So, I've been thinking about Waystones.
Let's start by breaking down what, exactly, they're doing. They are:
- Drawing in magic of all kinds across a wide area.
- Directing that magic down into a larger leyline network.
- Having those leylines lead to the Vortex.
- Doing all of the above whilst keeping the Winds from curdling into Dhar, and possibly breaking up Dhar into those Winds.
For step 1, I don't know how this can be accomplished. We can make it somewhat attractive to ambient Winds, and we know that modern Runesmiths can repel the Winds, but if they could attract them they'd have an easier time recharging their Anvils of Doom. It's possible that looking at Arcane Fulcrums might give us some inspiration, but those are probably almost as hard to investigate as the Waystones themselves. We might be able to get away with a huge number of Runes that only repel magic in a specific direction, all pointing towards the Waystone?
We've actually seen a proof of concept of Step 2, in those neat plants the Eonir have. Hopefully understanding those can help bridge the gap to doing so on a Waystone's scale. In the worst case scenario of the precious metals being an absolute requirement, maybe we can just hide them under enough solid rock?
I suspect that step 3 will be beyond us - we're better off trying to tie any new Waystones into the existing leylines than attempting to construct any new ones. On the other hand, this will likely be a requirement if we want to actually make use of these energies for anything new, because otherwise we won't be able to access them. We might be able to skip this step for reactivating pre-existing artifices though, like those ancient megaprojects that Thorgrim was ruminating on.
Step 4 is going to be very diffficult, given that no one seems to know how to turn Dhar back into its constituent Winds. I suspect we're going to have to hope that if we can get Dhar into the leylines, that the next "real" Waystone can untangle it.
