires? after all we are "brave"? or personally go alone to purge a skaven city? Because that is not quite what brave means
How would that even give us anything of value?
We are not voting for actions. we are voting for the 3 mission dossiers we suggest to our boss to assign to us
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avatar11792
Et Sic Incipit
- Location
- Planet Earth, North America
[X] Plan Conjectures
-[X] Report: Stick to the facts. We very discreetly acquired Petr and Maksim von Stolpe, using the Count's authority to borrow troops. We looked at the burst of magic flooding into the mound, and calculated that it came from Drakenhof.
-[X] Share some conjectures: The fact that the books were stolen at night by human shaped things that actually managed to traumatize horses by being nearby. As well as the powerful necromancer in drakenhof who put the alarm trap and then raised the dead in the mound suggests that the books were actually stolen by vampires, and that there is a pretty powerful necromancer among the vampires. The fact the books were kept rather than destroyed suggests they intended to use them, probably after installing their own patsy as a stirland elector count. The series of unfortunate deaths of Van Hal's predecessors and the connection between them and the noble we captured is further cementing the idea that we have a vampire making moves on stirland via subterfuge instead of an overt and open invasion. We should probably take steps against assassination attempts by vampires, and hopefully whatever info our guest at the dungeon provide will be a useful lead in the investigation.
-[X] Possible orders:
--[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] Capture of predecessor can lead to taking over the Stirlandian league for purpose of spying
---[x] Could he be related to the vampire plots? if so then finding him is a priority.
--[X] The Stirlandian League is a cancer eating at Stirland's economy, and it can be destroyed now that we have the ledgers.
---[x] The former spymaster has been acting against us. He probably still controls his spies in the league. Destroying it now would deprive of him of valuable resources, but may also destroy possible leads on his location
--[X] I've got the budget for a proper network of informants, now it just needs building.
--[X] Variant Writein: Drakenhof. This vampire plot to subtly take over stirland is concerning. We know there are vampires in sylvania, but who and where? And what exactly have they done in stirland so far? I could try to examine other stirland nobles for possible vampire connections, although this seems a bit of a shot in the dark. Alternatively, follow up any leads acquired from the interrogation of Stolpe.
[X] [Execution] Surprised and curious. While you had raised the issue of embezzlement and divided loyalties, the Count had also noted and accepted both. You want to know what did he actually do to cross the line, from the implications, he had sabotaged the army in some way for an outside party. Both for your own interests and for national interests, you want to know what the Count found.
-[X] Report: Stick to the facts. We very discreetly acquired Petr and Maksim von Stolpe, using the Count's authority to borrow troops. We looked at the burst of magic flooding into the mound, and calculated that it came from Drakenhof.
-[X] Share some conjectures: The fact that the books were stolen at night by human shaped things that actually managed to traumatize horses by being nearby. As well as the powerful necromancer in drakenhof who put the alarm trap and then raised the dead in the mound suggests that the books were actually stolen by vampires, and that there is a pretty powerful necromancer among the vampires. The fact the books were kept rather than destroyed suggests they intended to use them, probably after installing their own patsy as a stirland elector count. The series of unfortunate deaths of Van Hal's predecessors and the connection between them and the noble we captured is further cementing the idea that we have a vampire making moves on stirland via subterfuge instead of an overt and open invasion. We should probably take steps against assassination attempts by vampires, and hopefully whatever info our guest at the dungeon provide will be a useful lead in the investigation.
-[X] Possible orders:
--[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] Capture of predecessor can lead to taking over the Stirlandian league for purpose of spying
---[x] Could he be related to the vampire plots? if so then finding him is a priority.
--[X] The Stirlandian League is a cancer eating at Stirland's economy, and it can be destroyed now that we have the ledgers.
---[x] The former spymaster has been acting against us. He probably still controls his spies in the league. Destroying it now would deprive of him of valuable resources, but may also destroy possible leads on his location
--[X] I've got the budget for a proper network of informants, now it just needs building.
--[X] Variant Writein: Drakenhof. This vampire plot to subtly take over stirland is concerning. We know there are vampires in sylvania, but who and where? And what exactly have they done in stirland so far? I could try to examine other stirland nobles for possible vampire connections, although this seems a bit of a shot in the dark. Alternatively, follow up any leads acquired from the interrogation of Stolpe.
[X] [Execution] Surprised and curious. While you had raised the issue of embezzlement and divided loyalties, the Count had also noted and accepted both. You want to know what did he actually do to cross the line, from the implications, he had sabotaged the army in some way for an outside party. Both for your own interests and for national interests, you want to know what the Count found.
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