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[WHF] The Broken Mirror - A Divided Loyalties Peggy Sue

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So the thinking of Thorgrim's that she needed to nip in the bud... was that everything good is dwarf-only?

Not sure I really understood that explanation.
 
I don't think the problems are significant. We were not planing to use those great deed and credits any time soon and they are just fenced till we prove ourselves with the dwarves which should be a slam-dunk for Mathilde. Sure punishment is never good but we just are not trusted as lord magister yet in this timeline. We are a mystery box. But after we can prove our claims and show that we know what we know I am sure this is going to expedite our re-earning of all our accolades and titles. Plus it is always welcome to have Melkoth in our corner.
 
I mean we did the equivalent of passing a top secret report to a foreign head of state after being ordered to not do that. The consequences seem mild in comparison.
 
DragonParadox said:
Pepperidge Farm apparently knows how the wizards would figure out what is in the head of a dwarf king. It's a very clever farm. :V
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There's risks either way. Truth can be damaging, lies when caught even more so. Framing it as compulsive truth telling rather than weighing the risks based on recent in universe experence and maybe getting it wrong wasn't the best way you could have approached rebuking the thread participants for drawing the truly onerous torment of not being able to make exorbitant College purchases for a couple years tops onto our heads when we presumably just got Dwarf Favor of somewhere between Yes and Hell Yes.
 
consequences said:
There's risks either way. Truth can be damaging, lies when caught even more so. Framing it as compulsive truth telling rather than weighing the risks based on recent in universe experence and maybe getting it wrong wasn't the best way you could have approached rebuking the thread participants for drawing the truly onerous torment of not being able to make exorbitant College purchases for a couple years tops onto our heads when we presumably just got Dwarf Favor of somewhere between Yes and Hell Yes.
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Presenting things as 'there are risks either way' creates the false impression that they are anywhere near equivalent, they could not be further from it, as evidenced by the lack of even offering a mechanism by which this lie could have been revealed. It was as far as I could see mostly just being 'honorable' for the sake of it. Being absolutely risk adverse is in my opinion as crippling as being entirely careless of risk so it would be nice if we would not do this again and shoot ourselves in the foot in the process.
 
DragonParadox said:
Presenting things as 'there are risks either way' creates the false impression that they are anywhere near equivalent, they could not be further from it, as evidenced by the lack of even offering a mechanism by which this lie could have been revealed. It was as far as I could see mostly just being 'honorable' for the sake of it. Being absolutely risk adverse is in my opinion as crippling as being entirely careless of risk so it would be nice if we would not do this again and shoot ourselves in the foot in the process.
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I don't get how you arrive at this?

We made a judgment call, and then owned it; as a result, we've gotten an administrative slap on the wrist while our superiors wait for time to prove whether our intuition is to be trusted.

By contrast, if we had tried to hide breaking explicit orders, that's the sort of shit that they punish harshly. It's one thing to make a call in the field, that we have to break the letter of our orders, it's another thing to lie about doing it.

And our reasoning; that getting caught in a lie by the High King, regarding such sensitive matters at that? That would have been catastrophic, on a diplomatic level. And it would seem our superiors agreed, given that - again - they basically gave the lightest possible punishment for directly disobeying orders. They're not even actively punishing us, just temporarily suspending a privilege.

TLDR: There are times and places where we should lie, but to our superiors about matters of international diplomacy ain't one of them!
 
Lord Sia said:
I don't get how you arrive at this?

We made a judgment call, and then owned it; as a result, we've gotten an administrative slap on the wrist while our superiors wait for time to prove whether our intuition is to be trusted.

By contrast, if we had tried to hide breaking explicit orders, that's the sort of shit that they punish harshly. It's one thing to make a call in the field, that we have to break the letter of our orders, it's another thing to lie about doing it.

And our reasoning; that getting caught in a lie by the High King, regarding such sensitive matters at that? That would have been catastrophic, on a diplomatic level. And it would seem our superiors agreed, given that - again - they basically gave the lightest possible punishment for directly disobeying orders. They're not even actively punishing us, just temporarily suspending a privilege.

TLDR: There are times and places where we should lie, but to our superiors about matters of international diplomacy ain't one of them!
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The 'administrative slap on the wrist' has involved sealing away a significant amount of our resources for an indeterminate amount of time. I mean by sheer narrative logic it probably will not happen but the Grey College could keep those resources away from us for the next fifty years because it is their call and we have no one who can arbitrate if we think they are being unreasonable.

As for the catastrophe, sure it would be a catastrophe to be found out but so would swallowing warpstone dust with our next pint of beer and much like the mechanics of warpstone poisoning no one has come up with a way we could be caught in that specific lie.
 
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killfr3nzy said:
So the thinking of Thorgrim's that she needed to nip in the bud... was that everything good is dwarf-only?

Not sure I really understood that explanation.
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I might need to clarify, but what Mathilde wanted to prevent was that Thorgrim would pick one of the following two:

1) She was seemingly useful, but she's talking in riddles like an Elgi, and uses magic like an Elgi, so she (and her guild) are basically untrustworthy Elgi, and must have stolen Dawi secrets.

or, less probably

2) She was actually useful, and used dwarf secrets, therefore she's a dwarf and all aid going to her should be in a form that helps dwarves.

Both of which would be founded in his apparent bigotry against non-dwarven peoples.

Basically what I was going with was Mathilde making the argument that she couldn't avoid Thorgrim coming to one of those two conclusions without being forthright in what she said.
 
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DragonParadox said:
As for the catastrophe, sure it would be a catastrophe to be found out but so would swallowing warpstone dust with our next pint of beer and much like the mechanics of warpstone poisoning no one has come up with a way we could be caught in that specific lie.
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To make that a fair comparison, that would be a pint of beer being drunk when there's an Eshin assassin about.

Sure, you might not know that there's warpstone dust in the beer... But if there's a Deathmaster about, the safe thing is to not eat or drink anything unless you're certain it's safe.

Same thing with lying to the High King of Dwarves, when equipped with his full regalia and seated upon his throne, all of them with powerful - but unknown - mystical abilities.

It's a basic logic; we could lie to Thorgrim, or we could tell the truth. He could either detect lies, or he could not.

If we lie, and he can't detect it, everything is fine, carry on, and hope the truth doesn't come out later and retroactively destroy his trust in mankind.

If we lie and he can detect it, everything is very much not fine, and we can kiss all of that cooperation we were counting on buh-bye.

But if we tell the truth, we sidestep all of that - we, personally, are in trouble with the Patriarch for disobeying a direct order, but the diplomatic relationship with the Dwarves is not only maintained, but strengthened.

And then there's revealing this to our superiors, which is the same logic; the cost of admitting to our crime is significantly less than the damage that would result if we lied and the truth - inevitably - emerged later on.
 
Lord Sia said:
To make that a fair comparison, that would be a pint of beer being drunk when there's an Eshin assassin about.

Sure, you might not know that there's warpstone dust in the beer... But if there's a Deathmaster about, the safe thing is to not eat or drink anything unless you're certain it's safe.

Same thing with lying to the High King of Dwarves, when equipped with his full regalia and seated upon his throne, all of them with powerful - but unknown - mystical abilities.

It's a basic logic; we could lie to Thorgrim, or we could tell the truth. He could either detect lies, or he could not.

If we lie, and he can't detect it, everything is fine, carry on, and hope the truth doesn't come out later and retroactively destroy his trust in mankind.

If we lie and he can detect it, everything is very much not fine, and we can kiss all of that cooperation we were counting on buh-bye.

But if we tell the truth, we sidestep all of that - we, personally, are in trouble with the Patriarch for disobeying a direct order, but the diplomatic relationship with the Dwarves is not only maintained, but strengthened.

And then there's revealing this to our superiors, which is the same logic; the cost of admitting to our crime is significantly less than the damage that would result if we lied and the truth - inevitably - emerged later on.
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I give up, this is just exhausting to argue in the face of words like 'inevitable' with no backing.
 
Lord Sia said:
And then there's revealing this to our superiors, which is the same logic; the cost of admitting to our crime is significantly less than the damage that would result if we lied and the truth - inevitably - emerged later on.
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There's a lot of reasonable debate to be had about how likely they were to find out, but "inevitable" is a very strong word and as QM I'm willing to say it wasn't justified - it's still the case that no-one knows Mathilde has read the Liber Mortis after all. Two people knowing a secret makes it harder to keep than only one person knowing, but as voters pointed out at the time Thorgrim is OOC known to be possibly too good at keeping a secret. Although IC the details aren't known because of the fact that he kept the secret. :p

I appreciate the discussion going on, but wanted to clarify this particular issue because I know it could get heated.
 
consequences said:
Do you remember when our lies were caught out by merely mundane human paranoia and information gathering methods maybe six months ago in universe?


Pepperidge Farm Remembers.
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I don't remember, actually.

I also don't find it implausible, but I don't know the specific situation you're referring to.

Someone help me out?


kingreaper said:
I might need to clarify, but what Mathilde wanted to prevent was that Thorgrim would pick one of the following two:

1) She was seemingly useful, but she's talking in riddles like an Elgi, and uses magic like an Elgi, so she (and her guild) are basically untrustworthy Elgi, and must have stolen Dawi secrets.

or, less probably

2) She was actually useful, and used dwarf secrets, therefore she's a dwarf and all aid going to her should be in a form that helps dwarves.

Both of which would be founded in his apparent bigotry against non-dwarven peoples.

Basically what I was going with was Mathilde making the argument that she couldn't avoid Thorgrim coming to one of those two conclusions without being forthright in what she said.
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I did get the Elgi concern from earlier in the text, but I saw the Matti=Dawi declaration as a somewhat beneficial statement of face-saving bias.

So it was only when you linked it with not trusting the Kragg-Alphard tower that I was able to venture a guess as to your meaning.
Which I think is wanting human wizards to be seen as their own, positively-thought-of group, and something of a test case of non-dwarven things being good.

Don't be too concerned about editing, there's only 1 like on my previous post, so I don't think there's any widespread confusion.
 
The punishment stings, but that's why it's called a 'slap on the wrist'. It's not supposed to be horrifically painful, and I don't think it is. Even assuming the worst, we'd probably get access to that favor/GD (tbf I don't exactly recall how much BM!Mathilde got with her sequence breaking) back with more good work at some point anyway.
 
killfr3nzy said:
I don't remember, actually.

I also don't find it implausible, but I don't know the specific situation you're referring to.

Someone help me out?
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Mathilde tried to give Abelhelm the map of the Haunted Hills and some information on the Vampires ruling towns in Sylvania by claiming it came from Gabriella, and that after receiving it from Gabriella she'd looked into some of it and confirmed those parts to be accurate.

Due in part to Abelhelm already having information suggesting that Mathilde and Gabriella were both connected to the same conspiracy, and in part to chance not going her way, Abelhelm realised that Mathilde hadn't actually had the opportunity to check out any significant portion of information from her, and pressed for the truth.

This is the relevant update
 
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killfr3nzy said:
I don't remember, actually.

I also don't find it implausible, but I don't know the specific situation you're referring to.

Someone help me out?
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What the QM said. Now I specifically remember this chain of events because I'm the cocky little shit who said to himself 'we're a fuck mothering Grey Lord Magister and are practically Ranald's adoptive daughter, there's no conceivable way that this could backfire' and tried to knock out four Martial Advisor candidates with a single Magic Dart, all the while conveniently editing out the history where Van Hal, in his copious free time between unfucking his province, leading a campaign, and dodging vampiric assassination plots worked around his own spy master who can literally see deception in order to completely roll up the nefarious plot that was blackmailing her and her master without any members of an apparently Empire spanning Lahmian conspiracy realizing they had been identified. Presumably he made some absurd halberd skill checks during a brief flirtation with exploding crits as a mechanic.


And then a tiny bit later we had what seemed to me to be a none too subtle warning in the personage of King Ironfist displaying unknown truth discerning capability of distinctly not mundane origin. Which might be fun to watch from a safe distance pitted against some sucker we don't like and slipped the Coin set to Deceiver into their pocket, but very much set the tone for high ranking Dawi interaction as far as I was concerned, in the key of honesty major.


Casting back further to Words of Boney from the originating quest, the Grey Order is institutionally paranoid, and would certainly keep at least a lazy eye on Thorgrim to see whether his actions match up to what we claim to have told him. More likely they would find a way to at least gently poke at him to fulfill the unofficial Order motto of Distrust and Verify.


Once we committed to telling Thorgrim, the low risk move became owning up. Partially that calculation was based on the not yet proven status of Mathilde as the dawi expert of the Order if not Empire, hence somewhat more blowback than my most optimistic guess as to potential fallout.
 
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Naming the Staff
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    • [X] Wait until you can discuss the name with Lady Magister Dreyer.
    Sorry I kept forgetting to actually implement that vote...

    Before you left for Karak Vlag, you made the decision that you would ask Lady Magister Dreyer her opinions on naming your new staff. But with everything that happened, there was always something else either you or she wanted to talk about, and thus it never came to the fore.

    Now, as she leaves the Grey College after her own thorough debrief with Melkoth and Algard, it is your last chance to do so.

    "It is your staff - while I crafted it, you shall be the one to wield it for years to come." She smiles at you. "But if you wish for my suggestion... how about we take turns to suggest names?"

    You pause, and think. "My first thought was Knightstick."

    "With a 'k'?" You nod, and Cecilia sighs. "I suppose as High Sheriff it would have a certain appropriateness. While working on it I thought of it as The Staff of the Hourglass."

    "But where's the pun in that? Perhaps I could call it my Time Peace."

    "That feels forced. Perhaps you could allow it to earn a name in action?"

    "Perhaps - though I feel like such fine craftsmanship deserves recognition." You smile. "I named my previous staff, and my sword."

    "That still counts as my turn."

    "Okay then, how about Tempus Fugitive."

    "A good pun, but..." Cecilia tuts. "I feel like that might hint too much at your Jaunt."

    "It seems obvious if you know, but if you don't it just points to the fact it's an Ulgu staff that steals Azyr's associations with time."

    "Perhaps. A hidden reference would certainly fit your style... How about 'The Cythonic staff'?"

    "The job of the Grey Magus can certainly feel cthonic at times." You check your memories - you mentioned a crush on a dragon, but you never gave their name. "But why Cython?"

    "For those who know, it's the serpent of wisdom - the Wisdom's Asp. For those who don't it's a dragon of foresight, with eyes like Lileath's that can alter fortune."

    What name do you pick?
    [ ] Knightstick
    Suggested by @IronFist

    [ ] Time Peace
    Suggested by @LightLan

    [ ] Tempus Fugitive
    Suggested by @consequences

    [ ] Staff of the Hourglass
    Suggested by Lady Magister Dreyer

    [ ] Cythonic Staff
    Suggested by Lady Magister Dreyer

    [ ] Don't name it

    [ ] Write-In

    A/N Here's the update where you originally got the staff, and its capabilities are detailed.
     
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