The fundamental problem of magical academia - how do you explain something when everyone experiences that thing differently? The Elves of Ulthuan use poetry, a language where every word has a dozen contradictory meanings, and a lifespan measured in centuries. The Colleges find the best results from a Master and Apprentice system, so that the teacher and the student end up with similar magical senses and a solid understanding of where they differ. But the drawback of that is that it makes disseminating information impossible and standardization close to it. So every Wizard who puts quill to parchment ends up turning to metaphor, and every recorded Magesight observation is described through the lens of a more mundane sense. Usually sight, sometimes sound, the more repugnant magics often as smell, and for you, the Waaagh is best described as the taste of metal in your mouth and the feeling of an unpleasant vibration in your bones.
But as fundamental a problem as it is, it's also one that your audience will be familiar with wrestling with. While you do have to filter your observations through metaphor, you don't have to worry about it misleading them the way you would with laymen. So you merely couch your metaphor with a few others from your library - the discordant tones of a Light Order observer, the sensation of half-welcome heat mixed with entirely unwelcome humidity of a Bright Order Battle Wizard, the staccato pulsations of a Runesmith. Those that have felt it for themselves should be able to translate to their own senses, and those that haven't will have to figure it out when they first do. You regret that your Magesight had apparently decided that Waaagh is a flavour, as if it was a sight you could replicate it with your MAPP.
The least intuitive thing about Waaagh energies is that in stark contrast to the beings they arise from, it is entirely predictable and acts more like a mundane gas than the flighty and whimsical energies of the Winds. It is attracted to greenskins, more to those fighting than those not, denser around Bosses in accordance with their place in the hierarchy, and to Warbosses and Shamans most of all. A set of ironclad constants at the centre of the often-anarchic animosity of the greenskins is one of their strengths, but with this lecture you begun to transform it into a weakness. Reliability is vulnerability.
You explain all of this in painstaking detail in the first phase of the lectures, and take a break from there to field questions and talk some of the more prominent attendees into understanding. Those that have faced the Waaagh tend to get it, and those who haven't tend not to, and you begun to wonder if it might be possible to emulate or capture Waaagh energy for teaching purposes.
The second phase of lectures focuses on spell disruption, and where previous attempts went wrong. Your audience remains about the same size but grows in prestige, as Apprentices drop out but Battle Wizards and Lord Magisters read the transcripts so far and decide to see the rest in person. You explain to them that you can't kick away at the foundations when the air is thick with the energy the foundations are built upon, as those energies rush in to fill the void you just created and you may as well have not bothered. But if you blast those loose energies away - much easier than doing so to the energies being actively shaped by a Shaman - then the strength becomes a weakness as the spell begins to dissolve as the energies are drawn to the many small vacuums this results in. Or if you must strike directly, strike at the centre rather than at the foundations, and let the spell collapse inwards, resulting in every facet of it becoming weaker and less controllable, making it possible to combat it more conventionally.
As the phase draws to a close, you explain the most finicky but most potentially devastating method of indirect interference - charging the air with Winds to make it more or less resistant to the Waaagh and thus either direct them away from the Shaman and weaken them, or to them and overload them. This is the least developed possibility for the simple fact that you can and have tested how Waaagh reacts to Ulgu-energized air - very favorable for the Little Waaagh and somewhat unfavorable for the Big - but can't replicate the experiment for the seven other Winds yourself. So you leave that in the hands of your audience, and hope to see a series of supplemental papers emerge in coming years as your colleagues in other Colleges try it for themselves.
The third phase, in your opinion, is where the real meat of the lectures are. This is where you describe not how to merely prevent the casting of hostile magic, but to turn it back on the Shaman and sometimes any greenskins unfortunate enough to be in the blast radius. Enhancement spells being used as a channel to drain away the Waaagh from an area completely and psychologically devastate the greenskins is your personal favourite, but using the previously described air-charging method to steer a spell without touching it directly is pleasingly elegant too. The trickiest part is when a Shaman calls for the direct intervention of Gork or Mork, but while you very much emphasize how inadvisable it would be to try to directly counter a God, the energies a Shaman uses to suggest a target are fair game, and while moving them about without disrupting them would require a great deal of control, just about anyone could muster enough strength to scatter them and leave it up to luck for the God to decide where to intervene. As you're witnessed, They have no compunction against stomping their own believers.
As you're wrapping up the last few lectures and fielding all the questions you have patience for, Algard approaches you one evening. "Very fine work, Magister. But with the adulation taken care of, there's another matter. The Ar-Ulric has asked to see you." A thousand terrible scenarios flash through your mind in an instant, and you make no attempt to keep the expression on your face from showing it. "Believe me, I understand your concern. But the request has gone through the official channels, and I've spoken to the Emperor and Dragomas about it, and if this is a trap of some sort, the Ar-Ulric knows damn well that all eight Colleges will march on Middenheim and the Imperial Army won't do a thing to prevent it."
"Is it an order?" you ask flatly.
"No. He has no authority over you and I won't lend him mine. The decision is yours. But I won't deny that I'm curious, and ever since the trouble with Nordland started the Ulricans have been incredibly tight-lipped, and if you can bring any new information to the table it would be an enormous help."
[ ] Agree to meet the Ar-Ulric.
[ ] Refuse to meet the Ar-Ulric.
- If you do agree, it will take place after this turn is completed. Voting will be open for at least 24 hours, probably longer.
