Her eyebrows rise, but she shakes her head. "No."

That was the obvious next question but she didn't think of what not knowing the answer would mean. Someone becoming lord of all Sylvania is, uh, rather more noteworthy than yet another claimant to the Von Carstein name sitting themselves in Drakenhof.

Well, looks like her story from her on out has basically got to be "Very old vampire from Mousillon who took a very long nap."

She nods, as if this information is unsurprising but she had to check. This is an easy way for her to nod, for that was in fact the mental posture from which she asked the question.

"Your Lady. What is she like? Can speak Reikspiel if need, know some."

Nikola inclines her head. "Fair. Strong. That is enough. She... rules for a long time, seen much." She looks back down at her glass. "Da?" 

It sounds like the Lady is old. That's concerning. Would make it more narrativey if she defeated her. But- fair. That's honestly an odd thing for a peasant in Sylvania to say about their vampire overlord, in the setting she knows.

Maybe this place is different? Or it's the thing where terrible people demand everybody compliment them, even when they don't actually care about any of the virtues in question.

Does it seem like maybe that's what's going on here? Does Nikola sound afraid of her lady in the way that might produce? Does Friends In Low Places feel like- well, like that's how any Sylvanian peasant would describe their local vampire to a foreign vampire?

"Fair" does seem unusual. That's a word that says Nikola perhaps has some actual loyalty. Of course, it's also a virtue that you'd proclaim to a Blood Dragon if you believed you were speaking to one.

That said, the way she said it... she feels unafraid in a way that few peasants would be in front of a foreign vampire. Perhaps she believes that if she is killed she will be avenged.

That last bit is very unusual. She thinks. Well, that's another reason to speak to this Lady, actually. Avenging your peasants when only one has been killed isn't even sort of something you do if they're mostly useful blood sources as far as you're concerned. That said, there's an absolutely massive possible range of motivations for that, ranging from being an Actually Decent Person at one end all the way through considering your peasants your property to destroy on the other. But- she feels that's less likely. Landing on the setting's Actually Ethical Vampire just- fits the narrative more than landing on some random vampire who's slightly unusual but actually terrible. Or, well, more fits the kind of narrative it sounds like she's likely to be a part of. She could also see either of the vampire being evil and doing a decently convincing imitation of good she needs to spend genuine effort to pierce or else the vampire becoming an enemy she has to fight pretty quickly. Other options feel- kind of boring by comparison, honestly. And she now apparently has a life where that's actually evidence.

Anyway, she needs a response.

She nods. "Fair is good, and ruling long helps much."

Hopefully actually paying for her room will successfully sell giving half a fuck about fairness. Fortunately she actually does. Hmm, what else does she need to know.

"Are there any big problems around? Wars? Who is Emperor?"

She's going all in on "vampire from Mousillon who recently woke up in a nearby bog after a few hundred years mostly dead" at this point. She can get so much more information that way.

She continues to feel guilty about strong arming this woman into telling her things under unspoken threat of Angry Vampire, but she kind of needs to know if there's, say, an orc waagh two days ride south of here. It sure would be narratively interesting. And- she has a role she's playing, right now, and she can consider whether breaking it to be kinder makes sense later. She'd feel a lot worse if this woman seemed, uh, at all flinchy about the situation, but honestly she kind of seems completely unflappable.

"Same as always. Orcs. Ghouls. No war, not now. Karl Franz is Emperor in west."

Ah, so Karl's already in charge. That's good news, he's supposed to be actually really good at his job. On the other hand, that means she's not too far from the End Times and Archaon's invasion. She does not, in fact, get to just head that off at the pass by butterflying it out of existence.

It also means she hasn't just landed in Divided Loyalties. No Mathilde to leach competence off of, then. For now, though, she wants a sense of where in the timeline she is. She can't actually recall how many years Karl Franz was emperor before Archaon launched his invasion, but she's pretty sure it was years. If only half of her knowledge of the setting didn't come from an anachronism-filled time-is-fake strategy game.

"How Long has Karl Franz been Emperor?"

Wait, that maybe in conjunction with her earlier questions about whether anybody is ruling all Sylvania sounds like she's trying to determine whether she has a chance at taking first Sylvania and then the Empire.

"Not long. A year, perhaps."

She nods.

Okay, does Friends in Low Places have any opinions on how to end this interaction, she doesn't have any scripts and is guessing "nod as if this information was of use to her and turn away to return to her room" is the right option but isn't actually sure about that.

Friends In Low Places thinks to stay in character she should offer a brief thanks. Blood Dragons take hospitality very seriously.

Oh, good, she did not in fact know that that was the interpretation that held true here, she mostly knows about them from a video game and a wiki article.

For her next trick she will divine the entire shape of reality from what her powers tell her about how to make friends. She will use this dastardly ability to make All The Friends. Mua Ha Ha.

She thinks Brettonia had a thing about women sometimes ending up knighted after putting on honestly rather shoddy disguises and pretending to be men, which everyone else pretended to fall for. She can't actually recall whether that's just amusing fanon, but for now the most parsimonious details to fill out the rest of her role with probably go along with a history in that role before being turned.

"Your answers are helpful. My gratitude for them."

She nods her head in a way ever so slightly reminiscent of a bow, attempting to match what her powers say is the correct amount for a knight offering thanks to someone below them in the social hierarchy who has done them a service and thinks that by doing such a thing they're demonstrating enough virtue that they get to be internally smug about it. Which she thinks is- that amount, yes.

Nikola nods in return, and goes back to cleaning her glass... Though her gaze never actually leaves Alethia.

Yeah, keeping the vampire in your view is entirely reasonable behaviour. She'll just depart off back to her room now that she's gotten the information she needs and come down rather firmly on the side of introducing herself to the local vampire. Either she's going to have to kill them and take over, or else they're likely to have the information needed for Alethia to make farther plans. At any rate, it might actually end up important that she not obviously be anything but a very old Blood Dragon who recently crawled out of a bog, and to that end potentially leaking unnecessary information is a bad idea.

Back up to her room she goes.

And off comes the mask, once she's on her own.

Hello once more, friend notebook! I return to report to you that my venture was an unqualified success, and I now know Several additional facts!

And the notebook can be caught up on what she's learned from Nikola, and the fact that it tips Aletha rather firmly over into talking the local vampire tomorrow. And the bit about how Karl Franz being Emperor means she's probably on a time-limit to Armageddon, and she's not sure whether she has one year or twenty, but she rather suspects it's closer to the lower end of that spectrum. Which would be more concerning if not for the existence of Actual Metanarrative Protection.

Limited time before the end of the world sounds really scary! I know you'll beat it though. I believe in you!

It also might not go that way. Would be narratively interesting if things were Different from what I was expecting in at least a few ways. But, uh, yeah, it is pretty scary. Thanks for the faith in me. It's- nice. I'll do my best to live up to it.

So. How does all this information change things? Well, it means she probably doesn't have the option of just- learning things and advancing magic enough that she doesn't really need to risk things. She can't just go off and hide in a cave with a friend or two to power-level magic until she emerges powerful enough to make Nagash look weak. That would take a while, and she doesn't have that long.

Well. How did things break down in the canon? Uh- in a stupid enough way, with enough obviously-wrong events on the way, that she probably actually can't learn a lot from her half-remembered stories.

Okay, from first principles then.

I'm trying to think through how I can help, with this kind of time crunch. Becoming powerful enough to Just Say No to the Chaos Invasion

Archaon legally cannot invade you without your consent

is probably not an option without conflict. I can't just find a bunch of friends and go off to a cave to, like, turn my narrative into a romcom while I spend three hundred years learning and inventing magic. I probably have enough time to catch up to a lot of people in a lot of areas, with Anything You Can Do, but not so much on advancing forward just on my own enhanced merits. Inventing a whole new field of magic powerful enough the gods start getting nervous is the kind of thing you can do, here, but if I've got three years I don't want to bet everything on my ability to manage it in that much time. Not without leaning on narrative lots and lots, and- that doesn't look like sitting in a cave and Inventing Things. So I'm probably going to have to do some adventuring. Get lots of abilities from lots of species, and have plenty of opportunities for last-second dramatic powerups. Hopefully I can do this in some way that lets me just sort of shore up the world as I'm doing so. Deal with a Brayherd in the Drakwald and leave Middenland more well-equipped to fight, that sort of thing. And- hopefully end up with enough friends in enough places to be able to help international cooperation along when the time comes.

That sounds like a solid plan to me! What's a brayherd?

Oh! That's what a whole big group of Beastmen is called. Beastmen worship the Extra Special Evil Demongods and life in the forests, mostly. Their name is, uh, literal. They're usually hybrids with goats or cows or the like. According to the stories from back home they're very evil, and opposed to all civilization on a fundamental level.

This world really has a lot of problems, doesn't it?

Extra Special Evil Demongods would do that, I guess. 

They do indeed do that.

If you ever want to make a checklist or something for what to do next, feel free to put it in me! I'll keep it all organized for you.