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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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NSMS said:
Don't forget discovering and wiping out a nascent necromancy college and uncovering a skaven civil war!
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Or nuking half a million greenskins, or setting off a massive free-for-all between multiple factions that left K8P's open to the dwarves--sure it wasn't planned, but we probably could have don it on purpose if we wanted to, and people totally think we did--wait... what extra experience and smooth edges were we needing to smooth out again? Because that's a pretty solid track record of multiple large-scale achievements, and there's even more--both on and off record--that we could add to her resume.
 
So I think that Qrech has been pumped for plenty of information. We don't need to get Moulder or High Queekish out of him. Just arrange for him to live out his years comfortably, and let him be.
 
Mathilde basically already is a magister lord at this point. She can learn battlemagic, has a fancy tower, has minions, has lots of sway in the College and Empire.

If Mathilde spent the necessary favor she could get the title right now. That would only mean we don't have to pay the tithe though so it's not really worth spending our favor when we'll probably get the title for free if we wait a bit.
 
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WorldSlayer said:
Mathilde basically already is a magister lord at this point. She can learn battlemagic, has a fancy tower, has minions, has lots of sway in the College and Empire.

If Mathilde spent the necessary favor she could get the title right now. That would only mean we don't have to pay the tithe though so it's not really worth spending our favor when we'll probably get the title for free if we wait a bit.
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I mean, I think that's the surest sign that someone is getting close to the point of a promotion to Lord Magister - when the change in title comes with a ton of additional responsibilities and not many extra perks.
 
I wouldn't want to spend our great deed favor on the title anyway. Especially with how it allows leniency on a subpar factor, it feels like cheating. It'd always be in the back of Mathilde's mind that she didn't earn it properly, with the order deciding she was ready for it rather then doing it as a favor.
 
Character sheet has begun updating.

Since we haven't had this in a while, just a reminder: by Boney's request, use either Spoiler or Inline Spoiler tags to discuss any material from the upcoming update.

4 College Favour for Internal Mechanisms of the Ratling Gun, and How to Foil Them, By M. Grey (Grey), M. Gold (Gold), 2483.

EDIT: 5 more for Winning the War Below, 2483. So deeply classified that there isn't even an author listed, jeez.

No other changes yet. EDIT: Updated.
 
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On the topic of loyalty it should be noted that as a part of Sigmar's Empire aiding dwarfs is kind of a fundamental precept that the Empire was founded on.
Aid Dwarf-folk is even one of the strictures for Sigmar's cult.

In a more modern mindset Mathilde does commission a lot of super weapons from the Imperial college and generally encourage trade and good relations. For example with our anti-dragon weapon. Normally the standard dwarf tactic would be get a bunch of dragon-slaying munitions and set up more artillery with the proper mountings and train people for anti-dragon combat.

Instead we're taking that budget (which we'll call Dwarf Favor X) and instead using it to buy a super weapon from the Amber Wizard College. Odds are the Amber College doesn't have a lot of use for Dwarf Favor so they'll probably sell it to the Emperor and get themselves some Emperor Favor. The Emperor would then likely use that Dwarf Favor to get valuable dwarf made equipment for his armies.

In the end the Emperor gets an army equipped with Dwarf equipment, the Amber College gets some nice benefits, the Dwarfs get a super weapon and Mathilde gets a cut of the credit. Too fond of dwarfs? Spending too much time with Dwarfs? No such thing in Sigmar's Empire.
 
Talon TigerDino said:
Clearly we should teach the dragon Khazalid, that way it can complain about Elves in the proper manner. It pretty much thinks like a Dwarf already anyhow, with its disdain for Elgi, long-lasting grudges, hatred for Skaven, and fondness for a rigid, orderly existence.
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Also an obsessive affection for gold
BoneyM said:
It's a convenient arrangement, because the Halflings generally think "why would I care about what's below the soil?" and the Dwarves generally think "why would I care about what's above the rock?"
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Of such value differentials are the joy of diplomats and traders.
BoneyM said:
Very easily. The Expedition fought very few fair fights, most of the time they fought enemies already weakened by fighting each other, and some enemies were never faced at all. If they had to take on each foe in K8P at their full strength, they almost certainly would have run out of fighters before they ran out of foes.
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Fighting fair is for suckers and judicial trials!
 
WorldSlayer said:
On the topic of loyalty it should be noted that as a part of Sigmar's Empire aiding dwarfs is kind of a fundamental precept that the Empire was founded on.
Aid Dwarf-folk is even one of the strictures for Sigmar's cult.

In a more modern mindset Mathilde does commission a lot of super weapons from the Imperial college and generally encourage trade and good relations. For example with our anti-dragon weapon. Normally the standard dwarf tactic would be get a bunch of dragon-slaying munitions and set up more artillery with the proper mountings and train people for anti-dragon combat.

Instead we're taking that budget (which we'll call Dwarf Favor X) and instead using it to buy a super weapon from the Amber Wizard College. Odds are the Amber College doesn't have a lot of use for Dwarf Favor so they'll probably sell it to the Emperor and get themselves some Emperor Favor. The Emperor would then likely use that Dwarf Favor to get valuable dwarf made equipment for his armies.

In the end the Emperor gets an army equipped with Dwarf equipment, the Amber College gets some nice benefits, the Dwarfs get a super weapon and Mathilde gets a cut of the credit. Too fond of dwarfs? Spending too much time with Dwarfs? No such thing in Sigmar's Empire.
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I'd ague that the even more fundamental precept of Sigmar's Empire is a sort of 'you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours' relationship with the Dwarves.
So the nearly-perfect display of loyalty would be in using what we get out of the Dwarves to improve the Empire's situation. The canal and gun manufacturing projects the EIC is handling are great starts in that direction.
If we could get Empire-sympathetic settlers in dwarf-fortified towns dominant along the river in the Border Princes that connects Barak Varr and the Black Water that'd be another display of loyalty, especially after the canal, when that river becomes more important to empire trade.
Similarly, going back to the Empire and using our boon or dwarf favor to do something that really benefits the empire would be a solid signifier of loyalty.
 
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Dermonster said:
I have doubts that 'done at K8P' will ever be a Thing.
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Defining 'done at K8P' to be the equivalent of how we treat Stirland now (not involved in day-to-day/turn-to-turn affairs, but we pay attention to the goings on there and occasionally make an effort to lend a helping hand when they could use it), there's a fairly decent chance we might end up being done at K8P depending on how the elfternship or the Waystone collaboration play out - both of those things have the chance to spiral into larger, ongoing things that could involve moving shop for an extended period.

It's not guaranteed, but BoneyM does seem to be in the middle of lining up dominos to get us to go do something more than just chip away on our backlog of research stuff in our tower - and that moving on to different things as the primary challenge might also mean changing the location we live and work at.
 
guyfromtheplace1 said:
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.
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Or a single high-end item that can spam low-end effects, which should be surprisingly easy to do given how many spells are "Like X, but it affects fifty targets instead of one."
 
Redshirt Army said:
IIRC, "magic items that make magic items" aren't possible without binding a daemon into the top-level item, according to Boney.
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Not making permanent magic items - making long-lasting magical effects. I suppose maybe it'd be better phrased as building a single effect that looks like a collection of smaller effects? Either way, if it's possible to scale up a spell from "Gives one person a fancy shadow horse" to "gives your entire army fancy shadow horses", it should be possible to scale "talk to someone within LoS" up to "Everyone can talk to everyone else as long as they're within LoS".
 
NSMS said:
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.
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How much of a chance do we have of using moulder as a weapon against the other skaven clans? It seems like we should be able to pull off looking like eshin, especially with the crystal sword, and we can strike at moulder's enemies, where there are three. Attack the third so it looks like the second did it, provoke the first to jump on the third in its moment of weakness. Moulder 'wins' but has to fight harder than expected, and eshin, until now involved only in our falsehood, can jump on them and get involved in truth.

So we read Qretch in on most of this, but sell it as the empire ordering Mathilde to attack skaven, so she is coming to Qretch for targets. Cross-reference what he says against our new skaven archives to find the best spots to play our games. Report back to Qretch that eshin is making a move but moulder crushed the third clan(s), so we need his help in... Etc.

Basically sell him subliminally on the idea that he is a shadowy puppet-master cunningly manipulating his dwarf and human captors into eliminating moulder's enemies from the comfort of his mountain lair. Heck, much of it can even be true! Jay like with the dictionary.

And who knows, maybe meet our eshin not-killing-you-yet acquaintance again. Without killing eachother, again.
 
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Another update:

4 more College Rep for An Eyewitness Account of a Distinct and Hitherto Unknown Variety of Skaven Sorcery, 2483.
 
Vebyast said:
Not making permanent magic items - making long-lasting magical effects. I suppose maybe it'd be better phrased as building a single effect that looks like a collection of smaller effects? Either way, if it's possible to scale up a spell from "Gives one person a fancy shadow horse" to "gives your entire army fancy shadow horses", it should be possible to scale "talk to someone within LoS" up to "Everyone can talk to everyone else as long as they're within LoS".
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Hmmmm, something along these lines almost seems better for command and control of an army than communication within a Karak.

LoS means line of sight right? So if we had a multi-target communication spell attached to, say, a hot air balloon, or a really tall pole on the highest point on the battlefield, it would allow a general to speak with their officers in real time.
 
guyfromtheplace1 said:
Hmmmm, something along these lines almost seems better for command and control of an army than communication within a Karak.

LoS means line of sight right? So if we had a multi-target communication spell attached to, say, a hot air balloon, or a really tall pole on the highest point on the battlefield, it would allow a general to speak with their officers in real time.
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Mountaintops! And then long, straight pipes to provide lines of sight underground.
 
To all you Anton supporters, Dragonites and fellow Roswistans of the thread, I have a proposal to make:

The update is coming soon. And, assuming nothing significant explodes, a social vote is coming with it. A vote where Mathilde may choose to chase her romantic routes further. Now, we lost the last time a romance vote came up. It wasn't as clear a defeat as what happened to the poor Qrech-ship, but we were still soundly beaten by ~60 votes each. For the record, that's a larger gap to what kept healing Abelhelm with Dhar from winning back in the day. It is not an easy cliff to scale. However, it is not impossible either. Not if we work together.

My good people, I propose we make a gentleshippers agreement to vote for a plan that features Mathilde investigating the possibilities of a romantic relationship with each of Anton, Roswita and the Ice Dragon in the upcoming vote.

Neither Panorama nor Johann managed to get a majority of the votes last romance, and all of us managed to get at least 25%. If we combine our forces, we should be able to amass more votes than either of them. We should use this chance to firmly establish to the rest of the threadgoers why our guy/girl/dragon is the best choice for Mathilde to end up with! We've tried to do so with words before, and failed. Now, it is time for us to take action into our own hands, and show them with Mathilde's own eyes just how beautiful such a relationship could be! Seeing is believing, we cannot count on the regular voters without proper shipping goggles to instinctively know what a great pairing would be like we do. We'll have to show them within the text itself, and to reach that text we need to work together!

Yes, I recognise that this is just an alliance of convinience that will break as soon as we're out of the woods. However, while we will definitely fall divided, if united we might stand a chance against those 170 vote behemoths. Once we've convinced enough fencesitters of our own brilliance, then we can get back to stabbing each other in the front.

Plus, a plan like this ought to tell us if Anton has made any progress with Asarnil in the meantime, and I think we're all interested in that story. Even if our reasons are different.
 
This is unironically my favorite part of the thread cycle, waiting for the character sheet to update.

No one is pushing an agenda or campaigning for a vote, everyone is waiting on baited breathe for changes to the character sheet and speculating about what they could mean, but in a very relaxed fun way because they know that the update will answer most of the pressing questions.

There are times that I like to imagine that BoneyM is having fun drip feeding us tid-bits and watching us scramble.

Even when I miss the vote or my plan loses, there is just something so relaxing and fun about this phase of the thread.

Thank You Everyone.

P.S. I swear I was typing this up before @Omegahugger posted.
 
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