Right now waystones has a 1.8% lead that makes the vote quite stagnant. All the volatility generated by a bunch of nerds trying to outsmart each other with strategic approval voting has disappeared.
Making the vote closer in general would thus benefit the fourth place more. If the current current gap disappears we will be back in four-sided coin-toss land unless people are to tired to keep up the shenanigans.
Right now waystones has a 1.8% lead that makes the vote quite stagnant. All the volatility generated by a bunch of nerds trying to outsmart each other with strategic approval voting has disappeared.
Making the vote closer in general would thus benefit the fourth place more. If the current current gap disappears we will be back in four-sided coin-toss land unless people are to tired to keep up the shenanigans.
Good job to everyone who wrote massive effortposts for all the options. Things stayed remarkably polite in-thread, and it's been a ridiculously fast-paced but enjoyable discussion.
Well, it certainly didn't seem likely that any of the other choices was going to dislodge Waystones. It was close, but not that close, and it's been this close for a while. Boney, I hope you're happy about this being so popular.
As for myself, Waystones wasn't quite my favorite, but it wasn't one of the options I disliked or was even meh about, so I'm pretty chill with it. I implore everyone to not relitigate the discussion.
I love how these get gradually more far fetched and insane.
First she got convinced to undermine us over ideals. Then the flavorful thing happens where she's made vampire to get to us and exalt Omegahugger. Then all Jades are actually vampires lite all along. I didn't get the motivation with the second to last, but it seemed like just general and complete insanity. Finally I literally expected Panoramia to actually be a Skaven in the final one due to that build-up.
Because I enjoy counting chickens, I thought I'd lay out a list of what type of people we should hire for our advisers if we take the Markgraff job:
Diplomacy: Almost certainly a local lord, possibly one related to one of the counts or barons Roswita is going to raise up. The diplo adviser is going to be our ears and mouth to the people of Sylvania, and it needs to be someone who knows the lay of the political landscape. Sorry Anton fans, besides, he's busy on the opposite side of Stirland with his own Barony.
Martial: This is actually a tricky one to place. Someone from K8P such as Soizic? The knight commander of what ever knightly order we bring in? A jumped up local with a knighthood? A battlewizard? Who ever it is, they'll need to be good at coordinating lots of different organisations—knights, wizards, conscripts, artillery, mercenaries, dwarfs.
Stewardship: Someone from the EIC. We'll just ask Wilhelmina for a recommendation. Eike might be a bit too young for this, but Wilhelmina may disagree? Could be interesting.
Intrigue: Another grey wizard? Or a light? Or a Ranaldian priest? Someone who is good at untangling vampire conspiracies with some sort of arcane/divine backup. Probably not a local.
Piety: One of our missions is to bring approved religion to Sylvania and oust the vampire cults. Now the instinctive choice is Ranald, but I think we should use Morr, Verena and Shallya as a trinity (Father, Mother, Daughter) to represent Death, Justice and Compassion, with Ranald as an unofficial fourth member to keep tyranny in check, so I'd argue finding a broadminded Verenan priest/ess on that.
Learning: Qrech Someone who covers an expertise we don't, such as law, architecture, engineering or history. Leaning towards law or architecture myself, but it depends on what's more important—actual infrastructure or a legal code.
I still think we could save ourselves the Learning advisor and potentially also the Diplomacy one.
But if we don't I agree that roping in one of the newly minted nobles makes good sense.
For the Martial advisor I'm partial not to a Battle Wizard proper, but to a Wizard of any kind whose had a military education and some form of experience leading an army. So probably a Bright.
Remember that Von Jungfreud wasn't actually good at the strategy thing either, but was supported by four generals. So as long as we check that at least one or two generals below our military advisor know what they are doing fundamentals wise, it is okay to have a more specialized Military advisor at the top. In this case a Wizard wrangler that at the same time isn't completely out of touch with mundane forces.
Also good to keep in mind is that any conflict that requires full-blown armies will probably mean that we have the support of the armies of Stirland proper. It's not like they are doing anything else of importance.
I fully agree on your Stewardship preference, but it is also the slot where I'm most okay with accepting a compromise candidate for Roswita. She did say that that she trusts us in full though, so that's probably not necessary.
If we do take someone from the EIC, we might think about taking back full control of the EIC actions we had before the Hochlander and handing them to the Steward. Also propose to them to find an infrastructure specialist for the leftover half action.
I'd like to just stick with the Hochlander Intrigue wise. Spymaster is the job where trust matters most. He also already has a good working relationship with Witch Hunters, so we save on having to run that ourselves.
Your piety idea is pretty interesting. Other options are getting a non-Sigmarite suggested by Kasmir or going full Ranald.
And I definitely think that Learning, should we take it at all, should be a flex job. Either we keep hiring experts every couple of years with an understanding that this isn't a long term job, or we hire someone whose specialty is recruiting experts and solving niche problems indirectly or some other form of generalist. Or hell, we could even get a personal assistant whose job is to oversee and run our own experiments whenever we don't have time to continue them on our own. Because when it comes to poking at weird stuff, we're not just better at it, we're one of the best. Getting some 14 Learning egghead will just frustrate us and I really think a pure law or infrastructure expert is too limited.
Our Steward should know where the roads should go, our Military Commander will be needed to actually make sure they are built and the finances to do anything larger scale fast will probably not be there.
I also don't think that we can solve Sylvania's problems by creating a law code perfectly adapted to local sensibilities to get them used to rule of law over rule of blood. At least not early on in our career. Though I guess if we hire a Verenan as you suggested then it could be a side project for her eventually.
Pretty sure that all Human nobles that didn't swear fealty to the Empire before the reconquest are either dead or disowned. The nobles would be newly elevated ones and probably not local.
Edit: Whoops. Most of this post is useless now. Ah well.
That would be the best solution to fight the forces of destruction. A Karaz Ankor with a few Golden Age toys would be much more secured, and could concentrate its forces much more easily on outside threats We will see how that will go😏
Glad Markgraf didn't win - why I see how going back to Sylvania would be thematically consistent now, I didn't want the quest to be stuck there for the next 10 years
"I wish I had words to instil that confidence in you, but all I can do is tell you that if you allow self-doubt to erode your resolve, you will fail in the duty to Stirland we share. And while I would not hesitate to stand alone and die against all the evils of Sylvania, I would rather have you by my side and win.
I've gotta admit I would have preferred something more direct, with enemies to face and clear tasks ahead of us, rather than the more indistinct path of first finding people to cooperate with, then define goals for the Waystone-project and only then get to the juicy parts.
But I still think it will be fun due to good writing and I hope we can get done with the organisatorial parts of it with decent speed, to jump into the actual, personal research and lore-gathering (including possible library-thefts) as soon as possible.
Also I hope that regardless what we chose, we can do our part if the Marienburg situation should heat up further.
