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Now I really want the Bounty System. Looks like a great way to get books about rare topics and once set up we would constantly get books each turn without investing AP.
It does sound neat. Though with multiple libraries now waiting to have their entire contents copied over, that's probably going to be the priority for KAU actions for the next few turns. Getting everything from the University of Nuln etc is just too big an immediate gain to pass up.
 
It does sound neat. Though with multiple libraries now waiting to have their entire contents copied over, that's probably going to be the priority for KAU actions for the next few turns. Getting everything from the University of Nuln etc is just too big an immediate gain to pass up.

I guess, although otoh it's not like we are in any rush and setting the bounty system earlier would net us more books in the end.

Like, if it's 6AP to copy all the libraries then those would be 5 turns in which we didn't receive books from the bounty system and it'd only delay end of copying all the libraries by 1 single turn
 
Pall of darkness is also a Windsight action to which Eike might contribute.
I'm seriously worried that the 'seeing through Pall of Darkness' action will end up being a waste and that it'll turn out that there's just no seeing through it, sharp Windsight or no. I'm even more worried that Eike will be incapable of benefiting from that action - Mathilde seeing thourgh her own spell is one (imo implausible) thing, Eike seeing through Mathilde's impenetrable darkness is even less likely. Maybe it's worth trying once Eike learns Pall of Darkness herself, but that's probably not going to happen soon, and might not happen at all before Eike's Journeying.
Now that we've got the CF for power stones, I really want to bum rush the AV research, get it and the liminal realms done in the same turn. We're so close to writing the book and then closing the book on the subject, and I am keen as for that.
The Room of Utter Calamity won't come online until turn 43, and we would prefer to wait with the Morbing until it's available since eight Morbs are a whole lot of magic in one place, and while we don't foresee anything going wrong there we also didn't foresee a bird when we used powerstone creation methods on the AV. The liminal research probably can be done without the room, so if we want we can do it next turn, see for example this plan.
 
The reason we hadn't got it going yet is that it'd spark off widespread book thefts, many by people more concerned with a clean escape than books in good condition.

I don't think it'd be a good idea even if we manage to avoid pissing off anyone about it.
Just the idea of priceless first editions or illuminated books sitting in the mud until the thief can break pursuit gives me the chills. And they will because these are the most valuable books. Easier than carting dozens of books all the way to K8P

Heck, one of the classic theft methods is to cut the pages out of the cover and leave the cover as a decoy.
But possibly vulnerable to stopping working if humorism is discredited and the associations forgotten from the public consciousness.
It doesn't have to, humorism's concepts line up heavily with human intuition. Its a story the reader wants to believe.
 
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I guess, although otoh it's not like we are in any rush and setting the bounty system earlier would net us more books in the end.

Like, if it's 6AP to copy all the libraries then those would be 5 turns in which we didn't receive books from the bounty system and it'd only delay end of copying all the libraries by 1 single turn

It's four libraries (The Temple of Verena doesn't have any books, and the Elementalists already gave us theirs), so it would be four actions to copy. Four turns, if we only use the free library AP.

We could spend a normal AP on setting up the bounty system, and we could make it an Eike action to get her in touch with the criminal underworld—very useful skill for a grey wizard, and I reckon a knowledge of smuggling would work well with her logistics traits.
 
I think we should use KAU to get Vlag, they are likely to make magical topics from the fire spire. Once that is over with get to copping. Not to say th the Nuln academies are not bastions of learning, but we are playing a wizard, magic stuff is more interesting to us and our projects than Tilean pike tactics or something.
 
Now I really want the Bounty System. Looks like a great way to get books about rare topics and once set up we would constantly get books each turn without investing AP.
The bounty is for Ranaldians. That means it's essentially "Hey, go and steal books for me". It will definitly get you rare books. It will also get you pissed off people who just discovered KAU mysteriously added a version of their stolen book, shortly after it was stolen.

Honestly, I don't want to burden the poor We with the concept of paying someone to steal someone elses brains, and the nastier interactions between almost-We in Many-Foods. That's... a little too much realpolitik for our precious good boys/girls/spooders just yet.
 
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[X] Gretel
She's apparently getting involved in the Karaz Ankor's ambitions in the Border Princes.
[X] Okri
You've met Loremaster Okri of Karak Eight Peaks once before. Pay him a visit and see how his great ambitions for heavily-armed Ironbreakers delivered by Gyrocarriage are going.
[X] Middenland
See how the Ulricans are going with their new Eonir coreligionists.
[X] Nordland
See what's going on with the Ulrican schismatics that Nordland is backing.
[X] Elementalism
Now that you're sitting on a massive stockpile of magical texts, explore what 'Elementalism' actually is from an inside perspective.
 
Water Elemenentalists worshipping the God of Drowning would be an easy argument for why the entire College needs to be torn down. If they have books on him, they didn't hand them over to the Grey Lady Magister.

...but they did hand over dwarf books on Hashut to Mathilde 'the Dwarf' Weber :V

To be clear I do not say this as an OOC criticism, it makes sense that they would not make that connection as opposed to the much more obvious one with Stormfels I just find it funny that they handed over more than enough rope to hang them with anyway.
 
Like...mmm this does feel like something we should ask the Grey Mages* (the really old Lorelorn ones, not the grey wizards of the colleges.) It is a long shot, and the crown could just be a crown or do something entirely unrelated and I am likely taking too much from Belegar's crown being the thing that seemingly connected Karak 8 peaks back to the network and so many more assumptions, but if the Crown of the Phoenix King did nothing then I'd be surprised.

Not that I'm implying its lost in some way mind, the elves made a new one that they keep under maximum security.

*Not ask Boney since I imagine this is not the sort of thing we'd get an answer on from out of turn questions.
 
The Verenan Library in Nuln is almost unique in that it holds practically no books. Being the Temple of Verena in the biggest concentration of learning facilities on the continent means having their own books would be redundant. They were never going to contribute book to the deal, just the favour or disfavour of the Cult.
I'd have thought that they would specialize in confiscating and collecting all the potentially illegal or problematic books before some other religion's Templars can burn them. Though I guess they would neither advertise that fact nor share any such books with Mathilde even on a good roll.
 
That said @Boney just in case I am being a melon.

I imagine any current approach we can likely think of for why we'd want to examine the crown would be tantamount to admitting that we know of and are investigating the Waystone network (likely to Thorgrim himself), and we have no IC reason to think that is a good idea (not that I can think of an OOC reason to want to do it either.)

My apologies if this is a really stupid question, so to hopefully chase it down with a less stupid one, does our current dwarf...approval? cover something like offering to help out with translating the Dawi's big pile of Skaven stuff?

I had considered suggesting cooperation between the Grey College and the Dawi on that front as well as a combination of our respective piles of Skaven documents with the view of building a more complete skaven lexicon, but I think that's what we call putting the cart before the horse, given that this is secret stuff and the dawi don't trust magic.
 
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The only canon information on them I've ever encountered is that it was very briefly mentioned as where an OP Elf holocron ended up in 1e, so I've decided they either aren't quest canon or it's a particularly aggrandizing name for the College of Elementalists.
It could be early installment weirdness, but there is brief mention of their being a sanctioned school for Magic in Middleheim in the first Gotrek and Felix book.

Felix get's close to a girl whose teacher is a "Sorceress in good standing" who trained in Middleheim. A quick trawl of the wiki found this: Wizards and Alchemists Guild
Which seems to effectively operate as a branch college under the Golds and Lights as of 4th edition.
 
The bounty is for Ranaldians. That means it's essentially "Hey, go and steal books for me". It will definitly get you rare books. It will also get you pissed off people who just discovered KAU mysteriously added a version of their stolen book, shortly after it was stolen.

Honestly, I don't want to burden the poor We with the concept of paying someone to steal someone elses brains, and the nastier interactions between almost-We in Many-Foods. That's... a little too much realpolitik for our precious good boys/girls/spooders just yet.

We could just make copies of said books as soon as we receive them and if anyone comes asking return them the book and even compensate them for their troubles.

As for why we have the book? We just can say we bought it in the dark market or a merchant passed by and sold it to us.

Also I think you're assuming that anyone who gets a book taken will just, immediately, know it's in KAU as if it were extremely obvious which I find it extremely unlikely.
 
I'd have thought that they would specialize in confiscating and collecting all the potentially illegal or problematic books before some other religion's Templars can burn them. Though I guess they would neither advertise that fact nor share any such books with Mathilde even on a good roll.
Would they store such texts in Nuln though? Wouldn't it make more sense to have your private no-read library department stored in a library with actual books (to hide their deliveries) as well as a pre-existing robust guard?
 
That said @Boney just in case I am being a melon.

I imagine any current approach we can likely think of for why we'd want to examine the crown would be tantamount to admitting that we know of and are investigating the Waystone network (likely to Thorgrim himself), and we have no IC reason to think that is a good idea (not that I can think of an OOC reason to want to do it either.)

What's the actual question here?

My apologies if this is a really stupid question, so to hopefully chase it down with a less stupid one, does our current dwarf...approval? cover something like offering to help out with translating the Dawi's big pile of Skaven stuff?

I had considered suggesting cooperation between the Grey College and the Dawi on that front as well as a combination of our respective piles of Skaven documents with the view of building a more complete skaven lexicon, but I think that's what we call putting the cart before the horse, given that this is secret stuff and the dawi don't trust magic.

What would Mathilde be offering to do that the Runescribes Guild of Karaz-a-Karak can't already do?

It could be early installment weirdness, but there is brief mention of their being a sanctioned school for Magic in Middleheim in the first Gotrek and Felix book.

Felix get's close to a girl whose teacher is a "Sorceress in good standing" who trained in Middleheim. A quick trawl of the wiki found this: Wizards and Alchemists Guild
Which seems to effectively operate as a branch college under the Golds and Lights as of 4th edition.

Sure, 1e had different types of magic school dotted all over the place, but even in those books there's no information at all about an Academy of Wizardry in Nuln.
 
We could just make copies of said books as soon as we receive them and if anyone comes asking return them the book and even compensate them for their troubles.

As for why we have the book? We just can say we bought it in the dark market or a merchant passed by and sold it to us.

Also I think you're assuming that anyone who gets a book taken will just, immediately, know it's in KAU as if it were extremely obvious which I find it extremely unlikely.

Knock Knock, it is the cult of Sigmar looking to stoke anti-wizard sentiment out of your stealing books, specifically a grey wizard stealing books. :V

Seriously though any plan for doing crime that starts with 'we will compensate them if they catch us' is a bad one because that is tantamount to admitting it and there are intangible social costs to admitting you are a thief. We would be better off coping them, burning the original and then if someone should come to our door looking for stolen books we say we never heard of such a thing. Keep such stolen tomes out of the public eye for a generation or two and we should be golden to... 'purchase' them legally so they can show up in the public stacks.
 
We could just make copies of said books as soon as we receive them and if anyone comes asking return them the book and even compensate them for their troubles.

As for why we have the book? We just can say we bought it in the dark market or a merchant passed by and sold it to us.

Also I think you're assuming that anyone who gets a book taken will just, immediately, know it's in KAU as if it were extremely obvious which I find it extremely unlikely.
Having the only copy of something is a matter of prestige. If there's another copy freely accessible, and potentially even copyable, it's a lot less prestigious. Especially since now they won't have "Old Rare Book", they'll have "Recent Copy of a Book from a library". Plus, can you be sure the copy you got wasn't modified? Copying errors occur even while doing it honestly, but there's all sorts of potential for deliberate mucking about.

"We bought it and didn't know it was stolen" works as an excuse if it doesn't happen very often. It works less well if it happens semi-consistently. The Verenans already don't like it.

And yeah, it'll probably work out a few times before someone notices. But then you might get a whole bunch of people who had rare books stolen come by to check, and if a whole bunch find things it's a bad look.

And also, our poor spooders shouldn't have to face the ugly reality of things. This is the important thing.
 
What's the actual question here?
Broadly is there any IC justification I am missing here that would make Mathilde think that letting Thorgrim know that we know about the network is anything, but a bad idea?

What would Mathilde be offering to do that the Runescribes Guild of Karaz-a-Karak can't already do?
mmm. I'm possibly just underestimating the efficiency of dwarves, my impression was that they were lacking in trusted personnel to translate the stuff, since Thorgrim ordered his loremaster to use his authority to bring in scholars from Barak Varr and Zhufbar to help translate due to a lack of bodies etc.

As to what she offers, a greater insight into the Skaven mind perhaps? To try and figure out words or documents that are currently impenetrable, but obviously unimportant if that's already resolved.

"We bought it and didn't know it was stolen" works as an excuse if it doesn't happen very often. It works less well if it happens semi-consistently. The Verenans already don't like it.
It also just foments a bad reputation.

If they're willing to steal books to get them in the library what else are they willing to do, that sort of thing.
 
Broadly is there any IC justification I am missing here that would make Mathilde think that letting Thorgrim know that we know about the network is anything, but a bad idea?

There's no information I can think of that the thread doesn't already have to decide whether or not it's a good idea.

mmm. I'm possibly just underestimating the efficiency of dwarves, my impression was that they were lacking in trusted personnel to translate the stuff, since Thorgrim ordered his loremaster to use his authority to bring in scholars from Barak Varr and Zhufbar to help translate due to a lack of bodies etc.

As to what she offers, a greater insight into the Skaven mind perhaps? To try and figure out words or documents that are currently impenetrable, but obviously unimportant if that's already resolved.

Mathilde is only one person. She can't make much of a difference in how long it will take to translate millennia of accumulated documents, not when there's already three Runescribes Guilds contributing people to the project, not if she's only contributing a few weeks of work. She'd need to dedicate years of her life to it to make a discernable difference.
 
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