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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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A_Somebody said:
@BoneyM while youre here, do you mind peeling back the curtain on exactly how the Lahmian Conspiracy controlling Mathilde worked? (I think we're well past the point where this knowledge is an unearned advantage...) Here's a few questions/topics I have off the top of my mind.

1) What exactly were they aiming at with their tasks for us? I mostly remember them asking for info on Anton and Mr.Embezzler's replacements, which seems like stuff they ought to be able to trivially get. I suppose they wanted to make sure Mathildes info matched theirs and that she was actually obeying them, but it didn't seem to culminate in much of anything.
2) How easily could they keep track of Maty? Was there any hidden "conspiracy suspicion" meter? If so, how high up on it was she and did Abelhelm's investigation make consider offing her? How much leeway did the thread have?
3) Why didn't they make her sabotage the Abelhelm's grand campaign? Or any other major things? I guess they hated the "von Carstein" that much and wanted to slowly boil the frog as it were, but as mentioned in item 1 I think most of their tasks was just digging for info on people. Which didn't seem to get used.
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the Lahmian Conspiracy is very much still an active problem if not front and venture for a while now:

during the boat crisis, they were a suspect for the bomb (to relieve pressure on the Sylvana siege.)
 
reignonyrparade said:
The taalites persecute rival wilderness gods. The ulricans primarily persecute rival war gods, and also occasionally get into a feud about sigmar specifically for historical reasons and also because of the sigmarite claim that ulric abdicated being king of the gods to sigmar.
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not super important, but King Taal was the traditional 'king of the northern gods'.

Ulric was the most popular and powerful. but technically it was Taal.
 
Sinsystems said:
So I want to try my hand at making another Mathilde as a Total War: Warhammer Legendary Lord omake. So I want to ask the thread for their opinions on something, basically some details I'm not too sure about at the moment:

1: Mathilde's starting Location, currently thinking somewhere in or around Sylvania but not too sure. Other option would be near Karak 8 Peaks which would add a human faction to the region that is typically just Dwarves, Orcs and Skaven.

2. What would her starting bonus units be? Usually each Legendary Lord starts with a set of 3 bonus units, typically a pair of mid-tier units and a single high tier one. Currently my ideas are upper mid-tier cavalry unit in the form of the White Wolves and maybe something for the We spiders. Not sure for the high tier one, had an idea of using the Mammoth Wizard Altar back during that vote but that has passed.

3. Mathilde's mount options. Now obviously Mathilde would have her Shadowstead as her horse option, but most Lords have a more expensive option that tends to be either some kind of monster or a flying unit (or both, looking at you Elves and your Dragons). But what would Mathilde's be? I want to break away from the standard human options of a Pegasus or Griffon, once again considered the Mammoth but that has passed.

Finally there is the matter of Mathilde's unique campaign mechanics, my current idea is that she has 2 main ones. The first is her coin, basically every so many turns you can pick an appropriate bonus based on which face of the coin you choose. The second is a theme of "Stealing" units, although for friendly factions like the dwarves it's framed as more getting them through favors, with a Ranald theme. Basically if you use the mechanic you can temporarily gain access to units which are outright from other factions or reskinned versions of one in other factions (this is mostly a lore thing) so for instance getting some Hex Wraiths which are reskinned as Mathilde's bound Nazghul riders.
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Starting locations are always tricky. Are you looking for WH1 or WH2? Because the maps are rather different.

Hmm. If you want to stick to Empire units, you could swing a unit of Greatswords. Connect it to Marcus or Rosie. Maybe some Rangers, if you're not tied to the Empire units, they work quite thematically for Mathilde. Demigryph Knights perhaps. Or some equivalent for the Winter Wolves.

Most Lords do, but that doesn't mean Mathilde has to be one of them. Give her a unique skill instead.

Campaign mechanics are usually racial, unless the character is DLC, and has a separate campaign. Tyrion and Teclis have identical campaign mechanics, just with different buffs and focuses, for example. I'd make the Coin an item instead. Either lock it to a face or have it change faces every turn.

If you do want her to have unique mechanics, I'd come up with an enemy and a goal, rather than simply having her be in the normal game.
 
deathofrats0808 said:
Starting locations are always tricky. Are you looking for WH1 or WH2? Because the maps are rather different.

Hmm. If you want to stick to Empire units, you could swing a unit of Greatswords. Connect it to Marcus or Rosie. Maybe some Rangers, if you're not tied to the Empire units, they work quite thematically for Mathilde. Demigryph Knights perhaps. Or some equivalent for the Winter Wolves.

Most Lords do, but that doesn't mean Mathilde has to be one of them. Give her a unique skill instead.

Campaign mechanics are usually racial, unless the character is DLC, and has a separate campaign. Tyrion and Teclis have identical campaign mechanics, just with different buffs and focuses, for example. I'd make the Coin an item instead. Either lock it to a face or have it change faces every turn.

If you do want her to have unique mechanics, I'd come up with an enemy and a goal, rather than simply having her be in the normal game.
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I don't know why people find this so hard:

Mathy starts with two gold wizards and a jade.

It's a weird start, but four hero's (even starting wizards) can handle the first few turns as there will only be low tier units at play.
 
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reignonyrparade said:
Sigmarism on the other hand has a heresy that pops up basically every goddamn generation that all gods besides sigmar were killed by chaos and are just the corpses of those gods being puppeted around by chaos.

I am not going to say it is a problem WITH the faith, but it is genuinely a problem specific TO the faith.
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I mean. Morrism has a recurrent/ongoing heresy that says that doctors and other healers are the same as necromancers because they're keeping people from dying when they're "supposed" to, so they kill all the doctors and so forth they can. Ulricism has an ongoing heresy of people saying they're blood descendents of Ulric himself and are therefore entitled to rule the Cult and also incidentally the world. Manannism has a heretical/extremist sect that believes that the ocean is Manann's domain exclusively and so therefore boats are heretical for trespassing on the domain of their god, and need to be burned. Verenanism has some extremists who think freedom of thought should include Chaos worship, and kill every witch hunter they can find and take down.

Nobody has a monopoly on crazy.
 
Sinsystems said:
1: Mathilde's starting Location, currently thinking somewhere in or around Sylvania but not too sure. Other option would be near Karak 8 Peaks which would add a human faction to the region that is typically just Dwarves, Orcs and Skaven.
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For Gameplay, Marienburg as a putative expedition? Or Sudenburg down in Araby because as is they just get hammered and it devolves into "Repanse trying to snicker-snack Settra's head from his shoulders while surrounded by lizardmen and undead."

Sinsystems said:
2. What would her starting bonus units be? Usually each Legendary Lord starts with a set of 3 bonus units, typically a pair of mid-tier units and a single high tier one. Currently my ideas are upper mid-tier cavalry unit in the form of the White Wolves and maybe something for the We spiders. Not sure for the high tier one, had an idea of using the Mammoth Wizard Altar back during that vote but that has passed.
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Anti-Stealth Rat-Catchers who cause Skaven to have very bad days, and then units of The We to act as harassers.

Sinsystems said:
3. Mathilde's mount options. Now obviously Mathilde would have her Shadowstead as her horse option, but most Lords have a more expensive option that tends to be either some kind of monster or a flying unit (or both, looking at you Elves and your Dragons). But what would Mathilde's be? I want to break away from the standard human options of a Pegasus or Griffon, once again considered the Mammoth but that has passed.
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Hippogryph.:V Or a dragon, to represent Cython.
 
Fayhem said:
Ulricism has an ongoing heresy of people saying they're blood descendents of Ulric himself and are therefore entitled to rule the Cult and also incidentally the world.
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Don't forget the far more dangerous sect of lunatics who think that Ulric's going to cause an Ice Age, and the best way to prepare people for that is to burn their granaries and leave them to starve in winter.
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
I don't know why people find this so hard:

Mathy starts with two gold wizards and a jade.

It's a weird start, but four hero's (even starting wizards) can handle the first few turns as there will only be low tier units at play.
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I can back that, yeah. We have pretty much had multiple wizards under our control for every campaign. It would be a really weird campaign start, though. Too many wizards on a field just tend to cause problems if I remember correctly due to how the Winds work in TW.
 
Voikirium said:
For Gameplay, Marienburg as a putative expedition? Or Sudenburg down in Araby because as is they just get hammered and it devolves into "Repanse trying to snicker-snack Settra's head from his shoulders while surrounded by lizardmen and undead."
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Have her in Northern Ulthuan on her Elfcation.
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
I don't know why people find this so hard:

Mathy starts with two gold wizards and a jade.

It's a weird start, but four hero's (even starting wizards) can handle the first few turns as there will only be low tier units at play.
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Wizards start with no spells. And always have crappy fighting abilities. So she'd be left with some swordsmen, some spearmen and some crossbows. I don't rate her chances highly, I must admit. Also as Eric said, multiple wizards are bad because they draw from your winds pool, which is shared between all of them.

Also there, uh, there are no Gold Wizards. It's not a unit that exists in TW.
 
Sinsystems said:
1: Mathilde's starting Location, currently thinking somewhere in or around Sylvania but not too sure. Other option would be near Karak 8 Peaks which would add a human faction to the region that is typically just Dwarves, Orcs and Skaven.
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Between KaK and Varr but with a military allience with Belegar. That way the call to arms wars would force Belegar's Ai to actually go in the badlands rather than adventure the old world till confederation.


Sinsystems said:
True but DLC lords also tend to get special starting units that are introduced in their dlc.
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I though the wolves took care of it? But for her mechanic adding new dwarven untis would fit... We?
 
Fayhem said:
I mean. Morrism has a recurrent/ongoing heresy that says that doctors and other healers are the same as necromancers because they're keeping people from dying when they're "supposed" to, so they kill all the doctors and so forth they can. Ulricism has an ongoing heresy of people saying they're blood descendents of Ulric himself and are therefore entitled to rule the Cult and also incidentally the world. Manannism has a heretical/extremist sect that believes that the ocean is Manann's domain exclusively and so therefore boats are heretical for trespassing on the domain of their god, and need to be burned. Verenanism has some extremists who think freedom of thought should include Chaos worship, and kill every witch hunter they can find and take down.

Nobody has a monopoly on crazy.
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I'm not saying that Sigmarism has a monopoly on crazy. The sigmarite crazies simply have a unique form of crazy (which is not unusual in and of itself, everyone has their own unique form of crazy) that is also uniquely threatening to the unity of the empire, as shown by the fact that it previously destroyed the unity of the empire for a thousand years.
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
during the boat crisis, they were a suspect for the bomb (to relieve pressure on the Sylvana siege.)
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Wait. Really? Was it on the updates? Or a thread thing? They though war with Marienburg would force Stirland to recall forces? Seems like a really long plot, if they could do stuff like that they should have better options. No?
 
reignonyrparade said:
I'm not saying that Sigmarism has a monopoly on crazy. The sigmarite crazies simply have a unique form of crazy (which is not unusual in and of itself, everyone has their own unique form of crazy) that is also uniquely threatening to the unity of the empire, as shown by the fact that it previously destroyed the unity of the empire for a thousand years.
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The Age of Three Emperors was started by Ottila because she wanted to be Empress. She got the Ar-Ulric's backing because he didn't like the fact the Sigmarites were better at politics than the Ulricans, and then the two of them declared her the Empress, banned the worship of Sigmar on the grounds that the first Grand Theogonist was a mad-man, and called all the Sigmarites heretics. Oh, she also claimed the election of the then-Emperor was illegitimate (which AFAIK, it wasn't).

Like, feel how you like about the Cult of Sigmar, but they are pretty definitively not responsible for the fuck-up that was the Age of Three Emperors. They certainly didn't help, but after Ottila, everyone was in it for themselves. There were at least five different dynasties that claimed the Throne. It was nuts.
 
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One of the good things that can be said about the actual political-entity cult of sigmar is that monodominantism is top of their list of things to crack down on. Saying Sigmar is the best god is one thing, but saying he's the only god will have some very serious men paying you a visit.
 
Gap said:
Wait. Really? Was it on the updates? Or a thread thing? They though war with Marienburg would force Stirland to recall forces? Seems like a really long plot, if they could do stuff like that they should have better options. No?
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Mathilde listed them as among the "it could be anyone" suspects when reporting to Belegar.
Lahmian Vampires trying to take pressure off the Sylvanian holdouts, Chaos Dwarves trying to split the Karaz Ankor from its oldest ally, it could even be Marienburg - war between the Empire and the Karaz Ankor would definitely spike the canal project.
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Jyn Ryvia said:
not super important, but King Taal was the traditional 'king of the northern gods'.

Ulric was the most popular and powerful. but technically it was Taal.
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Taal does seem to have ended up on top of the 'who's in charge' debate, but it's not quite that clear-cut. One mainstream theory is that they were originally patron gods of individual tribes - Ulric of the Teutogen, Taal of the Taleutens, and Rhya of possibly the Cherusen or the Asoborn - and that each was considered supreme by their tribe. Then when the tribes started talking to each other they had to figure out a way to make their Gods play nice together, and Taal and Rhya had the obvious way to combine voting blocs and Ulric got demoted. But not everybody accepts that, and Ulric is still worshipped as the Snow King by some. Another theory is that Taal and Rhya came pre-packaged as Ishernos and only split into separate gods later, possibly as a result of mankind learning to farm. Another is that Ulric was originally part of Ishernos, and the triskele motif often found on Runestones is a reference to this triad. This theory goes along well with the idea that kingship passes back and forth depending on the season, or that Ulric rules in times of war and the other two in times of peace.

One stumbling point is that despite the generally agreed upon idea that the humans that the Northern and Southern pantheons formed separately and only mingled after the human tribes entered the Reik basin and started trading and communicating with the humans that were already living in Tilea and Estalia, there's a lot of myths that appear to be older than this and yet refer to gods from both pantheons, describing them as one court or family, with things like Dark Morr advising King Taal, and Ulric and Ranald being brothers. The easy answer is that these were later inventions, and there's no carbon dating to answer the question one way or the other.
 
I say it's because gods exist in the God-Time and linear chronological time is not a thing that can be applied to them. All mythological events happened both before and after all other mythological events.
 
das_slash said:
Oh come on, Markus wasn't that bad!
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Speaking of old Markus, I definitely didn't realize Pfaffbach that he hailed from is southeast of Mikalsdorf until I looked at what we'd be dealing with as Sylvanian Elector Count.

The Champion of Stirland was from Sylvania! I bet he had a cool story.
BoneyM said:
Taal does seem to have ended up on top of the 'who's in charge' debate, but it's not quite that clear-cut. One mainstream theory is that they were originally patron gods of individual tribes - Ulric of the Teutogen, Taal of the Taleutens, and Rhya of possibly the Cherusen or the Asoborn - and that each was considered supreme by their tribe. Then when the tribes started talking to each other they had to figure out a way to make their Gods play nice together, and Taal and Rhya had the obvious way to combine voting blocs and Ulric got demoted. But not everybody accepts that, and Ulric is still worshipped as the Snow King by some. Another theory is that Taal and Rhya came pre-packaged as Ishernos and only split into separate gods later, possibly as a result of mankind learning to farm. Another is that Ulric was originally part of Ishernos, and the triskele motif often found on Runestones is a reference to this triad. This theory goes along well with the idea that kingship passes back and forth depending on the season, or that Ulric rules in times of war and the other two in times of peace.

One stumbling point is that despite the generally agreed upon idea that the humans that the Northern and Southern pantheons formed separately and only mingled after the human tribes entered the Reik basin and started trading and communicating with the humans that were already living in Tilea and Estalia, there's a lot of myths that appear to be older than this and yet refer to gods from both pantheons, describing them as one court or family, with things like Dark Morr advising King Taal, and Ulric and Ranald being brothers. The easy answer is that these were later inventions, and there's no carbon dating to answer the question one way or the other.
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I appreciate that Warhammer Fantasy religion is at times almost as complicated and contradictory as real life.

That takes effort.
 
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