To sum up my issues with Markgraf:
That's it. It's rulling over shitty land, whacking against the same problem that realistically is only going to be "managed for now" rather than really gone because vampires are the true immortals of the setting.
Where do you grow from there? Sylvania just isn't worth much if you aren't interested in raising an army of the dead. Feels a lot like a dead end, thankless task.
Like Roswitta says, we might well be reporting to her grandkids and not be done. That's how big a job it is.
It's just green-ish grey land and haunted woods as far as the eye can see. Again and again.
And I do honestly think others could manage this mostly as well. It's not simply a problem of whacking things with a sword, or poking weird mysteries or situations. It's a well known problem: hunt down vampires, curb their influence. Rinse and repeat for twenty years, and if you are lucky you might be as close to done as you are liable to get.
Oh don't even start with that. It's like saying Loremaster at Large is going to pidgeon-hole Mat permanently as the Dwarf-woman, or that the Bodyguard option will leave her stuck as an Advisor to the future Emperor, long after he's an adult. Or that Waystones will leave her stuck in some crazy itteration loop with a Elven caster and a dwarven Runelord, while they all try stuff for the next century or two.
Each position is what we make of it. Mat is the one picking an assignment, and while fair effort to do her job are expected whatever we pick, none of the options are a lifetime commitment. Not
now, anyway. Any of them might
turn into one, but we just had that same option with Loremaster. Picking Loremaster-sinecure is essentially the retirement option. Even that has a temporarily attached to it.
As for "grey,grey,grey,grey". Nah. Each of the Vamps is it's own flavor of terrible. We'll be duling armies and bands of Carstains while Lahmians scheme and plot, Nechrarchs will be doing evil magic and rituals while feral, moster like Strigoi prowl the dark and abandoned woods. And that's without Mordheim, and all the different flavors of Skaven beneath, monsters from the Mountains, as well as Goblins and Orcs from the same. And the Imperial and Colledge Politics on top of all that, interfering and aidng as much as the people we are trying to rehabilitate.
If it wins, it will be ugly. But no more so, than Karag Eight Peaks before it was retaken. And every victory will make it a bit cleaner, a bit better. The story of taking a sickly, broken province, and healing it, raising it up back to respectability (or as respectable as Ranald gets, anyway)
is one hell of a tale. And exactly the chance Abelhelm Van Hal died, and his daughter lived, to give to them all.
So don't you spit on it all. Just because it will be hard and ugly at times, doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. I've the feeling that these people have been surviving under vamps for decades. Not the nobles, the commons. Remember Petrescu. Mat starts making a real difference, not a blimp that will just get extinguished like all the ones before it? Those folk will come out of the woodwork to fight for their homes.
They just never had a change to win before.
The problem isn't vampires we caught coming back. The problems is vampires someone caught fifty years ago coming back.
A random farmer cuts his hand while raising a new barn and surprise, there was a vampire buried where he is digging the foundations! A new village is wiped off the map and we only know about it after a few weeks or months.
Or hell, a new village welcomes its vampire overlord as things get back into their "right and proper" state, and you are now able to work towards becoming a superhuman immortal too!
It's Sylvania. There are random vampires and associated nasties buried around every other ditch.
More than that, it's hundreds of years of the same social paradigm that we'd need to dismantle and rebuild from the ground up.
If only the new ruler had a bunch of dwarven contacts to go over the underground with a fine toothed comb. Or a Mastery that makes things she touches invisible and intangible. I wonder if a Vamp made gone by Mockery of Substance can even be brought back.
"When affected by Mockery of Death, the subject is also intangible to anything except the caster and objects under the control of the caster." If we can figure out a way to cast that at Vamp remains, they might be shit out of luck.
If the thread represents Mathy's headspace, I'm scared for her sanity next update with how everything is bouncing around.
She'll be riding to Altdorf, then turn and ride for Sylvania only to turn and ride back for K8P, except then she reconsiders and is now going to Karaz-a-Karak except it's K8P except it's Sylvania except it's Altdorf except it's Sylvania....
I'm not worried about Mat. You on the other hand... Are you feeling ok? I could have sworn I saw you change your vote like 8 times in the last 24h. Take a walk, breathe some fresh air.
