I'm not sure we actually know what Nexuses do. I'm not even sure if we even know if there is a nexus-quantity of energy as opposed to a Waystone-quantity except as a trend- for example a Storm of Magic happening on top of a line of Waystones could result in more magic flowing through themthan most nexuses usually channel. I don't think we've seen any indication that there is such a thing as too much energy for a single Waystone. All the failure cases we've seen for a single Waystone have been when it's been sabotaged or the downstream link has been severed, and the battery has blown up. I don't think we've seen or heard of any cases of a Waystone being overloaded by the volume of energy passing through it from upstream.
Nexuses, for example, could be built to plug the smaller warp portals that apparently opened when the warp gates detonated. We just don't know much about them I think. The one we've examined isn't functioning as a nexus anymore.
Edit: The opening was overly harsh so I am retracting it.
Nexuses exist to relay the energies of dozens and hundreds of waystones. They probably do other things. The density of nexuses in the Forest of Shadows would indicate that having more of them in an area can help with draining bad shit. But the main reason they exist is to relay the immense energies collected by a dozens and hundreds of waystones all the way to Ulthuan.
Fort Solace was obviously not built to close a portal. It was built to relay energy. If you want to further argue that it was built to close a portal, feel safe in the knowledge I will not acknowledge it.
You are the one trying to prove that waystones can handle the energy of dozens or hundreds of other waystones
chains. That is up to you to find the evidence of. There is absolutely zero reason to think that and quite a bit to think it is outright wrong.
(Edit: How would waystones even be overloaded by Storms of Magic if they aren't cut off from the network? Waystones are designed to limit how much energy can be absorbed by them at a time. They also have storages that can last for centuries being cut off before blowing up as a dhar bomb. They also only release energy to the leyline in set intervals.
I'm pretty sure the main limit to the waystone-leylines is that they just aren't "carved" to be big enough to relay that much energy. If you tried to put more in it would jam. I mean, how would a normal waystone carve a big enough route to compare to the route a nexus could carve?)
(Edit 2: How is a nexus's worth of energy supposed to fit?)
(Edit 3: We
know that leylines have limits as to how much they can fit. And I found a quote! Boney did not say that nexuses were not needed to handle flows of nexus-quantities of energies. Boney stated that because nexuses handle it between single "pipelines" rivers could handle it without a nexus.)
Do the people on this project with more knowledge of Nexuses have reason to believe that rivers will need constructions on a similar scale as nexi to handle a Nexus-level of energy?
Probably not. A leyline between nexuses is carrying all of that in a single 'pipeline'. The riverine methods use the flow of water (and we're talking about an absolutely mind-boggling amount of water) to do most of the work and are just using an artificial 'pipeline' for the Dhar.
While I don't disagree that there are likely limitations on storage and throughput, this seems to be a mischaracterization. The act of experimenting with how to create a Nexus risks blowing up a province. It seems fair to assume that once a working method is found, that risk goes down considerably.
Boney said creating new nexuses risks blowing up a province. Not that researching how to build them risks blowing up a province. I also already said that expertise (infrastructure is certainly important too) would reduce the risk. I posted a comment wondering why the Elves of the Golden Age put so many nexuses in the Forest of Shadows if that was a risk (even with greater expertise and infrastructure) and Boney implied there is something off about the Forest of Shadows.
Not that I was wrong in saying there was a risk of blowing up a province by the act of building a nexus.
Why the hell did the elves of the Golden Age put so many damn nexuses in the area of the Middle Mountains? If that is the risk that comes with trying to make them? Obviously it was less risky in the Golden Age, but why the hell are there so many? There are at least four in it and bordering it. There's an additional seven near those.
Borek mentioned something about it drawing the Karaz Ghumzul dwarfs, but that is still a lot.
The most straightforward theory would be they were trying to drain the bad vibes out of the Forest of Shadows, but the Middle Mountains do have a lot of unpleasant strangeness about them. That the Elves of the Golden Age thought there needed a three-nexus relay connecting the Middle Mountains to the Talabheim nexus instead of the Forest of Shadows nexuses being connected just through Tor Lithanel is an eyebrow-raiser. If they just wanted to prevent Altdorf from being a single point of failure there would have been much easier ways to manage that.
I agree. For one thing, if nexuses were as simple as "this is where two or more leylines join" with nothing else to it, why did they build so many nexuses around the Middle Mountains? In a circle with a radius of 150mi around the southern foothills of those mountains there are six nexuses - almost as many as the rest of the Empire has combined. And we have no idea why they did that.
Boney has talked about that before. I've posted the comment above.
And "two or more" leylines join is downplaying it. Gross Selon had a dozen leylines from waystones feeding it. I doubt even the Wolf's Run nexuses have less than six waystone leylines feeding them.
