Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Except that doesn't really do anything to the Empire, because the Empire has a tiny coastline with minimal settlements, that gets raided by the Druchii and the Norscans anyway.
The Empire is also not an autarky, and relies to some degree or other on trade with the other civilised realms. If Ulthuan chooses to offer better deals or incentives that see the price of Bretonnian steel, Tilean leather, Estalian silver all going up in the Empire, Imperial nobles hit by price rises start agitating, and Elector Counts who have no real investment in the project start pushing the Emperor to maybe rein things in a bit. The everpresent border conflicts with those same polities and internecine conflicts between provinces that provide reasons for the tabletop game to see armies clash—maybe those get inflamed further with some deniable behind-the-scenes foreign backing.

Nothing that'd be worth sparking a continent-wide conflict about. But pressure, nonetheless.

My point isn't that Ulthuan is almighty and can dictate terms. It's that there's other avenues to expressing displeasure than sending men with pointy sticks to go burn down Altdorf. The Asur aren't doing any of that at the moment because they don't really have any reason to care about what goes on in the Empire, but they could, and at the moment the Waystones' political backing relies on a few very powerful individuals, not a groundswell of popular support.

Maybe none of the options Ulthuan has, short of outright war, would be enough to dissuade them. Maybe not. But saying they can do nothing as the poster I was responding to did? That's a bit dismissive. The project's few patrons are supportive because the potential benefits outweigh the currently relatively minimal costs. If those costs go up due to soft-power pressure, they'll re-weigh the value of a 'nice-to-have but not urgent' research group. Suddenly, on Turn 48 Mathilde is called for a meeting with the Chamberlain of the Seal that starts with something like:

"Your work on recreating tributaries for the Waystone network has been marvellous. Truly outstanding. The census reports major downticks in undead rising, stillbirths and mutations in all the regions your group has been rolling them out to.

"However. The market price of grain has been rising year on year, and it has reached the point where we estimate with this year's poor harvest, a famine is inevitable in the upcoming winter. Ten thousand dead, at minimum, and peasant uprisings are expected in Ostland and Nordland. Ulthuan has come forward with a very generous deal to make up the shortfall at below-cost. And a formal compact declaring that if a major Waystone nexus within the Empire is damaged beyond repair, they will ship and install a replacement at highest priority. The terms also include funding for further expansion of the Waystone Project's tributary system, on the condition that any further research into more central aspects of the network is to be halted immediately.

"You and I both know that the Asur had a hand in getting us to this point. They are not innocent. Given the circumstances, however, and the need to prepare for the expected arrival of an Everchosen within the next decade, we have decided to accept the proposal. You should be proud of what you have accomplished here, and I expect to hear great things about your future endeavours."
 
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Interesting

There seems to be a vocal minority that is definitely against River Leylines.

What compromises can we propose? The alternative swording plans haven't gained traction, but I think that we can focus on the least bad of the other plans.
There is the plan (Swordfall and Codifying) which is the winning plan, but without river laylines. putting an approval vote on that is pretty easy. it also has the benefit of also satisfying the Windfall Cabal.
 
What bad things? The High Elves are all carrot and no stick. There's nothing they can do to Mathilde or the Empire that they aren't already doing—not without kicking off war of the beard 2 that is.
They sacked Marienburg that one time, iirc.

When it was under imperial authority, too. So like, no. They are not toothless. I still think we have advantageous position and that it won´t come to it, but they definitely are capable of hitting Empire in meaningful manner.

Which could´ve well been what the Dark Elves intended, is what i would´ve said if this visit was actually sanctified by the higher rungs of their society instead of personal trip.

EDIT: Also yeah, trade war. Good point. Forgot you don´t need to solve everything in warhammer with sword.
 
They sacked Marienburg that one time, iirc.

When it was under imperial authority, too. So like, no. They are not toothless. I still think we have advantageous position and that it won´t come to it, but they definitely are capable of hitting Empire in meaningful manner.

Which could´ve well been what the Dark Elves intended, is what i would´ve said if this visit was actually sanctified by the higher rungs of their society instead of personal trip.

EDIT: Also yeah, trade war. Good point. Forgot you don´t need to solve everything in warhammer with sword.
To be fair, there's not really anywhere meaningful in the Empire that's on the coast anymore (Marienburg ensured that)

I'm also not sure that scenario matters per-se.

The High Elves sailing in and sacking some place doesn't really do anything to convince the Empire to stop. The threat of it theoretically could, but then that's giving the Empire time to prepare.

Attacking Tor Lithanael might do it, but that'd be a pretty extreme response.
 
Personally, my opinion is that any part of the Waystone project we can do without Ulthuan being involved, we should. And not just to be petty - I legitimately believe it to be better for the long-term stability of the project.

I understand that since Ulthuan is responsible for creating the Waystone network in the first place, this might seem like an odd position! And if I trusted them to deal with us openly and honestly, it would be. The problem is that I don't, and I feel that position is reasonably supported by the historical record.

The worst thing they can do isn't stay out of matters and try to pressure us into shutting down the project. As several people have noted, they have fairly limited avenues for pursuing that without sparking off a war that neither side wants, and several of those methods could easily result in the opposite of their desired outcome as the Empire digs its heels in over what it (rightly) percieves to be patronizing foreign meddling in a project with significant benefits to everyone.

No, from the perspective of the Waystone Project, the worst thing they can do is agree to help us and then, say, make sure that every code we're given requires verification from Ulthuan before it goes through, or arrange for backdoors to be introduced so that they can remotely terminate our waystones if they don't like what we're doing with our part of the network.
 
I think he could do something clever ala the Vortex, but not DBZ it.
A fair enough take; my presumption would be something similar to ending of Antimemtic Division, which, come to think of it, also features a mortal killing a god through a complex and clever plan rather than DBZ.
 
Codifying and Swords is, in this respect, identical to last turn's plan: she accompanies Mathilde for two Mathilde actions and an EIC half-action. It's not a downgrade or an abdication of our responsibilities at all, it's literally just as much stuff as we gave her last turn. Remember, Eike's got an unknown Martial stat and three unknown Martial skills:

Boney said that giving her two or three things to do will have better results than giving her ten, so experimenting with giving her a few more or less jobs to see if there is an obvious dropoff or boost in potential results from her rolls could be a good idea, instead of locking down how her training should go on our second turn with her.

I personally dont agree that two AP on sword training this turn is equivalent to the two different actions where she tagged along last turn, especially when training actions have a tendency to be very short scenes that I rarely enjoy, with the current leading plan I expect that we will barely see Eike in the coming turn.
 
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-[X] Tributary: Water Spirit (Stirland) (Baba Niedzwenka, Zlata, Max)
I'm looking forward to seeing how public this action turns out to be. And if Mathy will be hanging around it enough to prompt some new "the Dämmerlichtreiter never left" rumours.
Also if they will use a local biscuit or an import for the ritual.
 
I feel like bringing Eike to the training has a fairly high chance of making the training actions longer rather than the Eike segments shorter, myself.
 
No, from the perspective of the Waystone Project, the worst thing they can do is agree to help us and then, say, make sure that every code we're given requires verification from Ulthuan before it goes through, or arrange for backdoors to be introduced so that they can remotely terminate our waystones if they don't like what we're doing with our part of the network.
Given what we saw when we experimented with laylines, this seems to already be the case. Short of creating a completely independent network, I don't think we can avoid Ulthuan being able to remotely shut off or otherwise manipulate Waystones - and given the metric truckload of magic that Ulthuan needs just to keep afloat, cutting off an entire continent's worth of magic may provoke them into actual war just to turn the spigot back on.
 
Boney said that giving her two or three things to do will have better results than giving her ten, so experimenting with giving her a few more or less jobs to see if there is an obvious dropoff or boost in potential results from her rolls could be a good idea, instead of locking down how her training should go on our second turn with her.

I personally dont agree that two AP on sword training this turn is equivalent to the two different actions where she tagged along last turn, especially when training actions have a tendency to be very short scenes that I rarely enjoy, with the current leading plan I expect that we will barely see Eike in the coming turn.
As the proud writer of Lore and Metal I'm also pretty bummed about seeing less of Eike doing cool things, but on the bright side doing less stuff means she probably has a better shot at finishing Petty Magics this turn. There's been all sorts of idea for stuff Eike could do in her self study time, and finally finishing off Petty Magics would allow us to see her learning something more interesting than Magic Dart.
 
If Ulthuan chooses to offer better deals or incentives that see the price of Bretonnian steel, Tilean leather, Estalian silver all going up in the Empire, Imperial nobles hit by price rises start agitating, and Elector Counts who have no real investment in the project start pushing the Emperor to maybe rein things in a bit. The everpresent border conflicts with those same polities and internecine conflicts between provinces that provide reasons for the tabletop game to see armies clash—maybe those get inflamed further with some deniable behind-the-scenes foreign backing.

Marienburg is already doing that, that is a thing that's already happening. And if the High Elves start taking explicit and overt sides in the Empire-Marienburg trade dispute, that gives us an excuse to pull in the dwarves as well on our side, and things will spiral from there.
 
I think that's a dangerous assumption to make, and there are numerous things that the world's premier naval power can do to apply pressure without direct confrontation.
They sacked Marienburg that one time, iirc.

When it was under imperial authority, too. So like, no. They are not toothless. I still think we have advantageous position and that it won´t come to it, but they definitely are capable of hitting Empire in meaningful manner.
While what you're saying makes some sense, saying that the Asur are all carrot and no stick is a pretty direct quote from this WoB:
Geopolitically, Ulthuan have only recently returned to the Old World and most of the influence they've developed has been in Marienburg, and the relationship between the Empire and Marienburg is already extremely strained, so they don't really have any levers to influence the Empire with. Even if they start rattling sabers there's not really a whole lot they can actually do, short of razing a few fishing villages and failed trading towns on the coasts of Nordland and Ostland that the Norscans already raze every other decade anyway. They don't really have any way to escalate things beyond that short of sailing up the Reik and besieging Altdorf, which would kick off War of the Beard 2 plus Crusades 2 at the same time and Marienburg would probably balk at and refuse to allow in the first place, or sailing up the Schaukel and besieging Tor Lithanel, which is something the Dwarves of the Golden Age couldn't manage.

So if they can't bring their sticks to bear, all they have is carrots. And even Mathilde wouldn't consider something like "we're pulling the plug on the Waystone thing because Ulthuan gave us back Elf Wizard Dad" a failure state.
 
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The Water spirit method should hopefully take very well in Stirland and be able to import to Sylvania since that would mean drawing all that magic out of those bogs, thus meaning less random undead spawning from them and would likely allow the Bog religion to practice more freely which is great as they will likely be the main ones doing it in those area.
 
The Empire is also not an autarky, and relies to some degree or other on trade with the other civilised realms.

Mmmm. I would argue against this- prior to railroads and steamships, pretty much every economy was an autarky. Transport is just too expensive and slow to allow long distance (IE, outside of province at best) trade to replace local production.

There's always luxuries and exotics, but use of those in a trade war is much less impactful.
 
IIRC, the network is built on preexisting Old One architecture, or at least that's hinted at in the lore. They just adapted it towards a new purpose, and also created the vortex itself.
IIRC the lore says that it's built over points the Old Ones were using for similar purposes, but the infrastructure that makes up the Waystone Network as we think of it is all new. Like how building a new road over an old one doesn't make them the same road, even if they're going to the same places.

That's separate from the Slann's use of the Geomantic Web to strengthen the Vortex and Network, which is also a thing that's happening.
 
IIRC, the network is built on preexisting Old One architecture, or at least that's hinted at in the lore. They just adapted it towards a new purpose, and also created the vortex itself.

The leylines (or some of them) are Old One architecture. The Waystones are not. Basically, the leylines are like canals and the Waystones like pumping stations, from what I can tell.

Also, note, when we're talking about codephrases, what may well actually be happening is asking Caledor (or the arhcmages with him) to do something in a language he understands. They may well not be commands but requests that Caledor has no obligation to obey. If that's the case the entire thing about codephrases is a red herring.
 
I just had a random thought. The Ice Witches built a new waystone at Castle Alexandronov, correct? Would it be possible to go have a look at it or something?

At the very least, I think we should try to ask Zlata about it at some point, maybe include her on the Foundation action to see if she has any lore she can share (she probably doesn't, but it's worth a try).
 
Mmmm. I would argue against this- prior to railroads and steamships, pretty much every economy was an autarky. Transport is just too expensive and slow to allow long distance (IE, outside of province at best) trade to replace local production.

There's always luxuries and exotics, but use of those in a trade war is much less impactful.
Ehh. Like, sort off but no. I do think the empire is mostly self-reliant. But historically, you had some huge shipping networks. The city of Rome had between 500k and a 1m inhabitants, and they had to ship in massive amounts of food. Enough that the used oil amphores made a trash mountain. Egypt as a breadbasket had a pretty long history. There's also the bronze age collapse and how the resulting/accompanying trade collapse fed into that because the lack of tin made bronze production much harder. That also doesn't apply to the Empire of course. My point is simply that external trade can be quite critical even before modern transport. It just has to be along waterways.
 
Given what we saw when we experimented with laylines, this seems to already be the case. Short of creating a completely independent network, I don't think we can avoid Ulthuan being able to remotely shut off or otherwise manipulate Waystones - and given the metric truckload of magic that Ulthuan needs just to keep afloat, cutting off an entire continent's worth of magic may provoke them into actual war just to turn the spigot back on.

They could certainly sever our new Waystones from their network. That's not within our control, as you note; if they don't want them hooked up to the structures designed to feed into the Vortex, they won't be, because they control the infrastructure we're feeding power into. The difference is if them doing that makes the Waystones stop functioning entirely or simply means that we need to, say, route them into the Karaz Ankor network instead.

To use an analogy, think of Ulthuan as a phone company. They can always say that you can't make calls on their network; that simply isn't something anyone but them has the capacity to affect. The question is whether or not they can brick your phone if they decide they don't like who you're calling.
 
I just had a random thought. The Ice Witches built a new waystone at Castle Alexandronov, correct? Would it be possible to go have a look at it or something?

At the very least, I think we should try to ask Zlata about it at some point, maybe include her on the Foundation action to see if she has any lore she can share (she probably doesn't, but it's worth a try).
It's possible they only moved one.

Or that there was already one there, and the important change was that building Castle Alexandranov gave it enough security that they felt safe adding it to their Ice-Vortex.
 
Mmmm. I would argue against this- prior to railroads and steamships, pretty much every economy was an autarky. Transport is just too expensive and slow to allow long distance (IE, outside of province at best) trade to replace local production.
To add to this, isn't most of Imperial trade be based on rivers and to much lesser extent coastal shipping? Neither of which are affected much by elves patrolling the high oceans.
 
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