- Location
- Actually pretty lost
Honestly, that's a solid point. It rather undercuts the political messaging.
The non-"reverse engineered" version does have a Runed storage system, so I guess we're hoping that pulls ahead.
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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
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- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
The non-"reverse engineered" version does have a Runed storage system, so I guess we're hoping that pulls ahead.
Fortunately, as CrimsonOddball kindly provided the quote to prove directly above your post, it's not the case, so if we use this design all those new generation Waystones will be partially the work of a dwarven runesmith, which get the political message of the values of cooperation across quite nicely.
And if that level of engagement was good enough for their ancestors in the Golden Age, I'm pretty sure the modern dwarves will be quite content to have equalled their achievement.
K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
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That's assuming many of them would do so. There's at most 20 High Mages in Laurelorn, so it's unlikely there's many more Archmages. And they will also be busy making the flowers.
There's freaking 20 archmages at most, while there is likely hundreds of runesmiths. That's hardly comparable. We can more easily find free runesmiths than free Archmages given the disparity, even if some are busy with the reclamation.
Again, freaking 20 archmages.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
The Reik and its tributaries aren't prone to meandering. Cities founded in the time of Sigmar were built on the ruins of cities founded in the time of Bel Shanaar, and the rivers haven't abandoned any of them.
She is not Von Tarnus.
It's a real shame that Eike didn't roll well enough to be talented at Enchanting, as that trait paired with Natural Alchemist could take her interesting places.
Demand as well as supply matters. If there are a couple of hundred runesmiths who can theoretically make the storage runes but 90% of them are booked solid making gear for the Silver Road War for the next decade, it adds up to the same throughput.
This is likely to be an extraordinarily busy time for a group whose baseline is to to have no free capacity.
To illustrate, look at it from the Thorgrim Negaverse's point of view. While Waystones are doubtlessly important, are they as urgent as war prep?
As an example, say you have two units of deployable runesmith capacity
In a decade, you're going on a major, potentially risky war.
You have two choices:
1) Deploy one unit of runesmiths on Waystones and one on war prep for the next decade, and then deploy one on Waystones for the second decade and one on the many other things they can do
2) Deploy both units of runestones on war prep for the first decade and then both on Waystones for the second decade.
It would be pretty attractive to pick option 2, as it ends up producing the same number of Waystones in total after two decades but makes the war more likely to go well.
You're also not factoring in the possibility of getting Ulthuani archmages to make batteries for us, which may be possible.
Demand as well as supply matters. If there are a couple of hundred runesmiths who can theoretically make the storage runes but 90% of them are booked solid making gear for the Silver Road War for the next decade, it adds up to the same throughput.
This is likely to be an extraordinarily busy time for a group whose baseline is to to have no free capacity.
To illustrate, look at it from the Thorgrim Negaverse's point of view. While Waystones are doubtlessly important, are they as urgent as war prep?
As an example, say you have two units of deployable runesmith capacity
In a decade, you're going on a major, potentially risky war.
You have two choices:
1) Deploy one unit of runesmiths on Waystones and one on war prep for the next decade, and then deploy one on Waystones for the second decade and one on the many other things they can do
2) Deploy both units of runestones on war prep for the first decade and then both on Waystones for the second decade.
It would be pretty attractive to pick option 2, as it ends up producing the same number of Waystones in total after two decades but makes the war more likely to go well.
You're also not factoring in the possibility of getting Ulthuani archmages to make batteries for us, which may be possible.
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Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
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- She/Her
It does look a bit bad but the modern Karaz Ankor would, just like their Golden Age counterparts, stay in their homes 99% of the time and won't be out exploring the continent, so it is not a problem if it's mostly reliant on elves.
And this is just the first model, much like the first tributaries were deployed in Stirland but we will hopefully not stop there. The second model may well be mostly dwarf-reliant.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Well that gives a better idea of just how many of this type of waystone we can expect to make. I was hoping that her enchantment skills would actually be helpful on this project. I guess this what it is like to be a manager with some experience but managing the best in the world.
I thought the update stated pretty clearly that we should design this under the assumption that it will be the "main model", the one deployed across the Old World.
We may in fact stop here!
- Location
- Canada
The main draw is the fact that it's specifically stated to be very likely that further experimentation and practice will cut down on the difficulty of the storage
And if it reduces even one step to moderate I'd consider it a very good bargain since performance wise it's better than every other storage system
Plus Boney's stated that the Difficulty rating only applies to mass deployment and not the current prototyping phase
So there's both time to start experimenting now to reduce difficulty before mass rollout
And also the opportunity to supplement the design with other Waystone combinations
The current leading Waystone design seems like a good sorta central backbone that could be supplemented by lower capacity Waystones
It requires High Magic
So no
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
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I don't remember that ever actually being stated anywhere in the updates. Is that woB I missed?
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
I'm not sure that reasoning applies to the Rune in particular, being something that's essentially slapped onto the Waystone with little to no direct interfacing with the rest. It could do, though.
But even then, it's not a very impressive piece. It'd look better if something like the Storage component was runic, instead.
- Location
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We could stop after only one design
I doubt it, given the thread climate, but we could
If we did I'd only be more in favor of the one size fits all Waystone that's currently in the lead though
Expensive storage has its own bottleneck in terms of trying to pump them out en masse after all, and unlike the reverse engineered one it can't improve
The Stone Flower requires High Magic. The reverse-engineered storage mechanism doesn't.
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
If the second model is entirely material, it'll probably only be possible thanks to Dwarven engineering. They're the ones who designed the mechanical components, and the ones most likely to be trusted with engineering the complex physical materials that would be most useful as a battery (remember the turn where they installed our tower's safety room?).
They're also the ones most likely to be able to think of a physical capstone if we revisit the subject with them, perhaps using the same principles that comprise the mechanical foundation.
They're also the ones most likely to be able to think of a physical capstone if we revisit the subject with them, perhaps using the same principles that comprise the mechanical foundation.
The rune is straightforward Dwarf craft magically engraved on the important bit. It's not the meat of the rock, but it's pretty hard to get a more prominent position for any normal person looking at the thing.
They aren't helpful now but after a few iterations of refinement she may be able to reproduce the storage enchantment if she wants to. And when she can probably a number of other Collegiate enchanters can, as she's not the best of them.
Note that it doesn't appear to require high magic, just archmage level enchanting skill, which is why Von Tarnus could do it.
I think it does. Changing the rune changes the flow rate of magic into the Waystone, which I think would impact every other component.
And in terms of how impressive it is, dwarves literally worship their ancestors, and as carving the rune was their ancestors' only known contribution to the original Waystones, them thinking that it's not very impressive may be actual heresy. It would certainly be a level of disrespect I doubt any runesmith would consider.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Plan Building A Better Future
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- Canada
Huh, my bad
Well in that case it's another reason to want reverse engineered then
Getting it down to the point where any mage of any kind could replicate it is a real possibility
And this removes the whole "only elven archmages will ever be able to make it" concern
The option's got even more going for it than I had thought
It actually could be the sort of design that's mass printed
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- Location
- Actually pretty lost
True, maybe I'm overthinking it.
You're right, it'd be out of character for the dwarves to complain that they'd matched up to their ancestors.
I still think it'd be better from a political standpoint to have a runic storage method, but it probably doesn't rise to "problem" if we don't.
If anything, I think the current waystone would be better as a supplement. It can only be deployed near rivers, unless you intend to waste all the extra effort that goes into making it work on both leyline methods. We're going to want to make a version of this waystone that just has the keyphrase leyline so we can deploy those away from rivers too.
Laurelorn probably has less Archmages who can make the reverse-engineered enchantment than it has High Magic enchanters. The lists probably don't line up exactly. I'd bet that all of Laurelorn's Archmages can do High Magic, I'm not so sure they would all be willing to create Stone Flowers. I agree with you on the matter of Runesmiths being more available than Archmages too.
But there's two other factors here too. One, Ulthuan. Ulthuan certainly has a lot more Archmages than Laurelorn. They would be able to help the simplification of the storage enchantment, especially if we hand them a waystone design that they can make all on their own to assist their efforts to rebuild Yvresse's that needs the Golden Age enchantment. I already mentioned that the difficulty of the enchantment will go down.
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There's politics and politics. As far a we know the dwarves can't actually make much direct use of any Waystone we make (with the likely exception of cleansing Black Water*), but they do have an awful lot of other things their runesmiths could be doing. The leaders of the Karaz Ankor may be quietly grateful, even if they'd never admit it, that their runesmiths aren't under more pressure to contribute to the Waystone Project and can instead do things more immediately useful for their own hold. They may even be quite glad that the pressure is instead on elven archmages to commit their time instead, reducing the elven kingdoms' opportunities to get up to their own flavour of mischief.
The politics/incentives aren't necessarily straightforward.
* And even that's something that they might want to carefully build up to in case the nasties at the bottom respond by boiling up out of the water to stop the clock ticking on them
It depends, there are a lot of places that are near rivers depending on how widely a river is defined. Would any permanent stream count? In which cases most places were agriculture is possible would work.
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fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Which gets widened even further if the waystones are supplemented with tributaries. Which they should be given that even our cheapest waystone model are much harder to make then tributaries.
We can use rivers because they have been following that route for thousands of years. The Reik and its tributaries evidently don't move that much, but I imagine that streams would move a lot more. Rivers are also a lot more significant than streams, I assume that would be true metaphysically too. You probably could bury the menhir under the stream, but how many streams go to a useful place? And would it really be worth making Jade menhirs for every nothing stream in the Empire?
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