As rocks go, the one you've been taken to in central Middenland is far from the most impressive you've seen. It barely manages to stand taller than you, which is a low bar to clear in the first place, and you have to squint to see the faint remains of ancient carvings that have barely withstood millennia of wind and rain.
Ahah. We finally get to see something in Middenland. It's not a nexus or primary Waystone, but it's something. I also like the nod to Mathilde's height here. It's pretty funny, since Mathilde explicitly says that it's not much of an achievement for something to eclipse her in height.
You can find ones like it just about everyone on the continent if you bother to look, and the only reason this one stands out is that it in despite of a moderate amount of ambient magical energies that have soaked into everything else around you, the stone is completely empty of magical energies. Stone might have a high capacity for absorbing magical energy, but it still absorbs it, and any stone exposed to the elements for long would eventually accumulate as much earthbound energy as everything around it. But this one is, you expect, sending its magic to a nearby Waystone.
Fairly simple design, but that's what makes it work. It just sends Eartbound energy to a Waystone by conducting it without absorbing it, and it's barely noticable, which is its advantage.
"So," you say. "This is one of the Belthani tributaries."
"Yes, Lady Magister," Magister Tochter Grunfeld says. "As typical a specimen as I could find."
Cadaeth begins to examine the vegetation growing around it, and Baba Niedzwenka purses her lips as she looks the stone up and down. "Hm. Curious, but if I came across it I wouldn't stop to prod at it unless I was very bored."
I think this is a good demonstration of the attitudes of different characters. Tochter is exceedingly polite, consistently referring to Mathilde as Lady Magister and being straight to the point. Cadaeth goes right into business, perhaps out of practicality or perhaps out of curiosity, and she immediately drifts to plants, her specialty. Niedzwenka is naturally carefree and dismissive, saying what's on her mind with no filter. Aksel isn't even mentioned, so I don't know if he's here or not. Zlata on the other hand, is staying back and only contributes once she has an idea, rather than making idle comments.
"That's probably why they're still around," you observe. "They're just rocks. For mundane purposes they're not large enough to bother bringing tools to quarry them, and for magical purposes there's nothing to work with, and if for some reason you want magically neutral stone you can get as much as you need from any mine or quarry. There's not even anything to corrupt like there are with Waystones, the magical inflow is through the natural tendency of earthbound energies to seek equilibrium. If you broke the outflow somehow they'd just become normal rocks and eventually become no more filled with magical energy than any other rock."
This seems to be the tributaries primary advantage. They're overlooked. Their magical flow is practically unnoticable, they're small rocks and their material isn't all that interesting. It's not much of a magical material and there isn't even much to corrupt. And taking down a single one wouldn't have that great of an effect, and tracking them down is difficult unless you have significant knowledge. Most people wouldn't bother with them, which makes them so effective at their job.
Their effects are small, but incremental. If it does turn out that all we need is proper positioning, then this would be the most effective way to supplement the Waystone network in as short a time as possible and providing results. It wouldn't give us a big push, but the effects would be notable on a wider scale.
"Can you observe the flow of energies?" Tochter asks curiously.
You shake your head. "Not this far north, it took me a week of meditation to spot a Waystone-sized leyline in Reikland. Maybe if there were any in, say, southern Tilea or Estalia the background magic might be low enough for me to be able to spot it..." You consider further, then shake your head. "No, then there'd be less magic flowing to spot. By the mechanics of the tributary, the amount flowing out will never be higher than the background magic level I'd be trying to spot it through."
I think it's been firmly established that Mathilde has incredibly sharp Windsight by now. There were rumors in the College, but the project members have had a taste of it, so I think the pecking order is established until it's shown that someone else has better Sight. Maybe Hatalath, but he's not here.
Mathilde's observation is interesting too. The way these tributaries work, the flow of a tributary would never be higher than the background magic level. That effectively makes it impossible to spot the flow. You can determine where the tributary is by looking for a spot that is conducting no flow compared to the surroundings, but it would be hard to find unless you were looking for it and knew where to look for.
"Perhaps you could spot the channel itself," Zlata says from somewhere behind you.
"The channel might not be a distinct piece of magic," Cadaeth says. "The Waystones are already absorbing magic, if you release magic into the earth deep enough the magic will be pulled towards it as it diffuses. It doesn't take long before there's basically a magical rivulet that carves out a magically conductive channel using nothing but the absorbed ambient energies."
If you release the magic deep enough, it's automatically attracted to the pull of a Waystone's leylines, like some sort of magnetic attraction. Considering all the talk about cardinal and ordinal directions and compasses, it sounds fitting. Perhaps that's the basis of the Geomantic Web, where flows of energy would naturally converge at points that pull in all the ambient energy between them to focus it for great works. Before the Polar Gates collapsed, all the magical energy in the world would be, effectively, "Earthbound" magic, since the Winds didn't have an identity back then.
"I take it that's how the Lornalim work?"
She only hesitates for a moment before answering. "Only once their roots grow deep enough, otherwise the magic just 'floats' back up to the soil." She places her palm against the dirt at the base of the tributary. "And the depth required is significantly deeper than this stone goes."
It's nice to know that Cadaeth is willing to play ball. I had high hopes, and I think she's matching them. It's normal to hesitate when talking about things they've had to keep secret for so long, but if any progress is to be made, then some secrets need to be aired.
Also, I wonder if the reason the Lornalim requires deep root growth as opposed to the simple Belthani stone is because the Lornalim is not as perfectly aligned in Cardinal/Ordinal directions of a Waystone, so it requires more effort to conduct the energy. There must be costs and drawbacks as well as benefits to different types of tributaries, so I doubt the Belthani tributary is supposedly that much simpler than Lornalim without a cost.
"Which way is the Waystone from here?"
"Remind me to organize a Wayshard for you." Cadaeth concentrates for a moment, then points.
Oh, that's nice. Cadaeth is offering to organise a Wayshard for Mathilde. I don't know if she means she's just setting up a sale and Mathilde will have to pay for it, or if she's offering to front the cost. Either way it's nice that she's offering. Mathilde will probably need it if she's going around looking for Waystones. It would certainly make Mapping actions easier.
"Roughly west," Tochter says after glancing at the sun.
"We can do better than roughly." You pull the compass you borrowed from the Gyrocarriage's cockpit from a pocket and consult it, then look in the direction Cadaeth indicated. "In fact, I'd say it's exactly west."
"Surely not exactly," Cadaeth says, standing and moving to look over your shoulder, then frowns as she looks at it. "Okay. Exactly. That would explain why they're able to maintain a flow from so much shallower. How, though? The Waystone is far enough away that it wouldn't be visible even if you levelled all the trees and hills in the way."
Tochter is just glancing at the sun. Is she estimating from the sun's position? That sounds incredibly hard. I would expect her to look at shadows like the way sundials work to take a guess at the position. It sounds much harder to use the sun's position alone.
As a side note, the mental image of Cadaeth looking over Mathilde's shoulder is pretty funny and cute. I don't know how tall Cadaeth is, but I'll take a guess that she's noticably taller than Mathilde.
Also, Cadaeth does confirm here that the shallowness of the tributary is made up for by the exact positioning.
"The sun and the stars," Tochter says simply.
"To within a degree, though?" Cadaeth asks doubtfully.
"Yes," she replies firmly. "The Belthani placed great importance on the angle of the sun. I once saw some rubbings that..."
That's pretty interesting. I had no idea you could determine angles so exact with just the sun and the stars. Mathilde's compass is saying the position is exact, which requires some extensive studying and a great degree of accuracy.
Something that I would note, however, is that the Old Ones engineered the planet to have a perfect orbit and position. If they wanted to, the Old Ones could have set it up so that the positions of the stars and the sun would create a perfect indication of angles. Even if it's not possible in real life, and I don't know whether that's the case, it could definitely be possible in Warhammer.
She frowns as she thinks. "Actually, I might be able to do better than rubbings. Lady Magister, may I use the authority of the Project to lay claim to some carvings in Talabecland?"
"Whose authority do they currently fall under?" you ask warily.
"It's disputed. The Taalites and Rhyans claim it because some of the symbols are ones they adopted, and the Order of Life is disputing them but haven't wanted to do so too hard because some of the rituals depicted are potentially questionable."
"How questionable?"
"Human sacrifice and the summoning of what we believe to be Sevirric spirits."
"Ah. Not the sort of thing we generally like associated with the Colleges." She nods. "Do it. We're going to be casting so wide a net that this wouldn't seem out of place. Tell them that the Grey Order will vet the carvings. Then, as long as there's nothing in the carvings that's too improper, the Jades can have them once the Project is done."
"Thank you, Lady Magister."
You nod. "Okay, let's take rubbings and samples off this and head back to civilization."
Ah, now we're actively stepping in to put our weight on the scales of contests between organisations. I think this is worth it, the Taalastein Carvings are greatly noteworthy and potentially very insightful, but it's certainly going to be shifting the paradigms of some factions and organisations. At the end of the day, the Waystone Project is most important, and whatever Tochter does with the carvings afterwards doesn't matter as long as we get what we need. Not sure Paranoth will be grateful, but whatever.
In regards to the human sacrifice and Sevirric spirits aspect, that just sounds like Incarnate Elemental summoning. The Colleges definitely don't want to clue in the general public about it. Still, I wonder if Mathilde knows of Incarnate Elementals and that the Colleges already have those rituals ready if need be. I assume she does.
Magister Tochter Grunfeld has been busy, as the next time you see her it's with the fragments of a shattered decades-old jurisdictional deadlock in her wake. As a result thirteen ancient stone steles known as the Talastein Carvings have been transferred to the custody of the Colleges and transported five hundred miles to Tor Lithanel. Nine of them are dedicated to either depictions or instructions for specific religious rituals, two of them to the kind of measurements of sun and stars Tochter spoke of, one to the history and creed of the Belthani, and one either a shrine or a lexicon, filled with larger individual runes rather than pictographic sentences. Under Tochter's nervous eye you scrutinize the two that the Jades didn't want to lay too strong a claim to, and while the carvings are faint and damaged in places, the depiction of a human stretched out upon an altar is hard to mistake for anything else. "I can see why this wouldn't be the sort of thing you'd want to lay too strong a claim to," you say neutrally.
It's nice of the Belthani to record their history, creed, culture and rituals on a bunch of stone that survived the millenia. It makes our job of figuring them out much easier once we get translating. Some other cultures will be harder to crack I believe. The collection of runes might also be helpful once we take the Waystone Rune action, as we try to look for similarities between Belthani Runes and Waystone Runes.
Tochter nods. "Some accuse the Druids of sacrifice to justify their faith being replaced by the Taalties and Rhyans, either by saying they were no different to the Cult of Ahalt or outright accusing them of involvement with Daemonic powers. This could be used to play right into that sort of narrative."
I don't think it would be reassuring to those people to discover that these rituals are not exclusive to the Druids and the Colleges are willing to perform them for entirely secular reasons if need be. That's the downside of recording your cultural and religous practices on stone that lasts the millenium. People don't have context for your human sacrifice.
....
Yeah, I didn't feel great saying that either.
You peer at the pictographs. "Well, to my eye this looks a lot closer to Eltharin than Dark Tongue. Weirdly close, actually. Too close. Tochter, talk to me about this language."
"That's something I wanted to bring up with you in private. Your mention of 'silver ships' got me thinking of these in the first place, because this stone here," she points to one of the other steles, "is of the history of the Belthani. And these runes here," she points to a specific pair of pictographs, "were translated as meaning 'silver ships'."
"Translated by?"
She smiles. "Teclis."
First, I want to note that the way Mathilde speaks to Tochter is funny. She's not addressing her with her last name or with a title or anything, she's just calling her "Tochter". Combine that with the whole "talk to me about this" just really
brings to mind a certain sketch.
Anyways, in regards to the actual content of the Carvings, I've brought it up in thread a couple times before, but why not bring it up again now that the contents are directly referenced in quest?
"... the Moist Earth, the Mother of all life [two obscure symbols] Dryad, Naiad, Nymph [list of unknown symbols] Gods [two lines obscured] devastation [crack in stone] came from beyond the [half a line worn away] silver ships [seven unknown symbols] deep waters, fertile, and [three lines worn away] Worship Her [two unknown symbols] nurture Her land [one line worn away] we are Her children, we are the Belthani ..." —Extract translated from the Talastein Carvings, now held in the Royal Academy of Talabecland, translated by Teclis of Ulthuan
"Teclis translated this?" There was a time when you would have not questioned Teclis having knowledge of any language, but your time among the Dwarves and Eonir had introduced you to other perspectives on the Asur. "Why would an Elf of Ulthuan speak a language of the humans of the Old World? Even if they had bothered to learn the local languages when they were colonizing the Reik Basin, why would Teclis have gone to the trouble of learning one that by all accounts is entirely extinct?"
I suppose Mathilde is acknowledging that she is developing a more cynical perspective on the Asur as a result of integrating with more than one cultura that holds a disdain for them. I'm sure she still respects Teclis, but she is more willing to consider things in regards to him instead of responding with "of course he knew, he's Teclis".
"I have a theory about that, one that ties in to old legends about the Belthani coming from the west, just as the Scythians came from the north, the Tylosians from the south, and the Imperial Tribes from the east. Teclis was only able to translate a few scraps of the symbols have survived, but of those..." She begins to point. "'Came from beyond', 'deep waters', 'silver ships', 'nurture Her land'. What if the Belthani 'came from beyond' the Great Ocean? What if Ulthuan could interpret scraps of this language because it's a cousin of Anoqeyån? Because the Belthani were students of the Old Ones, just as the Elves were?"
This is an interesting concept. It is true that the human tribes were pretty spread out across the globe. Tochter doesn't know this, and Mathilde only has Deathfang's perspective, but Deathfang does say that there were five great cities watched over by the Dragons, and there were likely different people in each city. Maybe there were humans in all these sections, and they migrated after the fall of their respective cities, settling in one location or another.
Personally, we know of Albion's existence, but in universe the Colleges and Mathilde consider it a tall tale. It's more reasonable to assume that the Belthani also lived in Ulthuan before they migrated to the Old World to finish the job that the Elves started.
"Are you suggesting the Belthani came from Ulthuan?"
"And they were taken across the 'deep waters' on these 'silver ships' to 'nurture Her land'. Is that not what we did? When the Elves got too caught up in their wars, the Belthani completed the network."
You note and decide not to common on the 'we' slipping through.
I suppose this is somewhat personal to Tochter. She probably spent a lot of her time trying to prove the importance of the Belthani and their influence only to be seen as superstitous nonsense by those more secular within the College and who believed Teclis' words and dismissal of the Earth Mother. Still, as long as all it does is provide her with motivation to make sure this project is successful, it doesn't matter. We have need of people who will give it their all to see this project through.
"The idea is intriguing," you say, "and if it's true, then it means it might be possible to translate these symbols further. Teclis might have been able to pick some low-hanging fruit, but he was operating purely from memory. We, on the other hand, have the Library of Mournings to draw from."
"Which means," she goes to one of the other rite steles, "that we might be able to translate this, the consecration ceremony, into something we can perform."
Library of Mournings is shaping up to be quite useful. Glad we chose Laurelorn as a base of operations, although I believe we would have gotten their support here either way.
"That seems like it would be reliant on Teclis being completely correct that the Druids only ever communed with the Jade Wind. He had something of a blind spot for the existence of divine magic."
"Would it be so bad if we were able to reconnect the Jades to the Earth Mother?" Her tone is carefully neutral.
"No, it wouldn't, but that's not the only possibility. Just because we have Her in mind doesn't mean She's the only one that might answer if we go around knocking on doors."
"Ah. I see what you mean."
Tochter seems to be under the belief that perhaps the Jades could do a Nehekhara, and combine Divine and Jade magic or something. I'm not so sure that's possible, but I have to commend the optimism. If the Jades develop some sort of Divine/Jade magic, all the power to them. I don't necessarily support turning the Jades entirely into a religous faction, but people are free to practice their beliefs as long as it doesn't hurt anyone.
"We'll keep the possibility in mind, but we'll start from the start. We'll commission some menhirs of various materials and start planting them, if we can recreate the tributaries with just a theodolite then we should. Failing that, we'll try enchanting techniques to make it work, and then try to operate within the paradigm of Gods we know the current mailing address of. This seems like it could fit neatly within the paradigms of both Halétha and the Ancient Widow."
"Yes, Lady Magister."
"Meanwhile, I'll try to find a hard answer for you about those two potentially dodgy steles."
Hopefully it's as simple as planting a bunch of rocks in exact positions. Part of me is suspicious of such easy solutions, but another part is just hopeful at least one part of this project isn't a hassle.
And that's it. I decided to make a reaction post for this partial update. Once the full update comes out, whatever I make will likely skip over the parts I already went over unless it's been updated.
