You wonder if the Gods are keeping quiet, or if there's just no priests or shamans left in the mountain to listen to the complaints of Gork and Mork, but that's a concern for later.
Omnious.
The plans you made yesterday feel like a lifetime ago, but you remember the concerns you had for the Hoard and as such make your way there as quietly as possible. If it weren't for Aethyric Armour preventing your muscles from aching worse than they already did, you reflect as you make your way up an mountain-length staircase, you'd probably leave the riches to their fate. As is, you slowly approach the two guards still standing at the doorway, looking no more alert than they did during your scouting. It takes you twice as long as usual to shape Ulgu, the magic feeling light and distant to your senses, but you're in no rush. Shadowcloak gets you close enough to prod the guards with Sleep, and with a guaranteed minute you don't have to hurry through Mockery of Death. They slump slightly in simulated death, but remain upright in their place, and you slip between them to confirm the hoard is still present and untouched.
An Alarm on the door, a few spooky-looking sigils from your MAP floating in front of the Hoard, hopefully enough to give second thoughts to anyone that gets this far, and then you focus and carefully and slowly scale up the spell Eye of the Beholder until it encompasses the entire pile. Sweat is beading on your forehead by the time you're done, but the spell finally grows enough in size and you unleash it gratefully. Silver fades to tin, gold to brass, and jewels to rocks. The pile might evoke generosity, but hopefully not greed.
[Casting after Waaagh exposure: Req 60, Learning, 90+20=110.]
[Ritual Casting - Eye of the Beholder: Req 70, Learning, 64+20=84.]
Well, she overcame the difficulty with style it seems. I guess there was a risk of releasing Waagh or Ranald's Lore instead of Ulgu if we buggered the first roll
@BoneyM ?
Or just a dry fart from being magically exhausted(side note, this probably is useful progress towards raising Magic, if insufficient on its own, IIRC one of the ways to raise Magic stat mentioned before the hiatus was pushing the limits on how much you can channel?)
Also on that note, Mathilde probably shouldn't be casting anything really big for a bit.
Your internal clock is far off kilter, but you would have expected the alarm to be raised and the invasion proper to have begun by now, but perhaps the Rangers are doing better than you expected. You feel you've definitely contributed enough for just now, so instead of diving back into the greenskin murder you walk over to the windows; the clouds still hide the sun, but enough light is getting through for you to see the lines of battle drawn up to counter any sally from the Citadel. So far, they seem to be declining, though there's definite activity at the Citadel. You frown, and with a groan fold Ulgu once more, thickening the air in front of you into a series of lenses as you peer downwards.
It's not just the Citadel that's moving. The caldera beyond is built up from wall to wall with greenskin hovels and then built on top of itself alongside each edge, to the point where you can barely see any bare stone anywhere beyond the Citadel. And it is swarming like a kicked anthill. Some of them seem to be pouring into the southernmost Karag, which memory tells you is Karag Rhyn, but most are flowing towards the Citadel. Are they attacking it or joining it? You can't see the far side of the Citadel to know for sure.
Okay, remember the visions?
The ones pouring into Karag Rhyn should be responding to Skarsnik and his dudes suddenly losing his plot armor and dying.
The citadel is held by Only Mork black orcs if I'm not mistaken, and now that the Prophet of Only Mork is toast...they got the greenlight to smack down.
You're wondering if you should leave the Karag to help the Expedition repel what might be the biggest wave of greenskins you'd ever heard of, when suddenly the thunder that had been so distant shatters the sky before you, as lightning strikes the uppermost tower of the Citadel and bursts it into fragments. You grin as you remember that you are not the only power at work here.
Kragg-a-thoom!
From his vantage point, Kragg sighed.
It wasn't disappointment. Disappointment would require that he expected better.
It wasn't weariness. Truth be told, he felt more energized than he had in centuries.
It was merely the sound of a Dwarf that has discovered yet more evidence that he was completely correct in expecting the world to be untidy.
xD
Kragg is just...so done with everything lately.
Kragg gazed over the Eastern Valley as chaos engulfed the plans of younger and less wise beings. Something in Karag Nar had riled up the Grobi mightily, undoubtedly to do with that ridiculous Mhornokrul. Whatever had caused it, the Expedition was about to see more of a fight than it had expected, even in its worst-case scenarios. Kragg closed his eyes, and concentrated.
His pattern recognition is top notch.
Hysh in the dawn, Ulgu from the banishment of night. Azyr in the clouds crackling overhead, Aqshy dormant but about to be unleashed in the firing of cannon. Chamon in arms and armour, Ghur in the steeds of the manling knights. Ghyran in the scattered plants clinging gamely to life, Shyish soon to blossom below. And centred on the Citadel, nascent but rapidly growing, the growing energies of an imminent Waaagh!
Ah.
That looks like that could be Gork and Mork's response. Promote a new Warboss of Eight Peaks with the big rumble in the Citadel, then winner takes all and marches out.
Kragg was as blind to the Winds of Magic as the rest of his kin, but he knew them all.
Don't need to see the Winds if you KNOW where they will be huh?
A twitch of a finger triggered the release of tamer energies. If it sought the same effect, manling magic would attempt to goad Aqshy into changing the nature of his hammer, and it would succeed or fail based on the ability of the wizard and the whims of chance. Rune Magic did not allow for these variables. When magic flowed into a Rune, the ancient art of Grungni stripped it of its wayward personality and troublesome independence. The magic in Kragg's hammer heated it until red hot in the same way that water flowed downhill, as the inevitable result of inanimate forces.
Kragg would have liked very much to use that hammer to hit something that bled. But even though it insisted on disappointing him at every turn, he still put the Karaz Ankor above his petty wants. So when the hammer descended, it was not upon the face of an Orc, but upon an intricately-carved block of solid gromril.
Anyone with the slightest hint of magical sensitivity could instantly sense the change that had been wrought. One moment, the Winds of Magic blew hither and thon according to their whim in a thousand different directions. The next, all winds were pulled inexorably towards a single point atop the secondary peak of Karag Lhune. Some energies clung to those few individuals attuned to an individual wind, but most could do nothing but surrender to the pull.
"Khazukan Kazakit-ha," Kragg murmured to himself. And for the first time since he left Karaz-a-Karak, he smiled.
And unleashed the full power of the storm.
@BoneyM think you meant yon instead of thon there?
Also nice to see an Anvil of Doom at work. Looks like the dwarf way of 'casting' effects is basically playing Billards. Take a suitable Hammer, with a preset runic effect, and use it to trigger the complex runic formation of the Anvil, which then 'collapses' the stray magic as everything becomes fixed to the runes draw.
And boom, effect.
Also he in one stroke dispelled the available ambient Winds AND excluded our Journeymanlings in the process.
Genius.
[ ] The enemy reaction is greater than expected. Make your way to join the imminent battle outside.
-[ ] Hastily.
-[ ] Carefully.
Rush to the rescue. Mathilde would be casting Burning Shadows a lot, using the Torc a lot, and generally doing hero things.
But she's explicitly magically exhausted, and really, Kragg is having fun turning the storm building into Greenskin exploding bolts of lightning. He'd like the stress relief.
Let him do it.
[ ] This wealth is the future of Karak Eight Peaks. Stay here with the Hoard.
The option to just take a break and watch the lootpile. Mathilde is pretty tired after all, but I think its somewhat out of character in the face of what she just learned.
[X] Keep to the original plan. Find the invasion force and join them as they fight their way through Karag Nar.
Clear Karag Nar faster, and we can pull our field armies back to fortified areas sooner. They don't need to win the open battle. She's not in top condition, but she's still perfectly good at sneaking up to and ganking greenskins one by one without a roll or using magic beyond the fatigue removal.
Remember Mathilde still has the Black Lotus poison doses. She can kill fairly efficiently.
