This thread moves a mite fast. Rather than frantically try to catch up on the thirty four pages I'm woefully behind on, I'd like to look at two topics; the first what various Imperial colleges can do for Karak Eight Peaks, and the second the library and what we might do with it
Lore of Light: Tends to be specialized against certain foes, namely Deamons and the Undead. They have some modest healing capabilities and can help shed light on things (both physical illumination and clarity of thought), but it seems unlikely we will have particular need of Hysh in the coming years. The best counterargument I can think of is that when you need them you generally don't want to wait three months for them to arrive, but this far from the North I daresay the limited numbers of the Heirophants are better placed elsewhere, either fighting Chaos or blowing up in Stirland.
Lore of Heavens: Useful for both manipulating meterological phenomena and playing around with destinies. I imagine they would be helpful augmenting the Karak Eight Peaks Air Corps (both giving weather forecasts and if necessary changing them), and I suspect that they might give a bonus similar to Ranald's Blessing to efforts either by specific councilors or the Karak at large. Senior celestial wizards also have access to skywriting, which would help keep us informed of significant events around the world (if only vaguely), but given Karak Eight Peaks' position on a trade network and access to gyrocopters this is less of an advantage than it might be for other people. Also potentially useful as a minion for writing papers for us. Niche, but useful within that niche. Assuming that BoneyM keeps their ability to talk to birds that might also allow for the development of additional scouting capabilities. Overall, helps where we are already strong but will be of strictly limited utility in the tunnels. We may be able to entice some to move here just for a good observatory on one of the peaks, but I doubt they'd want to move all the way here just for the view.
Lore of Life: Healing and agriculture mostly. We have a journeymanling already here helping to replenish the depleted soil (and she's working with a group of halflings with both a vested interest and plenty of funding so if it's not quite a dream team it's about as good there as we're likely to get short of the Everqueen stopping by for a state visit. Aside from helping to get the agricultural portions of the economy up and running more quickly and smoothly, their primary benefit is likely to be helping to mitigate things like disease outbreaks and poisonings (two things worth considering with Skaven nearby). One of the Jade College's unofficial duties is to keep an eye on Imperial leylines and henges, and while the collection of elfstones near Karak Eight Peaks isn't strictly speaking Imperial I imagine we could get them interested enough to have a more senior magister at least come by to give an assessment of them. We can most likely get along with what we have as it stands, but there's room for more if they want to come.
Lore of Beasts: Before the spiders, I would have said that there wasn't a whole lot for the Ambers to do. The Ulricans have their wolves and I imagine the Undumgi would get some mounts of their very own, but aside from the ever popular 'turn into a bear and maul things' I wouldn't have seen much point in asking for some Amber wizard to set up shop nearby (beyond the usual 'keeps an eye on the wilderness', which is important to keep things like beastmen from sprouting up). With the spiders most of my prior reasons still hold, but I can't help but wonder if having one stay for a few years would help integrate the We into society. Overall I wouldn't be opposed to having some set up shop nearby, but I don't know about asking for any to swing by.
Lore of Metal: We have two already, and one is a magister. There's a lot to recommend gold wizards, starting with their analytical abilities and ability to help or hinder mechanical devices. As it is, I daresay we're saturated for the moment, and the ones we have don't get along (probably).
Lore of Fire: Surprisingly useful, I daresay. Karak Eight Peaks is going to be at least a simmering warzone for some time, and between trolls, gobbos and Skaven there's plenty of things for them to burn. I'm curious as to how their offensive abilities would mesh with irondrakes, and they should be able to operate effectively in tunnels with only a few considerations (like bringing fire along with an attacking force, which was likely going to happen anyway). Surprisingly they have some offensive social abilities, such as the ability to make two people passionately feel something for one another (like, for instance, getting one of the local orc chieftans to hate the warlord of clan Mors), and would be useful for stirring the pot, and one of their spells just burns the taint of warpstone out of an area. Also they have the ability to increase the hotness of food, be it making things spicy or helping that brandy burn on its way down. This is obviously very important and we should hire a pyromancer just for this.
Lore of Shadow: Good for scouting and keeping tabs on people. If we wanted to get an apprentice or journeyman we could have them perform some of the tasks we're too busy to perform ourselves, while helping to support the college. I don't know if we'd want to have them scouting the Karak, that's a bit of a high risk situation, but just having them follow people and report on their activities or manage a web of contacts could help us maintain a decent spy network within the Undumgi and keep an eye on trade caravans moving through. Plus we can help train them in important Grey College skills, like "being dead-killy" or "why smiling scares people". This doubles down on things we already provide (and doesn't really open up perspective on lores unfamiliar to us) but we are already short on actions to do all the things we want. I can see an argument on spending half an action to get a single action we'd like to get done at reduced competence.
Lore of Death: Primarily useful for either conversing with the recently dead (asking a single question of someone that died within the last day, for instance) or helping things that really ought to die do so, I don't see a particular need for their services at the Karak. They're certainly welcome, but I don't see a particular need when we're already pretty darn good at killing VIPs ourselves.
Conclusion; we'll want to discuss picking up bright, celestial and/or shadow wizards at some point.
Does anyone care to comment on these assessments?
For the library, I agree that we will want to make at least part of it available to the rest of the councilors and their staffs (I'm less convinced about the public at large but am willing to be persuaded). There are some topics that I'd like to see added, however;
Trade (Tilean, Asur) Both places known for maintaining strong mercentile concerns, we can add to an already sizable library bonus here. Ought to help make money and, even better, good decisions.
Medicine (Imperial, Dwarf, Bretonnian, Estalian, Tilean, Araby, Asur) "How not to die" is already a popular point of discussion, and while the art of medicine is currently distrusted among humans, both the elves and the dwarfs are known for their advances in medical understanding (through competing systems, which play out in Imperial surgical discussions as to whether Galen or systemic medical theory is better). Ought to help develop a strong medical profession in the Karak.
Divine Lore of Shallya (Imperial, Bretonnian, Tilean, Estalian, Dwarf) When you want some mercy, Shallya is there to help. Dovetails nicely with medicine (Shallyans care more about effective treatments than ideological purity) and has some spillover effects on early social services and psychiatric help (though I expect any help there to be incidental)
Crime, Law and criminology (various), to help establish Undumgi legal practices (and criminal customs)
Botany (Imperial, Dwarf, Tilean, Asur) Help with local plants, establish good herbology and make good medicines. Likely feeds into chemistry and agriculture as well.
Philosophy (various) I just think any sizable library ought to have some philosophy texts, that's just me
Divine Lore of the Lady (Bretonnian, Dwarf) If we're going to have a shrine of her here, best to know what to expect
Divine Lore of the Ancestor Gods (Dwarf) Same, but this is more with an eye towards avoiding basic mistakes for long-term residents than trying to infringe on dwarf customs.
Military history, theory and tactics (Dwarf, Imperial, Tilean, Estalian, Bretonnian) This is Warhammer, and this is a (semi-)active war zone. Having shelves full of old books of campaigns against goblins in old holds or the efficacy of various dogs of war regiments against Skaven seems like a useful thing to have when planning operations. I include Tilea and Estalia here because they're the primary customers (and providers) for dogs of war, and while I don't want to assume a Carthagenian model of 'most of the army are soldiers of fortune' making a habit of augmenting our troop strength with mercenaries seems like a reasonable course of action. Plus having prior instances of campaigns where dwarfen gyrocopters and the Birdmen of Catrazza fought alongside one another might inform us whether we want to hire them or not.
I'm sure I'm leaving out various topics that would be beneficial, but those are near the top of my list of concerns. Next up, a discussion of availability;
This isn't the era of cheap publication and free access to libraries. Even leaving aside low literacy rates and the risk of evil books (a somewhat overstated but still present risk), books are expensive. The usual method was to chain books to the shelves, and to limit access to them to people that could be trusted (either by prior association or financial remuneration) to be careful with the books.
I propose that we have three tiers of library access:
Public, where anyone can make a donation to the library for its upkeep and access materials. Probably the largest of the collections (and having a good reason to access the books like 'I work for the king or his councilors' lets you avoid the fee). This lets merchants look up records of successful trade attempts to Ind, lawyers look of legal precidents, historians perform their research, etc.
Semi-restricted, where you aren't gaining access without a good reason to need this information but that permission isn't unreasonable to acquire. Poisons, lore of the undead, methods for creating and identifying forgeries, etc. Things that you don't want shared with people you don't trust, but are still worth knowing.
Restricted, where there is going to be a good reason to get in and the number of people with legitimate reason to access it is going to be naturally pretty small; demon lore, texts on magic, blackmail archives, etc.
We may desire to work with various guilds to pool resources on the restricted and semi-restricted collections, but that seems to me something that runs into diminishing returns.
