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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Andmeuths said:
Is this the IC contention or the OOC contention? The word I used here was And. Not or.
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Both? In addition to being the thing people were talking about in the thread, if you look at Mathilde's train of thought during the updates when she was worried about the EIC:
BoneyM said:
"I saw how Wilhelmina was as Steward, she's scary when it comes to trading and finances and whatnot. So when she started clashing with the West Stirland Riverine Company - you remember, with Franzen and Wolfsbach? I told them it'd probably go really badly, and they spoke to her, and the Countess is paying a fortune for those handguns she's trying to introduce so she jumped at the chance to be bought out of the EIC. They got half each, and that meant that the EIC had the entire Old Dwarf Road, and with the Countess away the EIC has a free hand throughout the demesne so that gives them the Nuln Road all the way to Ramsau. And of course I'm not going to ignore the advise I just gave to Petra and Artur, am I? So when Wilhelmina came to town with that look in her eye, I didn't just get out of her way, I jump aboard. I cracked open the treasury, bought 16% of her share, damn near gave Da a heart attack. But then just as the Countess is getting mad at Nuln for the prices for all those handguns - which the EIC is being paid to ship, by the way - Wilhelmina has a word with her and gives her the idea, what if Stirland made the guns? And you know, Blutdorf already has a crossbow factory, it's got a Guild of Engineers, it's a safe distance from Sylvania, so where better? So Wilhelmina turns around and gives me back all that money I bought her share with, and we've just broken ground on a handgun factory that's going to have an exclusive contract to supply the Army of Stirland."

You look down at the map and consider the economic kraken he's describing, and you wonder if maybe it's a good thing this isn't your problem any more.
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BoneyM said:
"Couldn't be riper. She made an Exciseman her Steward. An Exciseman! Anyone trying to smuggle goods through Stirland is catching hell, sure, but it takes more than that to keep it all running, and I should know. He's farmed out the taxation rights! Sure, with proper restrictions so it's not quite the bad old days, but when the one that buys those rights is me, suddenly the EIC can undercut every poor bastard from here to Kirchham who still has to pay tolls and tariffs. I'd call it highway robbery but I've got three lads here and two in Altdorf triple-checking that every single step of it is completely legal, because sooner or later she's going to realize she handed me Western Stirland on a platter."

You stare past Wilhelmina at the map. As the reign of Dieter IV quite thoroughly proved, if someone's stupid enough to cut their own purse, there's no law against picking up the trail of gold they leave in their wake. But as the very same example also proved, there comes a point where enough's enough and something must be done. Does your old friend's burgeoning trade empire approach that point? Has she just boasted of the entire plan to a Grey Wizard, whose remit is to crush such overreaches?

Some of your thoughts must have shown on your face, because Wilhelmina turns solemn and follows your gaze. "I pay every tax she hasn't been stupid enough to sell me, and all the ones that go to Altdorf. She had a stake in all of this and it was her idea to sell it. I'm not skinning the sheep like the Stirlandian League - more trade than ever is flowing, and the ledgers are open to you if you want to confirm that. If you think this crosses a line, go ahead and bat your eyes at Anton or wave your sword at those silly buggers along the Aver and you've got the percentages to stuff the djinn back in the jar. But the way I see it, with the Countess selling everything she can get her hands on, there's plenty worse than me that could have bought it."

She's not wrong. If Roswita wants to turn trickles of income into lump sums now, that's a decision her title grants her the authority to make and there's hundreds that would come running to fill the vacuum if Wilhelmina stopped being the one to benefit. Wilhelmina is a known quantity, a decent person, and not least of all, almost entirely at your mercy. "I saw Anton on my way up," you say conversationally. "Gone into business with him?"
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BoneyM said:
There's also the matter of the EIC. While it is certainly thriving under WIlhelmina's rule, it's worrying how much of Stirland's economy it has been allowed to control.

[ ] Take an active hand in the EIC
One action per turn will be spent keeping in touch with the EIC, allowing you to more directly control it and, if you wish, helping it branch out towards Karak Eight Peaks.
[ ] Leave the EIC alone
Wilhelmina's the least bad person to fill the power vacuum Roswita has left in Western Stirland.
[ ] Interfere with the EIC
As Wilhelmina herself pointed out, you own enough of it that you could easily dominate the EIC. Start bringing it down.
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BoneyM said:
Your collegiate interlude must come to an end, and this time your target is Blutdorf, where once more the major figures of the EIC gather to hear your words. You could simply give orders along these lines, but you're very much aware of how little an order can mean when the one who gave it isn't watching. As the Kislevites say: the Gods are high above, and the Tsar is far away. And while the EIC as a whole has bought into Wilhelmina's personal policy of 'don't skin the sheep', you're very aware that even the best-kept sheep are pinned down and forcibly shorn on a regular basis, so you don't want to entrust the Empire's long-term good to that alone.
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She's never once expressed concern about the EIC consorting with enemies of the Empire, she's concerned that it has a lot of power and is using that for the maximization of long-term profit. The issue here is values alignment. So that's why I oppose Gretel in the event that we decide we want an aide for the EIC intel network: because her values are not aligned with ours. We want our intel network to be doing things for the safety and prosperity of the Empire, whether or not they offer any financial advantage whatsoever. Do you think an intel network with Gretel at the top will manage to be completely indifferent to the potential profits of various lines of inquiry?

I'm not saying Gretel is a Black Magister in the making who will sell us out at the first opportunity; she likes and respects us, and she arguably owes us her life. I'm saying that putting someone who we know has the primary value of wealth acquisition at the top of an intelligence network is going to get you intelligence network actions biased towards wealth acquisition. Not because she's betraying us! But because that's how she thinks, and because we'd have handed her a very good tool for that. The whole point of taking an active hand in the EIC was because we wanted it to care about things other than maximizing profits. Putting someone whose primary ambition is "wealth" in a key place at the top of its power structure short-circuits the work we did to drag it into being a more prosocial institution than your average corporation.
 
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Does it have to be a wizard as our 2IC for the EIC? Like, magic is not always a plus in this case. For example, a Dwarf may be the better option!
 
Shard said:
Does it have to be a wizard as our 2IC for the EIC? Like, magic is not always a plus in this case. For example, a Dwarf may be the better option!
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Most Dwarfs don't have high intrigue. Wizards probably open options and grant bonuses that non-wizards don't.

I did raise the possibility of promoting from within the EIC, but I'm not sure if QM would allow that, and it's probably not risk-free, maybe even riskier than Gretel, and definitely more risky than a Perpetual.
 
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Andmeuths said:
? No, an objection towards Gretel is not an objection towards an aide? I'm just saying look: the Grey Perpetual is almost guaranteed to have none of the potential baggage Gretel brings to the table.
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When you quote me responding to an argument you make with a response about an unrelated position as if it's a refutation it looks very much like you believe it is. If only your first two sentences were in response to me then you should insert space to make it clear the rest is a general statement to the thread. Something along the lines of:
Yes, the risk exist. How high it is, is a matter of debate.

For people concerned about the risk Gretel poses for a 1CF upkeep Prepetual abolishes that particular type of risk you are talking about, unless we rolled hilariously bad and said Perpetual somehow fooled all of the Grey College.
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Would make your intent much clearer.
 
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ReImagined said:
Not that hard to think of options. We could get a hidden Black Magister, somebody suborned by the Skaven/Lahmians/Chaos/etc.
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I think that they were trying to make the point that an institution so suspicious and meticulous in their assurance of loyalty that a literal divine artifact might not allow you to lie to them is unlikely to be infiltrated to that extent except under extreme circumstances.
 
picklepikkl said:
  • Plan: Spoken Queekish v4 is a straightforward "try to get spoken Queekish" plan with personal actions of Rapport/Spoken Queekish/Wolf/AV/Waystone class. This is the framework that most of the popular plans agree on.
  • Plan: Spoken Queekish v4 with Better Max is the first variant we shall speak of. The standard plan uses a write-in to get Max looking through Moulder books for missing vocabulary. This plan was created after people in the thread (disclosure here for bias: including me) noticed this and worried that this would not be a useful thing for Max to do, since we are only missing magical vocabulary and we didn't think that Moulder had a good chance of providing the missing pieces, especially on a writein. So instead he writes a paper. This is my preferred "get spoken Queekish" plan.
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Looking at the tally, are these two mixed up? Better Max is translating the Chaos Dwarf anatomy book while the standard v4 is having him look through the Moulder books.
 
Ericwinter said:
I think that they were trying to make the point that an institution so suspicious and meticulous in their assurance of loyalty that a literal divine artifact might not allow you to lie to them is unlikely to be infiltrated to that extent except under extreme circumstances.
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The institution so suspicious and meticulous our protagonist and her mentor were suborned at the start of the quest? :V
 
Andmeuths said:
Most Dwarfs don't have high intrigue. Wizards probably open options and grant bonuses that non-wizards don't.

I did raise the possibility of promoting from within the EIC, but I'm not sure if QM would allow that, and it's probably not risk-free, maybe even riskier than Gretel, and definitely more risky than a Perpetual.
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A 2IC with more capabilities is not necessarily a better option than one with less.

And in the case of the EIC, it may be best to just have someone reliable and whom we know we can trust.
 
Andres110 said:
Looking at the tally, are these two mixed up? Better Max is translating the Chaos Dwarf anatomy book while the standard v4 is having him look through the Moulder books.
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I didn't list them in tally order; I explained Spoken Queekish v4 first because it's the basis for a bunch of the other plans. Like I said in the Better Max description, the standard plan uses a write-in to get Max looking through Moulder books, but Better Max has him write a paper instead. Apologies if the way I structured it was unclear/confusing!
ReImagined said:
The institution so suspicious and meticulous our protagonist and her mentor were suborned at the start of the quest? :V
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This is a worryingly good point.
 
Gretel isn't a good idea as a spy handler because it's easily noticeable that she's a wizard. We want our handler to look like a normal secretary if we don't want to notice everyone that our employee is much more that they look.
 
Andmeuths said:
I did raise the possibility of promoting from within the EIC, but I'm not sure if QM would allow that, and it's probably not risk-free, maybe even riskier than Gretel, and definitely more risky than a Perpetual.
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Don't have a quote at the moment, but I believe Boney did state that when looking for a non-Perpetual, non-Gretel aide, the search would start within the EIC. The problem being that, if none are found from within the EIC, the search would expand to non-EIC candidates.
LotusPocus said:
Gretel isn't a good idea as a spy handler because it's easily noticeable that she's a wizard. We want our handler to look like a normal secretary if we don't want to notice everyone that our employee is much more that they look.
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I find this a much more reasonable mark against Gretel compared to her character sheet traits that keep getting brought up.
 
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NuclearConsensus said:
Don't have a quote at the moment, but I believe Boney did state that when looking for a non-Perpetual, non-Gretel aide, the search would start within the EIC. The problem being that, if none are found from within the EIC, the search would expand to non-EIC candidates.
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I thought he meant that with regard to handlers?

Honestly, I regret even trying to defend Gretel, when even the merits of hiring a Perpetual is put into question by association. Infact, I hope I've not accidentally turned the thread consensus against the very idea of hiring the Deputy, and if I have, perhaps I should just stop.

I guess the basic question is: would you rather read a Grey College agent that Mathilde grooms, or a random, previously unknown EIC employee that was raised from the ranks.
 
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NuclearConsensus said:
Don't have a quote at the moment, but I believe Boney did state that when looking for a non-Perpetual, non-Gretel aide, the search would start within the EIC. The problem being that, if none are found from within the EIC, the search would expand to non-EIC candidates.
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That's not quite what he said.
BoneyM said:
First preference would be to hire known quantities from within the EIC, but if there's not enough people with the appropriate skillsets Mathilde will look elsewhere for them. The exact details of that recruitment process is below the resolution of the turn votes, it might turn into a subvote between turn parts.
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This was in relation to the action:
[ ] Start hiring handlers who can then start hiring informers and begin to collect non-public information.
Which we have had available for quite a long time (and, in fact, the reason why we set up internal watchdog protocols on T25 was to help be sure that this would be more reliable when we did eventually set it up).
BoneyM said:
The two matters are separate. Handlers within the EIC will allow for it to gather more information. Having someone as a 2IC will eventually unlock options for them to either assist or to take over completely, once they've grown into the position.
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The 2IC actions were added to the EIC list after people asked about it yesterday:
[ ] Bring in a Perpetual Apprentice to start grooming as a handler for intelligence matters of the EIC. (1 favour/turn)
[ ] Look outside the Colleges for a candidate to start grooming as a handler for intelligence matters of the EIC.
But Boney was clear that we don't need the 2IC; it's something that will give us bonuses, if we decide we have someone we can trust with that amount of power and autonomy, but we can manage the EIC informant network without it.
 
picklepikkl said:
But Boney was clear that we don't need the 2IC; it's something that will give us bonuses, if we decide we have someone we can trust with that amount of power and autonomy, but we can manage the EIC informant network without it.
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Let me be blunt here, the moment an EIC action fails due to bad dice rolls, it's very likely there would be a panic buy of a 2IC, and given the 2IC is a growing bonus, if it's ever going to be bought, it should be bought sooner than later.

My own take is that it is very, very narratively boring to read about a faceless network. Extremely so.

Anyway, my own take is this: you cannot have guarantees about the reliability or quality of this (it can be amazing, it can be really bad):
[ ] Look outside the Colleges for a candidate to start grooming as a handler for intelligence matters of the EIC.

But this

[ ] Bring in a Perpetual Apprentice to start grooming as a handler for intelligence matters of the EIC. (1 favour/turn)

Has a higher chance of producing a candidate that is more desirable, almost certainly reliable and of higher quality, which offers a unique narrative and mechanical opportunity that the first option may not.
 
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Andmeuths said:
Let me be blunt here, the moment an EIC action fails due to bad dice rolls, it's very likely there would be a panic buy of a 2IC, and given the 2IC is a growing bonus, if it's ever going to be bought, it should be bought sooner or later.

My own take is that it is very, very narratively boring to read about a faceless network. Extremely so.
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You're not wrong on any of these points.

Probably, then, we should apply Ranald's Coin to our eventual seeking out of a 2IC, whether that be a Perpetual or someone else, to help us get the best possible results on reliability + capabilities. Since, well, this is a position that requires a lot of trust.
BoneyM said:
Only to those inducted into the Cult of Grungni.
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The list of ancient dwarf secrets grows and grows:
  • Rune magic
  • Artillery and gunnery
  • Gazul's lore of death
  • Caps lock
 
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ReImagined said:
The institution so suspicious and meticulous our protagonist and her mentor were suborned at the start of the quest? :V
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Both of whom immediately turned on the suborning force as soon as they had a chance. That wasn't really a case of alternate loyalties, just working under certain constraints that took clever thinking to get out of.
 
fictionfan said:
Do we need high intrigue? We don't need someone to plot stuff. We someone to go though large amounts of data and point out the important bits. Seems like that would be learning.
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For paperwork and handling an organisation, that would be stewardship. We still need intrigue because you know, a spy handler with low intrigue will be unreliable.
 
LotusPocus said:
For paperwork and handling an organisation, that would be stewardship. We still need intrigue because you know, a spy handler with low intrigue will be unreliable.
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In that they might be tricked. But them being tricked is more an indication of our network being compromised and we have a group on the lookout for that already. Mostly we need someone reliable literate and with a lot of patience.
 
Andmeuths said:
Nah, a nat 100 would be the Dragon taking a shine to Mathilde, and setting Mathilde on the path to doing what Dragomas can do, and transform into a Dragon.




It's either forgoing roll bonuses from our info network (I really hope we don't skip outb on the bonuses, or more likely, if we do skip out, panic buy because of a fail that a roll bonus might have averted), recruiting Julia, recruiting Gretel, a Perpetual, or promoting from within the ranks of Handlers. I imagine the 1CF upkeep is there because there are very real advantages to choosing a Perpetual over other options. This is probably the first opportunity to use the Perpetual system at a discounted favor upkeep, so I'd say that not using it now, means it's unlikely it's ever going to be used in the foreseeable since the system was never tried before, and this is probably the most generous offer to try the system yet.

I guess one of the most obvious trade-offs is basically whether the risks Gretel breaches the AoM in our service, and the OOC distaste for hiring a thief is high enough to justify the 1CF cost. Because so long Gretel doesn't breach the AoM, from the IC in-universe perspective, everything is Kosher.
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My take is that an EIC network is valuable enough that a few of the intel magisters are willing to drop in a favour each, each turn in order to subsidise the cost between them :)
picklepikkl said:
You're not wrong on any of these points.

Probably, then, we should apply Ranald's Coin to our eventual seeking out of a 2IC, whether that be a Perpetual or someone else, to help us get the best possible results on reliability + capabilities. Since, well, this is a position that requires a lot of trust.

The list of ancient dwarf secrets grows and grows:
  • Rune magic
  • Artillery and gunnery
  • Gazul's lore of death
  • Caps lock
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Whelp, i'm convinced on coin on the 2IC being a thing we should do and also a perpetual apprentice. Might have some spiffy narrative benefits too :).

More importantly. Death. Caps lock. Well, then. We all know the death that speaks in caps lock; don't we?
 
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