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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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noliar said:
And even then: Skulls for faces, people falling asleep if you visit them in the afternoon, smoke beards, your best friends forgetting what you look like... None of those are even worst case scenarios. Big magic fucks you up in Warhammer. You use it when those consequences would be an acceptable price. Getting our Abhorash cosplay does not have such value.
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That's why you get something like an item of Flamestorm. Or Dwellers Below. It doesn't matter if it takes months to recharge.
 
Briefvoice said:
The help he needs isn't about money or manpower, though of course those are always welcome. It's more about finding a philosophical answer he can believe in.
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I meant more as a stopgap so he is under less pressure while he figures that out... but also thinking of a possible response, which is that even if the help he received hasn't entirely reflected it, retaking K8P, and the changes it has led to, has majorly changed the strategic landscape for the Empire, for the better. (And for other dwarf-holds, too.) Which is cold comfort for his people right now, but if we can hold K8P, more help will be coming. Not sure how to explain it in an actually de-stressing way, really.
picklepikkl said:
Yes. DragonParadox said "with a penalty the first time."

(I'm not sure whether we had to cast it while it was still in progress because all battle magic works like that or because Smoke and Mirrors specifically works like that, since Smoke and Mirrors is a weird spell that works as either a spell in itself or a component of another spell, so I wouldn't generalize too much from that experience. Regardless, it was scary and we risked eating a miscast, which we haven't done in a long time. I am not eager to learn more.)
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Pretty sure Boney said it would have a penalty for each spell. Not specified if it would be -20 each time.
Asheram said:
We do have two to chose from.
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Nopenopenopenope. Do not want to try mixing Evil Chaos moonlight with Burning Shadows. That's how you get an army of burning mutants (which are probably fireproof, because Chaos hates you) and Gazul frowning at you forever.
 
BoneyM said:
"They're like cats!" Roswita shouts, waving her arms out the window of the briefing room in the general direction of the battlefields of Sylvania. "Every day, someone with fire instead of hair or surrounded by birds or a skull instead of a face wanders in and drops off a Vampire skull or the head of some forest mutant or a cartload of bones and I say thank you and they act like I've thrown a party and named my firstborn after them, and they go off to find something even worse to drag back! Look what they did to my table!"

You consider the small sapling protruding from the wood of the table, its small green leaves stretching towards the window. "I see."

"One of them walked off with my wall sconce stuck to her, I had to send a footman after her to get it back! She didn't even notice! Another made all the candles flare up, and one set fire to the curtains! One of them I had to tell only visit in the morning, because if he comes too late in the evening all the staff start nodding off!"

"It..." You search for words. "Could be worse?"

"I was expecting, I don't know, fire, floods, plague, having to repopulate Sylvania from scratch. Not this... weirdness! Part of Tempelhof got destroyed, and some of them rebuilt it, but refused to rebuild the roofs because 'why would they want the stars obstructed?' and they had to be led away to go bother the Strigoi."
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So, new headcanon: Battle Wizards are pranksters. Or at least, some of them are, and the rest are willing to go along with it. Now that they are allowed out of seclusion, they decided they wanted to play up the weirdness, and so are deliberately playing to stereotype. Table? On purpose. Wall sconce? Set up by one of the Greys who heard about Mathilde's misadventures in Eagle Castle as a journeyman. Candles were on purpose, but the curtains were an accident. Sometimes pranks do go a bit far. Sleep Aura? Nah, that's legit. And he's very annoyed by it, since it's a killer for what limited social life he has.

Refusing to rebuild roofs? Personality quirk, but aware of how other people would find it weird. Magnetizing a hill? Accidental, but a bonus.

That they consider Elector Countess headpats The Best? Entirely sincere.

😺 😸😼
 
Exmorri said:
Sufficiently respected Lord Magisters, like Mathilde, can learn a few spells of battle magic without becoming Battle Mages.
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Actually, we got cleared for all Battle Magic.
BoneyM said:
he sighs. "Never mind. Now, you've been turning heads. Bad business, that was. Normally their own jealousy and paranoia prevents them from just mass-producing necromancers, but there's always going to be exceptions and it's a damn good thing you caught it before it had a chance to bloom. So partly because of that and partly because 'Court Wizard to a Dwarfhold' has been raising an eyebrow or two, it's been decided that you're to be given full access to Battle Magic."
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Presumably they'll ask questions if we want to snap them all up in a row, but there aren't any explicit limits beside our desire (and ability) to learn them.
 
Thinking about my views on Johann and Max in a little more depth. On terms when they can productivity assist with Mathilde's assigned task(s) we should get them to do that. Apart from that, having them farm College Favour for Mathilde isn't really their job. It feels more like Mathilde's old tricks back in Stirland, embezzling state resources for personal benefit.

Now, not all potential actions are like that. Investigating the ooze to improve K8Ps self-sufficiency wouldn't be, for example. Firearms research is a lot more tenuous though, unless we get Gotri involved, which a Johann with a good standing with and understanding of the dwarves might be able to pull off.

Training, to make them more competent at their jobs for the Karak, or attaching them to the dwarven military would also count in my eyes.
 
Alratan said:
Apart from that, having them farm College Favour for Mathilde isn't really their job. It feels more like Mathilde's old tricks back in Stirland, embezzling state resources for personal benefit.
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Given that we're spending that favor for self-improvements and K8P infrastructure, I'd say it's a fair use of their time.
 
Alratan said:
Now, not all potential actions are like that. Investigating the ooze to improve K8Ps self-sufficiency wouldn't be, for example. Firearms research is a lot more tenuous though, unless we get Gotri involved, which a Johann with a good standing with and understanding of the dwarves might be able to pull off.
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those were skaven firearms. aka looking into your enemy.
Of course that is also for the benefit of K8P.
 
Alratan said:
Thinking about my views on Johann and Max in a little more depth. On terms when they can productivity assist with Mathilde's assigned task(s) we should get them to do that. Apart from that, having them farm College Favour for Mathilde isn't really their job. It feels more like Mathilde's old tricks back in Stirland, embezzling state resources for personal benefit.

Now, not all potential actions are like that. Investigating the ooze to improve K8Ps self-sufficiency wouldn't be, for example. Firearms research is a lot more tenuous though, unless we get Gotri involved, which a Johann with a good standing with and understanding of the dwarves might be able to pull off.

Training, to make them more competent at their jobs for the Karak, or attaching them to the dwarven military would also count in my eyes.
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It's not like embezzling because we are doing it in the open. If Belegar minded he would say so. For that matter Mathilde's master sugested snapping up Max for the potential paper witting, and I really doubt he would suggest embezzlement.
 
[X] [TOWER] Ongoing
[X] [COLLEGE] No purchase.
[X] [DWARF] No purchase.
[X] [PURCHASE] No purchase.
[X] [LIBRARY] Plan no favour mines
 
Something else that might be worthwhile for Johann to get involved in would be helping Gotri with the underground fortifications. Or, next turn, helping set up the Nuln-sourced artillery that I hope Kazrik was able to acquire. He's done well with artillery crews in the past, after all.
 
Alratan said:
That's why you get something like an item of Flamestorm. Or Dwellers Below. It doesn't matter if it takes months to recharge.
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Yay. You've killed an extra roomful of trolls. Better hope that there's no call for an AoE that would actually matter to anyone in the next few months*. In the meantime you're still in a mountain full of trolls planning to melee them and use battlemagic if it goes wrong.

How's this for a scenario? Warpstone glows. Some of these trolls eat warpstone. Troll stomach acid is lethal. Troll's are opaque so we can't see if any individual troll's acid sheds light until it vomits at us or we cut it open. Light sources negate substance of shadow. Our Seed is in our hand. So, we cut down an ordinary looking troll with a less than perfect stroke and suddenly both our arms are sludge (and spurting blood from the stumps). Smoke and Mirrors will carry a botch chance at that point - good luck using an earthing rod with no hands.

All this for what? territory that we don't have the population to exploit that was serving as a buffer against more actively malicious threats.

*One reason a Conflagration of Doom item is a better choice - it's more likely to be a daily.
 
We're not the Head Ranger. We're the Court Wizard. It is absolutely within the remit of our job to have our Gold Wizards study skaven artifacts so that we can understand how they work and replicate them without warpstone if we can or counter them if we can't. I don't care a lot about College Favour except insofar as we can spend it to affect the world in meaningful ways; I care about the tactical applications of our research.

(Incidentally, @Redshirt Army, that brings up something that's been on my mind. While it's true that the gaseous mist paper is going to fade from "freshness," I don't think it's actually a good use of our Serenity action, because it's not super tactically relevant. It's certainly not relevant to the Sylvanian campaign, since there aren't any more Necrachs there at the moment. I know it's inefficient in the long run, but I'd prefer to write the paper on our personal insights on countering the Waaaagh, since that has real bearing on a common enemy of the Empire, even if there are no major campaigns against the greenskins at the moment that we know of; if it helps the K8P wizards for our future campaigns, that's an extra plus.)

(Also, I just realized something: our crit on the paper this turn removed our penalty to writing papers ourself. We can remove "writing papers is hell" from the tags!)
 
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Do we need an enchanted 'nuke' item to fight the trolls, if we choose to for some reason? Could we not prepare a light source and burn/melt trolls with our shadow?
 
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I mean, why fight the trolls with our shadow if we can fight the trolls with a different shadow? When we eventually take Kvinn-Wyr, the best way to do it is probably "lure them into the Caldera in groups and have our doom-fortress obliterate them." They're not very smart; Illusions of food (which are multi-sensory) or volunteers to bait them out could work.
 
Is it possible to create a permanent disguise as a Skaven or some sort of defector? Because I'd like to go back to our roots as an Advisor With Divided Loyalties. Pick a Skaven tribe that we want to help direct, infiltrate and impersonate an advisor, and doom as many Skaven as we can.

Of course, first we have to learn enough to be able to even speak their language, let alone decipher their musks. To that end, we should try to recruit whatever passes for a Skaven expert among the Dwarves and Colleges. We're part of large organizations and we're trying to figure out the Skaven all by ourselves.
 
Olivebirdy said:
Is it possible to create a permanent disguise as a Skaven or some sort of defector? Because I'd like to go back to our roots as an Advisor With Divided Loyalties. Pick a Skaven tribe that we want to help direct, infiltrate and impersonate an advisor, and doom as many Skaven as we can.

Of course, first we have to learn enough to be able to even speak their language, let alone decipher their musks. To that end, we should try to recruit whatever passes for a Skaven expert among the Dwarves and Colleges. We're part of large organizations and we're trying to figure out the Skaven all by ourselves.
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That sounds like a rather pointless job, Skaven kill more of their fellows through incompetence and over-ambition than we ever could through active malice... and then there is the active malice of the Skaven. :V
 
Wait, are we back to the idea of trying to solo all the trolls with no support whatsoever? I thought we decided that was a stupidly risky plan regardless of what shinies we have?
 
I am just saying, what if we make use of the underlings we pay for to help us try to improve the tower?

Another perspective could be nice, and we will really need the help.
Plus maybe they get a good idea of hot to do it totally not related to ours...
 
Valarauko said:
Wait, are we back to the idea of trying to solo all the trolls with no support whatsoever? I thought we decided that was a stupidly risky plan regardless of what shinies we have?
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I think the decision was more "no point in it now, but maybe later when we actually want to get rid of them." But a few people are still arguing because People are Wrong on the Internet.
 
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