"There's sure to be other troubles, but we'll deal with them as they come. Now," you pull the cover off the chalkboard you'd prepared earlier, revealing a very rough sketch of the Old World with the known major Waystone nexuses marked. "Obviously the entire problem we're trying to solve is that we don't understand the Waystone network that well, but let's make sure we're all on the same page with what we do know. Have either of you gone through the Waystone course at the Colleges?"
"As an apprentice," Max says uncertainly. "I think I remember some of it."
"I was warned not to try to cast Breach the Unknown on any part of it. Apparently the spell tries to encompass the entire network, and you probably won't survive to see Frederheim."
"On the most basic level, the Waystone network is a worldwide network of artificial leylines that keeps reality from being drowned by the magical energy constantly flowing in from the poles. Without it, the entire world would be in the same state as the Chaos Wastes. All that energy is funnelled over to the Great Vortex at the centre of Ulthuan, and from there..." you tap the question mark at the heart of your sketch of Ulthuan on the chalkboard, floating off the coast of Bretonnia. "Well, our best guess is it's dumped back into the Warp, but we don't know for sure. We think at least some of the energy goes to keeping the island of Ulthuan afloat, and there's a lot of theories about what else they might tap into it for."
"They'd be stupid not to make the most of it," Johann says, nodding.
"Dwarven writing on the subject calls them duplicitous for it, saying they like to paint themselves as noble saviours of the world even though they're benefiting from having access to so much magical energy. But Dwarves aren't exactly unbiased on the matter." You twirl a piece of chalk in your fingers distractedly as you consider the map. "A big part of the mystery is that the network isn't just an Elven creation. The heart of it was supposedly an adaptation of an already-existing network built by precursors to the Elves, which we know basically nothing of. They started building entirely Elven Waystones throughout the world, but that didn't last long until they entered into their Golden Age partnership with the Dwarves and started incorporating Runecraft into the Waystones, and as far as I've been able to uncover, the details of those Runes are no longer known to modern Runesmiths." You sigh. "Dwarven philosophy says that it's better for knowledge to be lost entirely than taught to the unworthy, so they only ever record the least of their secrets. So when they had to turn all their attention to military matters just to survive the Times of Woes, a lot of knowledge was lost simply because there was no time to pass it on even to the deserving. But to acknowledge that would be to acknowledge a major flaw at the very heart of their culture. Modern Dwarves have to choose between seeing their Ancestors as flawed or themselves as undeserving, and most pick the latter."
The silence stretches as you brood on that. "So," Johann eventually says, "Runes are why we don't understand Waystones?"
"Right, Waystones. Well, Runes are a big part of it. The Elves being unwilling to tell us whatever they still know is another - most of what I've just said is pieced together from offhand comments Teclis made to the first Magisters. But a third problem is that there's a lot more to the network than Ulthuan's Waystones, even when you account for the differences between purely Elven and Elven-Dwarven hybrid designs. From the runes found on them, they're believed by most to have been made by early human tribes - Belthani in the west, Scythians in the east."
"They're extinct, aren't they?" Johann asks. "When I was reading up on the Kurgans, the books said that they wiped out the Scythians."
"The Kurgan say they're the inheritors of the Scythians, but it's unclear if that's from descent or conquest. The Kislevites claim that the Gospodars were descendants of the Scythians, but that might just be to bolster their land claims. I've seen theories that the Roppsmenn were Scythian remnants, and others that there are tribes even further east that might be. As for the Belthani, they were variously displaced and absorbed by the Pre-Imperial Tribes when they entered the Reik basin. Some say the beliefs of the Taalites and Rhyans descend from them, or the Damsels do, others say there are still secret cults keeping Belthani beliefs alive, and some say the founders of the Jade or Amber Orders were drawn from them. Some even say there's some secret island off the coast of Bretonnia where the Belthani still thrive, but that's never seemed plausible to me. So if that information is still out there, I'm going to have to try to winkle it out of someone who won't even openly claim they have it."
"Where do the Wood Elves come into this?" Johann asks.
"Eonir," you correct. "They were originally a colony of Ulthuan, and they've indicated they have at least some of the information Ulthuan has, and for reasons I can't get into, I believe them. They've also said that they're willing to share it, which is why we'll be partnering with them. They have a variety of plant they cultivate that acts as a tributary to the Waystone network, though I'm not sure if that was an original part of the network, or if it postdates or even predates it."
Max looks up from the notes he's been taking. "So by my count, you've got four nations, three tribes, four Cults, and two Orders that could all have pieces of the puzzle, and most of them aren't inclined to share, and some of them might not even still exist."
"At least." You hadn't mentioned the Hedgewise, after all.
"Well," he says, "at least it won't be boring."
