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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Alratan said:
There's a fair amount of evidence that what Mathilde is doing is fundamentally illegitimate, at least in terms of canon, and the Grey College are playing at best fast and loose with the rules and at worst acting in defiance of their charter by letting her. Realms of Sorcery says this 'The title "Magister" was created to prevent Wizards from becoming too wealthy at the behest of the Burgomeisters. In essence, they are vassals of their order and so they cannot manage business or own extensive property. Instead, a Magister's College functions like a Barony, and its Wizards are in service to it.' It also says 'The Lords of the Grey Order assure all Magisters of their Order are bound very tightly by the Articles of Magic and by the Order's own very strict rules. Shadowmancers may only practice their spellcraft for the benefit of Imperial society and are expressly forbidden from using their magic for their own profit or solely for the political or financial profit of their patrons.'

Several of Mathilde's activities as Spymaster of Stirland would be in breach of the latter rule, although she could make the excuse that she thought that the Stirland League was controlled by vampires, it's not a very convincing one.
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Well, the grey order may be playing fast and loose (Dragomas and his campaign to make wizards more acceptable may have had something to do with it), but they certainly didn't act in defiance.

Managing property as a magister: not only is that subtext and not the actual law, the Chamon order, even in canon, proves that wizards can get too wealthy depending on what the colleges allow. The Burgomeisters failed.

Forbidden for using magic for their own profit or solely for the political or financial gain of their patrons: that "solely" is a loophole big enough to drive an elephant through. One can argue that gain for the Empire economy as a whole does not fall under it. One can also argue that strengthening Stirland so that it could go take out the vampires also does not fall under it. Every single action of political or economic gain Mathilde has taken has passed through that solely loophole.

Edit: also, the Stirlanders were illegal. The law was about legally aknowledged political players. The baron she dissapeared was legal... but he was conspiring with vampires and they had proof, so he was also fair game.
 
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Why are we thinking like a nation state instead of the rich megacorp we are?

We don't need to build our own navy. Navies are expensive and difficult to maintain.

Why not bribe those with navies to protect our shipping?
As I said, navies are expensive and only reap a benefit if you use them. When there's no war, the ships sit in port and cost money.
From this follows, if we can offset the operating cost incured by anti-piracy operation and a fraction of the fixed cost navies have anyways, the dwarves should gladly protect our shipping.

Second alternative: pay bounties for hunting pirates. Best way to get pirates to backstab each other is incentivising killing each other.

Pay bribes not war!
 
GreenTamm said:
Why are we thinking like a nation state instead of the rich megacorp we are?

We don't need to build our own navy. Navies are expensive and difficult to maintain.

Why not bribe those with navies to protect our shipping?
As I said, navies are expensive and only reap a benefit if you use them. When there's no war, the ships sit in port and cost money.
From this follows, if we can offset the operating cost incured by anti-piracy operation and a fraction of the fixed cost navies have anyways, the dwarves should gladly protect our shipping.

Second alternative: pay bounties for hunting pirates. Best way to get pirates to backstab each other is incentivising killing each other.

Pay bribes not war!
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I like this thinking, use soft power, not hard power.
 
picklepikkl said:
Yes. If you recall, when escorting Roswita we used a Barak Varr monitor ship. Monitors are small ships that sacrifice armor for large guns.
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Monitors are warships specialized for coastal and riverine operations. They're typically incapable of operating on the high seas due to low freeboard (distance from the waterline to the deck) and stability. If they're caught in rough seas while moving between rivers, they'll often sink.

The term monitor was also used for coastal bombardment vessels the British built during WWI that were fairly small vessels that had a battleship turret (of which the British had quite a few spares laying around) slapped on them. They're not what are typically meant by the term monitor though.
 
Briefvoice said:
Look at that, it's another case of improving Mathilde's personal power being prioritized over research actions. When people ask, "Why do we keep doing nothing with aethyric vitae?" this is the answer.
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there is nothing stopping both, self-improvement options never fought with research options (self-improvement was pretty consistent) it was the flavour of the turn options that were the problem
 
Briefvoice said:
Look at that, it's another case of improving Mathilde's personal power being prioritized over research actions. When people ask, "Why do we keep doing nothing with aethyric vitae?" this is the answer.
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Actually I'm hoping we can do it organically through Polyglot and Xeno-affinity. There's a number of organisation we can have a short 3-6 month trip to visit and pick up diplo skills by immersing our selves in their cultures. Not including potentially picking up another level of karaz-Ankor diplo skill and getting the basic skill for interacting with the halflings and umdungi of K8P, there's also the Elfcation which will likely give us the basic skill for the High Elves if we have those traits and potential for getting the Nagarythe basic skill as well as I'm sure there are peculiarities of interacting with that subset of high elves as their culture is shaped very differently. In general I think we could get 4-5 extra diplo with out spending AP explicitly for getting it as long as we have those traits and go on a few 'vacations'

Although I will admit i'm quite happy to take a single class on diplomacy in general at the colleges.
 
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Valmond said:
Remember the trip to Bursar?
That could have gone lot worse.
And would have, if players had voted differently prior to the visit.
That has been no single "pick this and die" option, but just because it is an option does not make it a non issue.
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That's entirely your personal interpretation and you are welcome to it. I don't believe it could have gone too much worse though. I think that while the action had a chance to backfire like all options based on a roll, it's quite unlikely IMO.
Briefvoice said:
Look at that, it's another case of improving Mathilde's personal power being prioritized over research actions. When people ask, "Why do we keep doing nothing with aethyric vitae?" this is the answer.
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With all due respect? I wasn't talking about AV. No one was talking about AV. I was just seeing the interest in an option I liked.

Rather than that, please come at it a different way.
 
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I'd rather we pick traits for flavor and non stat benefits.
We can increase stats through training, and traits are harder to come by and can provide benefits and/or flavor stats can't.
 
Quest said:
That's entirely your personal interpretation and you are welcome to it. I don't believe it could have gone too much worse though. I think that while the action had a chance to backfire like all options based on a roll, it's quite unlikely IMO.
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So is your opinion that outside dice rolls, there are no actual poor outcomes possible?
That every vote option is just fine and nothing can go wrong?
 
GreenTamm said:
Why are we thinking like a nation state instead of the rich megacorp we are?

We don't need to build our own navy. Navies are expensive and difficult to maintain.

Why not bribe those with navies to protect our shipping?
As I said, navies are expensive and only reap a benefit if you use them. When there's no war, the ships sit in port and cost money.
From this follows, if we can offset the operating cost incured by anti-piracy operation and a fraction of the fixed cost navies have anyways, the dwarves should gladly protect our shipping.

Second alternative: pay bounties for hunting pirates. Best way to get pirates to backstab each other is incentivising killing each other.

Pay bribes not war!
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Pay whom?
The Dwarves are already patrolling, but seem to do not that well for now.
Stirland is monofocused on Silvania.
The Borderprinces mostly are the pirates we are talking about.
 
Quest said:
With all due respect? Sod off. I wasn't talking about AV. No one was talking about AV. I was just seeing the interest in an option I liked.

Maybe you should do the same, rather than passive-aggresively targeting other people's opinions.
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I'm trying to make certain things obvious rather than implied. All actions are in competition with each other. Shouting JUST SO YOU KNOW, THIS IS ANOTHER PERSONAL IMPROVEMENT ACTION AND WE TAKE A LOT OF THOSE may be a little annoying, but the intent isn't to badge or dismiss you. It's to make very clear as we turn down the pathway of another personal improvement action starting to seem mandatory because "we're all in agreement on raising diplomacy" (your words and may I say a very aggressive take on the matter).

If you're just offering options, don't look for interest by saying things like "we're all in agreement" which is a hell of a claim to make.
 
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