dinomannitro6
all your gender is belong to us
- Location
- The Land Where The Sunflowers Bloom
Botany/biology perhaps. Its a shared interest with her girlfriend, and could be useful when dealing with the forest elves.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Creative writing.
A: so I can finally get those silly penny dreadfuls I've wanted; WF needs a version of The Hardy Boys or Sherlock
B: more seriously, to get a more consistent compelling/fascinating bonus to papers.
- Location
- Texas
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I agree that History is a subject we should concentrate because of the 2/3 skill on the character sheet. After that imo maybe anatomy should be next? We do have a huge +12 bonus from our library. It might also help in assassination ,
- Location
- Earth
"...So yeah, this Alka-whatsit of course got hit with a terrible headache as that spell was literally burnt out of his head, saving me from necromantic slavery. Wear runic talismans made by the greatest Runesmith alive, that's what works for me. The fight really picked up after that, and..."
Of course, only the last 10% of the paper is actually dedicated to the inner workings of vampire skulls, rather than how Mathilde acquired them.
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- Location
- Actually pretty lost
I'd be very interested in trying to get a portable storage dimension. Yes, it would let us carry more loot, but you also have to consider the benefits of being able to carry a pile of situationally useful gear around with you everywhere you go. And yes, being able to retrieve loot from places we couldn't feasibly carry it out of.
And okay, maybe I'm idly dreaming of walking off with a sizable chunk of the Dawi Zharr's large piles of gold.
Other than that, I'd mostly be interested in the opportunity to understand other people's liminal realms, which have come up in several places already. Access to the World Roots would be an incredible asset to the Empire if we figured out enough for Wizards to open the way, for example.
Ultimately though, beyond learning enough for the AV book, we have so many other unfinished and unstarted projects I don't see us starting on them unless they're immediately relevant in some capacity.
And okay, maybe I'm idly dreaming of walking off with a sizable chunk of the Dawi Zharr's large piles of gold.
Other than that, I'd mostly be interested in the opportunity to understand other people's liminal realms, which have come up in several places already. Access to the World Roots would be an incredible asset to the Empire if we figured out enough for Wizards to open the way, for example.
Ultimately though, beyond learning enough for the AV book, we have so many other unfinished and unstarted projects I don't see us starting on them unless they're immediately relevant in some capacity.
Languages are the obvious pick, given how they open up so many more book bonuses. In distant second place, I might suggest taking Oswald Oswaldson up on learning how to direct cannonfire, given how effective we've seen cannons be in battle.
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- Location
- Actually pretty lost
I went back to look at the previous vote, thinking it had secured maybe 100 votes versus the 300+ of the winner. It seems to have only gotten 35. I suspect that any backlog-clearing option will lose out to the excellent arc hooks Boney can offer.
Now, if we could find a particular personal research megaproject to focus on and dedicate an arc to that in particular, I think that could be an attractive option. But at this time, no such project beckons.
I also read a bit on from that point, and was rereading Kurtis Krammovitch's backstop and came across it mentioning he was a master of Hedgecraft before joining the Grey Order. Does anyone remember if there was an explanation as to how he can use hedgecraft and Ulgu? Was it just a matter of lacking Arcane Marks? I've no doubt we were told we couldn't learn hedgecraft - we would have jumped on that pretty fast, methinks - I just don't recall why, and the discussion afterwards is dominated by an important vote.
Ideas for where Mathilde might recruit scribes from? So far I've only got a handful of options and I think I recall more options than these being discussed at some point.
[X] Cult of Scripsisti
Will build ties to the Cult of Verena. Reikspiel, Tilean, Old Reikspiel, Classical.
[X] Runescribes Guild
Highly-skilled and diligent. Reikspiel, Khazalid.
[X] Locals
Will demonstrate the value of literacy to the local population. Reikspiel, Tilean.
[X] Orphans
Can take your pick of literate orphans from throughout the Old World. Reikspiel, Tilean, Estalian, Kislevarin.
[X] Cult of Scripsisti
Will build ties to the Cult of Verena. Reikspiel, Tilean, Old Reikspiel, Classical.
[X] Runescribes Guild
Highly-skilled and diligent. Reikspiel, Khazalid.
[X] Locals
Will demonstrate the value of literacy to the local population. Reikspiel, Tilean.
[X] Orphans
Can take your pick of literate orphans from throughout the Old World. Reikspiel, Tilean, Estalian, Kislevarin.
Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
IIRC Codex noted it at one point and speculated that Hedgecraft must work differently than it does in the RP in terms of requirements. Because the only other alternative is that he's avoided arcane marks his whole life and that seems unlikely.
I do believe you said something once about possibly hiring independent scribes via putting out word through the EIC. Not sure if that's viable.
And I think we floated the idea of convincing a handful of Eonir elves to leave Laurelorn to become scribes, but ended up concluding that the number of such must be rather small and probably don't know Reikspiel.
- Location
- Earth
In this case, would it be better to get a wider variety of people for more languages? I know it's kind of trying to eat your cake and have it too, but what happens if we pick a group that doesn't cover a particular language and we want to copy a library in that language?
- Location
- Australia
To clarify, would we be importing the Cult of Scripsisti or the orphans to Karak Eight Peaks, or would we pick up the books from wherever they are?
- Location
- Earth
Importing, most likely, though they will be doing a lot of travelling. Remember how deals to copy an entire library generally have a "provide your own scribes" attached? This is where we're getting them.
Chlof
Her Ladyship
- Pronouns
- She/Her
University recruitment, maybe? Building ties to UNuln and UAlt?
MiracleGrow
Miracles for only $19.99 [They/Them]
- Location
- DOOR STUCK DOOR STUCK PLEASE I BEG U
Import Orphans not cause its a smart thing to do. But because it makes for a killer character background for a tabletop game lol
Halflings from the Moot library? We do have contacts with them, but I'm not sure what good they would be in terms of languages. They would be Chaos resistant at least if anyone wants that
They'd be working at whichever library is being copied.
University education is a bit much for a scribing job, but it could be offered to students for beer money. I'll add something to that effect.
I'm not going to say there's no such thing as a scholarly halfling, but it is a rarer attitude that you're fishing for in a relatively small population.
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
Given the language limitations, does this mean we'd have to spend another action hiring more scribes if we wanted to copy books in a library whose language wasn't covered by our first pick?
If the We ever figure out how to write, they wouldn't be a terrible choice, given that they're already the librarians and will presumably want and need to learn the languages of any books being added regardless.
EDIT: Never mind, the scribes need to be able to travel.
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- Location
- Earth
They're already literate. It's just that their hivemind thing means the entire group has to travel together for the individuals to remain sapient, they might not have the best copying speed, and a lot of people will object to having giant spiders running around in their libraries.
@Boney I take it that Eonir aren't a viable option because we can't find enough individuals willing to take the job?
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It would cost them their citizenship, so no, you're not likely to get too many takers.
The one idea I remember that isn't mentioned here is using the EIC, which Mathilde mentioned after reaching the library agreement with the Cult of Quinsberry.
- Location
- Australia
-Cult of Clio the Scrivener. I remember you said Clio's cult is trying to move into Scripsisti's turf, and inviting them in would let them further that goal. Clio's cult is just as tight with the Verenans as Scripsisti's is, but unlike Scripsisti's cult, Clio's cult hasn't been stated to oppose the printing press.
-Barak Varr Runescribes Guild. Situated at an international trade city, I think they'll have access to more languages other than Reikspiel and Khazalid. They would've known Eltharin back during the War of Vengeance days since it was elven charts that dwarves began sailing with, but the millennia since then might've changed that.
-Colleges of Magic's partners. I remember you said that the Colleges employ some scribes and presses to publish their works. They'd be legally allowed to copy magical texts like the Elementalists' for sure, but if other scribes can already do that by default, they don't offer anything special.
-Tilean scriptoria. I remember it was established when we got textile books from Laurelorn that Eltharin was to Tilea what Khazalid was to the Empire, which meant that Eltharin is relatively well known in Tilea. They'd be able to copy Tilean, Classical, and Eltharin, with Tobaro probably swapping out Eltharin with Khazalid.
-Imperial scribes. There's plenty of non-cult scribes in the Empire who'd be open to getting employed, and with a greater range of languages than the Cult of Scripsisti. Nordland would have Norse, Ostland would have Kislevarin, Reikland would have Wastelander and Bretonnian, and Middenheim may have Eltharin thanks to some of its ex-adventurer elven population being scholars. We got a bunch of Cathayan books translated to Reikspiel as well, and if even that language has a decent amount of scribes who know the tongue, then there'd certainly be scribes who know Classical, Tilean, Khazalid, and Estalian too.
-Laurelorn. They'd have Eltharin, naturally, but not much else, but it'd be easy for them to learn other languages; Kragg said Reikspiel's simple, which means Bretonnian and Old Reikspiel are also simple. The main issue here is cityborn status, so either we recruit from the forestborn, or we get some kind of political cover for our scribes.
-Assorted tombs. Just use necromancy to recruit the perfect scribes.
I think that is the orphan option, I mean how else would you bring that many orphans to K8P?
Turn 40 Results - 2489.5 - Part 7
To prepare for your search for the missing nexus of Reikland, you stretched out a large map of the province on a table in a study of the former House Elwyn estate. "For Axe Bite Pass," you said to Johann, Max and Egrimm, "we're looking at the Counties of Bögenhafen and Osburg, and the Barony of Ussingen. And the March of Helmgart itself, of course." With a gesture, you mark the area with Aethyric colour. "For Grey Lady Pass, it's either Ubersreik, Auerswald, or Stimmigen - Wittgendorf is on the wrong side of the line between Nuln and Altdorf. So it's mostly going to be the Vorbergland, the fertile foothills between the Grey Mountains and the Reikwald. This is the breadbasket of the Reikland, and some of the most heavily populated lands in the Empire outside of its cities, so it's either going to already be a landmark or tucked away really well." Then the four of you descended upon the Library of Mournings to search through their records of Elven settlements in those areas to narrow down the possibilities. Considering the Library is named that because it holds the administrative records from when all of those were the constituent parts of the nascent Kingdom of Elthin Arvan, you're reasonably certain they'll have what you're looking for. Once you've marked the map with every record of Elves building so much as a lean-to, you transplant your search to Altdorf and compare your map against the hall of records in the Palace of Retribution, which is known more officially as the Imperial Courthouse, and to search for anything odd that might be traces of ancient construction left off the official maps. The room you commandeered descends into studious silence, only occasionally broken by someone voicing their discoveries.
"The Hägercrybs are dotted with ancient cairns attributed to the Unberogens, and the Hill Dwarves used to have mines in the area. The northern stretch would be in the right area, though it's more east than I think is likely."
"It looks like there was an Elven trade outpost around where Bögenhafen is now. The Unberogens fortified the ruins around -400 IC and called it Boigenfastis, but it was levelled by greenskins about -200 and wasn't rebuilt until after Black Fire Pass. It could be that the nexus was there, and it was destroyed or buried in rubble then."
"Sigmar is said to have had a magical tomb built near Grey Lady Pass to contain the body of a Chaos Champion that had been raised by Nagash, and continued to harry the tribes after Nagash was defeated. His shamans might have recognized the power of a nexus and used its power for it."
"I suppose Ubersreik is out, if there was anything significant in its catacombs it would have been discovered while the Skaven were being expelled from under it."
"Maybe so, but the fortress of Black Rock is outside its walls. Maybe it was named for the presence of a literal, and particularly impressive, black rock?"
"Tor Fanloc, which was in the Seifenhügel, looks very close to where Midfurt is now."
"No, Midfurt's on the Blut, it couldn't be the location of an outpost in the Seifenhügel."
"I know you said west of the Nuln-Altdorf line, but there's a rather strange clock tower in Kemperbad that drove mad the one who made it. A Magicker experimenting on a Waystone, perhaps?"
"Apparently there's a Waystone in Grünburg that a local noble wants to turn into a statue of himself? Probably not what we're looking for, but I'll make sure someone has a stern word with him."
"It's a bit far north, but there's a castle in the southern Skaag Hills that's just called 'The Horn', and I can't find any record as to why. Could be it was built on something horn-shaped."
"There's a castle called Stychelschloss but I can't find any records of a Stychel dynasty, and it's only accessible by a roadside inn with a ferry that's called 'The Nobody Knows'."
"The 'stychel' could have been taken from the Bretonnian for 'stylus', that would make sense if it was an Elven research outpost at one point."
"Paranoth apparently has a tower near Eilhart? I don't think that would be it, but I'll ask the Jades to be sure."
"It's a ruin nowadays, but Taal's Horn Keep near Helmgart supposedly had a Waystone inside it."
"Reikland," you say with a sigh after the possibilities keep accumulating, "has too much unexplained oddities tucked away in its nooks and crannies. How are there this many unanswered questions this close to Altdorf?"
"There's always something more pressing that needs attention," Max says. "If a weird castle or a ruined temple isn't actively spitting out monsters, then it gets ignored in favour of dealing with the ones that are."
The four of you spend a while sorting the possibilities in order of how promising you find them and sorting out the path you'll take to investigate them, glad to have a Gyrocarriage at your disposal instead of having to slow yourself to the pace of Max on Shadowhorseback.
---
Two weeks pass in a haze of Gyrocarriage flights, mediocre taverns, and souvenirs that Max insists on accumulating from some of Reikland's most milquetoast landmarks, until you find yourself somewhere north of a nowhere town allegedly famous for its red cheeses, chasing a faded mark on an Elven map of questionable significance, with Egrimm having accumulated more and more reasons to be elsewhere as the stretch of unremarkable villages grew longer and longer. "I still think that it's just a label for this part of the Reikwald," Max says, lagging severely behind you and Johann as the two of you stride tirelessly through thick undergrowth. "It was just the word 'Athel', like on the other maps, and I don't think that smudge was enough to be the remnants of a whole other word."
"Best to be sure," you respond shortly. "It was the same plain handwriting that they used for places like Tor Fanloc and Tor Yvanithress. Elven cartography usually gets really fancy when a forest needs labelling. Besides, after two weeks of looking at thoroughly unimpressive rocks in thoroughly unimpressive villages, we could use a change of scenery." Branulhune appears in your hand to hack through a particularly thick tangle of lianas.
"Does the body good to get a bit of fresh air," Johann agrees, casually backhanding a probing Bloodsedge branch that had taken an interest in him.
"Maybe your bodies," Max grumbles back, trying to untangle his boot from a briar. "Mine is quite happy in civilization."
But Max's intermittent chorus of grumbling is eventually silenced when the steepening terrain funnels you down a narrow pass almost entirely clogged with hanging vines that need hacking through, and the first indication you have that you've found something is when Branulhune gives a judder of increased force as it finds itself impacting stone instead of wood, and it shears through the stubby pillar that had once been half of an archway. You and Johann, and Max when he catches up, look down at freshly-exposed white stone that contrasts starkly with the brownish-green of moss covering the exterior. Soon after that the corridor of stone opens up into a dense forest of trees and pillars, both identically overgrown with moss, and then leading into a maze of likewise identically overgrown cliff faces and stone walls.
"Huh," you say.
---
As the three of you poke through the ruins, you revise your estimate up from outpost to full-blown settlement, but at no point do you find anything that sheds any light as to its purpose. Though by all appearances it's been at least centuries since the last time these ruins had visitors, the last people here certainly were not Elves, as the place has been thoroughly picked clean of anything not nailed down. That plants the seed of a suspicion that the people of the Empire were not to blame - not because they're too noble to loot ancient ruins, but because if it was them they'd have quarried the ruins for stone as well - and that suspicion is proven quite correct when you start to recognize that among and sometimes atop the elegant lines of Eltharin is the cruder but still flowing curls of Belthani ideograms. When the scale of the place sinks in, you search for a place flat enough to land a Gyrocarriage, then you and Max begin to set up camp while Johann makes his way back to civilization to fetch Adela and start ferrying supplies in.
"This doesn't fit with all the other nexus locations," Max says to you as you clear the landing area of debris. "It's isolated and defensible and far from trade routes. Even going from Altdorf to Helmgart bypasses it."
"It might have been built as the Elven equivalent of Karak Norn," you say. "We know that getting over or through the mountains was tricky for the network, so it might be it needs to be tucked right up against the foothills instead of being able to thread the needle of the pass."
"If it was the same as Karak Norn, it'd be at Helmgart, or at least closer to it" he replies. "Maybe in that Waystone at Taal's Horn Keep."
"Once Johann gets back we'll scout the entire place and settle it one way or the other," you say with a shrug. "It's the Belthani graffiti that interests me. Maybe they learned how to make nexuses here, if they didn't know it already."
"Or they might have just picked it clean. According to some histories, they didn't even have bronze before the arrival of the Imperial tribes. Upgrading from soft native metals to Elven steel would be an incredibly big deal for them."
It doesn't take too long for the Gyrocarriage to arrive - unlike you, Johann is capable of almost his full speed in dense forests - and the three of you begin a thorough and systematic sweep of the ruins. To your mild surprise, at no point are the three of you ambushed by anything more threatening than strangler vines and some kind of corvid defending its nest. Truly uninhabited ruins are very much a rarity in the Empire, and you suspect that these will not remain uninhabited for long now that you've reopened the overgrown entrance to it. Your search eventually terminates at the central building, a large, domed building topped with the jagged remains of what had once been spires.
"A temple?" Max guesses.
"Not with that much energy pouring out of it," Johann replies. "There's definitely no leylines coming into here, right?"
"Unless it's coming deep underground and from the west, no," you say firmly. "So where's the energy coming from?"
"And why is it mostly Ghyran?" Johann asks. "Didn't you say that a leyline outflow would necessarily have a core of Dhar?"
"Ones from Waystones would be. I haven't made a study of Nexuses yet, I'd assumed they just scaled up the workings of Waystones."
The three of you cautiously make your way up the ruined entranceway, framed by ruined arches, and into the building proper. The interior is a single immense room extending several meters below ground level and topped by the dome, dominated by a massive, floating shape of marble fringed with gold, at least twenty meters tall and shaped like an angular plumb bob with concave faces. It floats on a point of crystal several meters above an identical crystal inset into the floor at the centre of what looks to you to be a much larger version of a Waystone base. The room is ringed by a walkway at the level of the object's crystal, and extending out over the floor below are what look like three control platforms, each with a control object of marble and crystal embedded at their points.
"I retract my argument that this isn't likely to be the nexus," Max says after a long silence.
"Definitely looks the part, doesn't it?" you say. "But while we've already ruled out it doing nexus things, it's definitely doing something."
"It's fountaining Ghyran into the air, is what it's doing," Johann says. "That might explain why the Vorbergland is so fertile."
"Ghyran doesn't just come from nowhere," you say. "And it can't be a portal like the Tarn of Tears unless it's dumping the other seven-eighths of the outflow elsewhere."
"Well, if it's not coming from a leyline and it's not coming from the Aethyr, what else is left?" Max asks.
"The Reikwald's Dreaming Wood? It can't be, Cadaeth told me that it's dormant," you reply.
"Did she say why?" Max pushes.
You search your memory. "'The magic that once sustained it disappeared'," you reply slowly. "Well. I guess we found where it went."
Johann looks the nexus up and down. "They turned a Nexus into a massive Aethyric shunt draining the magic out of the Dreaming Wood?"
"Taking magic that would make the Reikwald a lot livelier than it is, and instead using it as a sort of magical fertilizer," you say. "I wonder if it was the Elves or the Belthani that did it."
"Even if it was the Elves, then the Belthani left it be," Max says, looking at the densely-scrawled graffiti covering the walls. Perhaps you're just projecting, but here it looks a lot more like research notes than the incidental street graffiti you'd imagined the runes outside to be. "I thought they were all about living in harmony with the natural world."
"It's a lot easier to live in harmony with a dog than a wolf," Johann says.
"A lot of people would consider trading a magical and unruly forest for turning otherwise marginal foothills into a breadbasket to be an absolute steal," you say. "Including, I'd guess, the current nobility of the Reikland. This complicates things. I was hoping it was just a matter of finding a dormant Nexus and turning it on."
"Well, not really," Johann says. "If Marienburg's nexus is blocked or destroyed and there's no other way to reconnect the leylines, then turning this back into its original purpose - which I think would just be a matter of rotating it from the Aethyric back to the spatial - would be much better than letting everything east of the Grey Mountains turn into wasteland."
"That's true," you say, brightening up. "And at least now we know to protect it - Gods know what troubles the Skaven or Beastmen could cause with this place if they found it first. Or just someone that'd want to knock it over so they can strip the gold off of it. And you know what? Since this is what makes the Vorbergland's grains and vines so profitable, it would be easier to justify a tax or a corvée on it to see to its proper defence."
"A fort, or a chapterhouse, maybe," Max says. "Does Rhya have any Knightly Orders?"
"They've got a few heavily-armed monasteries, that would work. Or the Jades might want to set up a branch here," you say.
"Well, this much marble would probably pay for a fair bit of it," Johann says. "Tor Lithanel might even be wanting to buy it."
"There are a few interesting possibilities," you muse, brightening. "That does seem like it would make for some interesting debates."
---
While the Library-We is coming along quite well in terms of organizing and maintaining the library itself, they're still very resistant to the idea of complete strangers coming into their home and endangering their books with their presence, and have a tendency to lurk alarmingly around anyone they're particularly suspicious of the intentions of. Some might say that this is an inherent downside of the We as librarians, but in your experience, a significant amount of human librarians have the exact same attitude towards visitors. And if you were completely honest, you're not entirely opposed to having a constant guard making sure your rarer volumes aren't being mistreated. So you're happy to consider the education of the Library-We to be entirely on course.
But while the role of librarians plays to a number of the strengths of the We, the same could not be said of them as a scribe, as it is a necessarily nomadic role. To regularly uproot a We from its webs and expose its Egglayers to danger as it travels en masse to a new job site would be very distressing to them, and likely equally distressing to whoever it is you ask to host a colony of giant spiders. No, unless you can think of something particularly novel, your scribes would have to be rather more prosaic than your librarians. There's three basic approaches that come to mind: you could commission the efforts of an established organizations who are already extremely capable of performing this role, such as the Cult of Scripsisti or Clio or the Runescribes Guild, giving you a ready-made workforce that is ready to go from day one and willing to expand their capabilities if needed. You could seek out individuals with the necessary skillset on a per-job basis, either spreading the net of the EIC to seek out those with that skillset or just going directly to the universities to offer work to their students, giving you as much flexibility as possible to scale up or down the workforce as needed. Or you could hire on a full-time staff on a permanent retainer and train them up more or less from scratch, drawing from either the local population or from the orphanages of the Old World, tailoring them to your needs and guaranteeing their loyalty.
From where will Mathilde recruit an army of scribes for the Library of Kron-Azril-Ungol?
Outsourced:
[ ] [SCRIBE] Cult of Scripsisti
Dedicated to the Goddess of Writing, considers the creation of accurate copies to be their religious duty. Will build ties to the Cult of Verena. Reikspiel, Tilean, Old Reikspiel, Classical.
[ ] [SCRIBE] Cult of Clio
Dedicated to the Goddess of History, considers the preservation of historical documents to be their religious duty. Will build ties to the Cult of Verena. Reikspiel, Tilean, Old Reikspiel, Classical.
[ ] [SCRIBE] Runescribes Guild
Highly-skilled, diligent, and extremely reliable. Reikspiel, Khazalid.
Gig work:
[ ] [SCRIBE] Empire
Skim from literate citizens willing to travel for work everywhere the EIC has a presence. Reikspiel, Kislevarin, more languages as EIC expands.
[ ] [SCRIBE] Universities
Take students from the universities of the Empire who are looking for work to fund either their education or their drinking habits. Wide range of languages, but can tend to be a bit unruly. Reikspiel, Tilean, Estalian, Kislevarin, Old Reikspiel, Classical.
Permanent employees:
[ ] [SCRIBE] Locals
Will demonstrate the value of literacy to the local population, and will be reasonably loyal and self-sufficient. Reikspiel, Tilean.
[ ] [SCRIBE] Orphans
You can take your pick of literate orphans from throughout the Old World, and train them up from scratch to guarantee their loyalty. Reikspiel, Tilean, Estalian, Kislevarin.
Thus concludes the work Mathilde performed these past months, but not every waking moment was filled with work. With whom did she spend her free time? The five with the most votes will be chosen, not counting those locked in.
[+] Social interaction initiated by someone else (locked in)
Laurelorn
[ ] Max
The entire time you've known Maximilian, he has been pursuing his own goal of true transmutation via magically-enhanced blacksmithing. Check in to see how he's going with that.
[ ] Thorek
See what inroads Thorek has made with the Major Houses of Tor Lithanel.
Karak Eight Peaks
[ ] Panoramia
In the wake of an apparently quite controversial paper, Panoramia is finally taking her Magisterial exams. Be there to observe the fallout and offer moral support.
[ ] Gretel
She's apparently getting involved in the Karaz Ankor's ambitions in the Border Princes.
[ ] Okri
You've met Loremaster Okri of Karak Eight Peaks once before. Pay him a visit and see how his great ambitions for heavily-armed Ironbreakers delivered by Gyrocarriage are going.
Foreign Relations
[ ] Sylvania
Meet this would-be Markgraf Nyklaus for yourself.
[ ] Middenland
See how the Ulricans are going with their new Eonir coreligionists.
[ ] The Black Water Canal
Pay another visit to the canal project, and see if there's any further signs of sabotage.
[ ] Druchii Diplomats
Check in on these unexpected visitors to Tor Lithanel.
Friends Abroad
Following Up
[ ] Brief the Emperor
Though the Waystone Project is in early days, you've had a few early wins and have uncovered some important information about the Waystone Network as it relates to the Empire's security.
[ ] Amber College
Check in on the salamanders.
[ ] Gold College
See what's become of their research into Skaven technology.
[ ] Skull River Ambush
Look into the investigation of the mining of the Skull River, and any consequences of it.
- There will be a five hour moratorium.
- As always, feel free to suggest ideas for social actions, especially ones I've okayed and then forgotten about. I feel like there's at least one or two of those.
- Egrimm is missing from the latter part of this turn because, erm, I forgot he was along for this task. There's no concrete results he could have delivered above and beyond what you got if present though, you only lost out on the pleasure of his company.
"The Hägercrybs are dotted with ancient cairns attributed to the Unberogens, and the Hill Dwarves used to have mines in the area. The northern stretch would be in the right area, though it's more east than I think is likely."
"It looks like there was an Elven trade outpost around where Bögenhafen is now. The Unberogens fortified the ruins around -400 IC and called it Boigenfastis, but it was levelled by greenskins about -200 and wasn't rebuilt until after Black Fire Pass. It could be that the nexus was there, and it was destroyed or buried in rubble then."
"Sigmar is said to have had a magical tomb built near Grey Lady Pass to contain the body of a Chaos Champion that had been raised by Nagash, and continued to harry the tribes after Nagash was defeated. His shamans might have recognized the power of a nexus and used its power for it."
"I suppose Ubersreik is out, if there was anything significant in its catacombs it would have been discovered while the Skaven were being expelled from under it."
"Maybe so, but the fortress of Black Rock is outside its walls. Maybe it was named for the presence of a literal, and particularly impressive, black rock?"
"Tor Fanloc, which was in the Seifenhügel, looks very close to where Midfurt is now."
"No, Midfurt's on the Blut, it couldn't be the location of an outpost in the Seifenhügel."
"I know you said west of the Nuln-Altdorf line, but there's a rather strange clock tower in Kemperbad that drove mad the one who made it. A Magicker experimenting on a Waystone, perhaps?"
"Apparently there's a Waystone in Grünburg that a local noble wants to turn into a statue of himself? Probably not what we're looking for, but I'll make sure someone has a stern word with him."
"It's a bit far north, but there's a castle in the southern Skaag Hills that's just called 'The Horn', and I can't find any record as to why. Could be it was built on something horn-shaped."
"There's a castle called Stychelschloss but I can't find any records of a Stychel dynasty, and it's only accessible by a roadside inn with a ferry that's called 'The Nobody Knows'."
"The 'stychel' could have been taken from the Bretonnian for 'stylus', that would make sense if it was an Elven research outpost at one point."
"Paranoth apparently has a tower near Eilhart? I don't think that would be it, but I'll ask the Jades to be sure."
"It's a ruin nowadays, but Taal's Horn Keep near Helmgart supposedly had a Waystone inside it."
"Reikland," you say with a sigh after the possibilities keep accumulating, "has too much unexplained oddities tucked away in its nooks and crannies. How are there this many unanswered questions this close to Altdorf?"
"There's always something more pressing that needs attention," Max says. "If a weird castle or a ruined temple isn't actively spitting out monsters, then it gets ignored in favour of dealing with the ones that are."
The four of you spend a while sorting the possibilities in order of how promising you find them and sorting out the path you'll take to investigate them, glad to have a Gyrocarriage at your disposal instead of having to slow yourself to the pace of Max on Shadowhorseback.
---
Two weeks pass in a haze of Gyrocarriage flights, mediocre taverns, and souvenirs that Max insists on accumulating from some of Reikland's most milquetoast landmarks, until you find yourself somewhere north of a nowhere town allegedly famous for its red cheeses, chasing a faded mark on an Elven map of questionable significance, with Egrimm having accumulated more and more reasons to be elsewhere as the stretch of unremarkable villages grew longer and longer. "I still think that it's just a label for this part of the Reikwald," Max says, lagging severely behind you and Johann as the two of you stride tirelessly through thick undergrowth. "It was just the word 'Athel', like on the other maps, and I don't think that smudge was enough to be the remnants of a whole other word."
"Best to be sure," you respond shortly. "It was the same plain handwriting that they used for places like Tor Fanloc and Tor Yvanithress. Elven cartography usually gets really fancy when a forest needs labelling. Besides, after two weeks of looking at thoroughly unimpressive rocks in thoroughly unimpressive villages, we could use a change of scenery." Branulhune appears in your hand to hack through a particularly thick tangle of lianas.
"Does the body good to get a bit of fresh air," Johann agrees, casually backhanding a probing Bloodsedge branch that had taken an interest in him.
"Maybe your bodies," Max grumbles back, trying to untangle his boot from a briar. "Mine is quite happy in civilization."
But Max's intermittent chorus of grumbling is eventually silenced when the steepening terrain funnels you down a narrow pass almost entirely clogged with hanging vines that need hacking through, and the first indication you have that you've found something is when Branulhune gives a judder of increased force as it finds itself impacting stone instead of wood, and it shears through the stubby pillar that had once been half of an archway. You and Johann, and Max when he catches up, look down at freshly-exposed white stone that contrasts starkly with the brownish-green of moss covering the exterior. Soon after that the corridor of stone opens up into a dense forest of trees and pillars, both identically overgrown with moss, and then leading into a maze of likewise identically overgrown cliff faces and stone walls.
"Huh," you say.
---
As the three of you poke through the ruins, you revise your estimate up from outpost to full-blown settlement, but at no point do you find anything that sheds any light as to its purpose. Though by all appearances it's been at least centuries since the last time these ruins had visitors, the last people here certainly were not Elves, as the place has been thoroughly picked clean of anything not nailed down. That plants the seed of a suspicion that the people of the Empire were not to blame - not because they're too noble to loot ancient ruins, but because if it was them they'd have quarried the ruins for stone as well - and that suspicion is proven quite correct when you start to recognize that among and sometimes atop the elegant lines of Eltharin is the cruder but still flowing curls of Belthani ideograms. When the scale of the place sinks in, you search for a place flat enough to land a Gyrocarriage, then you and Max begin to set up camp while Johann makes his way back to civilization to fetch Adela and start ferrying supplies in.
"This doesn't fit with all the other nexus locations," Max says to you as you clear the landing area of debris. "It's isolated and defensible and far from trade routes. Even going from Altdorf to Helmgart bypasses it."
"It might have been built as the Elven equivalent of Karak Norn," you say. "We know that getting over or through the mountains was tricky for the network, so it might be it needs to be tucked right up against the foothills instead of being able to thread the needle of the pass."
"If it was the same as Karak Norn, it'd be at Helmgart, or at least closer to it" he replies. "Maybe in that Waystone at Taal's Horn Keep."
"Once Johann gets back we'll scout the entire place and settle it one way or the other," you say with a shrug. "It's the Belthani graffiti that interests me. Maybe they learned how to make nexuses here, if they didn't know it already."
"Or they might have just picked it clean. According to some histories, they didn't even have bronze before the arrival of the Imperial tribes. Upgrading from soft native metals to Elven steel would be an incredibly big deal for them."
It doesn't take too long for the Gyrocarriage to arrive - unlike you, Johann is capable of almost his full speed in dense forests - and the three of you begin a thorough and systematic sweep of the ruins. To your mild surprise, at no point are the three of you ambushed by anything more threatening than strangler vines and some kind of corvid defending its nest. Truly uninhabited ruins are very much a rarity in the Empire, and you suspect that these will not remain uninhabited for long now that you've reopened the overgrown entrance to it. Your search eventually terminates at the central building, a large, domed building topped with the jagged remains of what had once been spires.
"A temple?" Max guesses.
"Not with that much energy pouring out of it," Johann replies. "There's definitely no leylines coming into here, right?"
"Unless it's coming deep underground and from the west, no," you say firmly. "So where's the energy coming from?"
"And why is it mostly Ghyran?" Johann asks. "Didn't you say that a leyline outflow would necessarily have a core of Dhar?"
"Ones from Waystones would be. I haven't made a study of Nexuses yet, I'd assumed they just scaled up the workings of Waystones."
The three of you cautiously make your way up the ruined entranceway, framed by ruined arches, and into the building proper. The interior is a single immense room extending several meters below ground level and topped by the dome, dominated by a massive, floating shape of marble fringed with gold, at least twenty meters tall and shaped like an angular plumb bob with concave faces. It floats on a point of crystal several meters above an identical crystal inset into the floor at the centre of what looks to you to be a much larger version of a Waystone base. The room is ringed by a walkway at the level of the object's crystal, and extending out over the floor below are what look like three control platforms, each with a control object of marble and crystal embedded at their points.
"I retract my argument that this isn't likely to be the nexus," Max says after a long silence.
"Definitely looks the part, doesn't it?" you say. "But while we've already ruled out it doing nexus things, it's definitely doing something."
"It's fountaining Ghyran into the air, is what it's doing," Johann says. "That might explain why the Vorbergland is so fertile."
"Ghyran doesn't just come from nowhere," you say. "And it can't be a portal like the Tarn of Tears unless it's dumping the other seven-eighths of the outflow elsewhere."
"Well, if it's not coming from a leyline and it's not coming from the Aethyr, what else is left?" Max asks.
"The Reikwald's Dreaming Wood? It can't be, Cadaeth told me that it's dormant," you reply.
"Did she say why?" Max pushes.
You search your memory. "'The magic that once sustained it disappeared'," you reply slowly. "Well. I guess we found where it went."
Johann looks the nexus up and down. "They turned a Nexus into a massive Aethyric shunt draining the magic out of the Dreaming Wood?"
"Taking magic that would make the Reikwald a lot livelier than it is, and instead using it as a sort of magical fertilizer," you say. "I wonder if it was the Elves or the Belthani that did it."
"Even if it was the Elves, then the Belthani left it be," Max says, looking at the densely-scrawled graffiti covering the walls. Perhaps you're just projecting, but here it looks a lot more like research notes than the incidental street graffiti you'd imagined the runes outside to be. "I thought they were all about living in harmony with the natural world."
"It's a lot easier to live in harmony with a dog than a wolf," Johann says.
"A lot of people would consider trading a magical and unruly forest for turning otherwise marginal foothills into a breadbasket to be an absolute steal," you say. "Including, I'd guess, the current nobility of the Reikland. This complicates things. I was hoping it was just a matter of finding a dormant Nexus and turning it on."
"Well, not really," Johann says. "If Marienburg's nexus is blocked or destroyed and there's no other way to reconnect the leylines, then turning this back into its original purpose - which I think would just be a matter of rotating it from the Aethyric back to the spatial - would be much better than letting everything east of the Grey Mountains turn into wasteland."
"That's true," you say, brightening up. "And at least now we know to protect it - Gods know what troubles the Skaven or Beastmen could cause with this place if they found it first. Or just someone that'd want to knock it over so they can strip the gold off of it. And you know what? Since this is what makes the Vorbergland's grains and vines so profitable, it would be easier to justify a tax or a corvée on it to see to its proper defence."
"A fort, or a chapterhouse, maybe," Max says. "Does Rhya have any Knightly Orders?"
"They've got a few heavily-armed monasteries, that would work. Or the Jades might want to set up a branch here," you say.
"Well, this much marble would probably pay for a fair bit of it," Johann says. "Tor Lithanel might even be wanting to buy it."
"There are a few interesting possibilities," you muse, brightening. "That does seem like it would make for some interesting debates."
---
While the Library-We is coming along quite well in terms of organizing and maintaining the library itself, they're still very resistant to the idea of complete strangers coming into their home and endangering their books with their presence, and have a tendency to lurk alarmingly around anyone they're particularly suspicious of the intentions of. Some might say that this is an inherent downside of the We as librarians, but in your experience, a significant amount of human librarians have the exact same attitude towards visitors. And if you were completely honest, you're not entirely opposed to having a constant guard making sure your rarer volumes aren't being mistreated. So you're happy to consider the education of the Library-We to be entirely on course.
But while the role of librarians plays to a number of the strengths of the We, the same could not be said of them as a scribe, as it is a necessarily nomadic role. To regularly uproot a We from its webs and expose its Egglayers to danger as it travels en masse to a new job site would be very distressing to them, and likely equally distressing to whoever it is you ask to host a colony of giant spiders. No, unless you can think of something particularly novel, your scribes would have to be rather more prosaic than your librarians. There's three basic approaches that come to mind: you could commission the efforts of an established organizations who are already extremely capable of performing this role, such as the Cult of Scripsisti or Clio or the Runescribes Guild, giving you a ready-made workforce that is ready to go from day one and willing to expand their capabilities if needed. You could seek out individuals with the necessary skillset on a per-job basis, either spreading the net of the EIC to seek out those with that skillset or just going directly to the universities to offer work to their students, giving you as much flexibility as possible to scale up or down the workforce as needed. Or you could hire on a full-time staff on a permanent retainer and train them up more or less from scratch, drawing from either the local population or from the orphanages of the Old World, tailoring them to your needs and guaranteeing their loyalty.
From where will Mathilde recruit an army of scribes for the Library of Kron-Azril-Ungol?
Outsourced:
[ ] [SCRIBE] Cult of Scripsisti
Dedicated to the Goddess of Writing, considers the creation of accurate copies to be their religious duty. Will build ties to the Cult of Verena. Reikspiel, Tilean, Old Reikspiel, Classical.
[ ] [SCRIBE] Cult of Clio
Dedicated to the Goddess of History, considers the preservation of historical documents to be their religious duty. Will build ties to the Cult of Verena. Reikspiel, Tilean, Old Reikspiel, Classical.
[ ] [SCRIBE] Runescribes Guild
Highly-skilled, diligent, and extremely reliable. Reikspiel, Khazalid.
Gig work:
[ ] [SCRIBE] Empire
Skim from literate citizens willing to travel for work everywhere the EIC has a presence. Reikspiel, Kislevarin, more languages as EIC expands.
[ ] [SCRIBE] Universities
Take students from the universities of the Empire who are looking for work to fund either their education or their drinking habits. Wide range of languages, but can tend to be a bit unruly. Reikspiel, Tilean, Estalian, Kislevarin, Old Reikspiel, Classical.
Permanent employees:
[ ] [SCRIBE] Locals
Will demonstrate the value of literacy to the local population, and will be reasonably loyal and self-sufficient. Reikspiel, Tilean.
[ ] [SCRIBE] Orphans
You can take your pick of literate orphans from throughout the Old World, and train them up from scratch to guarantee their loyalty. Reikspiel, Tilean, Estalian, Kislevarin.
Thus concludes the work Mathilde performed these past months, but not every waking moment was filled with work. With whom did she spend her free time? The five with the most votes will be chosen, not counting those locked in.
[+] Social interaction initiated by someone else (locked in)
Laurelorn
[ ] Max
The entire time you've known Maximilian, he has been pursuing his own goal of true transmutation via magically-enhanced blacksmithing. Check in to see how he's going with that.
[ ] Thorek
See what inroads Thorek has made with the Major Houses of Tor Lithanel.
Karak Eight Peaks
[ ] Panoramia
In the wake of an apparently quite controversial paper, Panoramia is finally taking her Magisterial exams. Be there to observe the fallout and offer moral support.
[ ] Gretel
She's apparently getting involved in the Karaz Ankor's ambitions in the Border Princes.
[ ] Okri
You've met Loremaster Okri of Karak Eight Peaks once before. Pay him a visit and see how his great ambitions for heavily-armed Ironbreakers delivered by Gyrocarriage are going.
Foreign Relations
[ ] Sylvania
Meet this would-be Markgraf Nyklaus for yourself.
[ ] Middenland
See how the Ulricans are going with their new Eonir coreligionists.
[ ] The Black Water Canal
Pay another visit to the canal project, and see if there's any further signs of sabotage.
[ ] Druchii Diplomats
Check in on these unexpected visitors to Tor Lithanel.
Friends Abroad
Following Up
[ ] Brief the Emperor
Though the Waystone Project is in early days, you've had a few early wins and have uncovered some important information about the Waystone Network as it relates to the Empire's security.
[ ] Amber College
Check in on the salamanders.
[ ] Gold College
See what's become of their research into Skaven technology.
[ ] Skull River Ambush
Look into the investigation of the mining of the Skull River, and any consequences of it.
- There will be a five hour moratorium.
- As always, feel free to suggest ideas for social actions, especially ones I've okayed and then forgotten about. I feel like there's at least one or two of those.
- Egrimm is missing from the latter part of this turn because, erm, I forgot he was along for this task. There's no concrete results he could have delivered above and beyond what you got if present though, you only lost out on the pleasure of his company.
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