Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
There is an advantage to deploying waystones to Laurelorn first. We hopefully wouldn't need to spend a surveying action. The Empire seems to have an idea of where their waystones are, but we'd still need to go out and survey to confirm all of it. I would be very disappointed in Laurelorn if they didn't know the status of all of their waystones.

Although might Laurelorn be handled as a part of Nordland as far as deploying waystones is concerned. In which case we probably would need to survey.

The Amethysts did have a partial map of the Sylvanian Waystones, however. Your Order was mysterious about it, but let me peruse a few volumes - same sort of thing as the others, really. The Ambers... well, you know what they're like. The fellow I talked to said they know where most of them are in the Empire if you need to know, but that you probably didn't."
Every province is going to need an archives delve and a series of surveys before new Waystones start going up. Sylvania's is probably just going to be particularly grim.
 
Depends, do you count the replacement of the nexus in Marienburg?
Also we are fairly certain that the high elf's can still make them, just not many or at any appreciable rate.
That is fair. Let's put it "by someone who might be inclined towards mass production and actually retaking lost ground"
 
Alright, let's take a look at our new Waystone:
The New Waystones
(will be renamed if other Waystone types are created)
The name sucks. It works, sure. And there's a certain historical neatness to how, if we stuck with only this design, there would be "the new waystones" and "the old waystones". But the lack of any... anything in the name is a clear flaw. A name that had a pun and/or acronym would be the best, as is Mathildian tradition. But even something just descriptive of this design's purpose would be a solid improvement. As an example, "Bastion Waystones" isn't a great name, but it's still a name name.

I'm sure we'll get the opportunity to fix this in the future, but for now it's important to recognize this as a component that needs improvement.
Advantages:
Dual Transmission - Leyline + Riverine
We're still waiting to plug this in somewhere, but. We did it. This is a major improvement over normal waystones. You can't shut these down by breaking the line of transmission, and you can't cause one Waystone to accumulate Dhar because the others will send it down the river instead of to the jammed Waystone. We've replaced a major flaw with the original design with a solid improvement. And I want to point out, it was the Colleges of Magic that did this. While there was lots of assistance and all, it was the Jade Order and the Light Order working together that accomplished this bit.
Iterative Improvements - Storage Mechanism
What it says on the tin. The storage mechanism is a complicated nightmare of an enchantment, but by working on it, it's becoming less so. Enough investment here should hopefully mitigate or even eliminate that problem. Even with a low roll, we've made progress here.
No Visible Precious Metals
1000s of years from now:

Bob: What is that, Bill?
Bill: Magic rock.
Bob: Think there's anything to steal in there?
Bill: No, Bob. It's made of rock.
Flaws:
Very Difficult Storage Mechanism
Again, this is a problem we're working on. And it'll be less of a problem if we design a cheaper and easier alternative for safer areas. Which we really want to, since unless we fix this entirely it's going to limit the rate at which these can be manufactured.
Requires High Mage and Runesmith
This was probably a flaw the old original waystones had. One that was overcome simply by keeping waystone creation going for hundreds of years. But I think we'd rather work on alternate designs rather the depend on just this one.

A design that didn't require any specific magical tradition may be possible, but the problem is the Capstone. The Collegiate Fascis might work well enough, but failing that, we could try to get more Capstone designs. Though that would take more AP for us to work out.
Quirks:
Octagonal Pyramidion
Aesthetically Offensive (hidden by cladding)
Visibly Dwarven Rune
Pyramidion: The endless arguments about wind cardinality have been around for thousands of years, and will continue for thousands more.

"Aesthetically Offensive" is hilarious. But it's probably for the best that it's covered by the cladding.

Visibly Dwarf: Yes. And? Totally not politically motivated.

Overall...we did it. Waystones are no longer a lost secret of the ancients. We can make more, here and now. We can improve upon them, creating new designs to fit new needs. We are absolutely the smartest, most amazing group of magical researchers in thousands of years, and we should absolutely milk our accomplishment for everything it's worth... as soon as we plug our prototype in somewhere. Then, it'll be party time.
 
That is fair. Let's put it "by someone who might be inclined towards mass production and actually retaking lost ground"

Depending on quite how things went down, the Gospodars may have built the Praag and Castle Alexandrov nexuses and the Waystones that went into them. The furthest north elven settlement of the Golden Age that we know of was at the site of modern Erengrad, so any Waystones in Kislev north of there were presumably built by early Kislev. Unless Miska looted a load of them from further south during her initial invasion of the Empire.
 
This was probably a flaw the old original waystones had. One that was overcome simply by keeping waystone creation going for hundreds of years. But I think we'd rather work on alternate designs rather the depend on just this one.

A design that didn't require any specific magical tradition may be possible, but the problem is the Capstone. The Collegiate Fascis might work well enough, but failing that, we could try to get more Capstone designs. Though that would take more AP for us to work out.
Yeah we'd want to make at least two more designs. But I don't see why we should necessarily try to address the Runesmith or High Magic requirements. Maybe the High Mage, but the Runesmith enhances the waystone enough that I think dealing with them is worth it. I could be convinced to use the Collegiate Fascis, but I'd prefer not to.

I think we should make a version of this without the riverine component. The riverine component adds a lot of needless work if we aren't even going to deploy the waystone on a river. Make a variant without it for deployment everywhere there is not a river and just use this one where there are rivers.

I also think we should make an entirely elf made version. That way Ulthuan has a reason to increase their participation in the Project beyond mere seagull management.

I would like to make an Ice Witch version of the waystone just out of sympathy for Zlata. We can definitely have her find an alternative to the Rune. Well. Look, I'm not quite so sure she will find anything.
 
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Just rereading the last update; and it seems that the meneir to make a riverbed conduct Dhar is a separate component to the main Waystone, so if we don't erect the later on a river, we can just skip the former.

This also make me wonder if our success here means that it would be easier to adapt this Waystone to other riverine transmission mechanisms. It seems like the Waystone just channels the Dhar into the river and the menhir handles the rest. If that's the case, then a spirit based transmission mechanism might be very similar, with a spirit teleporting the Dhar instead.

I think the next step is probably an ultra basic pure riverine design using spirits without a battery. Essentially something custom made for Kislev.

We need to survey Kislev's network first though. We don't know what the bottlenecks are or to what degree we can interact with their network. Depending on what the bottlenecks are something like a dual transmission Waystone at Kislev City that can dump any overflow of Dhar or magic in general beyond what the Ancient Widow can process into the Reik system to be collected downstream could be very valuable, that would mean that we could use cheap riverine Waystones on Kislev's rivers without risking pouring Dhar into the sea.
 
A design that didn't require any specific magical tradition may be possible, but the problem is the Capstone. The Collegiate Fascis might work well enough, but failing that, we could try to get more Capstone designs. Though that would take more AP for us to work out.
Waystone Gold is probably the most promising route towards this. Currently it probably doesn't help, as the alloy work is only doable by Ulthuan, and while the Priests of Vaul will probably do the work for us if we ask, they're not likely to tell us how they did it.

It'd probably be 2AP and a long, long wait. One to secure a source, one to invite either the Gold Order or one of the major Karaz Ankor Metalsmith Guilds to the Project specifically to work on the problem. Then time for them to attack the problem. Probably at least as much time as the We Silk.
 
Waystone Gold is probably the most promising route towards this. Currently it probably doesn't help, as the alloy work is only doable by Ulthuan, and while the Priests of Vaul will probably do the work for us if we ask, they're not likely to tell us how they did it.

It'd probably be 2AP. One to secure a source, one to invite either the Gold Order or one of the major Karaz Ankor Metalsmith Guilds to the Project specifically to work on the problem. Then a long, long wait, but probably nothing more needed from us ourselves for the option to eventually present itself.
The bigger problem is the reliable sourcing I feel, currently that's only the ogres and maybe cathay. Both a long way away and you have to cross dangerous ground to get there and back.
 
Do I understand it correctly that they did not yet attempt to connect the prototype Waystone to the Network itself using the Elven key?
 
The bigger problem is the reliable sourcing I feel, currently that's only the ogres and maybe cathay. Both a long way away and you have to cross dangerous ground to get there and back.

We can organize attempts to purchase this metal in Lothern. The fact that this is the world's main trading center greatly helps in finding the most exotic things.
 
Also I bet grampa caledor would get extra extra grumpy if we connected a waystone, disconnected it, moved it then Reconnected it.

If for this purpose he finds the opportunity to leave the Great Vortex and help restore this world, then listening to his senile grumbling is a worthy payment for this.

Also, how voting goes so far? Do we have first results?
 
If for this purpose he finds the opportunity to leave the Great Vortex and help restore this world, then listening to his senile grumbling is a worthy payment for this.

Also, how voting goes so far? Do we have first results?
Currently karak to karak mark is winning followed by empire to empire and then okri to okri. But karak is fairly solidly in the lead
 
If we want alternative capstone designs that can be produced at scale in a reasonable timespan, I think we probably want to look to directions the Golden Age elves and dwarves didn't.

The obvious route would be human divine magic. Unfortunately we probably aren't allowed to ask one of the Necrotects that built the Nehekharan pyramids or the Liche priests, but that still leaves the Cults of the Old World.

Sadly, there isn't a prominent human craft god currently worshipped in the Old World. It's possible there's a spellcasting priest of the human cult of Grungni out there (which would be fascinating in of itself), but apart from that there aren't that many strong candidates. The Estalian/Tilean Cults of Myrmidia that worship her in her aspect as patron of civilisation may be one of the best bets. Alternatively, for people who know about the interaction of divine and Wind magic, there's the Damsels; although their deity doesn't obviously have a direct link to making things.
 
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