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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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DragonParadox said:
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.
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The concept of hereditary nobility is stupid anyway, so i don't give a fuck about "lineage theft".
And if this is treason, then we need more traitors. :V
What Luitpold would think if he learned, i don't really care, let's just make sure he never does.
Other things he might be upset about we should never tell him is how we had part in getting his previous wife murdered.

Man is happily married to a smart woman not part of a vampire conspiracy who has given him a son, let's leave it there.
 
I apologize for skipping the discussion.

That said, I'll be voting for

[/] Bodyguard and Tutor to Prince Mandred

For three main reasons.

First, it has a regular schedule, mostly- Heidi told us that there will be events we can plan around, but mostly troubleshooting, and that means we get to decide what happens in between to a degree. This allows us to do regular trips. (And I like the idea of having Panoramic with us during the winter social season.) This may even allow us to leave for a season to Ulithan without too much of a stretch, I hope, after several years of saying things up.

Second, it gives us a frankly sinful amount of patronage we can bestow on our friends and allies, because we are expected to recruit and train. And since we know an awful lot of very good fighters- just about every K8P human character qualifies- that would see Heir's Bodyguard as a desirable position, we can recruit from whom we have worked with and so know we can trust and rely on. Also- imagine drafting Horstmann as our 2IC. Gets him out from under Alric with a good excuse to still stay in Altdorf, or to run off doing interesting trouble-shooting things in the corners of the empire.

Third, I like Heidi. I like the older sister vibe she gives off, I like the way she treats us as a friend and co-conspirator, I like that she is working to shore up the emperor and his dynasty. Plus, I would really like to work with her on aethyric vitae. She can channel divine power and so gives us a lot more experimental flexibility than using divine artifacts, plus I'm willing to bet she could tell us a lot about possible uses, in either the leverage or the magical sense. And I don't think we need to work about her scooping us on publishing.

So overall it feels like the best parts of Loremaster at large (dabbling in politics, assasinating dangerous creatures, solving magical puzzles) with a renewed focus on the empire while we let the dwarves settle properly and build up some new suprises. It lets us put feelers out to the elves while taking care of other business, it lets us smooth things over in the empire for our allies back in Ulrikadrin, and it gives us an amazing bluff card for when we'd like to go off reservation: being know as the Empress's Dark Left Hand lets us claim her authority at need.

And ideally it gives us a mid-career path that leads nicely into 'retiring' to K8P to run a research institute dedicated to waystones in our golden years. The elves can wait a half-a-lifetime pretty easily, and I'd like to see the culture of K8P solidify before we do crazy stuff to it again.

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Last reason- it puts us in a central location close to information and resources in case anything Big and Bad happens.
 
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Phalfpipe said:
Nobles probably lie about their family history all the time. What really counts is that she seized a fortress town and used it to control the surrounding area as a feudal lord. That's true nobility.
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Seizing the holdings of a Vampire and holding it for a decade against other Vampires... Is something that would kinda maybe make you an actual Noble (of course, if the Empire accepts you - which again, holding Vampire holdings).

Of course, giving up rights for the Title seems to be something that can make you an Empress...
 
DragonParadox said:
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.
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Who cares? There's nothing better about nobles than peasants, only societal perception, so as far as I'm concerned morally she hasn't done anything different than a bottle blond. As for treason, maybe legally, but we don't live in the empire and thus are free to mock that, in the same way we might jusge the monarch more than the traitor in 1600s-1700s english treason trials - if this act is treason, that makes the charge of treason less meaningful, not the act worse.
 
Valmond said:
The concept of hereditary nobility is stupid anyway, so i don't give a fuck about "lineage theft".
And if this is treason, then we need more traitors. :V
What Luitpold would think if he learned, i don't really care, let's just make sure he never does.
Other things he might be upset about we should never tell him is how we had part in getting his previous wife murdered.

Man is happily married to a smart woman not part of a vampire conspiracy who has given him a son, let's leave it there.
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'It is not wrong because he will never find out' is a very slippery moral slope to be standing on IMO.
 
Fayhem said:
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.
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Don't think its actually very prevalent. Most people don't feel especially strongly about her, but the ones who do dislike her tend to say so at every opportunity(as observed right here for the past 20 pages, almost all the posts against Heidi are made by one person?), as the same sort of thing happened with Roswita.

The issue is very few people feel positively strongly about her at present, so you get the same effect, pretty much 3 people defending her for 20 pages
 
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Chlof said:
Pretty small potatoes for someone with the Liber Mortis in her vault, tbh.
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If people knew we had the Liber Mortis they would be scared of what the book might do. They would objectively be wrong to think that. If Lutipold knew he married a lie and his wife was not who he believed her to be he would in all likelyhood feel personally betrayed. Let me put it this way, if you heard that X had slept with Y under false pretenses that would seem skivvy as hell right? Now kick that up ten notches to 'married under false pretenses'. What the pretenses are matters less than the fact that we can reasonably assume the one lied to would care a lot if the lie were revealed.
 
DragonParadox said:
If people knew we had the Liber Mortis they would be scared of what the book might do. They would objectively be wrong to think that. If Lutipold knew he married a lie and his wife was not who he believed her to be he would in all likelyhood feel personally betrayed. Let me put it this way, if you heard that X had slept with Y under false pretenses that would seem skivvy as hell right? Now kick that up ten notches to 'married under false pretenses'. What the pretenses are matters less than the fact that we can reasonably assume the one lied to would care a lot if the lie were revealed.
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You've been banging this drum for a lot of posts and from a lot of angles. Maybe it's time to give it a rest.
 
I like Heidi. I also dislike the antagonism going on against her in this thread, as well as the 'Mathilde should do what is optimal for the world', which I just disagree with. I think the 'Bodyguard' role is the most interesting out of the various options so far.
 
BoneyM said:
You've been banging this drum for a lot of posts and from a lot of angles. Maybe it's time to give it a rest.
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Eh, just trying to explain my position. It feels like people are very eager to whitewash Hedi, when she is many ways a darker shade of grey than Mathilde is or I think could be. I'm not contesting that she has done some good, but 'rogue with a heart of gold' does not seem to fit her given that her current very privileged position is based on oathbreaking.

"Do You Hedi Haupt Anderson swear to wed the Emperor?"

Answering yes to that is oath-breaking because that person does not exist.

That said you are right I have been at this for a while, so this will be my last post on the subject. I feel I have explained where I am coming from adequately and do not want to clog up the thread with the same argument.
 
Mmm, the discussion with Heidi won me over to Bodyguard from ambivalent, the Empire does have a number of rather significant troubles that need to be shot, and which it lacks the resources which are both free(the armies, navies and provincial armies are tied up), and willing(the cults are doing the opposite of helping, and the colleges officially are not touching it with a 10 foot pole)

Quite interesting in its own right! More so than imagined, because Luitpold wants to get involved but cannot find anyone he trusts of sufficient capability. He might be in the market for any Grey Lord Magister, but those don't get minted every year. Heidi just lets the job offer get sent out deniably.
 
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DragonParadox said:
Eh, just trying to explain my position. It feels like people are very eager to whitewash Hedi, when she is many ways a darker shade of grey than Mathilde is or I think could be. I'm not contesting that she has done some good, but 'rogue with a heart of gold' does not seem to fit her given that her current very privileged position is based on oathbreaking.

"Do You Hedi Haupt Anderson swear to wed the Emperor?"

Answering yes to that is oath-breaking because that person does not exist.

That said you are right I have been at this for a while, so this will be my last post on the subject. I feel I have explained where I am coming from adequately and do not want to clog up the thread with the same argument.
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Her name is even less of a lie than her being a noble. Your name is whatever you're known as, there's nothing special about what name you get assigned at birth. If Heidi calls herself Heidi, then she is Heidi.
 
I think it's for the best that the emperor got himself a ranaldian priestess/avatar.

From what i manage to conclude the Vampire conspiracy manage to subvert the last empress. I'm more of a clince 'Royalty does not have the luxury of being wed out of love' which goes double for WHF where there evil god.

So... Yeah, being the bodyguard is ok.
 
Glau said:
Also- imagine drafting Horstmann as our 2IC.
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Yes... imagine making Egrimm von Horstmann second in command of protecting and educating the likely future Emperor. Just. Imagine that. :V

Seriously, while we don't know that there's anything wrong with thread-Horstmann besides seemingly having a dubious boss, we don't really have much vouching for him either besides "we did a road trip to hell and he seems cool." I don't think it's unwontedly OOC to put a higher bar of actually knowing a person better than that before putting them in that kind of position. We've known Johann, etc. for literal in-universe years and years. We've known Horstmann for one (1) road trip.
 
Fayhem said:
Yes... imagine making Egrimm von Horstmann second in command of protecting and educating the likely future Emperor. Just. Imagine that. :V

Seriously, while we don't know that there's anything wrong with thread-Horstmann besides seemingly having a dubious boss, we don't really have much vouching for him either besides "we did a road trip to hell and he seems cool." I don't think it's unwontedly OOC to put a higher bar of actually knowing a person better than that before putting them in that kind of position. We've known Johann, etc. for literal in-universe years and years. We've known Horstmann for one (1) road trip.
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...that might actually give him a legit out for his ambitions...albeit at the cost of annoying the Light Patriarch.
 
Yeah, bodyguard is really starting to sound better and better as time goes on. It's a delightful mixture of adventure, intrigue, influence and freshness, all wound together with bits and pieces of what makes the other options interesting as well. That, and if we're regularly riding around the Empire kicking ass and taking names as we pass through, there's a fair chance of our Dammerlichtreiter legend expanding out of Stirland and Sylvania. Also, we might be able to get a few more titles from our various exploits...

Speaking of titles, I wonder if we'll get anything for Vlag. It would be a shame if we didn't.
 
DragonParadox said:
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.
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I'm pretty sure treason doesn't work that way and I'm not sure there is such a thing as "lineage theft". Impersonation and fraud are the likely charges if it comes out. Treason requires you to side with enemies of the Empire.
Valmond said:
The concept of hereditary nobility is stupid anyway, so i don't give a fuck about "lineage theft".
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Hereditary nobility is fine. "Lineage theft" is a pretty stupid concept though, but it seems to be a concept that turns up more often in Harry Potter fics and modern American ethnopolitics than historical nobility when I try to look it up.
 
This one I consider the biggest and bestest thing we could do in Warhammer world among the options we've got:
[ ] The Waystone Project

And it would provide us with ample opportunities for any kind of adventure, I think... because of all the favors needed and information gathered/spied in exotic places, maybe even going to Lustria for a while. :)
 
veekie said:
...that might actually give him a legit out for his ambitions...albeit at the cost of annoying the Light Patriarch.
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Or it offers the Light Patriarch an in, in having influence over the education of the most likely next Emperor. Remember, if Mathilde is going to fight fires and troubleshoot for the Empress in the interest of securing a stable Imperial succession, it's likely that taking on Horstman would be seen as Mathilde not making this a solely Grey College affair, and bringing in a specialist troubleshooter Alric himself raised, who goes from serving Alric to almost directly serving the Emperor.

And this is probably the key to the optics of this job - a stable Imperial succession and competent next Emperor is in the interest of the Empire as a whole, and most definitely in the College's interest.
 
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Heldi said: "Electors don't like child Emperors, and I want to be able to count on their support should the worst happen. If there was a vote tomorrow, it'd almost certainly be Grand Duke Feuerbach of Talabecland. Failing that, Hertwig or van Hal."

I don't see what's problem with Feuerbach or Hertwig becoming new Emperor. :)
 
Exmorri said:
I'm pretty sure treason doesn't work that way and I'm not sure there is such a thing as "lineage theft". Impersonation and fraud are the likely charges if it comes out. Treason requires you to side with enemies of the Empire.
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Screwing with a noble's succession is treason because that is how the state is governed. If the marriage is not valid because of a lie then the kid is a bastard and the succession is fraudulent. Granted unless Mandred was made Emperor before his mother's lie came out it would not be treason to the Empire, just Reikland.
 
Yaknow what would be good? Having a friendly sigmarite empress called Roswite.

Roswite for empress! Hail to the daughter of Abel! Saviour of Sylvania!
 
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