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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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I'll vote this way because it puts more effort into our assigned task, but I wouldn't be sad if the other top option won.

[X] Plan Redshirt v1
-[X] MAX: Receive dictation: Queekish-Khazalid Dictionary, including spoken Low Queekish
-[X] JOHANN: Allow him to take it easy until his eyes recover enough for a second attempt at Gilding.
-[X] DUCK: Work with Panoramia for her to finally get around to investigating the greenskin mushrooms she found.
-[X] EIC: Bring in a Perpetual Apprentice to start grooming as a handler for intelligence matters of the EIC. (1 favour/turn)
-[X] Dictate papers: Queekish-Khazalid Dictionary, including spoken Low Queekish
--[X] COIN: The Gambler
-[X] Use King Belegar's pull to bring in some linguistics experts from the Empire's universities, though after proper vetting and swearing them to silence.
-[X] Attempt to interest a young Runesmith with ambition and flexibility in the interaction between Runes and Vitae. (will give a selection of candidates)
-[X] Travel to the Grey College and attend lessons there.
--[X] Practical Diplomacy
-[X] PENTHOUSE: Have a tower built atop Karag Nar: -100gc for 1 room, bonus to room's purpose.
-[X] SERENITY: Write a paper: Queekish-Reikspiel Dictionary, including spoken Low Queekish (1/2)
 
veekie said:
Which is to say that AV is unlikely to be a useful buffer against Dhar-decomposition, because adding even more uncontrolled Winds into a mistake in spellcasting is unlikely to reduce the amount of Dhar being made.

Not unless you can turn it to a stable solid form that doesn't disintegrate even if in contact with intense concentrations of the winds...like you know, active spells being cast THROUGH the AV.
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If regular spells never ht the threshold to induce decomposition, it doesn't matter, as the Winds would never touch to make Dhar, and it would all work fine. We already have a stable form of AV that can only be induced to undergo fission under unusual circumstances. Wure, we wouldn't be pulling off batlemagic using this method, but I don't think we should be pulling off battlemagic anyway.

Redshirt Army said:
As I understand it, it's the other way around. The Supreme Patriarch is the Emperor's Court Wizard.
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I don't think they are. The Supreme Patriarch is the head of the Colleges of Magic, a set of institutions based in Altdorf. The Empire's Court could be anywhere in the Empire, and they'd need a court wizard to deal with regular magic institutes. It's the same as how the Head of the College of Engineering isn't the COurt Engineer, and the Grand Theogonist isn't the Court Priest. They're the head of institutions that have a relationship to the Emperor. They're not necessarily posts in his court.

As an analogous thing from the real world, the Archbishop of Canterbury isn't the Chaplain of the Chapel Royal, because he has a full time day job so doesn't have time to be at court.
 
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Exmorri said:
There's one very direct way to affect the choice of next Emperor: become an Elector and vote. ;) One path to becoming an Elector might be to restore one of the lost provinces of the Empire, like Solland.
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I think it would be easier to just rig the damn thing than to resurrect Solland or the Drakwald. Especially as it would not surprise me in the least if most of the other Electors just refused to give either of them a vote even if they were restored perfectly.
 
Valmond said:
He will if we have anything to say about it. :thonk:
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The Empire would arguably be better off if the chain of Altdorf Emperors was broken, and another competent Emperor elected, to reinforce that it is an elective not hereditary monarchy. Making sure that the other Elector Counts know that their heirs have a shot at the big seat is a strong reason for them to stay onside.
 
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veekie said:
Isn't the Emperor's Court Wizard functionally the Supreme Patriarch anyways?
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The supreme patriarch is the Emperor's wizard, while the elector count gets his own.

so technically an emperor has two wizards. But the court wizard is the one they get to choose.

plus, the emperor could pass on ruling his province to his sonand still be the emperor, hell, would make live easier for him if he did.
 
Alratan said:
If regular spells never ht the threshold to induce decomposition, it doesn't matter, as the Winds would never touch to make Dhar, and it would all work fine. We already have a stable form of AV that can only be induced to undergo fission under unusual circumstances.
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But regular spells DO hit the threshold to induce decomposition. Lesser Ulgu spells do it on physical contact with the spell effect. Fiendishly Complex Ulgu spells do it within line of sight.
Any AV acting as a protective coating on your mixing magics is too close.
Alratan said:
The Empire would arguably be better off if the chain of Altdorf Emperors was broken, and another competent Emperor elected, to reinforce that it is an elective not hereditary monarchy. Making sure that the other Elector Counts know that their heirs have a shot at the big seat is a strong reason for them to stay onside.
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Eh, its simply how Elector posts tend to work. Any competent Emperor would be incentivized to stack the deck for their heir, any incompetent Emperor would incentivize the Electors to deliberately pick an incompetent Emperor just so they have higher freedom and a better shot for the hot seat, with the exception of a strong previous Emperor stacking the deck OR a crisis about to burn the Empire down they need a strong Emperor for.

The Electors gain a great deal out of the Empire's continued existence, more than enough to stay onside in itself.
 
veekie said:
But regular spells DO hit the threshold to induce decomposition. Lesser Ulgu spells do it on physical contact with the spell effect. Fiendishly Complex Ulgu spells do it within line of sight.
Any AV acting as a protective coating on your mixing magics is too close.
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Lesser spells explicitly don't do it on physical contact. We see from necromancy that only small amounts of magic are required to be used in the tongs.

veekie said:
Eh, its simply how Elector posts tend to work. Any competent Emperor would be incentivized to stack the deck for their heir, any incompetent Emperor would incentivize the Electors to deliberately pick an incompetent Emperor just so they have higher freedom and a better shot for the hot seat, with the exception of a strong previous Emperor stacking the deck OR a crisis about to burn the Empire down they need a strong Emperor for.

The Electors gain a great deal out of the Empire's continued existence, more than enough to stay onside in itself.
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The history of the Empire doesn't really suggest that the Electors need a strong Emperor. For most of that time the Empire existed in name only. Now, the need for collaboration against the forces of Chaos in case of invasion is present, but that doesn't require an Emperor with any actual power over them, simply a mutual self-defence treaty that they actually adhere to. The Electors don't gain much from having much more than a set of existing institutions through which to coordinate their own efforts. They don't even need anything as strong as a confederation. The Empire is spread over a huge area. Simple communication lag times makes central government and institutions weak by necessity, and diminishing returns to scale mean that the Electors might well be better off organising their own governments.
 
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Exmorri said:
There's one very direct way to affect the choice of next Emperor: become an Elector and vote. ;) One path to becoming an Elector might be to restore one of the lost provinces of the Empire, like Solland.
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At least with Solland, as far as I'm aware, the land is still largely occupied by humans, it's just severely depopulated and damaged from Gorebad.

So remaking Solland would involve, like, infrastructure projects and induced migration. (And somehow convincing Wissenland to give up the territory)

The thread has expressed distaste for economic efforts in the past.

(Retaking Drakwald would involve chopping down most of the trees and killing most of the Beastmen. Out of a very large population of both)
 
deathofrats0808 said:
There's not really any way to affect it that I'm aware of. Unless you're suggesting somehow rigging it, which would be hard, to say the least.
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It is rigged. There's a reason that despite being theoratically elective, in practice dynasties of Emperors are a thing.
Of course, if it were to be publically known that Manfred is a Ranald-worshipper - or even just a Ranald plot - you might very well start to see the game rigged against him for once.
 
Pempelune said:
It is rigged. There's a reason that despite being theoretically elective, in practice dynasties of Emperors are a thing.
Of course, if it were to be publicly known that Manfred is a Ranald-worshipper - or even just a Ranald plot - you might very well start to see the game rigged against him for once.
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It's not that rigged. The Empire tends against dynasties, for whatever reason. I believe the current Holswig-Schliestein one might actually be the longest. And it only holds that position because it has historically had strong support from the Cult of Sigmar. Canonically, Karl Franz very nearly didn't get the job because of how he spent his youth, and Boris Todbringer was only two votes away. And Franz won because he's an excellent statesman, Mandred might not have the skill to convince the other Electors to vote for him. And he might not want to be Emperor, it's not always a good job.

And I was referring to actually rigging it, not merely making alliances and deals to get people to vote for you.
 
If we were restoring a lost province, my preference would be Sylvania. There is active effort there, there are ties to our backstory and Mathilde would have reasonable cause to want to intervene there.

Then we could try backdooring our way into Elector Countess either via marrying the Elector Count (say, Anton) or by convinving all the Electors separately to give us the vote.

I think we could get Stirland, Altdorf, Ulric.. umm...
 
If we want to rig the election, there is a very simple method nobody's mentioned yet: assassinate all the candidates we dislike. :V
 
Shard said:
If we were restoring a lost province, my preference would be Sylvania. There is active effort there, there are ties to our backstory and Mathilde would have reasonable cause to want to intervene there.
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They were never an Elector as far as I'm aware. Stirland claims the whole province.

(Given what happened previously from an independent Sylvania, that's probably for the best)
 
NSMS said:
If we want to rig the election, there is a very simple method nobody's mentioned yet: assassinate all the candidates we dislike. :V
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With how amazingly unbalanced our skills are that might actually be the easiest way for us to do it.

Edit: Actually no. We are a follower of Ranald. One of the most hardline stances against murder of all the orders gods. We tried that everything would go wrong.
 
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deathofrats0808 said:
There's not really any way to affect it that I'm aware of. Unless you're suggesting somehow rigging it, which would be hard, to say the least.
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Sure there is. It's called campaigning. We could, for instance, become a member of his Council the moment he gets into any kind of position of authority that has anything like councillors. And then do awesome stuff that helps out other Elector Counts while convincing both them and Mandred that Mandred is responsible. Maybe even make it real by grooming Mandred into a person that would actually prioritize such things, even if we were to get replaced at some point.

We could also pressure those ECs that don't "see the light" in a myriad of ways, obvious and subtle, fair and underhanded. Or just appeal to their self interest and put our many contacts and powers up for sale for votes.

I mean, seriously. As long as no other awesome wizards endorse and support his rivals, this is a cakewalk. Especially 32+ turns from now. How old is the current Emperor again?

Edit: All of this is of course conditional on Manfred being baseline competent and decent enough for us to want to do anything like that and for no other EC with ambitions towards the Throne to impress us enough to side with them.
 
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Alratan said:
If assassinating Electors was that easy, I think there'd be much higher turnover amongst them.
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I mean, Abelhelm only got his seat after a long series of Electors died by various means in a short period of time, right? I'm pretty sure it was implied most of those guys got assassinated. Except for the one who like, summoned a demon on accident or something. It's been a while and those were early days, so I forget the exact circumstances.
 
Shard said:
If we were restoring a lost province, my preference would be Sylvania. There is active effort there, there are ties to our backstory and Mathilde would have reasonable cause to want to intervene there.

Then we could try backdooring our way into Elector Countess either via marrying the Elector Count (say, Anton) or by convinving all the Electors separately to give us the vote.

I think we could get Stirland, Altdorf, Ulric.. umm...
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Wasn't Empress Heidi claiming to be from a long lost line of decent claimants to the EC seat of Drakwald? No way Anton could sink his claws (what claws?) into it before she does.

Also, Roswita would be mighty pissed at anyone stealing the land she bled for and her father died for. So forget her voting in favor of anything that that newly minted EC wants.
 
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