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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Rafin said:
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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My understanding is that there isn't really much campaigning. There's like, a week of backroom deals.

Putting pressure on Electors like that seems to imply some very dangerous ideas that get people executed.

Not really. Otherwise whoever had the support of the Colleges would always win. So it would always be the Prince of Altdorf, which isn't true. Actually it might be that the Colleges restrict political activity during that time, because they don't want to piss off whoever does become Emperor, because the Emperor is the one who gets to make all the Empire's magic policy.

Luitpold's age doesn't appear anywhere I know. I'd guess he's mid-fifties though.

Also Mathilde caring enough and being in a position to do anything. If she's off in Ulthuan or something she might not be able to get back in time to do anything anyway.

Alliterate said:
How far do you trust Heidi?
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I'll not lie, my first thought was that for Mandred to be elevated that quickly, the logical conclusion was that Heidi had Luitpold assassinated. However, I suspect that she wouldn't. The chance of getting caught is not insignificant, and while the benefits to Ranald are great, the benefits to her personally are not (in comparison to just staying Empress). So I reckon her own self preservation would prevent her from doing it.
 
deathofrats0808 said:
I'll not lie, my first thought was that for Mandred to be elevated that quickly, the logical conclusion was that Heidi had Luitpold assassinated. However, I suspect that she wouldn't. The chance of getting caught is not insignificant, and while the benefits to Ranald are great, the benefits to her personally are not (in comparison to just staying Empress). So I reckon her own self preservation would prevent her from doing it.
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There is no need at all to have Luitpold killed.
When Mathilde went to report the College of Necromancy we've seen Luitpold take "Advice" from Heidi.

More like she told him what to do and then he did it.
The guy is already dancing to her tune.
 
deathofrats0808 said:
I'll not lie, my first thought was that for Mandred to be elevated that quickly, the logical conclusion was that Heidi had Luitpold assassinated. However, I suspect that she wouldn't. The chance of getting caught is not insignificant, and while the benefits to Ranald are great, the benefits to her personally are not (in comparison to just staying Empress). So I reckon her own self preservation would prevent her from doing it.
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On the other hand, she did complain to Mathilde about the 13-year-long con she had running in Sylvania. This Empress gig might be an even longer one. Of course, the "empress" part of it might outweigh the disadvantages.
 
LightLan said:
There is no need at all to have Luitpold killed.
When Mathilde went to report the College of Necromancy we've seen Luitpold take "Advice" from Heidi.

More like she told him what to do and then he did it.
The guy is already dancing to her tune.
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Mandred getting a Runefang requires Luitpold dead. Pretty sure he's not gonna commit suicide for her.

silentorphan said:
On the other hand, she did complain to Mathilde about the 13-year-long con she had running in Sylvania. This Empress gig might be an even longer one. Of course, the "empress" part of it might outweigh the disadvantages.
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Fair point, but in Sylvania, if she slipped up, she'd die. And she's not even really running a con anymore. She's not pretending to be anyone else, except she's changed her name. She can still act like herself and not like a Vampire.

silentorphan said:
What was the turnover rate for the last batch of Stirland ECs before Abelhelm, anyway?
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Something like 10 in 50 years IIRC.
 
deathofrats0808 said:
I'll not lie, my first thought was that for Mandred to be elevated that quickly, the logical conclusion was that Heidi had Luitpold assassinated. However, I suspect that she wouldn't. The chance of getting caught is not insignificant, and while the benefits to Ranald are great, the benefits to her personally are not (in comparison to just staying Empress). So I reckon her own self preservation would prevent her from doing it.
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She'd never assassinate anyone, because she's a devout Ranaldite. He has one of the most hardline stances against murder in the old world pantheon.

The blowback for a priestess betraying Ranald to that degree would be spectacular, to say the least.
 
BurnNote said:
Fuck, don't even joke about that. There's a line in the books (can't remember where) about how she hates Sigmar and likes Ranald (though she doesn't do any Ranald things like steal and not use a Greatsword, because their relationship is so *special*), and that's just scarily possible.
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The worst part is that this isn't the first time mary-sue shit like this has happened in GW. *coughs* Rowboat Girlyman *coughs*
 
MooseHowl said:
She'd never assassinate anyone, because she's a devout Ranaldite. He has one of the most hardline stances against murder in the old world pantheon.

The blowback for a priestess betraying Ranald to that degree would be spectacular, to say the least.
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Not true. The strictures say Ranald frowns on unnecessary violence. Not that he's going to smite you for it. And Ranald isn't omniscient either so it is theoretically possible to slip something like this past him.

But this does help prove the point that while Heidi isn't super trustworthy, she stands to gain so little and lose so much by getting Luitpold killed taht it wouldn't be worth it.
 
Oh cool, so she gets a re-do on life every generation. I wonder if she'll try to bag the whole Empire in time, going from one Elector Count lineage to the next? Heidi: Grandmother of the Empire.
 
Alratan said:
If assassinating Electors was that easy, I think there'd be much higher turnover amongst them.
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We ARE supposed to be an exceptional assasin. We managed to het past the Emperor's defenses when we were much weaker. Sure, it was a double ko, but we leveled up a lot since then.

LightLan said:
That was the easy mode without Celestials scrying for danger to the Emperor.
We also got several attempts to do it right and died every single time.
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We were also much weaker and had no runic items.

Rafin said:
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?
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Considerin the setting, wizard endorsement, awesome or no, may not actually be that big of a plus that it can rebalance the scales. May even be a minus.

BurnNote said:
It all depends which army book you appear in, and how much the writer of the day likes you. The Haupt-Andersens appeared in a Vampire splat book, and got repeatedly stomped in a side bar for the vampire thrall model. In that book, they run a conspiracy that goes to the highest echelons of power, and can snare even Grey Wizards.

Of course, it mustn't have worked well enough in drumming up sales, or a new guy in charge really hated vampires, because they decided to stomp them right to hell in the next splat. There, you have a journeyman wizard repeatedly beat the vampires in their shadow games on her lonesome, where previously the whole Grey Order was basically helpless. Then super wizard and the new Elector Count, a Witch Hunter (notice anything with that?) and descendant of Frederik van Hal (aka the guy who fucked up Sylvania in the first place) team up and tear down Castle Drakenhof. Most of the fanbase expects them to just flat out drop Vampires as a main line army, because where do you go from there?

That's a rhetorical question, by the way. The next book, a dwarfen splat for the new K8P subfaction, mentions the ECs daughter proceeded to stomp on the vampires some more, since they apparently wanted to make their position on vampire fans clear.

Because I'm already ranting, do you know why we know this, since it's from a dwaf book, but involves no dwarfs? Because super wizard (now a magister) is one of their lords (yes, one of three lords in a dwarf army book is a wizard. Surely that's completely sane and not at all lore breaking), and it's mentioned how she likes to show up for some vampire dunking now and then. In between casually conquering Karak-bloody-Eight-Peaks (and it is casually, since they make it a point to mention how quick and bloodless the whole thing goes down, especially the final battle she commands. Because that makes sense, but then they did the same for Drakenhof), building magical superweapons (yes, in a dwarfhold), and destroying million+ Waaghs with magical superweapons. You can't make that shit up (unless your GW, I guess).

I haven't even mentioned all of it. She's also super rich and best friends with the Empress (a former Haupt-Andersen, just to really drive the point home, and then that little extra bit further). That isn't the end of it either (bloody pseudo runefangs), but I don't want to be sued for reprinting copyrighted material.

At this point, the only way we'll get a vampire army book is if they decide she's a secret mega necromancer for some reason that would surely make total sense. No, I'm not bitter about my favorite army getting kicked to the curb in the lore. Incidentally, anyone want to buy some models?

Well, Elfs are slated for the next book, so hopefully we'll get a reprieve there. I'd say they can't shoehorn Ms Perfect into those when she's palling around with dwarfs, but that would feel too much like tempting fate.
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This was really funny, but I have to say that 1) every vampire we went against and/or that was residing in Sylvania in the current campaign, (with the possible exception of alpharad), was really incompetent by vampire standards and 2) we didn't actually beat any of them by merit, except maybe for the singer (and that was a team effort). The castle ones died from canonfire and their own antiquated tactics, while alpharad died due to Kragg's runes. The rest were done in by a combination of Roswita declaring total-ish war on them and the emperor unleashing the battlemages to scorch the place down.
 
storryeater said:
We ARE supposed to be an exceptional assasin. We managed to het past the Emperor's defenses when we were much weaker. Sure, it was a double ko, but we leveled up a lot since then.



We were also much weaker and had no runic items.



Considerin the setting, wizard endorsement, awesome or no, may not actually be that big of a plus that it can rebalance the scales. May even be a minus.



This was really funny, but I have to say that 1) every vampire we went against and/or that was residing in Sylvania in the current campaign, (with the possible exception of alpharad), was really incompetent by vampire standards and 2) we didn't actually beat any of them by merit, except maybe for the singer (and that was a team effort). The castle ones died from canonfire and their own antiquated tactics, while alpharad died due to Kragg's runes. The rest were done in by a combination of Roswita declaring total-ish war on them and the emperor unleashing the battlemages to scorch the place down.
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What really did them in was in fighting.
 
storryeater said:
We ARE supposed to be an exceptional assasin. We managed to het past the Emperor's defenses when we were much weaker. Sure, it was a double ko, but we leveled up a lot since then.
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While you gave a point, I feel the need to point out that the Reiksguard patched the security hole we used for the double KO. The people guarding the Emperor are no fools.
 
deathofrats0808 said:
Not true. The strictures say Ranald frowns on unnecessary violence. Not that he's going to smite you for it. And Ranald isn't omniscient either so it is theoretically possible to slip something like this past him.

But this does help prove the point that while Heidi isn't super trustworthy, she stands to gain so little and lose so much by getting Luitpold killed taht it wouldn't be worth it.
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Slip the murder of her husband and Emperor past him? You are severely underestimating the amount of attention Ranald has dedicated to the single most important devotee of his in the entire world. She'd have to do it all without ever using a single one of Ranald's blessings and drawing his attention, which in itself would be suspicious for someone who uses them so frequently on everything.

Smiting wouldn't even need to happen; stripping her of all blessings and giving every other Priest of Ranald free rein to mess with her in perpetuity would accomplish more than a divine smiting ever could.
 
MooseHowl said:
Slip the murder of her husband and Emperor past him? You are severely underestimating the amount of attention Ranald has dedicated to the single most important devotee of his in the entire world. She'd have to do it all without ever using a single one of Ranald's blessings and drawing his attention, which in itself would be suspicious for someone who uses them so frequently on everything.

Smiting wouldn't even need to happen; stripping her of all blessings and giving every other Priest of Ranald free rein to mess with her in perpetuity would accomplish more than a divine smiting ever could.
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You're making a lot of assumptions here, about things we don't know, and have no real way to gather info on.
 
storryeater said:
This was really funny, but I have to say that 1) every vampire we went against and/or that was residing in Sylvania in the current campaign, (with the possible exception of alpharad), was really incompetent by vampire standards and 2) we didn't actually beat any of them by merit, except maybe for the singer (and that was a team effort). The castle ones died from canonfire and their own antiquated tactics, while alpharad died due to Kragg's runes. The rest were done in by a combination of Roswita declaring total-ish war on them and the emperor unleashing the battlemages to scorch the place down.
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I mean, that's true, but it's also the joke? The main one is "Our girl Matty is a bit of a Sue, ehh?", but it's build on parodying "People complaining about how the new thing is different and therefore bad", and that generally does not include a nuanced accounting of different aspects. There's no introspection of Drakenhof or the Eye either. And Mathilde is a Sue only if you boil away all the details, but the same goes for a lot if not most MCs of long running series. The wrongness of that statement is part of joke (though joke isn't quite the right word. Entertainment factor? The enjoyment of people being convinced of a thing you know to be false).
 
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