I've been waiting for an excuse as I do my full(ish) reread:
Traditional Dawi Drinking Song(As of approximately 2480-90. Precise lyrics often vary)
She comes over there and she burns all their wings
She chops off their heads and she burns them in acid
There's doom divers falling but they have no wings
We drink and we sing and we drink and they die
They have no wings! No they have no wi-i-ings!
She comes over there and pisses off their trolls
She walks up to Gork and she spits in his eye
Their prophet is dead and their warlords all gone
We drink and they die, we continue to drink
Khazukan!
Kazakit-ha!
She killed Waaagh Birdmuncha with Lord Gazul's Flame
The poor orc boss crying Haha what a shame
(Incoherent untranslatable rude noises
Incoherent untranslatable rude noises continue)
Khazukan!
Kazakit-ha!
We drink and we sing and we drink and we sing!
(Hey!)
We drink and we grudge and we puke and we drink!
(Hey!)
We drink and we fight and we bleed and we cry!
(Hey!)
We puke and we smoke and we drink and they die!
(Hey!)
From Denis Leary's Traditional Irish Drinking Song. Pre 2480ish the lyrics were probably a lot closer to the original dismal tone, just taken 100% straight
I can picture that- it would be in the outdoor kitchens that the halflings built, in the days before Karag Lhune was fully cleared for the colonist dwarves to move into, while the warriors rotated back to guard them. The East Gate would be half-built scaffolding behind them, with the masons still running 24hr shifts, and the sun would be well down behind Karag Ziflin.
Long tables and barrels of ranger ale, firelight filckering over faces that for the first time in decades were starting to really *hope*.
With choruses of this song getting made up and endlessly repeated as new folk showed up through the night and those there grew drunk enough to forget the verses they had made before, and begin repeating.
[*] Plan: Slow and Steady Research with Double Recruitment
-[*] MAX: Use kitting out his workshop as a pretext to get to know House Miriel and the local Cult of Vaul
-[*] EGRIMM: Attempt to bring the Light Order into the Waystone Project
-[*] JOHANN: Train with and study the freshly-attached golden arm
-[*] Furnish the research spaces of the Waystone Project HQ (specify how much: 2000gc for Laurelorn-grade)
-[*] Attempt to bring an organisation into the Waystone Project (The Jade Order)
--[*] The Gambler: Attempt to bring the Jade Order into the Waystone Project
-[*] Investigate how the Vitae reacts with Divine Magic
-[*] EIC: Insert agents into Talabecland administration to start gathering their secrets
-[*] Seek official recognition of Kron-Azril-Ungol as an affiliated library of the Colleges of Magic
-[*] Write a paper: Observations on the Chaos Wastes in the western Great Steppes
One oft-debated topic in the Colleges is why Teclis had such a blind spot to the existence of Divine Magic, and one popular explanation is that Elves and humans worshipped the Gods in fundamentally different ways. The Asur, it is said, will worship a God primarily as an embodiment of the part of themself they were choosing to encourage, and the worship of them as an independent being they wish to attract the favour of is either secondary or completely absent. The problem with this theory is that it is largely unprovable, as the Elves of Ulthuan will refuse to answer questions on the matter, except for when they are able to answer in a completely ambiguous way that raises more questions than it answers. Even the question of whether the Asur believe their Gods actually literally exist or whether they believe them to be entirely metaphor is unknown, with some scholars going so far as to say that the Flame of Asuryan that the Phoenix King walks through when crowned is itself a metaphor for the trials of rulership that they are inevitably tested by.
You had assumed that the Eonir would operate in much the same way, and you're still not entirely sure whether that's the case. To take the Queen's Champion, Kadoh, as an example, his authority derives from his showing at the festivals dedicated to Asuryan. Does that mean he demonstrated the attributes the Eonir believe to be most closely associated with Asuryan? Do they believe the festival itself is something the being called Asuryan subjectively approves of, and Kadoh inherits that approval as its winner? Or do they think Asuryan actively intervenes to ensure that the product of the festival is His personal favourite of the candidates? You're still not sure, but you are sure that if you outright asked, the answer you'd get would not at all clear up your confusion.
The reason this matter is on your mind is that you are about to begin dealing with House Miriel, the House most closely associated with Vaul, and you're still not sure what that actually means, despite the amount of books you've managed to acquire and skim on the Great Houses. From what you've heard, they do seem to be inordinately predisposed towards artisanry, their economic fortunes are based on craftsmanship, and their influence derives in part from their presence in and influence over the priesthood of Vaul. Craft, business, faith. But you're reasonably sure that one of those things would be central to the character of House Miriel, and the other two would merely derive from it, but you don't know enough about Eonir beliefs to be able to know which it is.
It is not at all difficult to arrange an audience with House Miriel. Every morning the Great Houses disgorge the segment of the population who had spent the night in their bunkhouses due to being unable or unwilling to pay for a roof over their head, and there's always a member of the House there to remind them whose beneficence sheltered them. Most file by quietly, some who wish to gain the attention of the house give the ritual phrases of thanks that are received in silence, and small gifts are given to those who are in the House's favour and instructions are given to those that wish to be. One morning you wait for the flow to ebb and slip through the doors into House Miriel's entrance hall, taking a moment to admire the decor. Every Great House keeps the public-facing decorations of their House in constant flux, and House Miriel currently favours a small forest of plinths, each holding a beautifully-crafted weapon of some sort - a reaction to recent trends, as the victory over the Beastmen and the possibility of war with Nordland is still fresh in the Eonir mind. Each stands eerily upright, and you can't tell if it's through perfect balance or clever artifice.
"Loremaster Weber of the Empire," announces a servant whose job it should have been to notice you much earlier.
With a sudden jerk the figure that had been starting to relax from having seen to the morning's duties jerks upright and gives you a rather alarmed look. "Friend Loremaster," says the girl, whose lanky figure would suggest someone in their teens on a human, but on an Elf could signify anywhere from around the same to a decade your senior. "How may House Miriel benefit you?"
"I seek to construct as fine a workshop and laboratory as mortal hands can produce," you reply. "In Tor Lithanel, all indications are that House Miriel are the ones to speak to if I am to fulfill that ambition."
"You have the truth of it," the girl replies, trying not to smile at the flattery. "And for such an honoured guest, greater than I would be needed to fulfill it. Please excuse my absence as I seek them."
With as much of a run that can be achieved while preserving dignity, the girl disappears into the rest of the structure. You make your way through the maze of plinths, trying to spot the trick that keeps them all upright. You'd ruled out cantrips and hidden filaments by the time the girl returns. "This way, if you please," she says, and leads you deeper into the House of Miriel, through corridors crowded with jumbles of ancient treasures. As she pushes open a door the rasp of metal on wood emerges, and you blink in the sudden light as you enter into a well-lit workshop filled with a sharp smell of freshly-worked wood. In the center of the room sits a tall, slender Elf with a lined face and fingers stained a deep crimson, pulling a drawknife along a stave.
"Forgive me for not greeting you in the manner of your kind," he says, glancing up from the bow. "The blood of the yew is quite toxic to those not accustomed to it. I am Councillor Galrith of Miriel."
"A pleasure to meet you," you reply. "I am Lady Magister Mathilde Weber of the Grey Order."
"You wield the Wind of Shadow, I am told," he says as he works. "Much like I hear my distant kin in Ulthuan do, though my ancestors left them when the land was still whole. There is, I feel, more honour in doing what is necessary but not praised, than what is celebrated in story and song." He taps the stave while glancing up at you wryly. "The great hunter gets a canto, the bowyer but a stanza, and the fletcher not a line. And now you want to form your own legend that our labour will make possible."
"Elven artisanry is legendary, and among the Eonir it is known that House Miriel dominate the production of the finest-quality works. I do not intend to fail due to substandard equipment, so I came to you."
He looks up at you thoughtfully. "You twist words like my children. Perhaps that is what the other Houses see in your kind. But though I will accede to the collective will of the High Council, I will not bleed my own House dry to fund your ambitions. You will pay for our services, as all must."
"Would you prefer the coin of the Empire or Dwarven ingots?"
"Ingots. As your kind is so aware, many of our hills are rich in silver and gold, but it is needed where it is."
---
Once you settle the details of your arrangement with the patriarch of House Miriel, the matter is handed over to his eldest child Laurelin, who you recognize as the girl who you met in the entranceway. Underneath the formality she seems more friendly and curious towards you than her father was, and to both of your surprise you learn she is three years your elder. You're as horrified at the thought of a decades-long adolescence as she is at the thought of being halfway finished with her allotted lifespan at a mere forty, and on that foundation of mutual pity you build something of an understanding of her and her House. As you come to understand it, the central belief of House Miriel is that every single Elf has within them the potential to be truly masterful at a craft, and their purpose is to locate and cultivate that potential within each member of their family. It's a sentiment that strikes you first as rather sweet, second as rather selfish, then third as worryingly compatible with isolationist or supremacist viewpoints.
You also gain an understanding of why House Miriel is opposed to cooperation with Middenheim, where genuine doubt about the unreliability of humans is bolstered by concern for their carefully-guarded pride. House Miriel is renowned for their craftsmanship among the Eonir, but will that still be the case if the economy of Tor Lithanel is joined, however tenuously, with that of Ulthuan? What will it do to their reputation if goods from the forges of Caledor, the workshops of Tiranoc, the jewellers of Eataine, begin to trickle in via Marienburg, or possibly by direct trade via the Schaukel? Not the noblest of motivations, but not an uncommon one, either. A similar dynamic plays out fairly often when human craft guilds find themselves competing with imported Dwarven goods. Big fish in small ponds have a habit of getting quite concerned about a sudden connection to the ocean.
But despite all that, they are willing to go along with the majority vote, and to do business with yourself at rates no worse than those available to any citizen of Tor Lithanel. If this is the worst of the attitudes of those amongst the isolationist bloc, then there's reason to be optimistic of the future of relationships between the Empire and Laurelorn.
Alongside that understanding, you equip the headquarters of the Waystone Project with the finest equipment money can buy in Tor Lithanel. There is glasswork of every size and type, made of a variety of glasses, including some apparently formed from clear crystal. There are ceramic alternatives for when the contents must be kept away from light. There are contraptions of incredibly delicate lenses to aid the eye to observe both the miniscule and the distant. There are multiple sets of alchemical equipment in glass, stone, ceramic, copper, and steel. There are modular runic arrays and stencils for the quick and easy construction of the various kinds of magic circles, and a stunning variey of resonant materials to reinforce them. There is a veritable armoury of ritual knives, daggers, sickles, and hammers of every magically resonant material imaginable, and a second of more mundane tools made of materials chosen for a complete lack of resonance. And not least of all is a smithy the equal of any in the Empire that Max is entirely rapt with, which presents a problem to your plans to use it as a pretext for further investigation. After a great deal of prodding he is finally able to find something to complain about, and you prod him further until you have a set of incredibly exact specifications.
Your plan is to make something so complicated that nobody who isn't deeply immersed in the art of metalworking can hope to understanding it, so that you will need to take Max directly to the artisans in question - the Smith-Priests of Vaul - and thus gain better insight into them. While this proves to be impossible, Laurelin's explanations for why that is are as enlightening as you could have hoped for. Laurelorn's Smith-Priests labour in the tunnels and caverns below the Rainbow Falls, where the magic in the waters from the Tarn of Tears flows through after being shattered upon the rocks of the falls. To even enter them takes a great deal of training to allow an utterly neutral mindset, or else part of the flowing Winds will be drawn to that person's soul and cause turbulence that can quickly grow into a vortex of Dhar. Part of that preparation is the ritual blinding common to Priests of Vaul, and the time spent in such close proximity to the constant tumult of the falls as they wield the Winds to bend mundane materials to their will renders these craftsmen as deaf as they are blind, only able to communicate with other members of the Cult of Vaul through methods protected as holy secrets. This creates a virtually unassailable monopoly on craftsmanship, as these artisans communicate only with their correligionists, which is under the unofficial but almost total control of House Miriel.
An unexpected upshot of these discoveries is that Max is thrilled to learn that the magical artisanry that he has been pursuing is possible, and far from being discouraged that those that have mastered it are unwilling to share it, he is glad that they are extremely unlikely to share it with anyone among the Colleges, leaving the field clear for him to invent and claim the credit for Chamon-based smithing. That's an unusual point of view, but you suppose he's done more than enough to earn the right to a little eccentricity.
---
With the help of yourself and a sort of gauntlet Max made to cover the new arm's dangerously sharp claws, Johann has been working to gain an understanding of his new arm. For quite some time it simply hung limp, swaying with his movements. But Magesight reveals activity just under the surface, with a tendril of Hysh from the arm probing around and releasing small trickles of what Egrimm identifies as healing energies into the socket it finds itself in. Throughout it all Johann seems quite cheery, enthusiastically recounting every errant twitch of the fingers of his new arm. He is, you remind yourself, a wielder of the Wind of Metal and an enthusiastic pursuer of ritual gilding, and thus it makes sense that he would resonate at least as strongly with a prosthetic embodiment of practicality and permanence as he did with his own flesh and blood.
Over time the twitches become more pronounced and his fingers begin to flex slightly when he isn't paying attention, but your own observations are more taken with how the tendril of Hysh that seems to be healing and examining the socket it has been implanted into withdraws quite obligingly whenever Johann channels Chamon, allowing him to perform his spells without trouble, and the few times he's unthinkingly tried to send magic through his left arm out of habit the magic has simply rebounded off the metal, indicating either some sort of advanced insulation worked into the metal or a very high density of stored Hysh. You're becoming more and more curious of the inner workings of the arm, and take copious notes of what you can observe in the hopes you might be able to incorporate something similar into some of your future enchanting projects.
If part of you had begun to hope that Johann ultimately rejects the arm and returns it to your laboratory for further study, those hopes are dashed one morning when Johann's complaints of phantom sensations up and down his missing arm culminate in a spasm of surprise and pain as Hysh pulses through the prosthetic, revealing an intricate tracework of runic patterns that you try fruitlessly to memorize in the fraction of a second they are visible for. When it fades, Johann has already begun to lift his metal arm, his fingers wriggling and flexing as they begin to respond to impulses that had previously been dashing themselves fruitlessly against severed nerve endings.
"Huh," Johann says, and that about summarizes it.
It still takes Johann quite some time to adapt, as even though the new arm is responding much the same as if it was his old one, it still differs in length, strength, range of motion, and dozens of other small ways that combine to turn the usually-nimble Johann rather clumsy. The claws prove much stronger than his gilded fist, and Max has to produce several more gauntlets of even stronger designs after Johann accidentally mangles the first few, the golden claws slicing themselves free of their steel sheaths. Tests of exactly how much strength the arm is capable of are discontinued after he badly strains his still-ungilded shoulder muscles, proving that whatever the ceiling of his new strength is, it's higher than the portion of his body that remains merely flesh and blood - though it might not be if he continues the gradual gilding of his torso, he muses aloud one day.
Your continued monitoring picks up that the arm has begun to draw in wisps of ambient Hysh through the palm, and comparing the approximate amount drawn in to the activity he is engaged in indicates that the arm draws in more energy after particularly intricate work, but not, interestingly, after work that required an expenditure of strength. Is the Hysh only needed to control the arm, and some other power source is drawn on for the actual movements? Or is controlling more taxing on Hysh than raw strength? Egrimm ventures that the arm might have some mechanism to convert Winds to raw mechanical power in a similar manner to Runecraft, allowing greater efficiency for movement but still requiring the use of raw Hysh for control. It sounds plausible, but with the inner workings of the arms still concealed it's simply one theory among many at this point.
The final major question centres on the palm, as the size and location of the raised circle leads you to believe that it is not simply an input. If it only needed to draw in small wisps of ambient Hysh it could have been located anywhere and could have been much smaller. It being on the palm leads you to believe that being able to control where the output is pointing is important, which is why you theorize that it is some sort of weapon. Johann spends a great deal of time in a borrowed firing range pointing his new arm in the direction of the buttes as he tries to prod the arm into doing something. Everything else he has asked of the arm used the same impulses as his original appendage, but now he is trying the equivalent of flexing a muscle he's never had. It's a long and frustrating process, and you were well into questioning your original theory when the first sputters of light finally start to emerge from Johann's palm.
It doesn't take him long to be able to exert control over this new impulse, and soon enough he has a beam of light emerging from his arm, which might be somewhat useful if it weren't for his blindness to it. But neither you nor he believe that the only purpose of that mechanism is to save a few coppers on candles, so day after day you return to the field as he contorts his mind around the one mental impulse that seems to work, seeking some sort of neighbour to it that will have a different or stronger effect. And finally one day he achieves it, causing you to drop your book in surprise as Hysh flares and a beam of light slams into the butte, sending soil and burning grass flying.
"Huh," Johann says again.
Egrimm identifies the effect as being fundamentally the same effect as that known to the Light Order as Shem's Burning Gaze, and further experimentation shows that Johann can only use it twice in succession without affecting the use of his arm, or thrice if he's okay with his arm hanging limp until it absorbs enough ambient Hysh to revive itself. Overall it's as good a result as Johann could have hoped for, but you find yourself slightly frustrated that its inner workings remain completely concealed from you. You have only the slightest idea where one would even begin to create an enchantment able to interface directly with a living body like that, and that it's capable of both precision and power indicates to you that whoever built it must have been incredibly skilled, or had access to a great deal more accumulated knowledge than the Colleges do. Frowning to yourself, you finish writing up your notes on what little information you were able to glean from your observations, hoping you'll be able to make use of at least part of it at some point in the future.
- There's less to this update than I wanted there to be, but I'm going to be away from my computer for the next day or so, so here's what I've got so far.
One of the tragedies of Warhammer's worldbuilding IMO is how few polities there are, and hence how relatively 'flat' all the wars that are fought feel.
I sometimes think about how it'd be fun to do a sorta nega-AoS Fantasy rewrite where the worldbuilding is more traditional, rather than the GW's everything-pivots-around-these-few-hyper-distinct-armies style informed by their business model. The Empire alone kinda got that treatment due to being the setting of WFRPG, but it'd be really cool if all of the subfactions had their own defined agendas within and beyond their own borders. Maybe one of the Bretonnian provinces is obsessed with killing Greenskins for some historical reason, and sends all its knights down to the Badlands. Maybe one of them has started selling peasants to the Dark Elves en-masse on the down low and so fights the High Elves incognito to keep this going. Maybe L'Anguille is tired of Marienburg strutting around as the northern Old World port and becomes relatively urbanized and obsessed with trade warfare and naval skirmishes.
And then you do it from the other side, too - maybe those Dark Elves trading with that second province are Karond Kar specifically, and they're trying to amass enough economic power and clout elsewhere to become independent from Malekith, since they're tired of going along with his millenia spanning war. And then you could flesh out the small nations, too, and it'd slowly start to look like actual geopolitics instead of "we've decided to attack <x> today for <basic, faction wide motivation>!"
I'm downright jealous of that arm now. Now all Johann needs to learn is how to snap his fingers in a way to cause sparks and it would instantly kill me.
I think you meant to close with an ] there.
(edit; apparently putting just the opening bracket, i and ending bracket italicizes the entire rest of the post)
Yeah that helps because it would be weird for me imagining Mathilda having wrinkles and grey hair right now it still feels like it was only a year ago we where in Sylvania fighting for Van Hal.
On another note great update! I'm mostly a silent poster not really getting too involved with the discussion in thread but I really enjoy this quest!
Yeah that helps because it would be weird for me imagining Mathilda having wrinkles and grey hair right now it still feels like it was only a year ago we where in Sylvania fighting for Van Hal.
On another note great update! I'm mostly a silent poster not really getting too involved with the discussion in thread but I really enjoy this quest!
I think the update is pretty clear. Ultimately we would have gained more knowledge by taking the arm apart and studying the internals. As it is, Johann has a neat battle magic zap gun and we've learned a little. A little. But we could have learned more.
Spilled milk, not refighting the vote. However I think it's a good lesson to take that the cool thing is not always the most effective thing. We made a mistake. I made a mistake, voting to graft the arm on Johann.
I think the update is pretty clear. Ultimately we would have gained more knowledge by taking the arm apart and studying the internals. As it is, Johann has a neat battle magic zap gun and we've learned a little. A little. But we could have learned more.
Spilled milk, not refighting the vote. However I think it's a good lesson to take that the cool thing is not always the most effective thing. We made a mistake. I made a mistake, voting to graft the arm on Johann.
Or it might have blown up in our face as we disrupted the exquisite latticework of unknown energies and materials in our functionally blind fumbling. I'd at least wait to see if any follow on options open up before chalking this one up to experience.
I think the update is pretty clear. Ultimately we would have gained more knowledge by taking the arm apart and studying the internals. As it is, Johann has a neat battle magic zap gun and we've learned a little. A little. But we could have learned more.
Spilled milk, not refighting the vote. However I think it's a good lesson to take that the cool thing is not always the most effective thing. We made a mistake. I made a mistake, voting to graft the arm on Johann.
Unlikely, DRM is usually a priority with advanced mechanisms like this, and note that it showed very subtle signs of magic until it was actually attached to someone, and the only time it really went loud was when it fully 'Clicked' with him.
Pretty sure what we got was a proof of concept that justifies further Windherding research and that there's ways around the "Winds don't mix" barrier that bars a lot of high end enchantment.
There is one, called Quenelles. Seriously, in the RPG stats for Knights of the Grail, characters from Quenelles start with the Grudge-born Fury talent, which signifies that the folk of Quenelles have a burning hatred of orcs and goblins rivaling that of dwarfs. Besides, if all you want to do as a Bretonnian is kill Orcs, just go to Carcassonne or Quenelles. You will literally never run out of specimens to kill in your lifetime.
Honestly, kinda horrifying. Those smiths aren't people anymore. Just mechanisms of flesh and blood bent to a singular task.
Really hope Max doesn't take it as inspiration.
I think the update is pretty clear. Ultimately we would have gained more knowledge by taking the arm apart and studying the internals. As it is, Johann has a neat battle magic zap gun and we've learned a little. A little. But we could have learned more.
Spilled milk, not refighting the vote. However I think it's a good lesson to take that the cool thing is not always the most effective thing. We made a mistake. I made a mistake, voting to graft the arm on Johann.
Nope. Mathilde believes she could have learned more by taking it apart. We have no reason to think she is correct. And strong meta reasons to think she would have learned nothing at all, beyond that whoever made it knew things she hasn't even dreamt of.
"Loremaster Weber of the Empire," announces a servant whose job it should have been to notice you much earlier.
With a sudden jerk the figure that had been starting to relax from having seen to the morning's duties jerks upright and gives you a rather alarmed look.
Laurelorn's Smith-Priests labour in the tunnels and caverns below the Rainbow Falls, where the magic in the waters from the Tarn of Tears flows through after being shattered upon the rocks of the falls. To even enter them takes a great deal of training to allow an utterly neutral mindset, or else part of the flowing Winds will be drawn to that person's soul and cause turbulence that can quickly grow into a vortex of Dhar. Part of that preparation is the ritual blinding common to Priests of Vaul, and the time spent in such close proximity to the constant tumult of the falls as they wield the Winds to bend mundane materials to their will renders these craftsmen as deaf as they are blind, only able to communicate with other members of the Cult of Vaul through methods protected as holy secrets. This creates a virtually unassailable monopoly on craftsmanship, as these artisans communicate only with their correligionists, which is under the unofficial but almost total control of House Miriel.
I think the update is pretty clear. Ultimately we would have gained more knowledge by taking the arm apart and studying the internals. As it is, Johann has a neat battle magic zap gun and we've learned a little. A little. But we could have learned more.
Spilled milk, not refighting the vote. However I think it's a good lesson to take that the cool thing is not always the most effective thing. We made a mistake. I made a mistake, voting to graft the arm on Johann.
I didn't vote, but... We still got an item with a rechargeable Battle Magic spell. With extra spice against Undead or Daemons.
That's perhaps not as awesome as "Figured out a novel form of enchanting", but we have no idea if we would have been able to figure out much from unraveling it anyway, so.
Heck, this thing is so adaptable and idiot-proof that apparently it can be used without the user being given any instructions or reading any manuals at all. It's even usable as a prosthetic by a mage and doesn't interfere with his magic. We might not have figured out how it works, but at least we know that it does work very well?
How has Mathilde's appearance changed at this point, from early in the quest? In terms of both age, hair and dress. There's been some incidental mentions, but it's hard to get a complete picture.
Wonder if we will get to see how their craftsmanship compares to Dwarf work.
Only quitters settle for their 'allotted' lifespan.
Honestly, kinda horrifying. Those smiths aren't people anymore. Just mechanisms of flesh and blood bent to a singular task.
Really hope Max doesn't take it as inspiration.
It is as we expected. Battle Magic beam cannon arm. At least Johann is pleased.
Nope. Mathilde believes she could have learned more by taking it apart. We have no reason to think she is correct. And strong meta reasons to think she would have learned nothing at all, beyond that whoever made it knew things she hasn't even dreamt of.
