I had an interesting situation come up in my current game, which has helped me learn a thing or two about the new Conclave council politics:
My character is Mielitty Karjalainen, second king of Finland in the 867 start. His father, my starting character, united the country and became the first king. Mielitty is already 60 years old, has recently reformed the Suomenusko faith and for the past ten years or so he'd focused on his faith and stayed away from women and other worldly desires. But as age crept on him he got tired of religion, wars, bickering vassals and the constant worries about succession, and decided to lighten up and have some fun before death would take him.
So he invited a premium selection of would be nubile concubines to his court and started on his new path as a 60 year old court tomcat. One of those young women was Öshkamöshka, a mysterious lady from some remote eastern tribe with a whopping 26 intrigue. King Mielitty first took her as a concubine and made her his new spymaster. Then he found out that he couldn't seduce his concubine so he first set her aside and then tried to seduce her. Öshkamöshka refused his advances and at this point she already had a -50 opinion modifier due to being set aside and having rejected seduction.
Anyway the old king made her his concubine again and then turned to the other young ladies, all of which he managed to seduce and have some good fun with. But watch out, Öshkamöshka was a spymaster with 26 intrigue and of course she found out about every affair that King Mielitty had. First she blackmailed him and he paid her to keep quiet. Then next time she just slandered him. So now both she and the king's wife had a -100 opinion modifer on him due to him being an unfaithful lecher.
Ideally, you don't really want to have both your wife and a spymaster with 26 intrigue hating you. But King Mielitty was old, succession was in place, and he did not fear death.
But it turned out Öshkamöshka had more cards up her sleeve. She was a member of the king's council and favors were being traded back and forth in the council. King Mielitty owed her a favor too. Next thing that happens is that the woman calls in the favor and forces a vote on a law change. Now I look at the council and see that this is the situation:
* Chaplain owes a favor to Öshkamöshka (the spymaster).
* Steward owes a favor to the chaplain.
* Everyone else owe a favor to the steward.
* All those favors had simultaneously been called for council support.
If you trace this chain of favors you see that basically the entire council will be forced to vote as the spymaster does. What the hell. So the crazy devious spymaster concubine had just forced a vote on the king and also had his council in her pocket. And she was malcontent because she was mad at him. Now he was facing a law change going through that he wasn't to happy about and everything else that he wanted to do was blocked by the council because she would say no every single time. This was going to last three years, the duration of the active favors.
But then she died of pneumonia, 26 years old.
Made me kind of sad actually, she had earned my respect. I could have removed her from the council but I kind of wanted to keep her.
Lesson learned: Pay attention to favors in the council. This kind of "favor chains" can often come up and be exploited to get at least a 2 for 1 on your favors or possibly better as the example above (the spymaster had a 5 for 1 there). Also, don't piss off your amazing spymaster lady!
My character is Mielitty Karjalainen, second king of Finland in the 867 start. His father, my starting character, united the country and became the first king. Mielitty is already 60 years old, has recently reformed the Suomenusko faith and for the past ten years or so he'd focused on his faith and stayed away from women and other worldly desires. But as age crept on him he got tired of religion, wars, bickering vassals and the constant worries about succession, and decided to lighten up and have some fun before death would take him.
So he invited a premium selection of would be nubile concubines to his court and started on his new path as a 60 year old court tomcat. One of those young women was Öshkamöshka, a mysterious lady from some remote eastern tribe with a whopping 26 intrigue. King Mielitty first took her as a concubine and made her his new spymaster. Then he found out that he couldn't seduce his concubine so he first set her aside and then tried to seduce her. Öshkamöshka refused his advances and at this point she already had a -50 opinion modifier due to being set aside and having rejected seduction.
Anyway the old king made her his concubine again and then turned to the other young ladies, all of which he managed to seduce and have some good fun with. But watch out, Öshkamöshka was a spymaster with 26 intrigue and of course she found out about every affair that King Mielitty had. First she blackmailed him and he paid her to keep quiet. Then next time she just slandered him. So now both she and the king's wife had a -100 opinion modifer on him due to him being an unfaithful lecher.
Ideally, you don't really want to have both your wife and a spymaster with 26 intrigue hating you. But King Mielitty was old, succession was in place, and he did not fear death.
But it turned out Öshkamöshka had more cards up her sleeve. She was a member of the king's council and favors were being traded back and forth in the council. King Mielitty owed her a favor too. Next thing that happens is that the woman calls in the favor and forces a vote on a law change. Now I look at the council and see that this is the situation:
* Chaplain owes a favor to Öshkamöshka (the spymaster).
* Steward owes a favor to the chaplain.
* Everyone else owe a favor to the steward.
* All those favors had simultaneously been called for council support.
If you trace this chain of favors you see that basically the entire council will be forced to vote as the spymaster does. What the hell. So the crazy devious spymaster concubine had just forced a vote on the king and also had his council in her pocket. And she was malcontent because she was mad at him. Now he was facing a law change going through that he wasn't to happy about and everything else that he wanted to do was blocked by the council because she would say no every single time. This was going to last three years, the duration of the active favors.
But then she died of pneumonia, 26 years old.
Made me kind of sad actually, she had earned my respect. I could have removed her from the council but I kind of wanted to keep her.
Lesson learned: Pay attention to favors in the council. This kind of "favor chains" can often come up and be exploited to get at least a 2 for 1 on your favors or possibly better as the example above (the spymaster had a 5 for 1 there). Also, don't piss off your amazing spymaster lady!
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