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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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[X] Wilhelmina, to see how she's going when she's not a terrifying financial juggernaut.
[X] Kasmir, to see how he's keeping himself busy in Sylvania.
[X] The We, to check on how they're settling in to the new arrangement.
[x] The Amber College, to see how your donation of Lustrian eggs is going.
[X] Johann, as both of you reflect on the events both of you went through together over the past year, that began with the hunt for a Clan Skyre gasmask.

Reshuffling time I suppose!
 
Until Francesco Cavallero is officially a Thane and we can enquire about his own personal Council he is honestly the only Undumgi I care to social. The only reason I temporarily approval voted Oswald was because I cared more about any existing character than about following up on random loot that we decided to pawn off for favor because it wasn't worth our AP, and he was fifth place at the time. With Kasmir there is an emotional past connecting us, even of it isn't a clearly positive one.
 
Now I may be confused, but wasn't part of the reason we chose a permanent mystery box because we knew that, in practice, the interesting characters were too interesting not to pick, and that, as such, they'd have a chance of making a debut and charming us in that slot?
 
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storryeater said:
Now I may be cinfused, but wasn't part of the reason we chose a permanent mystery box because we knew that, in practice, the interesting characters were too interesting not to pick, and that, as such, they'd have a chance of making a debut and charming us in that slot?
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Sure, but we don't actually know the criteria by which Boney picks candidates for the wildcard slot; last turn the Ambers showed up to talk to us, and they weren't even an option on the regular social list. So I've been treating the wildcard slot as a nonentity for the sake of this discussion; it might be important people we never sought out on our own, it might be people we talk to all the time, it might be people we don't even know about. We don't know.
 
BoneyM said:
You're overthinking it. The Lotus discussion was a fun little character moment, and I decided at the time I'd rather have it in than cut it for the sake of being exactly accurate in regards to Reikspiel's historical linguistic evolution. If it really bothers you, consider it a translation into a linguistic quibble that makes sense for English speakers when they were actually talking about which definite article to use.
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Yeah, okay. I'll just go with the head canon that all non-English stuff is just a warp-mangled approximation that tried to map human languages to geographical equivalents without preserving original etymological pathways from the Warhammer planet.
I still think that New Reikspiel should have at least one direct influence beyond Old Reikspiel for the sake of elegance, but ultimately it is such an unimportant detail of the otherwise vibrant world-building that it doesn't even matter.
The only reason I got so fixated is that I speak four languages and it has led to language evolution becoming an lay interest of mine and bad treatment of bilingualism in stories (which you have not in any way done) an annoying pet peeve of mine.

I recently read a story where some guy gets dropped into a fantasy world where he doesn't know the language initially, but learns it fast. And he keeps having to explain English idioms like "cool" being something to denote positive feelings instead of temperature despite the fact that no person that learns a second language through culture immersion would ever casually use literally translated idioms from his native language as anything but a joke!

Stuff like that actively rattles my immersion, but the graph you made doesn't even nearly reach that level.
 
BoneyM said:
You're overthinking it. The Lotus discussion was a fun little character moment, and I decided at the time I'd rather have it in than cut it for the sake of being exactly accurate in regards to Reikspiel's historical linguistic evolution. If it really bothers you, consider it a translation into a linguistic quibble that makes sense for English speakers when they were actually talking about which definite article to use.
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Rafin said:
Yeah, okay. I'll just go with the head canon that all non-English stuff is just a warp-mangled approximation that tried to map human languages to geographical equivalents without preserving original etymological pathways from the Warhammer planet.
I still think that New Reikspiel should have at least one direct influence beyond Old Reikspiel for the sake of elegance, but ultimately it is such an unimportant detail of the otherwise vibrant world-building that it doesn't even matter.
The only reason I got so fixated is that I speak four languages and it has led to language evolution becoming an lay interest of mine and bad treatment of bilingualism in stories (which you have not in any way done) an annoying pet peeve of mine.

I recently read a story where some guy gets dropped into a fantasy world where he doesn't know the language initially, but learns it fast. And he keeps having to explain English idioms like "cool" being something to denote positive feelings instead of temperature despite the fact that no person that learns a second language through culture immersion would ever casually use literally translated idioms from his native language as anything but a joke!

Stuff like that actively rattles my immersion, but the graph you made doesn't even nearly reach that level.
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Go full Tolkien: Samwise Gamgee's name was actually Banazîr Galbasi, with Samwise Gamgee being simply a name of a similar meaning and etymological path.
 
Mopman43 said:
I expect that's probably going to continue being the case. He made the wildcard for socials that he wanted to show- not much point in putting them in the list.
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Another impetus was that it bothered some people that Mathilde's social interactions were entirely initiated by her, and the wildcard helps make the world a little less static.

Rafin said:
Yeah, okay. I'll just go with the head canon that all non-English stuff is just a warp-mangled approximation that tried to map human languages to geographical equivalents without preserving original etymological pathways from the Warhammer planet.
I still think that New Reikspiel should have at least one direct influence beyond Old Reikspiel for the sake of elegance, but ultimately it is such an unimportant detail of the otherwise vibrant world-building that it doesn't even matter.
The only reason I got so fixated is that I speak four languages and it has led to language evolution becoming an lay interest of mine and bad treatment of bilingualism in stories (which you have not in any way done) an annoying pet peeve of mine.

I recently read a story where some guy gets dropped into a fantasy world where he doesn't know the language initially, but learns it fast. And he keeps having to explain English idioms like "cool" being something to denote positive feelings instead of temperature despite the fact that no person that learns a second language through culture immersion would ever casually use literally translated idioms from his native language as anything but a joke!

Stuff like that actively rattles my immersion, but the graph you made doesn't even nearly reach that level.
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Oh, I see what you mean. I'd originally left out that part of the evolution of Reikspiel because that part was already really crowded, but I managed to fit it in.

 
picklepikkl said:
I mean, that would be pretty great if that were a thing, but it hasn't been; he's shown up only one time in regular turns. I'm also not sure what you mean about watching her in terror; when did that happen?
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And that works for me, he will show up again soonish I'm sure.
As for the terror, that's just a thing people do, but I might be confusing him with someone else, all humans look pretty much the same after all.

As for giving characters the spotlight, we voted to give them autonomy, one slot is reserved each turn for other people, thus the argument to give someone else the spotlight is really arguing that we should sacrifice another slot in that same pursuit.
 
picklepikkl said:
If this is aimed at me: please point to me doing this, because I was trying really hard to avoid that and to only speak in terms of my preferences and what I think would be valuable to the quest. I don't think I ever impugned anyone's motives or said they were wrong for wanting a particular option. Like they teach in conflict resolution classes, I try to use "I" sentences, not "you" sentences :p.
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It was more meant in general since I don't really keep track of people besides writers, but it felt like I kept catching up with the thread and there was always someone saying something like that. Also I noticed I forgot to vote, it was saved as draft which was what me check, but didn't have anything specific to say so added the complaint for the post to have something besides vote... :oops:

Social votes are meant to be very straightforwardly 'who do you want to see more of'. One can -and should- off course talk about a character, possible interactions, future possibilities and whatever in hopes of grabbing people's interest on someone you want. But arguing on how people should vote and complaining about what other people are voting for is not something I care for.

I wrote the above before checking your posts since it was to explain the general feeling of my previous reply. Now I searched for your last posts in the thread, I found you arguing people should vote for someone new every social turn and questioning why people are voting for Kasmir, don't know if the latter was meant as complaint but given the context it looks like it. So apparently at least some of what I got annoyed at came from you, sorry.

Mind I am probably less tolerant than most in this regard since all the blocks of voters constantly pushing for something(Research, AV, favour, shipping, boon and so on) all annoy me too and generally kills my interest in whatever they are arguing about.
 
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picklepikkl said:
Kasmir is my example here: remember, on our first social turn, he wasn't originally an option. @Vocalend poked Boney about finding out what was up with him, [] Try to find Kasmir in Sylvania was added to the list, it won, and after that he showed up on future social vote options and is currently one of the winners of this one.
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To add and to be fair, my main concern with Kasmir was whether or not he's still alive. It was disheartening to find that Markus died offscreen and the lack of option made me panic if Kasmir went the same way.

Now that he's confirmed alive and well, my liking for him is the fact that he's someone who went through an entire character development arc — fanatical bigot to tolerant 'dented iron' — and is arguably the most nuanced character left alive in Sylvania — Anton's spine-growing and love-finding is still in progress and Roswita's 'development' was more shedding a limelight through an entire RL year worth of resentment and negative feeling — and thus why I am perfectly fine with the vote outcome so far.

Though well...
[X] Oswald Oswaldson, newly-minted Chief Bombardier of the Undumgi.

...if there's a last-minute upset, I wouldn't mind Oswald as well~
 
Mopman43 said:
Heideck was taking care of the Vitae while Mathilde was on campaign. He probably uses it as a bolthole.
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I hope not. He's retired from banditry, and now is just a priest. If it's being used as a bolt hole for crooks on the lamb, that implies he's let other people know about it.
I'd not really mind if he'd full-on moved in, on the other hand.
 
The issue I see with the prevailing social vote themes is that it makes Mathilde stuck in the past. She left Stirland years ago, yet doesn't seem to have made any new friends since. Instead, she spends much more time with people that have some, any connection to her old job and home rather than investing time in people she's met since leaving. It niggles at my sense of place that while Mathilde works and sleeps in K8Ps, a lot of the time she seems to barely even live there, instead just visiting from her actual life in Stirland/the Empire. Or, taking another angle on it, she's like one of those western expats that goes to work in a foreign country and spends all their time in a gated community only socialising with people from 'back home' and spending all the time they're not working visiting there.

On this basis, the local wizards and Oswald are better than people that live thousands of miles away, but we spend much too much social time with people who shouldn't have such significant narrative presence. My feeling is that we lose the sense of scale and place when Karak Eight Peaks seems to essentially be on the Empire's doorstep, not an isolated enclave of Order thousands of miles away that we're reclaiming. We should almost have to interact with the locals more, simply by opportunity and proximity - perhaps each social action should have to be with a person in the same location as one of the main turn action, so you socialise with people that you should naturally be meeting, so if we want to socialise with two people in Stirland we'd need to be spending two main actions in Stirland.
 
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I thought about it a couple of times, and I'm simply drawing a blank on exactly what reasons Mathilde would use to visit Kasmir again. She opposes Sigmar worship, and while she's thankfully entered a detente with Kasmir instead of actively disliking him for his faith, I can only picture her giving a massive "meh" to the idea of looking him up again. Mathilde can rationalize her previous visit as being for Roswita's sake, instead of her own (or his, for that matter). But what justification would she use for a second?

Because "Kasmir"? That doesn't seem to be particularly salient compared to, say, looking up Gustav "because Gustav." Because "Sigmar"? Wouldn't that be a reason for her to turn around and visit someone else?
 
silentorphan said:
I thought about it a couple of times, and I'm simply drawing a blank on exactly what reasons Mathilde would use to visit Kasmir again. She opposes Sigmar worship, and while she's thankfully entered a detente with Kasmir instead of actively disliking him for his faith, I can only picture her giving a massive "meh" to the idea of looking him up again. Mathilde can rationalize her previous visit as being for Roswita's sake, instead of her own (or his, for that matter). But what justification would she use for a second?

Because "Kasmir"? That doesn't seem to be particularly salient compared to, say, looking up Gustav "because Gustav." Because "Sigmar"? Wouldn't that be a reason for her to turn around and visit someone else?
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Regardless of my opinion, seeing so many people posting veiled demands for others to justify their vote on something meant for fun and no mechanical benefit is pretty tiring.

Not trying to pick on you specifically, just the first post I saw after waking up.
 
silentorphan said:
I thought about it a couple of times, and I'm simply drawing a blank on exactly what reasons Mathilde would use to visit Kasmir again. She opposes Sigmar worship, and while she's thankfully entered a detente with Kasmir instead of actively disliking him for his faith, I can only picture her giving a massive "meh" to the idea of looking him up again. Mathilde can rationalize her previous visit as being for Roswita's sake, instead of her own (or his, for that matter). But what justification would she use for a second?

Because "Kasmir"? That doesn't seem to be particularly salient compared to, say, looking up Gustav "because Gustav." Because "Sigmar"? Wouldn't that be a reason for her to turn around and visit someone else?
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Because Kasmir was an acquitance turned friend during the siege of Drankehoff and a comrade in arms maybe?

Again, Mathilde is pretty clearly characterized as NOT disliking Sigmar worshippers themselves on principle(the high priest is not a on principle thing, he has earned dislike multiple times) but rather believing them deceived/serving an unworthy god.
 
[X] Oswald Oswaldson, newly-minted Chief Bombardier of the Undumgi.
[X] Soizic, military leader of the Undumgi.
[X] Sir Ruprecht Wulfhart, leader of the frontier town of Ulrikadrin.
[X] The We, to check on how they're settling in to the new arrangement.

[X] Barak Varr, to watch the progress of the canal.
[X] Karak Hirn, to satisfy your curiousity about Prince Ulthar.
[X] Kasmir, to see how he's keeping himself busy in Sylvania.
[X] Wilhelmina, to see how she's going when she's not a terrifying financial juggernaut.
[X] Julia, See what she has gotten up to as Stirland's most experienced spy master.

I miss Prince Ulthar. He was basically our best friend during the Expedition, and we've barely heard about him since then :(
 
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Axel Fones said:
Regardless of my opinion, seeing so many people posting veiled demands for others to justify their vote on something meant for fun and no mechanical benefit is pretty tiring.
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Insofar as I have contributed to this, I apologize to the thread; I have been trying to make a case "for" the stuff I want to see, rather than "against" the stuff currently beating it in the polls, but, uh, I've posted about it a bunch, and I'm not perfect, so I'm sure I've slipped. So for the remainder of the social turn voting period, I will sit on my hands as it regards this particular topic.

Instead, here is an unrelated topic of discussion. Assuming we don't get anything unexpected thrown into the works (an assumption that does in fact sometimes bear out, even in this quest!), next turn we'll have a bunch of personal actions available. What should we spend them on? We'll need one to dictate to Max, and we should probably check out AV's interaction with dwarf runes before we involve a runelord, but that leaves two. Some options:
  • Finishing up the second dictionary in the same turn? It's more efficient, actionwise, to spread the writing of the second dictionary over two turns (it lets us turn a Serenity action on the turn-after-next into a Mathilde action next turn, which is really useful), but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this.
  • Practical diplomacy class? This is an important skill to have, especially if Belegar assigns us to a Waystone project after we wrap up Queekish.
  • Powerstone class? This unlocks part of the AV tech tree and might come in handy in unknown other ways having to do with high-energy magic.
  • Controlling one of our Arcane Marks? The practical benefits of doing so are unknown, but maybe it would make us more respectable among other skilled magic-users.
  • Another research action? Poking at Ranald's Coin would at least give us an idea of what lies beyond that. Alternately, there's only one more We action to take before we can write the book on them.
  • Something I've left out?
 
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