Dwarf Waystone:
-Capstone: Runic Inductor
-Rune: Carving/Dwarven
-Storage: Material/Runes
-Orbital Mechanism: Dwarven Clockwork
-Leyline: Riverine - Jade
I bet we could do a side deal with the dwarves about the colleges transferring knowledge on wire or thread leylines- if the dwarves just wanted to run between holds to mimic the rest of their system, then trenching and hiding a physical thing seems to fit their skill set well.
I will be forever perplexed by how watching tourism occur could be more popular than checking out the first known instance in history of Elves adopting a human god into their mandala.
Seeing as how they work from the inside, it's a very populist political move as much as it is a cultural and religious one. The basic logic of local, powerful, non-hostile god being incorporated is to really set down roots and differences, another way of declaring independence from the phoenix throne. In that way it's also a sop to the forestborn, in that a god of the local land and seasons is being brought into the city.
I think there's a few really interesting questions that need answers though.
First, how does one mantle Ulric? Who is Ulric, as a personality and a view of the world? What is not already part of the other gods that can be focused on to bring on the mantle? Basically, how does one worship Ulric as an elf?
Second, does Ulric grant power to elves like an elven god or like a human god? Are elves going to be able to start casting from the ulrican lore or is there going to be something novel but semi-equivalent? How does Ulric treat these new worshippers?
Only then do you get to the point of this becoming foreign policy again.
M: Oh we never bothered with that. Instead we made a new one with a river and fetch it out with a waterfall.
Ya know, there's going to be a weird power play in Marienburg as soon as it becomes clear that we are using the rivers as our leylines. The Asur have every reason to try and divert the flow to the marienburg nexus, and the Waystone project knows they want to do it, because they know how useful that volume of power could be.
So the empire's incentive is to grab everything useful out of the flow just before the river crosses out of their control, and to get what they can for but interfering with the elves grabbing the rest.
The Asur have a choice between doubling down on Marienburg or active reproachment with the empire, hidden behind the choice of whether to try and work with the Waystone project on hooking the flow up to the existing leylines, or just doing it themselves as it passes through the city.
And Marienburg has to figure out what is going on, what their interests are, and how to act collectively fast enough that they don't just get bypassed. Because they are for sure going to want a cut.