Plan: Ordnance Survey
-[*] Waystone: Mapping (Empire, Border Princes) (Egrimm, Johann, Max, Aksel)
A jolly interesting road trip.
Or possibly sky trip. The chapter doesn't specify but presumably they were travelling by gyrocarriage.
That is an awesome phrase and I dearly hope I can find excuses to slip it into conversations.
You frown at him. "What?"
Mathilde outright admitting she has no clue what someone is on about. Perhaps the rarest situation we see her in.
These three leylines also allow you triangulate the position of Marienburg's nexus to the fortress of Rijker's Isle, once the seat of the Elector Count of Westerland and, as the Directorate does not trust any one of their number to control such a symbolically and strategically important location, now a heavily-garrisoned prison.
…having criminals sitting atop a nexus strikes me as unwise.
Aksel tries to get in touch with his counterparts in Reikland, but with the Reikland Hedgewise engaged in some sort of theological conflict with the Sigmarites and therefore being especially hunted by the Templars, he's unable to do so.
The fact that this is presented as if it is somewhat unusual rather than the default state of things is interesting. I was given to understand that the Hedgewise were always in conflict with the more mainstream religions.
Perhaps the fall of wherever was next in this chain of nexuses is either caused by or contributed to the abandonment of Karaz Ghumzul, and the 'curse' the locals remember was a severe uptick in nastiness crawling out of the Middle Mountains now that the ambient magic was no longer being drained away.
If true that actually has major implications. High mana levels being a factor in the reproduction, conversion or spontaneous creation of various creatures is something potentially worth investigating.
In particular pegasi and griffins might breed better in high mama areas.
You find yourself overcome with an eerie sense of repetition as you hear of the Marcher Fortress being drawn into the realm of the Lord of Excess, its guardians doomed to be corrupted at the leisure of the resident Daemons.
Good news: we know how to deal with that.
Bad news: apparently that trick was not a one-off.
Anyone remember if we published a paper on how we yanked Vlag out of the warp?
For duty. Because atop Karak Norn, you now have no doubt, somewhere in that forested plateau upon which grows the finest wood of the Karaz Ankor, is a nexus. What would be the only nexus standing between the Empire and a slow slide into the realm of Chaos if the Rijker's Isle nexus was destroyed.
More evidence that a nexus can have major strategic and economic utility.
We have a lot of infrastructure to build and repurpose.
You spend some time staring at the towering stone maypole at the centre of the public green - 'the largest maypole in the Empire!', you remember being told when you spent a night in a tavern here - and smile.
Fits with the halfling aesthetic. Hidden in cheerful mundanity.
For as often as Mathilde has travelled through it we have actually seen very little of this area. And by the look of things we haven't been missing all that much.
Amusing thought: While The Waystone Project isn't a secret, it also isn't publicised. Thus all over the continent there are going to be spymasters and rumour-millers being inundated with reports about multiple Wizard Lords turning up in a flying machine, poking around and then leaving. And none of them are going to have the faintest idea WTF is going on.
