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No, those are actual experts, not 10 year olds. I'm still not 100% sure how much more exactly they could do for us though magic wise however, since a lot of the stuff we're interested in requires our extremely advanced magesight to properly study. They would come pretrained with the skills to help wizards do their work though. So the question would be if they advantage they bring in is worth the time cost of directing them and favor cost of keeping them hired.

This is the big unknown. What would be a reasonable break even cost for you? Two Research Actions per AP? Three?

Remember, time is precious for Mathilde, both in world and from the mechanical perspective. And the complexity of her research is only going to grow, not shrink so the past is not a reliable guide to the future.
 
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This is the big unknown. What would be a reasonable break even cost for you? Two Research Actions per AP? Three?

I'm not even a huge fan of research but even two for one would be enough. I think it's unlikely to work out that way though, both because in universe I'm skeptical the value add is that strong. Also though due to the fact it adds more stuff Boney has to write each turn. I was surprised even the Serenity tower was allowed honestly.
 
Also though due to the fact it adds more stuff Boney has to write each turn. I was surprised even the Serenity tower was allowed honestly.

Even one turn of two research actions per Single Ap would effectively clear space for saving the coins in the vault.

So is saving the coins worth 2 college favors?

Given thread politics dictates Research actions are needed for a plan to win right now, it might really be worth 2 or even 4 college favors to buy one more Research action in a previous turn and therefore free up one action to save the coins in a subsequent turn.

Are these rare coins worth two college favor? Even four. I am for saving those coins, so even one turn of additional research actions per AP for two college favor, so we can take the coin action seems very much worth it.

On the other issue, often two closely related actions are often folded into one cohesive narrative. I believe many of our Project Queekish turns unfolded that way. I suspect that is the reason why our Qrech gambits are free- because of the automatic synergy.

Actually, narrative length and the writing tax is a strong argument for synergistic actions, because it makes it easier to condense two actions into one scene.

So yes, there is abit more complexity to the tax of writing than just more actions equals more words. Two interrelated actions may well save words in the net aggregate. So if this was the concern, then the two research actions could only be allowed from the same project, where the likelihood of both actions being foldable into one scene is very high.


The justification probably would be economies of scale - asking a grunt to switch from one subject to another would reduces the manhour savings from said Grunt because he cannot use the preparations for one subject for a second action taken to a different subject.
 
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Even one turn of two research actions per Single Ap would effectively clear space for saving the coins in the vault.

So is saving the coins worth 2 college favors?

Given thread politics dictates Research actions are needed for a plan to win right now, it might really be worth 2 or even 4 college favors to buy one more Research action in a previous turn and therefore free up one action to save the coins in a subsequent turn.

Are these rare coins worth two college favor? Even four. I am for saving those coins, so even one turn of additional research actions per AP for two college favor, so we can take the coin action seems very much worth it.

On the other issue, often two closely related actions are often folded into one cohesive narrative. I believe many of our Project Queekish turns unfolded that way. I suspect that is the reason why our Qrech gambits are free- because of the automatic synergy.

Actually, narrative length and the writing tax is a strong argument for synergistic actions, because it makes it easier to condense two actions into one scene.

So yes, there is abit more complexity to the tax of writing than just more actions equals more words. Two interrelated actions may well save words in the net aggregate. So if this was the concern, then the two research actions could only be allowed from the same project, where the likelihood of both actions being foldable into one scene is very high.


The justification probably would be economies of scale - asking a grunt to switch from one subject to another would reduces the manhour savings from said Grunt because he cannot use the preparations for one subject for a second action taken to a different subject.
Well if we want to increase research well not adding to the writing workload the thing to do would be for every research task we can assign the apprentice is a related task. So do two AV tasks or assign the apprentice to write a paper about the research as it is being done.
 
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[X] Plan Dictionaries now, powerstones for AV stuff and jazz
[X] Spoken Queekish with better gambits
[X] Plan: Spoken Queekish v4 with Better Max
[X] Plan: Spoken Queekish v4 with Better Max and Better Paper
 
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Well if we want to increase research well not added writing workload the thing to do would be for every research task we can assign the apprentice to a related related task. So do two AV tasks or assign the apprentice to write a paper about the research as it is being done.

@BoneyM

In the context of the recent discussions, what are the benefits of hiring a Perpetual Apprentice as a Research Assistance, for the efficiency of our research actions?

1. Does he or she increase the amount of Research Actions we can take in a single AP, by contributing her manhours to the lower level grunt work of research, such as procuring materials, cleaning after experiments, sorting through correspondence, identifying relevant literature in our library collection, making backups of our results, running messengers, making arrangements with printers and publishers on our behalf, and so on? If so, how much more would he or she help the amount of research we can conduct per turn? Does he or she grant a bonus to rolls, or just a bonus to how many research actions we can take due to his/her manhours? It seems more likely to me it's an action economy bonus rather than a roll bonus, since it's administrative/menial manhours being brought to the table and less so expertise.

2. Is there any other cost to hiring and using a Perpetual apprentice, besides the two college favors per turn? For example, does it cost AP to use him or her on top of the AP we use for research assistants, or do we simply straight out apply him or her to the AP we spend on Research actions, because any sufficiently experienced lab tech/Research assistant among the Grey College generally doesn't need close supervision for low level, time-consuming grunt work?

3. Assuming no Articles of Magic are breached, are there any risks that a Perpetual Apprentice Research Assistant from the Grey College would breach confidentiality and leak experimental results to other scholars without our knowledge? I'd like to think because it's the Grey College, and Integrity is very important for Shadowmancers, Mathilde can be confident of the integrity of any research assistant she manages to recruit from the Grey College, but it won't hurt to confirm.


4. What else can we direct a Perpetual Apprentice research assistant do besides helping us with contributing his/her manhours to time consuming menial and grunt work in our Research, assuming we take no research actions per turn? For example, can he/she help us sort out the coins if we choose to save them?

5. Does Lord Magistership make it cheaper favor-wise to hire perpetual apprentice research assistants and maybe even Journeymen due to the cost?

6. Must we hire a Prepetual Apprentice for a whole year, or can we hire him/her on a six months period?


The key reason I'm asking this, is because we might need to free up an AP for the Coin action somehow, and I was wondering if the Perpetual apprentice can help by helping Mathilde to take more than one Basic non-job related action per turn , in order to free up the AP on the turn needed to save the coins. I do think that saving the coins might be worth the 2-4 College Favors it takes to shuffle effective AP across turns, just for the sheer unqiue historical value of these coins.

Edit: Even better, can we just hire an Assistant from the College to handle the various low-level, low-skilled menial aspects of our actions that turn, so that we can carve out enough time from our schedue that particular six months turn in order to save the coins?

Something like this for the next purchase votes until the Coin option expires:

[ ] Hire a Perpetual Apprentice from the College as a personal assistant for six months to deal with the more menial aspects of your activities, in order to allow you to save enough time from your schedule to save the coins (Will make saving the coins a free action next turn, 2 College Favors).


Also, the more I think of it, a very elegant way to represent the general effects a Research Assistant has in saving Mathilde, is to have the Research Assistant allow Mathilde to take one additional overwork action without advancing the Overwork bar, to represent the broad and general time-saves and the manhour of said RA on reducing the menial drains on Mathilde's time. Basically, Mathilde can plunk down two college favors to allow herself to squeeze in an additional action without costing her sleep, or rest time, as some of the busy admin and menial work she normally does alone is taken over by the RA. One could purchase a free-overwork by using College Favors to hire an Igor perpetual apprentice. That may be the easiest way to portray the general effects a RA has on Mathilde's time - you can't ask the RA to take an independent action like you might a journeyman, but the RA saves Mathilde time in the background with the off-screen menial aspects of her activities that aren't interesting to write, but most certainly eat up Mathilde's time.

If this effect is too powerful or weak, there are ways to scale the effect up or down, for example, to rule that Prepetual Apprentices can only tank the impact of one overwork once a year (ie once every two turns), or if the Prepetual is applied directly to an action as opposed to helping Mathilde in sundry menial work in general, you can't use the Prepetual to tank the overwork.
 
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I honestly can't see why you guys think a perpetual would help. Most of the stuff Mathilde researches are complex magical interactions, the sort of things you need high learning and good windsight to handle and perpetuals are magical failures, not enough ambition or not enough control to advance to journeyman. Given that one of them would have to consent to come to K8P to work with us we would get one of the perpetuals lacking magical control. I don't know about you guys but I do not want someone like that around Mathilde's many dangerous magical projects.
 
Uh guys, I get thats its been a while, but BoneyM had explicitly come out with it before, an apprentice wouldn't cost AP(and likely doesn't generate much AP). We're not getting "fresh from the streets" apprentices here, Mathilde is an active employed magister in a border region, not a college academic.

The Grey College is aware of the difficulties of having an apprentice for a working Grey agent, and they will assign apprentices who have already completed basic education and training in magic, but have yet to achieve sufficient magical mastery or practical experience to graduate into Journeymen.

Its, in modern terms, the equivalent of an internship before you graduate, where you go to a real working environment and see a pro work to pick up the informal tricks and make sure they're reliable before sending them on their Journey.

Which basically means that while we spend some time mentoring them they make up for the lost time by doing chores like preparing lab equipment, fetching books, and being assigned particularly tedious bits of paper writing(anyone who've done research assistant work gets the idea, collating surveys and statistics requires someone knowledgeable in the field, is basically impossible to fuck up and sometimes involves literally being told to watch paint dry and document it).
 
Uh guys, I get thats its been a while, but BoneyM had explicitly come out with it before, an apprentice wouldn't cost AP(and likely doesn't generate much AP). We're not getting "fresh from the streets" apprentices here, Mathilde is an active employed magister in a border region, not a college academic.

The Grey College is aware of the difficulties of having an apprentice for a working Grey agent, and they will assign apprentices who have already completed basic education and training in magic, but have yet to achieve sufficient magical mastery or practical experience to graduate into Journeymen.

Its, in modern terms, the equivalent of an internship before you graduate, where you go to a real working environment and see a pro work to pick up the informal tricks and make sure they're reliable before sending them on their Journey.

Which basically means that while we spend some time mentoring them they make up for the lost time by doing chores like preparing lab equipment, fetching books, and being assigned particularly tedious bits of paper writing(anyone who've done research assistant work gets the idea, collating surveys and statistics requires someone knowledgeable in the field, is basically impossible to fuck up and sometimes involves literally being told to watch paint dry and document it).
Maybe I'm too much of a dwarf, but if we're going to get an apprentice, I wanna to it properly.
 
Uh guys, I get thats its been a while, but BoneyM had explicitly come out with it before, an apprentice wouldn't cost AP(and likely doesn't generate much AP). We're not getting "fresh from the streets" apprentices here, Mathilde is an active employed magister in a border region, not a college academic.

Maybe it will not cost AP but it will cost narrative space and more writing from the GM when he could be dedicating it to other characters. Personally I do not think we need one more new character to take up that space. Maybe when one or more of the Ducklings decide to leave.
 
Preferred Votes:
[X] Plan: Spoken Queekish v4 with Better Max
[X] Plan: Spoken Queekish v4 with Better Max and Better Paper

Approval Vote:
[X] Plan: Spoken Queekish and AV preliminary research done. V3
Different choices for the Ducklings and Serenity paper which make it a less attractive plan for me.
 
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[X] Plan: Spoken Queekish v4
[X] Plan: Spoken Queekish with better gambits
[X] Plan: Spoken Queekish v4 with convincing

RE Apprentices: given how the thread convinced itself that Johan's research is our problem, I am skeptical of any suggestion that posits that adding a new character will free more time, instead of trying to take the new character's desires as Mathilde's burden.
 
Crows are sacred to Ranald? I didn't know that.

Qrech was being useful. No, not only that, he made a real piece of art. He's actually been making it for some time now, but only now do I realize the significance.
What a unique thing that must be, in a world outside of Skavenblight, and how tragic in its implications.

Oh. Oh, my. If the Division of Arts's proposed sketches imply what I think they imply, that's entirely too much hardcore romance for the poor, sheltered Mathilde. Shallya's priesthood definitely probably wouldn't approve, and even wiping out all the Necromancers in the world wouldn't save Mathilde from Morr's wrath.

I do like the end result. It sounds very peaceful and wholesome. Beautiful imagery.
...didn't realize it until you said it, I went back and checked and...right thats one interpretation of a vessel that brings life alright...


...Ranald would totes do it through, cunning rogue that he is.
The Barrows are... iron ore? Silver ore? I can't remember. I hope at least one of the old mines is a gromril one.
The gromril mine WAS the Under-Citadel, and long mined out. Based on that its possible that theres more in the Trench.
It's odd for Belegar's mindset, and foolish imho, to ignore Valaya as that. Especially as Mhonar is safe and empty, save for Bok. Out of all the Ancestor-Gods, Valaya's domain is the one most in tune with Belegar's aim.
I hope he has a plan in reserve that explains his reasoning.

Gunnars also doesn't seem at ease with Belegar's decision.
Not quite. Gunnar approves once he heard the reasoning.
Valaya would be quite poorly served with a temple in an empty hold. Inauspicious. Likewise, putting a new grand temple to Valaya in Grimnir peak sends all the wrong messages.

Thus the only reasonable recourse was to wait until Mhonar is properly repopulated, and we aren't housing the majority of our dwarf population above the mass graves.
Ah, I meant the Bank vault.

It wouldn't have surprised me much. I could easily see them selling some off and the "closing" of the bank ensuring that no one could ever collect.
Belegar was pretty clear: the account holders died, their heirs died, THEN after holding the accounts active for a very long time, Karak Eight Peaks died.
Crows are like Ranald. They like shinies, they are social, they attack people who bully them as a group, they seem ominous and evil while actually being some of the most lovable and unquestionably good aligned animals... What's not to Ranald?
Fun fact, the local corvids have learned how to imitate car horns and engine noises.

I saw one imitate a car alarm once to scare the shit out of a cat.
Gentledwarves, it is time.

Time to introduce the We to romance novels.
How would we frame it?
I don't think in terms of reproduction, since the We's reproduction is essentially self manipulation.

A Romance, from the perspective of the We, should have the mating at the end as the least important part. The important part is two equal persons probing each other for suitability of union!
It's hard to know the exact limits of wind-herder, but while "Making them keep a safe distance from each other" could be logic'd to being able to use one to manipulate another (Surround a blob of Shyish with a cone of Ulgu and push it forward like magnets?) It's a pretty high end interpretation of what's possible.
Naw, like, if the winds overlap, Dhar will likely form.
But you could say, use Ulgu to manipulate Shyish by inducing existential terror so Shyish reacts to that(fear overlaps with both).

So, now that Qrech has made a contribution to a Ranald Shrine unknowingly, can we start the conversion? Otherwise we would have to eventually kill him, because we can't let him loose to return to the Skaven.
No? Going head to head with the Horned Rat in this manner is a bad idea.

And theres no reason to let him free, keep him in comfort and captivity for the rest of his days. Nobody knows he exists and he's not feeling any desire to invoke the Horned Rat, end his comfort and potentially be very dead.

Added EIC option:
[ ] Sell some of the Grand Urbaz Bank coins to collectors and museums.

As with the other related option, it will be available until the smelting.
Nice.
Trickle pacing the coins out to collectors should help amplify the wealth, at least until we exhaust the market's willingness to spend.

Wilhelmina probably could get some collectors to sign over their grandmothers for the rarer pieces.
He was working on a system to help defend the underground sections of the Karak. It likely was going to use pipes and boiling steam to cook enemies alive. The newly reclaimed Karak is just too big for such a system right now. He might revisit it later but standard dwarf defenses will have to do now.
It does seem quite hard to boil that much water.
Or stock that much water.
Physiological needs- these are biological requirements for human survival, e.g. air, food, drink, shelter, clothing, warmth, sex, sleep.
  1. Mostly met we have a great tower. Although our sex life sucks. Unfortunately not a problem that money or a boon is likely to fix very well.
A friend of mine tried it. He does not recommend. Buying sex is generally inferior to masturbation as far as meeting needs goes.
Enchantment probably could help!
Besides the Prestige and freedom from tithing, what else would a Lord Magistership bring us?

Cheaper College classes? Unrestricted access to more sensitive material? Cheaper cost of hiring assistants from the Colleges because of the prestige of working for a Lord Magister on one's CV? Higher favor income from renting out one's service to Elector Counts for specific jobs?

Because these sort of arguments boil down to: Lord Magistership is valuable versus Lord Magistership is poor value for Great Deed value. Without knowing some of the benefits of Lord Magistership, which side is right boils down to a matter of speculations and assertions.
Don't have WoG on it but from the description we can surmise:
-Enhanced authority, a Lord Magister is empowered to make limited deals on behalf of the Empire and to represent the Empire without any more prior arrangement than the title. If they made you a Lord Magister they trust you to make the right call or to not make a call at all.

-Reduced restrictions. Laws and rules apply more laxly, or at least you'd be more likely to be allowed to explain yourself before they pass judgment. A Wizard Lord is likely permitted to cast spells whenever they want, as people who cast spells irresponsibly don't get to be Wizard Lords unless they ALSO are of such personal power they can't be made to answer for their actions.

-Enhanced prestige. Note the clause on spending Favor to get people to help for your projects being cheaper if the other party is interested. A Lord Magister has the kind of prestige that they don't need to spend as much college favor to get people working with them, though this isn't a reliable measure.
--At the least, you're an object of respect and emulation, so finding people who are interested in the right field and hype to work with you is muc heasier.

-You do get paid a lot more, but most people who reach Lord Magister usually are beyond caring much for the specific moneys.

Oh right, votes lets see...I'm so so late that making a plan is a waste of time, diving right in:
[X] Plan: Spoken Queekish and AV preliminary research done. V3
[X] Plan: Save the History! also AV and Job I guess...
[X] Plan: Save the History! also AV and Job I guess... V2

Closest to what I want for now.
 
He said he wants Queekish. He gives Mathilde a lot of latitude, and it's up to her to decide what she can reasonably deliver. He won't complain if what arrives on his metaphorical desk is just the written language, but nor will he consider it an overreach if he gets the spoken language too.
I love how Belegar has just come to expect Mathilde to pull off ridiculous coups like this, not so much because he's demanding, but because he thinks she's just that good.

"Going to build a magic tower that weaponizes a mountain to slaughter en masse? Have at it! Here's a blank check."

"You captured a skaven and think you can learn from it? I want a lexicon on their language on my desk by Tuesday."

It's pretty heartwarming to see, too. For a dwarf king to unreservedly trust a human's reliability and capability in such an enormous way without hesitation says so much about Mathilde's relationship with him.

---

I also loved the bit about how the grumbling dwarf builders suddenly became a lot happier when tasked with building Mathilde's vault. Yeah, it makes sense that vaults have a special and very positive connotation with dwarves. Building a new one (when there are so many old ones still around) must be a novel and highly appreciated opportunity for them.
 
[X] Plan: Spoken Queekish and AV preliminary research done. V3
[X] Plan: Save the History! also AV and Job I guess...
[X] Plan: Save the History! also AV and Job I guess... V2
 
Don't have WoG on it but from the description we can surmise:
-Enhanced authority, a Lord Magister is empowered to make limited deals on behalf of the Empire and to represent the Empire without any more prior arrangement than the title. If they made you a Lord Magister they trust you to make the right call or to not make a call at all.

It won't surprise me if, from Algard's perspective, the incoming potential collaboration with the Eonir is a crucial test of how well Mathilde might be able to handle that level of power. Of course, as Mathilde's involvement in high politics potentially increases, this ability may well come increasingly useful. Also, considering Mathilde's Xeno-affinity trait, and the very real prospect that Mathilde would eventually leave the Karaz Ankor years down the line, this authority may well become either very handy.... or a very weighty responsibility in many situations.

The way I see it, cashing it on a Great Deed on Lord Magistership is treating the Great Deed like a trump card. Ordinarily, a Magister clearly on the path to Lord Magistership with time may well simply continue what they are doing to get them this far, and practice patience. But it may so happen, that the limited power to represent the Empire might eventually become very handy to address a potential opportunity or a potential crisis within this arc or the next. So while ordinarily, the thread might never think of cashing the Great Deed to grab that Lord Magistership early, it may well be that circumstances (and it's easy to see how that might happen) makes an early Lord Magistership one potential solution to quickly cut through the Gordian's knot of a political problem. It won't surprise me if BoneyM presents us a political dilemma where actually getting early Lord Magistership with a Great Deed is a serious, and viable solution.

Now I think of it, Redshirt is right, we need to work on our diplo stat - sooner, rather than later, and maybe with the same urgency as Waystones.

-Reduced restrictions. Laws and rules apply more laxly, or at least you'd be more likely to be allowed to explain yourself before they pass judgment. A Wizard Lord is likely permitted to cast spells whenever they want, as people who cast spells irresponsibly don't get to be Wizard Lords unless they ALSO are of such personal power they can't be made to answer for their actions.

Paging @Omegahugger : this might be something you are interested in. :cool:

This is partly an Academic Issue, but given how closely Windherder stays just on the right side of the line of the Articles, I feel that it might be genuinely wise to wait for Lord Magistership before seriously exploring Serial Multi-wind Casting further. There are alot of our Moonshot research lines of inquiry here that probably would become less potentially politically risky (though the distance of the Eight Peaks and Belegar's trust in us helps) that our traits make possible, where the greater laxity of Lord Magistership probably gives Mathilde a far larger margin of safety.

-Enhanced prestige. Note the clause on spending Favor to get people to help for your projects being cheaper if the other party is interested. A Lord Magister has the kind of prestige that they don't need to spend as much college favor to get people working with them, though this isn't a reliable measure.
--At the least, you're an object of respect and emulation, so finding people who are interested in the right field and hype to work with you is much easier.

You do get paid a lot more, but most people who reach Lord Magister usually are beyond caring much for the specific monies.

As we are beginning to see with Mathilde, even Magisters on the road to Lord Magistership likely snowball to the point where favor acquisition and GC acquisition no longer poses a truly onerous concern, if one was to exert the time needed to earn such favor.

I think part of the problem we haven't seen what the benefits of this situational ability to more easily requisition manpower, is that so far, we haven't really tried to see what dropping College Favor to get people in your project can really do for Mathilde, aside from the Tower of Gazul which is an upper end-use case banked rolled by Belegar. But I do think that there is a very real possibility that even something as simple as hiring a Research Assistant/Lab Tech/Personal Assistant from a Prepetual in the Grey College can go a very long way in improving Mathilde's capabilities to do more with her time, which at the end of the day, is what AP hell really is. There is a very good reason why influential people with many responsibilities hire personal assistants, and I get the feeling Mathilde is reaching the point where a PA/RA to handle the various lower level time-consuming (preparing experimental material, cleaning up after experiments, running down to the publishers, passing messengers, getting testers off the streets, sorting and filtering Correspondance, searching for relevant literature, sending and collecting publications from the printers, helping with sundry domestic tasks in a large home, the list goes on) aspects of some of her actions can have some impact on AP Hell, which at the end of the day simply is an abstraction of Mathilde's limited woman-hours.

I think the only question, is the favor exchange rate actually worth it, for the benefits it might bring to Mathilde's time constraints? For example, if Mathilde wants to save the coins, would the manhours saved on her research project help Mathilde carve out the time to take a look at the coins from her AP Hell? Because to be honest, if the effective exchange is 4 College Favors to carve out that one AP needed to save the coins without having to sacrifice on too many actions Mathilde wants to do, that expenditure might be really worth it.

Needless to say, the equation probably becomes even more worth it once Mathilde reaches Lord Magistership for a simple reason: Windherder. She's eventually going to need to ask for at least journeymen in the College.
 
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