Arkeus said:
1°) The way your phrased it seems to imply that going Feudal Lord is a route that necessitate us to betray Dita if our grandfather truly is against her. Does this mean it's a route where we can't change his mind, just obey it?
Well, you'd have to at least make the Duke think that you're toeing the line. Travel times and the limitations of medieval communications mean that you would have some room for discretion, but you'd have to be very careful about what you get caught doing.
Arkeus said:
3°)Given that Khersis is at least Nominally allied with Inovia i would have thought that getting a church of Inovia in our territory wouldn't be heresy- is it heretic or not?
The general attitude is that the Inovians are dangerous lunatics who fortunately happen to be fixated on destroying evil most of the time. So the church advises lords to leave them alone and let them kill monsters whenever possible, but also to keep an eye on them in case their current scheme for 'fighting evil' turns out to be something insane or heretical. You never know when the Inovians are suddenly going to decide that the ogre is a nice guy, or the dragon can be "saved", or the local bishop is actually evil because of some infraction that the church would have no problem with. Inovians have a very different (and more modern) concept of morality than most Borjerians, which tends to cause a lot of friction.
So while supporting the Chosen is not heretical, it is going to make your neighbors seriously wonder what you're thinking. To them it's like deciding to raise rabid honey badgers for living.
Arkeus said:
4°) Would a 'troubleshooter/spymaster/diplomat' third route be possible? As in, we get to running our fief at least part of the time, but most of the time we are travelling the kingdom making alliances, assassinating enemies, subjugating rebellions or monsters. As we would stay in Berjoran we would have more time to take care of our fief, but we would also be harder to find, will have decent advancement because of constant adventures, and we'll be able to make alliances. Also, Dita would be a great support for this.
To some extent yes, but your freedom of action will be seriously limited by the need to appease your neighbors. If you're off in Egypt or India or something no one knows or cares about the details of how you do things, but if you're adventuring around inside Borjeria that won't be the case.
There are also several other routes you could choose, but they aren't as obvious and may not be as appealing. For example, there's definitely room to play an 'evil noble' route, using treachery and mind control to advance your cause much faster than would otherwise be possible. Obviously that's a high risk approach though, because if you get caught things could go bad very quickly.
Arkeus said:
5°) If the previous Route is possible, it's likely that Gravilla is already doing it- we should possibly talk to her about such a role for us, and see if there is a place for a second member of the family doing such. Would such questions, in private of course, be liable to destroy our relationship with her?
No, at least in your family it's possible to discuss such things in private. Gavrilla will tell you that she is no hero herself, but she does have a minor talent for sensing magic and a knack for dealing with "unusual people". Mostly she handles the family's espionage and, counterespionage, with some diplomacy on the side. Her younger brother, Dita's father, was the family hero.
Arkeus said:
EDIT:
Seems i completely misread that sentence previously, somehow reading 'troublemaker' instead of 'troubleshooter'. Ok, this really does seem like Gavrilla believes that Dita's father (or his wife) was the family's troubleshooter, and as such the odds of him being killed by our grandfather are...Small.
Am i understanding it correctly ShaperV?
If so, this means that my theory of Dita's exorcism being to 'quiet' her beacon might be true, if our grandad even did demand those.
Gavrilla muses that you're probably old enough to hear the truth now, and sadly informs you that the whole affair was one of those unfortunate incidents of Inovian insanity. Dita's mother had some crazy idea that she was going to reform a demon somehow, and as tends to happen she managed to convince her husband to go along with it. So it was necessary to put a stop to things before they created some debacle so huge that even your family's influence would be enough to paper it over.
That's one reason the church advises people to avoid too much contact with Inovians – the crazy tends to be catching for some reason. Of course, it's entirely possible that this is because the church of Khersis is just completely wrong about a lot of things, and the Inovians tend to be convincing to people who will actually listen to them. But Gavrilla doesn't seem likely to buy that sort of reasoning. She's obviously still a bit broken up about her little brother's death, but she's too emotionally invested in believing that they did the right thing to want to think that she might be wrong.
