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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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While technically, ok entirely not usable in the duel, showing up in a flying Dawi Dreadnought, that drops a wheeled ironclad, that dimensionally unfolds to release a blinged out war mammoth, that you launch off of on your imperially awarded Griffon to make your grand entrance before checking your unique dawi super bling at the coat room would make several statements regarding the connections and influence that we would bring to the table as Supreme Matriarch, along with the inadvisability of launching instant death attacks.

Unfortunately we only have one of those options, and the least awe inspiring of them at that. So I guess we need to work on our connections and personal prowess.

Or roll 100 when inducing or directly causing Miscasts yet again...
 
BoneyM said:
The Duel for Supreme Patriarch does not have a carefully curated list of permitted items. What it has is the expectation that those who have attained the rank necessary to make a challenge also have sufficient common sense to realize that if you're going to fight for a leadership position in front of all those you will be leading, you need to make a good showing of it. Demonstrate your puissance, not just your ability to find One Weird Well Actually, Supreme Patriarchs Hate It. Otherwise all those who are happy to sit back and let the previous status quo continue will start recalculating, and you absolutely will not have enough tricks up your sleeve to work your way through every Wizard Lord in the Empire.
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Actually, wouldn't having enough tricks in your sleeve for every LM in the empire and the strategic puissance to use them be the system working as intended? It sounds like something that would result in an actually extremely competent SP
 
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I have to say I find the idea of Mathilde securing a powerbase in the Grey College to be really funny since she never really interact with her fellow Grey Wizards, never made friends with her classmates or left behind potential friends, her Master/father figure doesn't really count, her other peers Grey LMs respect her for her achievements and being fellow workmates.

Sure she made limited friends in other Colleges but they're a few level under her and far from social considering why they end up there plus to other wizards her friendship with dwarves, some high ranking normal humans meant nothing if they want to challenge her for the top rank or being pain in an asses.

Sure Mathilde could take up position as a teacher but some young loyal minions doesn't add much to her powerbase considering the large amount of Grey wizards inside the College and out in the world around her age and above.
There's plenty of jealous folk considering her rapid raise up the ranks, sure they would respect her for her achievements and would work together against enemies of the Empire but they're not going to be her friends.
Honestly i'm hoping there would be a reckoning for Mathilde being distant with potential friends and classmates, maybe the arrows to her heart when Eike of all people being far better at making friends than her.
 
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storryeater said:
Actually, wouldn't having enough tricks in your sleeve for every LM in the empire and the strategic puissance to use them be the system working as intended? It sounds like something that would result in an actually extremely competent SP
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Wizard Lords get to their rank by being very good at solving weird tricks. If you can actually beat them all I'd start wondering at divine avatar or daemon manifestation
 
veekie said:
I'm fairly sure that Alric WOULD be normally a fairly strong contender for the spot, simply because:
-He's won the title before and hold it for multiple terms. If nothing else he's a great duelist. Dragomas made it look easy, but Dragomas also crossed an expanse as a Journeyman that would put Lord Magisters at significant risk of misadventure.
-He has quite a bit of political support from accumulated political favors from his tenure. Power builds power, people remember the favors they owed from when he did them a good turn.
-He's still holding onto the Light College after everything. Not all the time, but by the above two points, that he's even in the running says he's really that good, leading a secret cult, or both.

The Greys don't like the whole mess, but the other Colleges may not feel so strongly about the matter.

That said I'm not sure why Mathilde would need to contest for the title to enact her Waystone plans, because last we heard, College leadership already wants in on the Waystones, there just hadn't been a proposal likely to end well yet.
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I think Alric used to be good contender for the spot. He is goddamn ancient.
 
veekie said:
Wizard Lords get to their rank by being very good at solving weird tricks. If you can actually beat them all I'd start wondering at divine avatar or daemon manifestation
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I'm not that sure. I think most LMs get there by having their personal That One Weird Trick, which they refined over years of casting and danger, backed up by solid fundamentals. Dragomas has Turning Into A Dragon. Chances are, he knows more about how people fight dragons than you, and he's also seen a fair share of ways to stop him from Turning Into A Dragon, and gotten good at doing it anyway.

The difference between having That One Weird Trick that lets you punk someone once and will never work again, and a working fighting style is how much you've worked through the possible counters to your Weird Trick.
 
storryeater said:
Actually, wouldn't having enough tricks in your sleeve for every LM in the empire and the strategic puissance to use them be the system working as intended? It sounds like something that would result in an actually extremely competent SP
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Okay, yes, in the theoretical scenario where a contender has hand-tailored a hard counter to each of the fifty-odd Wizard Lords in the Empire, they would probably be a great Supreme Patriarch candidate. That was not the scenario I was addressing, though.
 
Shard said:
I was more thinking about illusions that stay around you, more for distracting people you are actively killing in personal combat.
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Smoke constructs does that. For the "independent action" part we'd have to have wolf take the wheel, or an Apparition.
But apparitions have so much more potential to kill things than being distractions
 
Jrin said:
Honestly i'm hoping there would be a reckoning for Mathilde being distant with potential friends and classmates, maybe the arrows to her heart when Eike of all people being far better at making friends than her.
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I... think Mathilde would just be happy that Eike isn't growing up as lonely as she did?

Like, she's just been doing everything in her power to make sure Eike has a way better time than she did in all respects, seeing her make friends wouldn't be some kind of 'reckoning'.
 
I feel like Mathilde is far more likely to help put someone she wants into the role of Supreme Wizard then trying to claim the role herself.

Dragomas has proven pretty great while Alric chasing after old glory has only weaken his power base more than before and not focusing on his current position more.
 
GrimTheMad said:
I... think Mathilde would just be happy that Eike isn't growing up as lonely as she did?

Like, she's just been doing everything in her power to make sure Eike has a way better time than she did in all respects, seeing her make friends wouldn't be some kind of 'reckoning'.
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Mathilde just has to teach Eike not to be continuously smug and mysterious.

Do as i say, not as i do :V

For best results, delegate that part of her education to Panoramia
 
IronFist said:
Mathilde just has to teach Eike not to be continuously smug and mysterious.

Do as i say, not as i do :V

For best results, delegate that part of her education to Panoramia
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No no we want Eike to be a good Grey, right?

Smug and Mysterious is a requirement for that. Absolutely vital to the Ulgu mindset.

You can maybe swing dropping Smug or Mysterious and focusing solely on the other, but both at the same time? One way ticket to Perpetual, that is.


(It really is a part of the Ulgu mindset, rather than just Mathilde being Mathilde- hence her comment on Ulgu naturally creating mystics and showmen. Like, the Grey College literally has classes on pretending you know more than you do.)
 
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Historyman14 said:
Dragomas has proven pretty great while Alric chasing after old glory has only weaken his power base more than before and not focusing on his current position more.
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Alric at this point I think is the poster chil- poster old man for "reaching beyond one's grasp." He can't even hold onto his own college, and has been swapping out with Mira for like 2 decades because of it- and now hes trying to reach for the top shelf even as the floor is falling out from under him.
Makes you wonder if him trying desperately to stay relevant is what gets the Plotter into the order of light ITTL
 
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GrimTheMad said:
No no we want Eike to be a good Grey, right?

Smug and Mysterious is a requirement for that. Absolutely vital to the Ulgu mindset.

You can maybe swing dropping Smug or Mysterious and focusing solely on the other, but both at the same time? One way ticket to Perpetual, that is.

:V
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Or just not doing it continuously, or just being occasionally obvious about it, so that some people occasionally see through the illusion.
 
consequences said:
While technically, ok entirely not usable in the duel, showing up in a flying Dawi Dreadnought, that drops a wheeled ironclad, that dimensionally unfolds to release a blinged out war mammoth, that you launch off of on your imperially awarded Griffon
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Have you read 'The Stars My Destination'? Just reminded me of that, and it's a very good book-
 
DocMatoi said:
Alric at this point I think is the poster chil- poster old man for "reaching beyond one's grasp." He can't even hold onto his own college, and has been swapping out with Mira for like 2 decades because of it- and now hes trying to reach for the top shelf even as the floor is falling out from under him.
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That reminds me, it's interesting that the perception Mathilde had before meeting Mira and Horstmann was that Alric and Mira were happily swapping out with each other, presumably to share the workload. I suppose they'd been doing a good job of keeping the internal squabbling internal.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
That reminds me, it's interesting that the perception Mathilde had before meeting Mira and Horstmann was that Alric and Mira were happily swapping out with each other, presumably to share the workload. I suppose they'd been doing a good job of keeping the internal squabbling internal.
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Possibly a purely political matter. The Ligths likely had certain political power from having an ex-Supreme Patriarch as their head of College, and if we look at Horstmann then we can tell that at least one has been chafing from it.
"It's been a pleasure working alongside you," he eventually says, "and a very welcome reminder that the competent can still claw their way up the ranks."
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Wouldn't surprise me Alric has been acting mostly as a figurehead these days.
 
I was thinking about Mathilde's magic duelling style, or anti-magic duelling, because she mostly wins due to miscasts (her own, in one case, and sometimes without forcing it). How could you take that further?

Well, being active about it, for one. So maybe some sort of spell that makes casting harder for opponents. Also, it should be a fog or mist, because she's got a theme (and is scared of doing battle magic without her safety staff).

And I think we do have something that could be used for that: Windherder. Use Ulgu to herd the winds, making them harder to control and also pushing them away. Possibly go with something like RoW, and have many small spell instances distributed by a mist. The other wizard would have better control over their wind, so it's unclear how much it would hinder them, but it's something. And in the less nice variant where there's deliberate ulgu-dhar-wind connections, you'd have some pretty sever interference I would think, though I'm pretty sure it would break the articles, which makes it a whole lot less usable.

If it ends up as a local channel effect like RoW, it'll be fairly useless. If it's something that can be lobbed away but has to be maintained, it would be situational, but potentially useful (mostly in multi wizard battles). If it's a spell that can be cast and then Mathilde can do something else, it would be quite powerful (assuming it's enough of a hinderance to actually impact casting ability).

(There's also the ability to improve the spell by including an apparition to fuck with the opponents spellcasting, but we should have taken at least one apparition action before speculating further on that).

@BoneyM Is a Windherder based casting-debuff plausible?
 
Deathbybunnies said:
That reminds me, it's interesting that the perception Mathilde had before meeting Mira and Horstmann was that Alric and Mira were happily swapping out with each other, presumably to share the workload. I suppose they'd been doing a good job of keeping the internal squabbling internal.
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I think that was Mathilde being a bit naive in that it would have been what she would have done since she is not someone who would hold on to a position at the expense of the collage. Projecting essentially.
 
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