Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Once you decide to tell most of the truth, it doesn't take much effort to bring the memories, and the emotions, back to the forefront. Most of the hurt has faded, but the bitterness never has. "During the Purge of the Haunted Hills, I saw, and felt, Sigmar's intervention multiple times. Most notably in the Battle of Fang Island, where it struck down a great deal of Undead, including the Strigoi vampire known as the Singing King. Brother Kasmir channelled the might of Sigmar with considerable skill and finesse, before, during, and after that campaign. In fact, the only time I ever saw him fail to do so is when he called on it to heal Abelhelm Van Hal."

"Ah," Starke says. "I think I see." By how guarded his expression has suddenly become, you suspect that either he doesn't, or he does extremely well.

"Abelhelm was a great man, and I admired him a great deal. After he had been allowed to die..." You sigh. "Well, I did have good reasons for seeking a new patron for the Watch, but the way I responded when they did not cooperate was entirely down to my personal feelings at the time."

He nods and leans forward to start writing. "Entirely understandable. A lot of Journeymen have done much more, and for worse reasons." His expression of concentration as he writes is more natural than the poker face he had before, but gives just as little away.

"I hope this will be the last I hear of the matter."

"It should be," Starke says distractedly. "I do not foresee a time when we have nothing more important to deal with than a few disgruntled former thief-takers. I would not have brought it up at all if we weren't in the business of guarding against the unforeseen."

You nod and rise, giving Starke a thoughtful look before you leave. Somewhere in the Grey College there must be a room filled with documents like the one he is now working on, filled with details of embarrassing missteps by prominent Wizards and the way best to explain them away should they come to light. This is, you suppose, a requirement of being the Order tasked with wielding a Wind so easy to misuse - that those who wield it must be above suspicion. Such a reputation must take a great deal of very careful maintenance.

You let your mind linger on that as a welcome distraction while your emotions settle. The memories of Abelhelm's passing are a lot easier to call up than they are to dismiss.

---

In Karak Eight Peaks, Kvinn-Wyr is a hive of industrious activity. The excavation crews, drawn from the local mining population, have begun work on what is to be the fifth hall. In the fourth, masons have begun work on the rough edges of the pickmarked stone with chisels and polishing pads to create the smooth surfaces of the finished rooms. In the third, flagstones are being laid out to protect the natural stone from the wear of passing feet. In the second, metalsmiths are laying down an inset pattern of branching minecart tracks in gaps left between the flagstones, with masons following behind and filling the space between the tracks with cobblestone.

And in the first hall, the prototype of the first bookcase waits for your approval.

Your priority was simple: everything goes in its section. Simple enough at first glance, but it gets trickier as your collection grows more diverse and esoteric. A regular shelf is fine for the products of Altdorf booksellers, but what about older, more delicate books that need to lie flat, lest gravity wrest the pages free from the grip of fraying threads and decaying glue? What about scrolls and tablets and slips? What about monstrously oversized tomes like the Modest Treatise? What about things like tapestries and rubbings? The usual answer is to put them in storage and then inevitably forget about them, while the less bad answer is to transfer everything into book format and simply accept a certain amount of copying errors creeping in. You, however, are building a library that will be beyond the usual ravages of budget and necessity. While this does mean you will have the power to create a bespoke solution for every oddity and edge case you encounter, a certain amount of uniformity is still preferable for the sake of efficiency and aesthetics.

Enter this: the Mark One 'Kvinn' Wheeled Modular Bookcase.

The skeleton of the Kvinn looks very much like a short and sturdy stone bookcase with the shelves removed, and it theoretically could be used that way, and perhaps sections could be set up for copies of the more in-demand books if the library starts to attract enough visitors that individual tomes could become bottlenecks. But for the initial collection, your priority is that everything will stay where it is left until it is needed, whether that be an hour or a week or a century later, and over a long enough time period the forces of gravity, moving air, ambient damp, and the friction of books being pulled out and returned begins to accumulate. So in place of shelves can go an array of other carefully-crafted modules. For most books, labelled sliding shelves of varying size will be the answer, with individually-crafted felt-lined cavities for each item. A clever latching mechanism leaves a handle visibly protruding if a shelf isn't fully closed and locked in place, and it requires the proper weight inside of it before it will allow itself to be latched. This is intended to be more a proof against misplaced books than a security mechanism, and it can be replaced with a key lock for the more valuable or dangerous tomes. A similar module has been designed for holding scrolls of various widths and diameters, and as a proof of concept, purpose-built modules for containing various awkward items ranging from a broken pick to a large boulder have been roughly hewn from scrap stone to demonstrate that the system could be adjusted to almost any contents.

There is another, subtler bugbear of would-be librarians who yearn for order: that of expansion. Dedicating a shelf to a single topic is all well and good, but as you acquire more document you reach the limit of that shelf. The question can be put off by balancing additional books atop the row of spines, but eventually one must succumb to the inevitable and displace the contents of an adjoining shelf. This is annoying on a personal scale, but could be disastrous on the scale of a library that wishes to maintain proper order. The displaced shelf must displace another, and that a third, until the displacement dominoes through the entire contents of the hall it is in. And this would happen every time a shelf reaches capacity. Well, this is where the minecart tracks come in. Each bookcase will be dedicated to a single category only, and when one reaches the capacity of its case, a new one can be wheeled in. A single moderately-fit librarian with a can of axle grease and the key to release the locking mechanism of the wheels could move entire bookcases around with ease, and with no risk to the secured contents.

At a stroke, the Kvinn solves a great variety of potential problems. In exchange the amount of space it will take up and the amount of effort it will take to build them is greatly increased, but that is the benefit of being bankrolled by a King: not only does Belegar have the wealth to afford this, it actually isn't that expensive to him because all the labour is being drawn from the local population, with local mining, mason, and metalsmithing clans paying labour in lieu of their usual tax obligations. And the physical space, usually the most expensive component of any library located in a city, is something the Karak actually has too much of, and it laying empty is a vulnerability. You consider suggesting a taller bookcase, noting that it is shorter than even the ones you use personally, but leave it unsaid. A height ideal for human sizes would be awkwardly tall to Dwarven and Halfling patrons, and a human can kneel easier than a Dwarf can find a stepladder.

You give the Kvinn your approval, and seal the fate of a great many blocks of quarried stone.

---

Library Purchases:
[ ] [LIBRARY] Colleges of Magic: name four magical, non-divine topics to acquire all available Empire books on.
[ ] [LIBRARY] Barak Varr booksellers: name three public topics to acquire all available Empire and Dwarven books on.
[ ] [LIBRARY] Library of Mournings: name two non-magical topics to hire Cityborn scribes to copy all available Laurelorn books on.
[ ] [LIBRARY] Back-fill.
Instead of seeking books on specific topics, fill in some of the sections of your existing library where you have some of the available books from the Empire and the Dwarves on a subject, but not all. Will acquire more books total than other options, but cannot be directed.

Dwarf Favour Purchases
Aethyric Vitae can be spent instead of favour at an exchange rate of 3 favour per gallon; for Rune-related purchases, this will also guarantee the cooperation of Runelords who may otherwise be disinterested. To use this, simply add 'paid by Vitae' or similar to an item you are voting for.
[ ] [DWARF] No purchase.
[ ] [DWARF] Write-in.

College Favour Purchases
[ ] [COLLEGE] No purchase.
[ ] [COLLEGE] Write-in.

Other Purchases
[ ] [PURCHASE] No purchase.
[ ] [PURCHASE] Write-in.


- There will be a three hour moratorium.