The current prototype is a showpiece that is limited by the number of Arch-mages in Laurelorn, more than that by the number of Arch-mages willing to do boring repetitive enchanting work. With it we would have the same problem the Asur do, not enough hands to make the things.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
-
- Tags
- warhammer warhammer fantasy fantasy be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist pansexual protagonist ck2 quest divided loyalties mountain vietnam ranald is real this is a dwarf quest (dwarfs) this is maybe an elf quest this is not a vampire quest this is not an empire quest try it and find out open voting
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
The current prototype is a showpiece that is limited by the number of Arch-mages in Laurelorn, more than that by the number of Arch-mages willing to do boring repetitive enchanting work. With it we would have the same problem the Asur do, not enough hands to make the things.
That's fine after we've completed the network. That could take centuries. What about before then? Having cheaper, more easily deployable Waystones for the interim makes sense. We can design a cheap riverine spirit based Waystone that hardly competes with the existing design so won't impact the rate of construction of the permanent network, and instead supplement it.
I agree with the thrust of your post, focusing on trouble spots makes sense, but I don't think these stones are the best idea for Sylvania. The current design is best for singular tainted locations where the lack of scalability isn't as much of an issue, but Sylvania is too big for that, imo. A cheap riverine design could very easily cover the whole place, though, and do it without giving necromancers batteries they could use either.
- Location
- Probably one of the continents.
Designing a specific riverine waystone would be useful for lining the skull river and the aver+canal to slowly begin draining the black water of nastiness. But that's not the main point of what we're doing here which is attempting to restore/improve the existing waystone network. If we design one that doesnt hit the same production bottlenecks as whatever else we design, cool. We just need to set aside the AP for it. Later.
pucflek
Verified simpleton
- Location
- Czech Republic
Not really. If its viable and we commit to actually making, its going to be perfectly fine, because one of the two difficult parts will be streamlined
I don't think it's obvious that our priority should be restoring the existing network.
For example, northern Kislev may not have any Waystones in at all, and we may not be able to add stones to the Ice Witches private network. In that area, building from the foundation of the existing network may take a very long time compared to using deploying riverine Waystones along the upper reaches of the Lynsk and Tobol and their tributaries.
Similarly, we could probably do a lot of good in Sylvania by installing riverine Waystones in the major towns, as they're mostly on rivers.
Then we swap in our dual purpose Waystones in towns downriver that are connected to the wider network to extract the Dhar from under those rivers so it doesn't flow into the sea, and move those original Waystones to plug gaps in the network elsewhere.
One of my eventual hopes for this project is to build a waystone which can be made with purely human wizard hands. That way we can eventually sell the knowledge of its creation to the other ordered nations of mankind. It's one of the ways which we could most ensure the knowledge lives on, and it be one of the greatest strikes against the forces of chaos we can make.
Even if we never go to far away nippon, Araby, cathay or ind, I'd like to figure out a way to get them the knowledge of waystone creation and hopefully get something interesting for the trouble.
That might be out of the scope of this project or this quest though, which is fair enough given the amount of work something like that might be for Boney.
Even if we never go to far away nippon, Araby, cathay or ind, I'd like to figure out a way to get them the knowledge of waystone creation and hopefully get something interesting for the trouble.
That might be out of the scope of this project or this quest though, which is fair enough given the amount of work something like that might be for Boney.
Last edited:
pucflek
Verified simpleton
- Location
- Czech Republic
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
While Ulthuan didn't build Waystones and put them in the ocean, Waystones absolutely do carry magic between Nexuses. Nexuses are built at intersections of leylines, which run between Waystones, as well as at points when the ocean or mountains gets in the way of the usual chain of Waystones. Unless you're arguing that Waystones just collect magic from around them and then that magic is drawn into the flow between Nexuses, which doesn't really seem to work to me, because if that was the case, the flow between Waystones wouldn't matter for draining the magic out of them (as it is, as seen when Mathilde and co. tested the commands for turnign off Waystones). Now, there's an argument that the Nexuses on Ulthuan don't need to have that magic transported away, because it's drained directly out of the Nexuses by the Vortex, but that's different from Nexuses in general, which is all we've seen.
The province thing is because the Nexuses handle the energy from multiple points at once. Each individual Waystone holds nothing like that that, because they don't either intersect or need the extra power for ocean/mountain crossing.
Restoring the original network may be the long term goal, but as Boney said:
In the short run we may find it more important to put ten riverine Waystones that don't use the network in Praag, then Mordeim, then Mousillon rather than patch holes in the network in less important places.
A final state network wouldn't need ten Waystones in a single city, it's just a temporary measure required to cleanse them of the dhar they're contaminated in. When they're cleaned up, those Waystones can be moved.
We may even find it more important to build riverine Waystones in the towns on the rivers first before doing the long slog of building out the network to space fill the less densely or unpopulated regions in between them.
Last edited:
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
I could be entirely wrong, but as far as I'm aware, Waystones collect magic from the air and tributaries and send that magic to Nexuses, which send magic to Nexuses further down the chain to get to Ulthuan.
So Tributaries flow to Waystones which flow to Nexuses which flow to other Nexuses until they reach the Vortex.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
I don't think River Leyline Waystones would be useful in Mousillon- it's at the mouth of the Grismerie, there's nowhere for the magic to flow to to get it to the network. It's already at the end of the line.
Also, we have no idea how ling those Waystones would need to be there to fully cleanse, say, Mordheim. I'm not sure it's a short enough span to be worth trying to make mobile Waystones.
- Location
- Probably one of the continents.
Why not dump more dhar into Mousillon? What could possibly go wrong?
I think it would still be useful, as long as we used a design with a spirit deal, which the Bretonnians shouldn't find difficult to implement. The Waystones would pull the dhar out of the environment, dump it in the river, where the river spirit of the Grismerie would pick it up and teleport it to somewhere upriver where there's a functioning Waystone, and drop it on top of that. We don't care if the Winds pour into the sea.
And all Waystones are mobile, depending on how much effort we want to spend moving them, now we know the codes to disconnect and reconnect them. Some are just more mobile than others and have different restrictions where they can be set up.
The way I look at it, it takes a single Mathilde action to design a Waystone. After that the Damsels could probably build a design. In any other context, we'd look at a single AP to be instrumental in cleansing Mousillon as a total bargain - I mean look at what else we've spent AP on this turn and why. I think it's hard to argue that being instrumental in the cleansing of a major blight on the Old World is less important than examining the Ghyran Nut or Mastering an Arcane Marks.
Last edited:
Thinking about boat waystones... The only good argument I've seen is that they can be boated away if threatened... But then it occurred to me that you can absolutely do that with normal waystones too... Just deactivate it, dig it up and load it on a boat. TADA, one boatable waystone.
I'm specificly talking about the cities, not all of Sylvania. Put one in each city for now, then, later see if we need another model for the rest of Sylvania (smaller towns, villages, fields, wilderness, etc.).
I mean, the current version will always be reliant on high magic which is a big ask if you want thousands built. It's an archmage taking some of their time for EVERY stone flower.
There is a huge difference between a "simple" high magic enchantement and a "simple" rune or regular wind enchantement. The latters can be done by relative novice runesmiths or enchanters, the former can only be done by an elf archmage standing at the very top of their vocation. The value of the respective individuals' time is NOT equal.
The current plan is VERY elf heavy, which is fine at first for the high priority locations, but it might be a hard ask in the long term.
Last edited:
It's probably harder if it's not designed for it, and takes a lot longer to do so you need more notice.
It also doesn't work on the move, and you have a much more limited choice about where to reinstall it if it's leyline dependent.
Note that you don't need to be an archmage to be able to cast high magic. I think being an archmage is harder.
Last edited:
Kinda? But anywhere were I'd want to install a waystone anyway is probably somewhat important (for at least the next 20 years) so building a permanent one just makes sense, as for choosing where you put it... You put it where the people are and if they don't have to they don't like moving.
If you're in the north of Kilsev where the people are probably changes every few days, as the Ungols are horse nomads who follow their herds to avoid overgrazing the steppe. They have no choice about moving. For at least some of their migratory routes, they're likely to pitch camp on the banks of rivers, as that's where the vegetation is lushest and their herds can find clean water to drink.
Their horse nomads because nothing grows there enough to stay, if a waystone changes that you'd bet you ass they will settle. That's what happens to nomads that find a space that can support them. And boney implied a waystone changes that massively.
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
Possibly, but in that case, why have Waystones at all? Why not just build more Nexuses and tributaries? It was the height of Ulthuan's power, they would have had the resources and the time (or at the least, believed they did). Plus, if Nexuses can send directly to other Nexuses, why do they not all head directly to Ulthuan instead of stopping at the coast first?
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
You only need to be an elf, not an archmage. Twenty five ish elven enchanters that we can shake loose doesn't sound like much, but as a number of enchanters rather than simple practitioners it's actually pretty large.
I think people are getting a bit confused. There's are two different ways Waystones can be "mobile." First, you can take a regular Waystone, disconnect it from the network, and cart it somewhere else to be reconnected. This can be very useful if you're patching a critical whole in the network, but the Waystone is inactive the whole time you're doing this.
The second method comes from a quirk of spirit based riverine transmission. Because the spirit will automatically work for any Waystone along it's length, a riverine waystone with this design can remain functional and active while it is being moved. I agree that this wouldn't be enough to push us to design one on its own, but stones like this are also incredibly cheap and easy to construct on a per stone basis and can be freely put where the people are.
My ideal scenario would be to design something like this:
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Runic Inductor
Requires a Runesmith. Simple, negligible cost. Will result in more Dhar and less of the other Winds when large amounts of multiple Winds are present.
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
Requires a Dwarven Runesmith. Simple, low cost.
-[ ] [STORAGE] None
No requirements, no cost. Not compatible with leyline transmission.
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Collegiate
Requires a Light Wizard. Simple, low cost.
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Riverine (Spirit)
Requires negotiation with the river's spirit. Reduces difficulty and cost of Foundation. ? difficulty, ? cost. Reduces difficulty and cost of Foundation
This design has a cost of two negligible/ one simple and a difficulty of two simples and one trivial (because the riverine transmission reduces the difficulty of the foundation). It's is the kind of design where we could fasibly put a Waystone on every town along a river. Even if some towns are already covered, replacing their existing leyline Waystone and moving that one somewhere more critical would be pretty simple--much simpler than building one of our own. It doesn't work for Mousillon, but it doesn't need to because you'd free up more than enough traditional stones to provide coverage by rolling this out.
The second method comes from a quirk of spirit based riverine transmission. Because the spirit will automatically work for any Waystone along it's length, a riverine waystone with this design can remain functional and active while it is being moved. I agree that this wouldn't be enough to push us to design one on its own, but stones like this are also incredibly cheap and easy to construct on a per stone basis and can be freely put where the people are.
My ideal scenario would be to design something like this:
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Runic Inductor
Requires a Runesmith. Simple, negligible cost. Will result in more Dhar and less of the other Winds when large amounts of multiple Winds are present.
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
Requires a Dwarven Runesmith. Simple, low cost.
-[ ] [STORAGE] None
No requirements, no cost. Not compatible with leyline transmission.
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Collegiate
Requires a Light Wizard. Simple, low cost.
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Riverine (Spirit)
Requires negotiation with the river's spirit. Reduces difficulty and cost of Foundation. ? difficulty, ? cost. Reduces difficulty and cost of Foundation
This design has a cost of two negligible/ one simple and a difficulty of two simples and one trivial (because the riverine transmission reduces the difficulty of the foundation). It's is the kind of design where we could fasibly put a Waystone on every town along a river. Even if some towns are already covered, replacing their existing leyline Waystone and moving that one somewhere more critical would be pretty simple--much simpler than building one of our own. It doesn't work for Mousillon, but it doesn't need to because you'd free up more than enough traditional stones to provide coverage by rolling this out.
We get mobile Waystones for free with a cheap spirit based riverine design. Rather than building a specific mobile design, think of it as an additional bonus that can be used in specific situations.
A riverine design would remain functional on the boat, is the thing.
Last edited: