Personally I just don't particularly like Heidi and am not interested in her having a greater narrative role in the quest. Her son is also a nonentity to me who I have no particular buy-in to see gains the throne. So even assuming the means used were palatable, we'd still be laboring for a longterm goal that's not particularly moving for me.
The actual stuff we'd be doing on the job itself seems like it would generally be fine though, so it won't be awful if it wins. It just pales in comparison to stuff we could be doing instead.
Overall I feel good about most of the options, with Waystones and Loremaster at Large being the standouts.
Can they? Are they? Will they?
How many of them are aware that Heidi is who she is? Are any of them?
Considering that last empress was a Lamian, i would not just go "someone else will handle it" and move on with no worries.
Wether you want to do the bodyguard gig or not, the arguments so far against that rely on anything but "i personally would not find this interesting" have been of poor quality, at best.
Nuln and Sylvania or fires someone needs to put down, and someone will be doing so wether Mathilde will or not, wethr they will be as good at it or not, who knows.
Heidi will find someone else to be her bargaining chip, and i seriously doubt they will be as aware of her schemes or motives as we are.
Waystone project is the only job that needs doing an only Mathilde can do, but that can probably wait a decade.
I'm pretty solidly on bodyguard camp now, if you want to change my mind (and maybe you don't, which is fine), tell my why something else is interesting, because arguments on how being bogyguard is a betrayal of everything we stand for and Heidi is lying liar who lies, or something else equally dramatic, is clearly not working.
I was not expecting to be so sold on the Mandred tutor option.
Putting Ranald in our debt sounds extremely attractive.
In fact, I strongly suspect that a future endeavor in examining the Waystones would be much more successful with Ranald looking out for how he can pay us back (extravagantly).
I'm about to log off to go to bed, so I'll get my prediction out there now. I'm going to vote for the Bodyguard job, but I don't think it'll win.
I think we've had a lot of great discussion in the thread and the moratorium will end and we'll get like 100 votes for the Waystones in the first hour and that'll be pretty much all she wrote. I know the previous vote was just what we were interested in investigating, but I don't think many people really change their minds, that that was certainly a big show of Waystone interest. We'll see in a bit under six hours, I suppose.
Can they? Are they? Will they?
How many of them are aware that Heidi is who she is? Are any of them?
Considering that last empress was a Lamian, i would not just go "someone else will handle it" and move on with no worries.
Wether you want to do the bodyguard gig or not, the arguments so far against that rely on anything but "i personally would not find this interesting" have been of poor quality, at best.
Nuln and Sylvania or fires someone needs to put down, and someone will be doing so wether Mathilde will or not, wethr they will be as good at it or not, who knows.
Heidi will find someone else to be her bargaining chip, and i seriously doubt they will be as aware of her schemes or motives as we are.
Waystone project is the only job that needs doing an only Mathilde can do, but that can probably wait a decade.
I'm pretty solidly on bodyguard camp now, if you want to change my mind (and maybe you don't, which is fine), tell my why something else is interesting, because arguments on how being bogyguard is a betrayal of everything we stand for and Heidi is lying liar who lies, or something else equally dramatic, is clearly not working.
The Empire has survived far worse infiltration that a Priestess of Ranald, consider the Lahmian conspiracy Reginald dealt with just a few years back, so yes I think they can deal with it and they will if Hedi gets bad enough. The idea that we must guard Hedi because we are the only ones who know about her does not incline me to choose her because it is not an argument for it being a good fit, or and interesting read or worthwhile it is playing sewage manager in court politics. I think it will be the arguments we had when talking about the Chancellor times one hundred with every single action turned around and around to see where it fits with oaths and loyalties.
It's hard to speak for "people" when everyone has their motives, but in this game thread I personally kind of like the idea of an employer who will play some games with us.
Mathilde has this super-high Intrigue score and is skilled at lies, deception, and stealth, and you don't always get the best use of that pairing it with perfectly straightforward employers who we can trust absolutely. Maybe I'm interested in studying with a master of cons and pulling fast ones and bluffs and tricks. You used the word "trust" a bunch of times as a pure positive, but there is some appeal in an employer who tests and wrestles with us a bit. At least for me. Maybe 'trust' isn't the quality I'm looking for when compared to "clever" or "tricky".
I know- You're about to tell me we can pull the tricks on the Skaven or the Vampires, but it wouldn't be the same. At the end of the day we're out to kill all the skaven and the vampires. Games with human opponents you have to hold back a little more. It's about getting them onto your side, not defeating them. It's a different sort of challenge and one I'm interested in tackling.
This is a good write up for a perfectly valid opinion!
I sincerely do not want to read about that. That type of character would annoy me endlessly. I deal with enough people who lie all day, think they're the most clever person in the world, and mainly seek to exploit me IRL. It'd make the quest feel, well... mundane. All of the cool, positive relationships in the quest, such as Belebro or Panpan or the late Abraham Lincoln? And on the other hand, the negative relationship with Alka-Seltzer that presented as pure, open hatred? Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but they're just as exciting and fantastical as the rest of the world of WHF. For one, I already tend to hate my boss IRL, and really don't want that to carry over into my favorite quest.
But, seriously, good writeup. And I even agree with a part of it-- Skaven and Vampires wouldn't be the same to deal with... and that's why I'm voting for that, or anything else that's likely to win over this.
If anyone's on the fence, though, and actually does want what BV's describing here? Well, I can't deny, their writeup does seem likely to be an accurate description of what working for Heidi would be like.
The Empire has survived far worse infiltration that a Priestess of Ranald, consider the Lahmian conspiracy Reginald dealt with just a few years back, so yes I think they can deal with it and they will if Hedi gets bad enough. The idea that we must guard Hedi because we are the only ones who know about her does not incline me to choose her because it is not an argument for it being a good fit, or and interesting read or worthwhile it is playing sewage manager in court politics. I think it will be the arguments we had when talking about the Chancellor times one hundred with every single action turned around and around to see where it fits with oaths and loyalties.
What are you even talking about?
Did someone at somepoint imply that Heidi is a threat to the empire?
Vote what you like, i am not trying to convince you to vote for Heidi, i am pointing out why your arguments why we should not do so are terrible.
Tell me/us why something else is good instead.
What are you even talking about?
Did someone at somepoint imply that Heidi is a threat to the empire?
Vote what you like, i am not trying to convince you to vote for Heidi, i am pointing out why your arguments why we should not do so are terrible.
Tell me/us why something else is good instead.
The post I was answering was about if other actors in Aldorf can handle Hedi should she become a threat, my answer was yes they can, they have handled worse. We do not need to be there to manage her.
The post I was answering was about if other actors in Aldorf can handle Hedi should she become a threat, my answer was yes they can, they have handled worse. We do not need to be there to manage her.
First, and often have not.
Second, we don't need to "handle" Heidi to protect the empire because she is not a threat to the empire, in fact she is the opposite.
Third, anyone arguing that we should not join Heidi because we can't trust her fails to take into account that Heidi is still going to be an empress and with the exact same motivations and goals, minus a Grey LM with high intrigue and knowledge of her goals looking over her shoulder. Argument on Heidi's untrustworthiness is an argument in favor of bodyguard job, not against it.
How does this square with the previous assessment that the Karaz Ankor doesn't currently have the population base to support another Hold reclamation, as they couldn't populate it with enough dwarves to keep it even if they retook it? Does "take a poke at" have some non-reclamation meaning here?
...this is an excellent question. @BoneyM, do we know whose budget we'd be billing if we opt for Waystone, or is that one of the first decisions we'd be making on the project, per the bit about how "The exact details of how a position will work will be negotiated with whoever oversees it once a decision is made"?
Depends, the Loremaster-at-Large and the Bodyguard job explicitly come with a side of getting involved in foreign business, but in general I'd say you should focus on the job you actually take, not the ones you didn't.
Third, anyone arguing that we should not join Heidi because we can't trust her fails to take into account that Heidi is still going to be an empress and with the exact same motivations and goals, minus a Grey LM with high intrigue and knowledge of her goals looking over her shoulder. Argument on Heidi's untrustworthiness is an argument in favor of bodyguard job, not against it.
Yeah, sorry I still do not buy that we need to guard her. The Empire is still here in spite of far worse infiltrators all the time, it does not need us watching the Empress, she has plenty of eyes on her. This is ah... 'eat your greens' logic. It's kind of like arguing for Waystones on the grounds that if we do not take it the world will end. That might even be factually true but the quest is realistically unlikely to make it to the end of the world either way so it's not like we are going to see it. If people want to become a Magical Border Princess, or poke Slann ruins or kill vampires that is a perfectly fine choice and we do not have a moral obligation to take one option over the other. In Mathilde's IC opinion they are all worth taking on those grounds because she has already sorted out the ones that did not make the cut.
Voting for Spymaster first tomorrow as it interests me heavily with old dwarf lands we might be able to rebuild and get functioning, more skaven enemies dealing with, can probably bring Johon with us to fight the skaven and study their tech, and most of all a preety straight forward elector count used to dealing with the patriarch of the lord of death college with a death wind alligned dragon that i forgot the names of but my point still stands that he seems like a good dude willing to do much for nuln and Wissenland.
I have doubts Boney will ever give us such a... straightforward and amicable towards magic count again and i would like a taste of the empire and doing empire stuff before going waystone research but we'll see., maybe we'll hear more about the silver pinicle in the future retaking attempt by the dwarves which would be cool.
If that falls of later in the vote going for waystone for that sick lore and magic research knowledge, got to choose your battles I guess.
The so-called 'Hill Dwarves' of the lowlands took the brunt of Elven attacks before the war swung in favour of the Dwarves, and most of them either returned to the mountains or started new lives amongst the human tribes of the Belthani that lived in the forests. In time the ancestors of the Empire arrived and conquered or assimilated the Belthani, and those Dwarves became the first of the Imperial Dwarves, and some of their ancestors probably call Nuln home once more. No wonder they'd be touchy about the home of their fallen glory.
They must have absolutely hated Karaz Ankor to go and live with a bunch of Umgi barbarians rather than rejoin the fold. This was all before Sigmar too so they would have had zero reason to respect Humans.
While the Waystone project would no doubt have a significant impact on the story, it just kinda feels repetative and not at all interesting to go through with. Maybe we get in conflict with a Beastman here or there but otherwise it's just gonna be us stuck in a room writing up diagrams and blueprints while having a cup of joe while our co workers insult each others height/pointed ears.
Wissenland or Emperor's tutor sound much more eventful in my book.
Yeah, sorry I still do not buy that we need to guard her. The Empire is still here in spite of far worse infiltrators all the time, it does not need us watching the Empress, she has plenty of eyes on her. This is ah... 'eat your greens' logic. It's kind of like arguing for Waystones on the grounds that if we do not take it the world will end. That might even be factually true but the quest is realistically unlikely to make it to the end of the world either way so it's not like we are going to see it. If people want to become a Magical Border Princess, or poke Slann ruins or kill vampires that is a perfectly fine choice and we do not have a moral obligation to take one option over the other. In Mathilde's IC opinion they are all worth taking on those grounds because she has already sorted out the ones that did not make the cut.
I am not arguing that we need to guard her.
She is not a threat, in fact she is a net positive.
The claim that she is untrustworthy is an argument for needing to guard her. And the claim that "she has plenty of eyes on her" fails to take into account that so far those eyes seem to not have caught her (which is good), continued survival of the empire is not a good argument because that survival is atleast partially based on luck (hi Ranald), and definitely partially on people like Mathilde keeping an eye on people who are not trustworthy.
Again, i am not arguing that "we should keep an eye on her", i am pointing out that you argument has a logical followup of "so we should keep an eye on her".
Every option is a valid one, none of them are going to end the empire, or the world, if not picked (though waystones are pretty important, but they are also the one most likely to keep waiting).
My argument, from the start of you asking "why should we work for someone we can't trust", has been about pointing out why we, as a grey magister with high intrigue and loyal to the empire, should work for an empress we can't trust.
So, please, if you want something else to win, tell us why that option is great. Because the arguments on why Heidi sucks have not been compelling.
They must have absolutely hated Karaz Ankor to go and live with a bunch of Umgi barbarians rather than rejoin the fold. This was all before Sigmar too so they would have had zero reason to respect Humans.
Also just to make my position clear on Hedi, when I say I do not trust her I don't mean 'she is as bad as a vampire', rather I do not think she is worth the power we would be handing her as compared to other causes we could be championing. All choices are valid and IC as baseline so so now the question is who is more worthy of Mathilde's skills and time? I would contend that 'court politics to assure the small child we barely know becomes Emperor' is at the very least trending towards the bottom of the list.
The possibility of making damn sure the next emperor is smart, competent, wizard friendly, and in favor of Ranald and therefore the commoners, seems like a very valuable use of our time to me.
I have to say, I'm low-key fascinated that there's so much distrust of Heidi in the thread when IMO the two characters she has the most in common with out of everybody we've seen in the story are... us, and our oldest friend. Like, guys. Ranald does not make malevolent/totally callous and self-interested puppetmaster con artists, or most of the other things people say they're afraid she is, into priests. Even when he's the Deceiver, he's still the Protector; all his aspects inform each other. Ranald makes people who represent his values into priests. And please let's nobody even suggest she might have put one over on Ranald. You can't trick a god while simultaneously letting them into your heart and mind to accept their power, especially not when that god is who taught you everything you know about deception.
Here's my best breakdown of things we actually know for a fact she's done (for a given value of "fact" since I'm drawing a lot of this from Heidi's self-reports, but if she actually tried to put one over on a Grey Magister who knows something of who she really is then she's dumber than anything else she's done suggests), I'm probably missing something but I think this is at least the highlights:
- Killed a vampire.
- Assumed that vampire's place and infiltrated the conspiracy they were a part of; this may or may not have been related to the very bad things that proceeded to progressively happen to said conspiracy over time, but for somebody that we know has served both the Deceiver and the Protector it would certainly be in character to arrange for that to occur without tipping their own hand (hey, did we ever find out exactly who in that conspiracy had the very bright and totally not long-term fatal idea to blackmail a Grey Magister into """helping"""?). I mean, maybe it's just a coincidence the Lahmians, who have had millennia to get good at intrigue and had just earlier been going from success to success and shooting up in behind-the-scenes power, then managed to simultaneously get their supposed-to-be-secret conspiracy onto the radar of both literally the Grey Order and the most experienced anti-vampire Witch Hunters in the Empire. Or maybe it was enemy action from inside their gates all along.
- Revived the actual vampire that preceded her exactly in time for her to wake up and smell the pyres as Heidi ducked out the door with her taxes.
- On the topic of "we know she's served the Protector": the reason she looks as young as she does is because she did so many good works on behalf of the Shallyans, while also serving the Protector, that they busted out some incredibly powerful and presumably quite secret rituals (considering that IIRC we didn't actually know they could do that, and literally we're from the Grey Order) in order to either make her young again or put an actual fountain of magical youth inside her body. They don't do that for some scrub league shit. To earn that while serving both the Protector and Shallya - and at least in her description she did EARN it by actually doing those deeds, even if it was also to benefit herself - she probably had to be personally responsible for saving thousands if not tens of thousands of lives. In fact, for miracle-working on that scale I wouldn't be shocked if tens of thousands saved was the LOW end of the scale. They really don't do that for just anybody, to the extent that they don't even let most people know that they even can do that at all.
- Assumed a false identity to marry the Emperor and take the starring role in Ranald's big follow-up play to the Mork Heist. This seems to be the one that's really putting people's hackles up, as far as I can tell. To the extent that people are even going "she lied to trick someone into loving her!!". Guys. She was a political compromise candidate for a noble marriage in a feudal system who happened (or rather, """happened""") to be in the right place at the right time. This is her accounting of that chain of events:
"Wasn't entirely sure what to do with myself after that. Thirteen years playing the Vampire Countess. Set myself up in Altdorf and started showing my face around town because there's all kinds of capers that start well if high society thinks you're one of them, and next thing I know our mutual friend shows up grinning and bulging with stolen power and saying 'you won't believe what Mathilde did'. So He let it ride. I 'reveal myself' as the lost scion of the Haupt-Anderssens, and act terribly brave about how the lands of my ancestors are denied to me, and just as certain gullible parties are starting to grumble I reassure all the right people by laying aside my claims to Stirland. And it just so happens there was another throne in need of a bum, and gosh isn't this lady who gave up power for the sake of the Empire just the sort to introduce to dear Luitpold?"
True love deceived that ain't. And it makes it clear that becoming the Empress was Ranald's play that he came to her to execute; she didn't walk in there with the idea that she'd seek a position of high political influence, she just had a vague sort of idea that she'd run some sort of con on some nobles types (and considering she's explicitly and very much a Ranaldite who serves multiple aspects of his, I strongly suspect that many/most of the cons she runs have something of a Leverage tinge to them if anyone else watched that show). And honestly I kinda think half the reason she wanted to make us Mandred's godmother and get us involved in being around more is to have somebody she can feel like herself around. The thing about running a "normal" con is that you can get time to breathe if you need it, but the Empress is never alone and never unobserved. ...Honestly I kinda think she might actually be some version of lonely, and bad at admitting and/or realizing it?
And, guys. If you actually look at the stuff we know or even strongly suspect she's done, literally none of that stuff is actually bad. None of it is. Heck, none of it's even as overtly shady and potentially alarming as "got a fully intact copy of the Liber Mortis, didn't tell anybody, and read it front to back." Just for a totally random example.
I will note that she does have a habit of consistently playing up her own self interest when she describes her own actions, and I'm guessing that probably contributes a lot to people's impressions of her. And maybe that is accurate. But my read on it, once you factor in things like unironically getting major Shallyan blessings for actions that serve both Shallya and the Protector, has always been that this is a primarily/originally Deceiver-focused Ranaldite's version of modesty. I mean, just admitting that you were acting altruistically? That's rather dreadfully earnest, isn't it? You practically might as well just burst into song and let adorable woodland creatures start following you around.
To me, Heidi very much vibes like an embodiment of the "rogue made good(ish)" archetype. Sort of that Han Solo type where even when they're doing good deeds and saving the lives of the innocent, they grumble about how they'd rather just be smuggling and committing some good honest crime to maintain their self-image. Except in Heidi's case she reads like she started as "conwoman" rather than "smuggler."
Jesus, this turned into way more of a random Heidi character analysis effortpost than I thought it was gonna be. Uh. Well.
That is a fair way to put it too, though to be honest I would rather be doing something more worthwhile is possible. It just seems a waste of our talents to help get Manfred who we know nothing about other than 'he is not as clever as Wolf' as opposed to say Belegar who well... is Belegar.
The possibility of making damn sure the next emperor is smart, competent, wizard friendly, and in favor of Ranald and therefore the commoners, seems like a very valuable use of our time to me.
Also having Ranald in our debt. Or more in our debt, at least. Also getting to help out with various other messes across the Empire, if in a less direct manner.
personally, I'm hoping for either bodyguard or Markgraf, wouldn't necessarily mind Loremaster-at-large or Waystones, and care very little for the rest. Oh they'd be interesting enough, but nothing especially jumps out at me. It is nice to note that most of our options seem to suggest a lot of future diplomacy though. We'll get her to heroic diplomacy yet!
- Assumed a false identity to marry the Emperor and take the starring role in Ranald's big follow-up play to the Mork Heist. This seems to be the one that's really putting people's hackles up, as far as I can tell. To the extent that people are even going "she lied to trick someone into loving her!!". Guys. She was a political compromise candidate for a noble marriage in a feudal system who happened (or rather, """happened""") to be in the right place at the right time. This is her accounting of that chain of events:
As a note here she lied to get a high noble to marry her under false pretenses, that could be considered lineage theft and treason. And yes Lutitold might very well hate her guts if he knew because he is and early modern feudal autocrat and not a modern man. For all we know he would view the very fact of wedding someone not of noble blood with disdain. Now would that make him a nice person from our PoV? No, but if that is the case does that make Hedi's betrayal any less terrible? Also no.
