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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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ConfusedCanuck said:
So I was wondering since I feel like we have the skill/power to become a Lord Magister now how do we do that? Like what steps does that involve cause I would love to see us become one in a year or two. Does it involve learning all the other Battle Magic cause that would be great as well.
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There is a breakdown somewhere of what needs to be true to be considered for Lord Magister, but its summed up by politics.
 
BurnNote said:
I think the more useful counter for them would probably be something like Father of Thorns to cut down on their mobility and blunt the charge, but that's only nice to have, and the dwarfs could handle it.

Notably, the ogres close by don't seem to pose a huge threat right now because they're sickly and not motivated to leave. Somebody should be keeping an eye on them so that that doesn't change, but that's something for the rangers
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This is something I've started to worry about after discussion; the way that they'd only need to hit one or two real storms in the peaks on the way here and that disadvantage would evaporate. I like the idea of Panpan stepping up to stop them as well- ideally with a grin over her shoulder to Mathilde and a hair toss-

"Well, I guess I've finally gotten around to building a superweapon! Dear, you are a bad influence."

BurnNote said:
On the favor front, I would guess he's doing very well too. He's king of the second biggest hold, which he reconquered. With shocking speed and lack of blood, even if it was just some podunk minor hold, not Karak Bloody Eight Peaks. Then broke a huge Waaagh on the next day, using one of the superweapons. Then got a huge train of workers because the High King couldn't help. And just last turn he dropped a groundbreaking intelligence asset on the other kings. Belegar has many problems, but buying power is not one of them.
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It occurs to me, phrased like this, exactly how large of a target we have made ourselves. It's Ranald's grave that there are no organized enemies near, else a rich, isolated, low-population city-state would be bait for every faction with loot in their eyes. As it is though, we do know the skaven have an eye on us, and the sudden ascent in power means that as soon as it really starts to filter through their spies how the rest of the world is treating us, we become a threat.

So I think we are going to have a lull, to be social and vacation and enchant and study. But then we are going to be hit from as many sides and as many threats as can be roped in.

...ok I've kinda talked myself into dealing with the nearby orcs soon ish. Hmmm.
 
Parzival95 said:
If we don't keep him busy
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Which we're doing. Getting him involved with the college correspondence course keeps him occupied in perpetuity.

I'm content to let him live out the rest of his days in Mathilde's prison. He's more than paid for his room and board, and for someone who has helped us so much, I don't want to kill him.

Besides, if we killed him, his dog would be sad.
 
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ConfusedCanuck said:
Yeah probably but still having the favour of the Empress in our corner never hurts. And even then our Patriarch likes us I think so I'm pretty confident we're a shoe-in for the Lord Magister title sooner or later.
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I'm crossing my fingers that once our newest book, A Study On Communication In The Common Rat :V, hits the colleges that we'll start seeing hints of a summons, haha.
 
So some thoughts on Qrech.

If we want Qrech to give up more information easily then we'll need to get him to be able to justify it to himself. Generally stories that show things from the point of view of a skaven have them be treacherous, but they also justify this treachery to themselves. As such trying to entice him directly with a comfortable life would be a bad idea.

Instead we should continue on with our previous attempts of acting like we're facing competition that already has access to skaven secrets. On top of that we should also act as if we're facing budget cuts that will mean we'll have to reduce the level of comfort that Qrech has access to. We can even combine it by saying our superiors feel like Qrech is acting uncooperative and not giving enough information so they'll instead be using the budget to increase security or some other unpleasant idea.

Notably with access to the wolf-rats, super goo and whatever else we can dig out of our Moulder stockpile it should be fairly easy to trick Qrech into thinking that the Empire already has access to Moulder secrets that they've reverse engineered.

Basically since in Qrech's mind the Empire already has access to Moulder knowledge he's not really betraying Clan Moulder by helping Mathilde. In fact by encouraging backstabbing by helping out Mathilde he's practically hurting the Empire, truly Qrech is a model skaven. The fact that helping Mathilde will ensure his own comfort is purely circumstantial.
 
BoneyM said:
Loyalty, ability, reliability, experience.
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Loyalty: Possibly a bit too fond of dwarves, but has never shown any anti-Empire tendencies.
Ability: Talented mage and researcher, good at mundane stealth and intrigue, extremely skilled swordswoman. Not so good at diplomacy, unless she has plenty of prep time.
Reliability: Has yet to fail at a task given her, and often over-achieves.
Experience: Still young, and has been a qualified magister for less than five years. Done a lot in that time, but still could do with more seasoning.
 
Yeah, Mathilde's got the statline expected of a Wizard Lord but not quite the same iron reliability and unquestioned competence. She's getting there though.
 
Glau said:
It occurs to me, phrased like this, exactly how large of a target we have made ourselves. It's Ranald's grave that there are no organized enemies near, else a rich, isolated, low-population city-state would be bait for every faction with loot in their eyes. As it is though, we do know the skaven have an eye on us, and the sudden ascent in power means that as soon as it really starts to filter through their spies how the rest of the world is treating us, we become a threat.

So I think we are going to have a lull, to be social and vacation and enchant and study. But then we are going to be hit from as many sides and as many threats as can be roped in.

...ok I've kinda talked myself into dealing with the nearby orcs soon ish. Hmmm.
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A low population doesn't really matter against an overland assault. The only ways into the Karak are the East and West gates, a pair of heavily fortified bottlenecks.
Between Mt Doom Shadow, the airforces and Mathilde herself a siege is just an invitation to be slaughtered.

If the Skaven mount a major assault via the underway we will be in trouble. However the Dawi have learned a thing or two about defending from below since K8P originally fell.
 
WorldSlayer said:
So some thoughts on Qrech.

If we want Qrech to give up more information easily then we'll need to get him to be able to justify it to himself. Generally stories that show things from the point of view of a skaven have them be treacherous, but they also justify this treachery to themselves. As such trying to entice him directly with a comfortable life would be a bad idea.

Instead we should continue on with our previous attempts of acting like we're facing competition that already has access to skaven secrets. On top of that we should also act as if we're facing budget cuts that will mean we'll have to reduce the level of comfort that Qrech has access to. We can even combine it by saying our superiors feel like Qrech is acting uncooperative and not giving enough information so they'll instead be using the budget to increase security or some other unpleasant idea.

Notably with access to the wolf-rats, super goo and whatever else we can dig out of our Moulder stockpile it should be fairly easy to trick Qrech into thinking that the Empire already has access to Moulder secrets that they've reverse engineered.

Basically since in Qrech's mind the Empire already has access to Moulder knowledge he's not really betraying Clan Moulder by helping Mathilde. In fact by encouraging backstabbing by helping out Mathilde he's practically hurting the Empire, truly Qrech is a model skaven. The fact that helping Mathilde will ensure his own comfort is purely circumstantial.
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Honestly, I'm satisfied with what we've got out of Qrech. It's already possibly the greatest intelligence coup made against the Skaven in a century, and I personally don't think either the Moulder dialect or the High dialect are as immediately useful as the base one. Clan Moulder's holdings are mostly outside of the Empire, as far as I'm aware, and High is mostly used in Skavenblight itself.
 
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Vebyast said:
For example, Purple Sun is a terrible defensive weapon. It's indiscriminate, its area is too large, and there's no way to defend your own troops from it. It's a terrifying offensive spell. Outfit a high-performance gyrocopter with stealth gear, then replace its standard payload with an item that casts Purple Sun. Just buzz around the enemy army or fortification eradicating bits of their civilization. It's the equivalent of a nuclear bomber, except nobody's yet invented the ICBM, radar, surface-to-air missiles, or even interceptors.
...
Just stack up every reroll/precision buff into a single item, then dump the wombo-combo on high-value low-probability precision actions like "Mount a runed ballista on top of Karag Lhune and snipe the orc warboss from across the caldera". Premonition, First Portent of Amul, Omen, Lens on the Sky, Eyes of Truth, Enchant Item, Trial and Error, Law of Logic, etc. I think that's three rerolls, two "will trying it now be a good or bad idea", two supernatural performance bonuses...
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I love both of these ideas with a startling passion. One is for bombing Chaos Dwarves into oblivion, the other is a mobile method of inducing collapse in armies that are dependent on Lichpin figures, like Greenskins, or any Skaven but the now destroyed clan Mors.(and possibly Eshin)
Vebyast said:
Substance of Shadow to dive straight from the surface into the Underways. Since we own the surface and can travel much faster aboveground, this amounts to letting us to spawn armies at arbitrary locations underground. Combine with the Teleportation Tower we were thinking of earlier and we can be literally anywhere in K8P, even underground and behind enemy lines, in seconds. edit: Combine with a way for Mathilde to broadcast her position, probably simultaneous castings of Locate Item from different points to triangulate and get her position and depth, and we'd be able to consistently drop massively-runed longbeard hit squads on enemy command posts.
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This sounds like an interesting direction for research, but we'd need to make sure the delivery mechanism and points are marked out beforehand, and we might need a way to pull people out after sending them down.
Vebyast said:
A network of minor items that cast Sounds, which acts in line of sight, to replace the sharply bandwidth-limited signal flags with magical telephones. Bonus points if items are embedded in the walls and floors throughout the region, letting us listen in on any enemy forces that enter the area.
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This sounds like the sound of having to hire most of the Grey College's enchanter population for a long time to finish, so maybe doable for K8P, not entirely sure whether it'd be worth it though.

New idea, kind of useless out here, but crazy useful to the Empire: use Warrior of Fog to invent a spell that helps peirce or remove confusion about the position of enemy forces, by enhancing an individual such that they can pick out the position and size of enemy forces despite mundane blockages to their senses. Get people equipped with the spell mounted on Gyrocopters, now we have the ability to conduct an aerial survey of the number and positioning of the Greenskins and Beastmen in regions of the Empire, probably quickly enough that we can do a rough survey of the whole thing in in a couple years.
 
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WorldSlayer said:
So some thoughts on Qrech.

If we want Qrech to give up more information easily then we'll need to get him to be able to justify it to himself. Generally stories that show things from the point of view of a skaven have them be treacherous, but they also justify this treachery to themselves. As such trying to entice him directly with a comfortable life would be a bad idea.

Instead we should continue on with our previous attempts of acting like we're facing competition that already has access to skaven secrets. On top of that we should also act as if we're facing budget cuts that will mean we'll have to reduce the level of comfort that Qrech has access to. We can even combine it by saying our superiors feel like Qrech is acting uncooperative and not giving enough information so they'll instead be using the budget to increase security or some other unpleasant idea.

Notably with access to the wolf-rats, super goo and whatever else we can dig out of our Moulder stockpile it should be fairly easy to trick Qrech into thinking that the Empire already has access to Moulder secrets that they've reverse engineered.

Basically since in Qrech's mind the Empire already has access to Moulder knowledge he's not really betraying Clan Moulder by helping Mathilde. In fact by encouraging backstabbing by helping out Mathilde he's practically hurting the Empire, truly Qrech is a model skaven. The fact that helping Mathilde will ensure his own comfort is purely circumstantial.
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Mmm... I'm still not sure we can get him to act against Moulder. He's come across as a genuinely die-hard loyalist for his clan in basically every interaction we've had that touches the topic, and that sort of loyalty, if it's held this long, is going to be very hard to undermine. Then, we have to remember his role- he's a former war leader, not a scientist or general leader, and anything he can tell us is going to be outdated by several years at this point to boot.

I think the only way we could get Moulder secrets from him is if we frame it as needing them to hurt the other clans in some way, but I'm not sure how we could sell or what he could actually tell us on that front that would still be useful. Stuff about the other clans should be free game, though- ask him to summarise everything he knows about the other clans and their weaknesses, for example, and he'll jump at the chance. Though in that case, we'd need to very carefully check what he gives us.
 
Yeah so maybe after we're finished at K8P we should take a assignment in the empire then to iron out that Loyalty question then.
 
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