I don't think I've seen anyone cite where Boney said that dousing a town with Hysh to fight disease was viable, so here it is.
Boney since this is something we could actually look into IC what do Mathilde and Ergrim think of the suggestion of getting the Lights the ability to draw power from Waystones so deal with plague outbreaks? Would something make it nonviable either magically, like the complexity of the spell or socially the riots Tobtorp is proposing?
It seems viable. The Empire is extremely keen on stopping plagues from spreading and don't really prioritize getting the informed consent from plague victims before they stop them from spreading the plague, so if it came down to it they absolutely would give them the choice between standing in the magic light or going on the bonfire. It's a preferable solution to burning entire towns or districts, which has been resorted to in the past.
Absent all else because it's nothing I actually wanted to touch upon, yes, that is exactly what I am saying. Dwarves are creatures of habit and tradition. The question of what the energies are doing would have presumably hit a stonewall of "this is a secret" at some point and everyone would accept it and then it would get enshrined.
It's imho just as possible that if belegar brought the topic up, his brother sister king queens would tell him that they know and know what it is doing as it is possible that they know and have no idea what it is doing as it is that they had no idea.
I really think you underestimate the consequences on dwarves inquisitiveness when it hits the escalating wall of hierarchy that ends at high king, and the precedent that it then starts.
So yeah I think that it's entirely possible that crucial details of the particulars and specific purpose of dwarves network could have been forgotten either accidentally by demographic collapse or on purpose. And that is ALL I am saying. It's possible they were not.
That is a ridiculous assertion. Dwarves are
very intense about their property. We know that even extends to the nexuses, Boney's said as much. Thorek has no authority to allow Karak Azul's to be studied by elves, that permission belongs solely to King Kazador. We just saw that secrecy doesn't stop people from questioning with Belegar.
The High King's authority is not absolute and it practically did not exist for the two millennia after the Time of Woes. Belegar pointed that out himself. The High King has power on paper. But
four millennia of that power not being exercised means that it doesn't same weight. So no, there is zero reason to think that 'the High King said so' would have satisfied dwarves wondering during the Time of Woes, or even after.
If the waystone network was forgotten on purpose then why did the most paranoid Karak retain that knowledge? You ignored that point, like before. I'll point out again that Barak Varr remembers it.
You are working backwards to justify your assumption, rather than working
forward based on the evidence that we have.
Thorek wouldn't have the authority to make that decision [whether elves can investigate the Karak-Waystones]. It would be up to the respective Kings. Attempting to negotiate that would be one avenue for further investigation.
"And if the Karak-Waystones are being used to benefit Karaz-a-Karak alone, then he could use that authority to try to interfere with attempts to inspect the Waystones. That's true, but if he does do so it would confirm my suspicion and give me an excellent reason to broach the topic with the other Kings. While the letter of the law gives the High King a great deal of power, most of it hasn't been exercised since the shattering of the Underway. Four millennia of tradition carry a lot of weight."
Wait a minute. Were Karak Norn, Izor, and Hirn founded before or after the War of Vengeance?
I'm guessing before, because how else would they have gotten elven nexuses? But Thorgrim's musings on the decline of the KAWN suggest that they were founded after the golden age because otherwise they would have dwarven karak-nexuses. But the real question is, were those elven nexuses made from the limited supply of Old One monoliths, or did the elves make them from scratch?
If they were made from scratch, that suggests it is possible for world-class experts to build new ones, albeit with considerable difficulty.
That's easily answered by the fact that Belegar is the latest in a line of kings-in-exile, who up until recently hadn't been living in his karak for 3000 years. Chances are good that the information about the karak-nexuses never got passed down in the first place, probably because the king-at-the-time died in a holding action and possibly never got a chance to explain all that he knew to his surviving heir. Factor in thousands of years of what secrets remained being passed down verbally amongst a wealth of information about the karak (quickly becoming all second-hand at best), and you get Belegar knowing almost nothing about the karak-nexus within K8P until after Mathilde and Kragg and Thorek notice it turn back on.
It would be even less likely for any info about what that energy would be doing to be successfully passed down. Other karaks with karak-nexuses would potentially not think of the energy flowing away as anything to be concerned about because it was magic-as-a-pollutant and it going elsewhere to be dealt with was desireable. But Belegar views magic differently, particularly after Mathilde designs and commisions a magical superweapon that wiped out a Waaagh and saved his home from a brutal fight.
They were founded before. I believe they were founded in part to protect the nexuses they were built around. I doubt those nexuses were created with a different method than the ones Ulthuan build elsewhere.
Yeah, I'm not questioning the methods of how Belegar lost the knowledge. I'm saying that Mathilde and Belegar were too blinded by their bias against Thorgrim to ask how it got set up. Because it's not like Karaz-a-Karak's runesmiths snuck in Karak Eight Peaks after it fell to set up the flow of energy. If Mathilde and Belegar had thought about it more, they would have known that the flow of energy had to have been set up with the permission of one of Belegar's ancestors. They wouldn't have had any idea what its purpose was. But it would have been hefty evidence against the notion that it was being stolen.
The runesmiths would know that it wasn't entirely a pollutant. And the ownership of the Karak-Waystones is very firm under dwarven law. The Karak-Waystones belong to the King. The Runesmiths
could just not tell them about their property. But it's been four millennia. There has been way to much time for that secret to have been kept in contraviction of dwarven principles. I highly doubt that Dwarven law is set up in a way where you can monitor someone's property without actually telling them about it.
Boney's also said his age has never been relevant on-screen, and so it's never really come up:
Which means it's probably somewhat in flux until it matters for the quest, if it ever does.
Eh. The principles of the
comment I quoted still hold. Read it over, it's logic replicated in the update. It might vary some, but the general theme of Thorek being young for a runelord probably would still hold if the age is ever nailed down.
But it is worth reminding yourself, accustomed to interacting with Kragg the Grim as you are, that Thorek Ironbrow is no average Runelord. While Kragg is certainly respected as the eldest of living Runelords, and the most skilled and knowledgeable of them, Thorek Ironbrow is considered the greatest Runelord. Not for his artifice or his knowledge, as the unspoken truth of the matter is that he is, by Runelord standards, nothing special.
Again, i agree with your broader point, just want to make it clear what my (more limited) argument is on.
