How to complete Where Loyalty Lies in The Blood of Dawnwalker

Completing Where Loyalty Lies is the first big step in aligning yourself with a faction in Blood of Dawnwalker. Until now, you've likely been taking the fight to Brencis yourself, though maybe you decided to free Mert out of the goodness of your heart. But to join the Manumits, you'll have to prove your commitment to the cause by raising your infamy, a system you may not have interacted with much until now.

How to complete Where Loyalty Lies in Blood of Dawnwalker

You'll need to raise your infamy level to Notorious in order to join the Manumits, which is the fourth (IV) level on the court's infamy track, which you can see in the 'Court' tab of the menu. Your best bet for raising infamy is:

1. Complete named Vrakhir quests in any of the regions, such as Ambrus's Cellars, Ambrus's Transports, Ambrus's Collectors, or Ambrus's Prisoners, all of which are available in the regions just after you leave Laslea, such as in Briar Sloughs, Maragir Wealds, and St. Tyna's Grove. Other Vrahkir boyars have their own quests in other regions, which are similarly named.
2. Defeat one of the Vrakhiri boyars. Completing named Vrakhir quests will increase their anger, which you can see if you hover over their portrait in the court menu. A good way to do this is by completing every quest in a particular node, such as destroying all of Ambrus's blood cellars. Once you anger them sufficiently, you'll get a quest to defeat them, such as The Gilded Gauntlet for Ambrus.
3. Destroying Soldier Camps and Soldier Pickets: Soldier Camps are an incredibly time-efficient way to earn infamy. They don't increase a boyar's anger as much but they only consume one hourglass. They also generally reward you with a Swordsmastery manual. When you reach infamy level 2, Military Checkpoints will appear, which are equally time-efficient.

I'd recommend a mixture, destroying Soldier Camps in Ambrus's regions to unlock those abilities, but then also deal with some of Ambrus's operations to anger him enough, fight him, and gain a big chunk of infamy there. Either that, or go to a completely different region and anger one of the other boyars instead, though enemies in these will be a bit harder.

Details

Once you reach Notorious infamy, you can head to Svartrau and meet up with Sara to continue the Manumit questline.