User:Fynnkaterin/Khanate

A sorting-out of information about Khaganian Intrigues for my own reference for now, and maybe for guide use later.

Khaganian intrigues are action carousels that take place in Khan's Heart, across the zee in the Khanate, involving clandestine activities tied to The Great Game. They make use of Cover Identities and require high-level stats (both main Attributes and Advanced Skills) to complete efficiently, but yield valuable items.

Why pursue Khaganian intrigues?

From a gameplay and roleplaying perspective, intrigues will be particularly enjoyable for those interested in The Great Game, and those who enjoy creating Cover Identities (which are necessary to access Khan's Heart), zailing (as you will be travelling back and forth across the zee), the Chessboard (a major source of items used to make faster progress), and complex action carousels that require planning and strategising ahead of time.

As for mechanical rewards, intrigues yield a variety of valuable items, including:

• Bottle of Fourth City Airag: Year of the Tortoise
• Corresponding Sounder (currently the only source for a Violant-filled Mirrorcatch Box)
• Crackling Device
• Gant-filled Mirrorcatch Box
• Infiltrator's Footsteps, boots which are best-in-slot for Dangerous and A Player of Chess
• Magnificent Diamond
• Mortification of a Great Power
• Much-Needed Gap
• Oneiric Pearl
• Oneiromantic Revelation
• Parabola-Linen Scrap
• Searing Enigma

In terms of Echoes per action, various intrigues can be worth ~4 EPA, increasing to ~5 EPA when selling the proceeds at the Rat Market.

Preparations

Unlocking intrigues

Before you can engage in intrigues, you will need the following:

• A ship, in order to zail to the Khanate
• Railway progress to Balmoral, and a fully-upgraded Cabinet Noir there, to create needed Cover Identities

Once you have Cabinet Noir 4, you will be able to draw an Opportunity Card, A Letter from the Khanate, which will give you an Intercepted Document. Take this to Balmoral and decipher it in your Cabinet Noir to yield a Salt Steppe Atlas and Acquaintance: The Reformer of Reputations.

This will redirect you to the storylet Who is the Reformer of Reputations? Here you can Figure out a route to the Khanate (If you haven't already done so by using the Salt Steppe Atlas).

To access Khan's Heart, where intrigues take place, you'll need a Khaganian Front—an elaborate fiction that disguises your clandestine activities. The Reformer of Reputations is waiting in the Khanate to set this up for you, but you'll need to bring along a Cover Identity for him to work with. The specifics of your Cover Identity will determine what sort of Front he can construct, defined by its Appearance, Methods, and Weapon. These aspects determine which actions you can take to advance your Intrigue, and which skills the challenges in Khan's Heart are based on.

Sound complicated? Don't worry; we're going to go through this one step at a time.

Choosing your skills

Challenges in Khan's Heart are based on three different sets of skills:

• Bizarre, Dreaded, or Respectable, based on the Appearance of your Front
• Persuasive, Watchful, or Shadowy, based on the Methods of your Front
• Mithridacy, Glasswork, or Kataleptic Toxicology, based on the Weapon of your Front

Current Time in the Khanate determines which skill challenges are available each turn. Ideally, you'll want to be able to succeed at actions at every hour of the day, to avoid wasting actions.

The following table shows which skills can be used at each hour of the day. (Starred checks indicate challenges that increase in difficulty with Taimen's Attention.)

Timetable of Khan's Heart

Hour	Time	Methods			Weapon			Appearance
1	False-Dawn	✓*	✗	✗	✓	✓	✓	✗	✓	✓
2	Early Morning
3	Morning
4	Midday		✓*	✓*				✓
5	Early Afternoon	✗			✗	✗	✗
6	Afternoon
7	False-Dusk
8	Early Evening
9	Evening	✓	✓	✓
10	Late Night								✗	✗
11	Nearly Midnight
12	Midnight

The upshot of all this: there are several possible combinations of skills that will cover the whole day in Khan's Heart. In the tables below are the actions comprising each of these strategies, along with the skill level needed to 100% the check.

It may take a bit of trial and error to figure out which combination is the most doable with your equipment and stats. Some tips that might help:

• Raise your Attribute caps if you haven't already. It will be easier to get to your target levels with equipment modifiers if your base skill levels are as high as you can get them.
• Some skills tend to appear together as equipment bonuses more often than others. If you have multiple items that raise both Shadowy and Kataleptic Toxicology, for example, it may be easier to optimise both in the same outfit.
• Check the Max Equipment Bonuses page for stat-raising equipment you may have access to but don't yet have.

Once you've decided which skills to focus on, you can create a Cover Identity that will allow you establish a Front that uses those skills.

Crafting a cover identity

A player-created Guide is available for this content: Cover Identities (Guide)

Cover Identities are crafted in your Cabinet Noir at Balmoral. Consult the guide linked above for an explanation of the process.

For the purposes of Khaganian intrigues, the sort of Cover Identity you'll need depends on the skills you picked in the previous step. The table below illustrates how each skill corresponds to an aspect of your Cover Identity, and what sort of Khaganian Front this will become.

Skill check	Cover Identity quality	Khaganian Front quality
Bizarre	Ties: Surface	Appearance: Academic
Dreaded	Ties: Dispossessed	Appearance: Criminal
Respectable	Ties: Bazaar	Appearance: Mercantile
Persuasive	Credentials: 5	Methods: Manipulation
Watchful	Nuance: 5	Methods: Observation
Shadowy	Witnesses: 5	Methods: Subversion
Mithridacy	Credentials: 5	Weapon: Disinformation
Glasswork	Nuance: 5	Weapon: Dream-Shaping
Kataleptic Toxicology	Witnesses: 5	Weapon: Poison

The first aspect of your Cover Identity that you will choose is Ties, depending on which BDR skill you've chosen to use. If your strategy doesn't use BDR checks, you can choose whichever Ties you want. This determines the Appearance of your Khaganian front.

Next, you will build up your Cover Identity, based on the other skills your strategy focuses on.

• For Persuasive and/or Mithridacy, you will need Credentials 5.
• For Watchful and/or Glasswork, you will need Nuance 5.
• For Shadowy and/or Kataleptic Toxicology, you will need Witnesses 5.

Finally, you will want to add Elaboration and Backstory to strengthen your Front.

• Elaboration increases the Obfuscation of your Front. Obfuscation is lost when you fail at skill checks, and if it reaches 0, you will have to establish a new front with a new Cover Identity. You need at least 1 Elaboration to establish a Front, but unless you can 100% all the checks, you should add more Elaboration to be safe, up to a maximum of 10.
• Backstory increases the Resilience of your Front. Resilience reduces how much Obfuscation you lose on failures. Backstory isn't required to establish a Front, but if you have any chance of losing Obfuscation, it's worth your while to add more Backstory, up to a max of 10.