Personally, I've been curious about whether Waystone Gold had connections to Lizardman gold for some time, and one of the first possible formulae that came up for pyramidron is originally a Gold/Titanium biocompatible alloy that was being explored for prosthetics. Johann hasn't said anything about his arm, but I think there's still enough of a potential link there to be worth looking into.
Tributaries aren't Waystones.
Tributeries have no gold in them. They are worlds most boring rocks.
Belthani tributaries don't have Waystone Gold in them. Some tributaries are part of the original network, and they're just smaller Waystones:
there are many types of tributaries, including ones of the same design as the main waystones.
IF they are not more capable at being a tributary than the ones we can produce ourselves, then the capstones on them could be repurposed for use in main waystones.
i think this is bad idea tbh. Dont touch waystones is pretty ingrained habit. If peasantry sees effort to tear some down, they might think its open season.
There are probably a couple, but there are not very many total wizards, and definitionally the ones willing to cast tale of metal and breach the Unknown willy-nilly on every weird rock of dubious provenance are going to burn out fast
Permission to learn it also requires working six months in the magical insane asylum. So you don't learn it on a whim, and you have ample awareness what it does when used wrong. You can probably find one or two reckless enough, or at least enough to be talked into stupid things, but that's both morally reprehensible and liable to get you a reputation. The golds don't appreciate their wizards going mad either.
I was going to say it'd go to the top of their "if you really must use Tale of Metal on something" list, but they probably don't even keep one.
It's also a matter of risk vs reward. If it was "either we figure this out, or the world drowns in daemons", the Golds would be ready to chance it, even at bad odds. They'd probably even be willing try multiple times with variations of the spell. Hell, if it was "either we figure this out or we'll never built more waystones", you could probably get someone willing to risk it, maybe after some brainstorming for safety features. But it's neither of those. It's "we spent six months on it, and while we figured out several viable alternatives, we've only got a few promising hints for this one, so please immerse you're brain meats in ancient history so I can satisfy my curiosity sooner".
"Magnetic" might even just be a metaphor here. The bars pull less on the winds than the pyramid does, which is being described as being less magnetic to them. I don't think actual magnetism is even involved.
Notably, by the end of the episode, they do manage to Macgyver one up, with a little help from the Sear's catalog and a friend with a connection to a Toledo hotdog restaurant (they needed plastic tubing).A War For All Seasons said:
"If you want me to guarantee that Nagash himself couldn't subvert the project's works given direct access, I'm going to need significantly more funding."
That's kinda what we're doing with the Waystones, Sears catalogue and all. Although I guess the average Runelord wouldn't appreciate their craft being associated with a hotdog stand XD
All jokes aside, that's not what I meant. My concern is that a talented, but by no means Nagash level Dhar user takes a research trip to Nehekhara. For the sake of discussion, let's call him Helmut. He spends a few years figuring out how Nagash corrupted the Nehekharan network, Helmut then head to the Empire, and attempts to replicate it on our homemade network, unleashing massive amounts of destruction in the process.
Imagine the level of BOOK that Mathilde could get with a Nehekharan Great Deed.
Bringing life back to the deserts of Nehekhara seems a bit too much of "not our problem" for the participants in the Waystone Project as it stands. However, if it was in exchange for some extremely valuable knowledge, that's a different matter.
I would definitely like to map out Nehekhara and learn what we can from that at some point in the future after we actually learn High Nehekharan, but I feel like we should temper our expectations. A Waystones mapping action should yield just that: a map of the place's nexus, or lack thereof.
Dhar usage, unfortunately, isn't exclusive to the necromantic set. I was actually thinking more along the lines of the followers of Chaos myself. Using a mystical ritual to metaphysically poison a river belonging to a major Order power seems right up Tzeentch's alley, and perhaps Nurgle's as well. This is especially true if it's possible to make the Dhar user aligned to a particular member of the Four, or simply Chaos Undivided. The right cult in the wrong place could do a serious amount of damage.
I mean, Nurgle would be up for targeting the Empire's rivers *anyways* just to spread plague. It being a leyline doesn't make it a whole new threat. And our dhar under the river mechanism might actually pull any dhar injected into the river under it and make it *safer* than before. Since people in the empire aren't constantly dying of poisoned rivers and wells, presumably some combination of factors is acting against that possibility.
I wonder how the Tomb Kings would react to the idea? If I remember right, Settra was pretty pissed about waking up a corpse in a wasteland instead of an immortal in a paradise. He might be interested in a proposal to restore his kingdom. Though their whole, army of the dead thing might be dependant on the corrupted network to maintain the undeath for all of them? I dunno.
