At some point, if the trend continues, the Magisters trying to teach this thing to their apprentices are going to have to throw back their heads and screech 'MMAAAAAAPP' like a Pterodactyl in order to get the name right.
Nominally. You know, if they could ever manage to work together. Which, outside of the end times, just isn't a thing; that's why all their ridiculous prowess gets handwaved away in the first place. It's like saying Bugs Bunny could destroy the world because he can rearrange all the stars in the sky.
Fucking lol that made me almost bust a gut at my desk this morning. *imagines strodgy grey beard academics screeching like ancient terror birds* Pfffffft.
[ ] [TOWER] Ongoing
I want to see Belegar's reaction when we tell him, "The tower can currently move the sun so anybody can use the controls to direct the nega-fire of Gazul practically anywhere they want. It'll be great once it's finished."
D'you think we can get a spit-take?
I'd love to see a Dwarf version of a spit take.
...Khazalid equivalent of "picking out wedding rings"?
I like that dual meaning and it is now canon.
♥
With his hair hacked down except for a single stripe down the center, the Dwarf will now make the long trip to Karak Kadrin to complete the ceremony that dedicates a Dwarf to the seeking of death in battle. Any Dwarf in the Karaz Ankor would give him food and a night's shelter, and transport if they're going in the direction of the Slayer Keep. It's not necessarily part of the ceremony, as far as you understand. It's more of a symbol of the Oath they intend to take, to show the Clan they think they've dishonoured that he intends to set things right.
I wonder how Dwarves handled Slayerhood before the establishment of Ungrim's line of Slayer Kings, and Karak Kadrin becoming famous as
The Slayer Keep. Its not a section of the lore I'm all that familiar with.
"Karag Lhune was once a quiet corner of the Karak," he says as the two of you walk out of the now-empty Hall, King Belegar's bodyguard shadowing you as unobtrusively as a fully-armoured Dwarf can be. "Filled with the odds bits-and-pieces that couldn't quite fit in the more-populated Mhonar or Rhyn or Zilfin. Temples, airship docks, the school and apprentice barracks, an overflow vault. Now the entire Dwarven population of Karak Eight Peaks fits into the Chiselwards, and could quadruple before we'd need to start excavating new rooms."
And this points out another issue. When we conquer the other peaks the dwarves are going to be spread very thing. Split that current "We could quadruple before needing to excavate" across five more peaks and you get a twentieth. If they spread out they would be
spread. Which is pretty depressing on its own to contemplate.
On the other hand if the worst disaster comes and all Order forces north of Black Fire Pass fall to the End of the World Karak Eight Peaks reclaimed would be a good final bastion for the Dwarf race. Which is morbid as fuck, but its another way to look at it.
You remain silent. If you were honest, you'd have to admit to having had similar thoughts. Only one in four Dwarven children were women, and it was a rare woman that would have more than four children, and she would usually be approaching her hundredth year by the time she does so. That was an awkward fit into a world where greenskins and Skaven and the forces of Chaos and other, more esoteric threats applied a constant attrition.
Others have mentioned this and it isn't really soluble in our life time. Or Belegar's normal Dwarf lifetime. If he decides to outstubborn death itself then he might see it turn around. But really what he's doing here is set up for any eventual children he has.
The Norgrimlings were comfortable in Zhufbar.
Hmm? Oh? Are these guys the Ironbreakers and Irondrakes native to K8P @Boney?
I ask because we were waiting on getting some of both of those before moving on to the next peak.
He remains silent for a while, and then exhales. "It's true. Their reconnection to the Karaz Ankor might not be possible any other way. But I find it difficult to find satisfaction in their Karak when my own is so diminished, and will never be otherwise in my lifetime."
*hugs Belegar*
I'm pretty dang sure we'll figure it out.
The tidings you bear are not related to the Empress, but they're certainly good. For the second time in a year you make your way into Algard's office, and though his table is as clear as ever, the two added pocket dimensions indicate that paperwork may have been piling up while he was engaged in tower-related business in Eight Peaks. "Trouble with the tower?" he asks distractedly, squinting at a parchment covered in numbers.
Oops?
A small smile twitches in the corner of his mouth. "The kind that would have been very bad news, except it ends with 'and you took care of it'?"
"Don't know where you'd get that idea." You take a seat across from him. "I speak, of course, of a full-blown Skaven civil war."
After a moment of thought, he sets the parchment down, and the dimensions of the desk wrinkle for a heartbeat as the parchment slides in the opposite direction of reality and out of sight. "You have my attention."
Lol.
"I've taken a cooperative Clan Moulder prisoner. He seems to still be loyal to the Clan in general, but he ended up on the wrong side of a leadership dispute so he's got no direct ties, and the rest of Clan Moulder got wiped out that day so there's no mundane way the Skaven would know I have him."
"'Mundane'. Good qualifier."
"Thank you. He says, and I believe him to be telling the truth as he understands it, that Clan Pestilens and their subordinates made a play for control once more, and this time Clan Mors sided with them. They've failed but there's been no intercession by the one in charge, so the other Clans are scrambling to finish the job and grab what they can in anticipation that when it does, it'll call a halt to hostilities."
Heh. Also interesting how they're not referring to the Horned Rat by name. Probably same kinda deal as the Chaos Gods names.
"Pestilens, the rest of the Brotherhood, and Mors..." he leans back and stares into space, muttering to himself. "Shame we're only hearing about it in the aftermath, but still... Mousillon, Bastonne. The current Ambassador's a good egg, I'll have a word in his ear. As for here... Ubersreik, of course. And Nuln..." He refocuses on you. "This might be worth having a poke at the Conspiracy of Silence. I'll have a little word with people who'll have a little word with people. If it all ends in disaster pray you never hear a word of it again, but if everything goes as it should this might be a nice little feather in your cap. Needless to say, if your guest spills anything else of interest I want to hear about it."
"Of course, Lord Patriarch," you say with a smile.
He returns it. "You've become quite a credit to the College. Keep it up, young Magister."
EEEEEEE HEADPAT!
A boss headpat too! Exquisite!
The first piece is a rebuttal to Preliminary Observations on the Eusocial Cave Spider, and you frown at the opinionated Amber with a lot of opinions on where the line is drawn between sociality and eusociality, and is quite firmly convinced that the We must fall short of the latter. You flip through the other pages present, and find a counterrebuttal from Esbern and Seija that quite thoroughly puncture the debate presented on its merits without having to bring the We into it at all, which you imagine would be quite necessary with them being somewhere within the forests of the Empire.
And this is another good reason to have fleshed out characters from the Colleges! They can be used by Boney to rebut dumbasses!
Thanks you two!
You flip through a number of reports on attempts at adapting the MAP to other winds, and apart from the Bright College it seems that all attempts were dismal failures, seemingly because their own Winds don't have the natural inclination to flow and pool. But then you flip further and find a sparse few paragraphs in which a Bright College Lord Magister guts your spell, replaces its innards with a few simple flourishes, and sends it on its way, simplified enough for any Apprentice to cast. Following that is eight near-identical letters informing you that your spell has been added to the curricula of all eight Colleges.
[+10 College Favour from Mathilde's MAPP being developed and added to the curricula of the Colleges]
Eeeeee. I am in gleeeeee. I am going to be quite chuffed and pleased when we eveeeeentually get an apprentice and can teach them with this.
Also whoever said they'd fill the halls with 3d porn is entirely accurate and we may well have just precipitated the creation of Hentai: Wizard Version.
She fakes a gag. "Perish the thought. But I'm liking the theme. Leopold's out, not giving the Unfähigers a foothold. Probably be a bit too on-the-nose to go with Sigmar, wouldn't it?"
Hmm I don't know that family name. Possibly Ulricians?
Unfortunately you didn't come all the way to Nuln just to see how much you could make the Princess blush, so after fishing for as many juicy details as she's willing to give, you take her on a jaunt across the border and up the road to Blutdorf. Sadly you've other business elsewhere and can't linger long enough to properly catch up to Anton, but you can make introductions. As the ruler of Blutdorf, he can spread word and vouch for the offer, and as a well-liked figure in local nobility, he can make even further introductions to spread an even further net. And not least of all, he can act as the local node of the EIC to funnel the actually rather stupendous amount of underworked, underpaid, or adventurous weavers within the EIC's sphere of influence that they've gathered the information of.
Kek.
Huh, looks like we rolled good on
getting weavers, but Edda got a bleh trait out of it.
Oh, she operates fine as an ambassador, a representative speaking on behalf of a Dwarven Kingdom, but she doesn't seem to understand how humans operate on every level, and seems limited to speaking her request and seeing what happens, and if she gets any result but acquiescence she's lost. It's not a matter of any sort of dislike, as far as you can tell - you and her get on fine, and you're not just a human but a wizard. It's just that as an administrator, she's used to Dwarves, who can almost always be predicted and when something goes wrong, it's usually in a fairly predictable way. You imagine it must be something like a champion sheepdog being expected to run herd on a cat farm.
Normally it would never be a problem for a Dwarven Princess, but Karak Izor's gambit to put her within marrying range of King Belegar had put her in control of a sizeable and growing human population. Troubling. You tuck away your newly-won insights and move on.
Honestly she's tracking okay at the moment, but I think we should point the problem out to Belegar and suggest Kazrik. It means sticking them together and he's better suited for it going by his traits and his nat 100 on learning Reikspiel that got him those traits. They'd make a great team even if they never become a couple.
And it means giving Karak Azul ties to Karak Izor which was pointed out in this section to have ties to Tilea and Estalia. More places for them to see!
"They're like cats!" Roswita shouts, waving her arms out the window of the briefing room in the general direction of the battlefields of Sylvania. "Every day, someone with fire instead of hair or surrounded by birds or a skull instead of a face wanders in and drops off a Vampire skull or the head of some forest mutant or a cartload of bones and I say thank you and they act like I've thrown a party and named my firstborn after them, and they go off to find something even worse to drag back! Look what they did to my table!"
Oh my god they're like Mathilde.
Oh god.
Pffffffffffffft. *too funny*
Look what they did to my table!"
You consider the small sapling protruding from the wood of the table, its small green leaves stretching towards the window. "I see."
Hahahahaha. Also symbolic.
"I was expecting, I don't know, fire, floods, plague, having to repopulate Sylvania from scratch. Not this... weirdness! Part of Tempelhof got destroyed, and some of them rebuilt it, but refused to rebuild the roofs because 'why would they want the stars obstructed?' and they had to be led away to go bother the Strigoi."
Okay that's kinda cute, and also depressing.
Not building roofs since they're so used to them being overhead.
She subsides and scowls before admitting it. "Yes, and their Primar came all the way here and said if we keep away the Vampires and the wizards, they'll pay taxes and accept whatever authority I put over them. Still got Strigoi and Lahmians to deal with, and it's a stalemate on both fronts so far, but so far there's been nothing unexpected."
"Please! Don't let them come back! We'll happily serve! Just keep the Doom Cat Dorks away!"
Well that's one way to do it.
In your recently-furnished sitting room, you cast an eye over the gathered wizards. "In the past six months, I have weaponized the Hellfire of another race's Hell."
Thoughtful silence greets you. "You can do that?" Adela finally asks, intrigued.
Goddamit Mathilde, opening like this just isn't fucking fair lol.
Setting a great example though.
He smiles. "I killed a troll."
You consider that. "...why?" He stares at you. "Okay, let me unroll that. While sorting out the trolls in Kvinn-Wyr is definitely an entry on the long-term list, there's a lot of things above it. What made you seek out a troll?"
Hmm. *hand to chin*
*ear marks him for the future conquest of Kvyn-Wyr*
I mean he already has experience, unlike the other two. And he's still alive so... *shrugs*
"Picking through the ruins of Clan Moulder," she says, without a hint of self-consciousness.
"That'd explain it. Anything beyond monetary wealth, which I as a Grey Wizard am immune to the allure of?"
I wonder how hard their bullshit detectors just went off when they can just think about her library and how expensive it would have to be.
and skip right to Johann, who's got one of the wolf-rat pups sitting on his shoulder and grooming his hair and another asleep in his palm. "Johann, apart from our favourite puppies, what's been happening?"
Oohaawmigawd *eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee*
I want to see this as art. It is too pure, too beautiful for this world.
Kyut.
"Still stalled on the damn ra- uh, the you-know-what, but I've been working with Panoramia with the ooze we found. It can digest just about anything organic and turn it into... well, more of itself. We're feeding it to some of the cattle and they seem to like it okay, we're up to three months without ill effects at half their diet."
Uh huh. That's rather weird.
"With all the water we could need, I've set up some ponds up against Lhune for the Black Lotuses." She frowns. "Loti?"
"Lotuses," Johann says.
"Loti," Maximilian disagrees.
"Old Reikspiel root, so it pluralizes as loti," Adela says with a satisfied smile.
Pff. Nerds.
If I'm not around, find Wolf and ask him to let you in. It's on this floor, other end of the hallway, to get into the Collegiate section Dispel the lock and replace it on your way out - you all know Dispel and Magic Lock?"
Eeee! Wolf Librarian!
Five yes, one no. Oh, Celestial College. Why must you- well, actually, that one makes sense. No need for locks with prognostication enchantments to prevent thievery. "You've got a one-month grace period where I let you in and out, Hubert. Scrolls are under Sevir, take what you need with you when you leave but return it in good condition or I'm sending a stern letter to your Magister."
Hahahaha, you just played yourself Mathilde.
As for the vote.
[X] [TOWER] Ongoing
[X] [COLLEGE] No purchase.
[X] [DWARF] No purchase.
[X] [PURCHASE] No purchase.
Gotta get all those rough edges offfff~ *singsong*
And I'm completely okay with letting the library sort itself out amongst you folks.
