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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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A_Somebody said:
Convincing the thread to share AV seems like it'd be the real miracle. People were against sharing it with Webat, the college brach Mathilde is literally in charge of who's charter focuses on multi wind interactions. Id definitely be interested in seeing what others see of it in general though.
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The issue was that most of the AV actions we wanted to take weren't things we could do with the rest of WEB-MAT:
LawsOfRobotics said:
@Boney is this equally valid for AV powerstone research, and working with other members of WEBMAT? From the way you phrased your response it seems likely but perhaps I shouldn't assume.
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Boney said:
No.
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Almost the entirety of this research tree has been stuff Mathilde could only do solo due to her unique Windsight advantages; IIRC, the only action we got confirmation that we could bring someone in to assist on was the experimentation on integrating AV into enchantments, and that action got removed from the action list when Mathilde learned enough about how AV reacted to realize that it couldn't possibly work, so even if we had done that it would have gained us nothing. Back in the day, a bunch of us wanted to make AV our project for Belegar, but the thread outvoted ever proposing that. But once we've finished the research and published, then I see no reason we might not sell AV to other Winds-users the way we already sell it to Runesmiths. (In point of fact, at this point the Runesmiths have been given more AV than Mathilde herself has ever used, though that will change once we make the Orbs.)

That said, I do not expect the elves to be blown away by AV. It has been repeatedly hinted that they have their own ways of accessing the undifferentiated substance of the Aethyr, such as the portal that we know exists in the Tarn of Tears; if the Eonir have something like that, then I'll bet you at extremely good odds that the Asur, Druchii, and Asrai all do too. The reaction I expect to get from them is not jealousy or astonishment; at best, I think they'll be impressed that we managed to independently reinvent a secret that they never shared with humanity. But we're not going to suddenly start a bidding war between the Eonir and the Colleges by dramatically unveiling our swag.
 
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A_Somebody said:
Convincing the thread to share AV seems like it'd be the real miracle. People were against sharing it with Webat, the college brach Mathilde is literally in charge of who's charter focuses on multi wind interactions. Id definitely be interested in seeing what others see of it in general though.
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On the other hand, there is a major thing going for sharing AV with the Eonir mages in that it fills out at least two notable, and possibly fundamental, gaps in our knowledge of it: We don't know what the health and safety measures are for Elves handling it or how theirs differs from humans, and we have no record of the Aetheric Vitae's interactions with Qhaysh. I think we're at the point where we have good guesses, but concrete answers that confirmed or, more importantly, denied our assumptions could be in important result.
 
picklepikkl said:
The issue was that most of the AV actions we wanted to take weren't things we could do with the rest of WEB-MAT:


Almost the entirety of this research tree has been stuff Mathilde could only do solo due to her unique Windsight advantages; IIRC, the only action we got confirmation that we could bring someone in to assist on was the experimentation on integrating AV into enchantments, and that action got removed from the action list when Mathilde learned enough about how AV reacted to realize that it couldn't possibly work, so even if we had done that it would have gained us nothing. Back in the day, I wanted us to make AV our project for Belegar, but the thread outvoted that. But once we've finished the research and published, then I see no reason we might not sell AV to other Winds-users the way we already sell it to Runesmiths. (In point of fact, at this point the Runesmiths have been given more AV than Mathilde herself has ever used, though that will change once we make the Orbs.)

That said, I do not expect the elves to be blown away by AV. It has been repeatedly hinted that they have their own ways of accessing the undifferentiated substance of the Aethyr, such as the portal that we know exists in the Tarn of Tears; if the Eonir have something like that, then I'll bet you at extremely good odds that the Asur, Druchii, and Asrai all do too. The reaction I expect to get from them is not jealousy or astonishment; at best, I think they'll be impressed that we managed to independently reinvent a secret that they never shared with humanity.
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They might still want it because I somehow doubt what comes out of the tarn of tears is as storable as our stuff (but that's just a guess) and they probably only have one point of access. So being able to get some even when the current allocation is used up might be nice.
 
On advanatge of collaborating with the Eonir and n AV research is that they may have a source if it, and if so and we tell them what it can do they might be able to use it as a very valuable trade good with the dwarves.
 
Alratan said:
On advanatge of collaborating with the Eonir and n AV research is that they may have a source if it, and if so and we tell them what it can do they might be able to use it as a very valuable trade good with the dwarves.
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But that can also Happen after we published the book so I don't see a pressing need now.

The only thing that might be correct is that we could see what quaysh does with av but honestly no one in the empire or neighboring human countries can use quaysh and the elf's in Marienburg don't care enough to show up. Laurelorn is only now opening up to us so it wasn't an option before and I just think that whatever quaysh can do to av is just not important to human wizardry because we will never achieve it.
 
In reference to the Dyrcha wood:
Boney said:
"It would have only existed since the Dryad manifested so it wouldn't have the centuries or millennia of being steeped in a Wind that makes things like dragon bones so useful, but it would have been created with the conscious intent of creating wood that would be extremely amenable to the flow of their Wind. It would be better suited to fine control than raw power."
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Hmmm, to me this sounds perfect for use as an enchanting aide of some sort. Maybe a staff specifically for enchanting, maybe something else, but it seems like it might be useful if we want to go full in on windherding/enchanting.
 
Tobtorp said:
But that can also Happen after we published the book so I don't see a pressing need now.

The only thing that might be correct is that we could see what quaysh does with av but honestly no one in the empire or neighboring human countries can use quaysh and the elf's in Marienburg don't care enough to show up. Laurelorn is only now opening up to us so it wasn't an option before and I just think that whatever quaysh can do to av is just not important to human wizardry because we will never achieve it.
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We don't have to stop AV research just because we publish the book. Indeed, on the turn we publish I'd like to see if we can spend our WebMat actions collaborating with its members to see if they have any insights or can spot anything we've missed, to give them first mover advantage for follow on papers.

And as Qhaysh appears to be a structure of the distinct Winds it would almost certainly cause the AV to transform into more of those Winds.
 
I can't imagine there's anything left to study, aside from the properties of a liminal realm, and we have to do that before we write the book anyway.

Edit: oh wait, there's also the moment of transformation that we can't see because it's too blinding, but if we can't see it I don't hold out much hope for the others.
 
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I personally think that the golds might salviate over the stuff until they understand that any interaction with a wind makes a wind explosion and that as such it's not great for potions.
Which is why our book is so important, it will be the guide book for anyone who wants to tinker with it. Best practices, what not to do and what can be done.
They will build from there.

But Mathilde is very good at magic and has a almost preposterous learning score so if she can't think of it it's either super secret or not there.
 
Though it's gonna be interesting what the other magic traditions would want to do...

Also I just realized... The thing with the elementalists, where their stuff changes with a wizard present... That might be a thing for AV too.

Maybe the elementalists actually might want av ...
Weird...

Also the ice maidens might wanna tinker with it and bretonnia has a grail to pour some in...
 
Mopman43 said:
They don't actually have a physical grail hanging around.

The last person in Bretonnia to claim they had the grail on hand was Maldred, the last Duke of Mousillon.
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Then they can pour some in the lake, same difference.

Edit: Actually @Boney did Mathilde consider AV after the revelation on earthbound magic? Or is it one of those "was considered but couldn't be tested safely so discarded" things?
 
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Chlof said:
Stray thought; if Mathilde's windsight isn't actually sight but 'sight' then using the term blinding might be leading us astray as to how to solve this particular issue.
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It's a moment of too much magic, I doubt a serviscope would help, it probably also just gets blinded. (It's probably a bit like magical fission. In that splitting the AV produces lots of energy)
 
I will point out that we, the thread, do not need to solve the "how to observe primordial winds" problem.
Boney said:
she's probably going to try to figure something out for that when it comes time to do so
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Mathilde's going to try to figure something out when she takes the Orb of Sorcery action. If we feel really hot and bothered about primordial Winds, we could throw the Gambler on it and hope Ranald gives us a hint or lets us get a good reading, but there's no real point talking about it now. We don't get the Room of Calamity up until T43, and I think it would be absolutely insanely reckless to go about making eight Orbs of Sorcery simultaneously without being able to hit a button to pause the experiment if things get out of hand, lest we end up mute with a goatee and a crowbar following an uncontrolled resonance cascade.

And, like, worst case scenario (where we don't get good observations of the primordial winds) is that some hotshot researchers from the Colleges who think they have a clever idea buy more AV off of us to try to solve the problem themselves in a followup paper, which sounds great to me.
 
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picklepikkl said:
I will point out that we, the thread, do not need to solve the "how to observe primordial winds" problem.

Mathilde's going to try to figure something out when she takes the Orb of Sorcery action. If we feel really hot and bothered about primordial Winds, we could throw the Gambler on it and hope Ranald gives us a hint or lets us get a good reading, but there's no real point talking about it now. We don't get the Room of Calamity up until T43, and I think it would be absolutely insanely reckless to go about making eight Orbs of Sorcery simultaneously without being able to hit a button to pause the experiment if things get out of hand, lest we end up mute with a goatee and a crowbar following an uncontrolled resonance cascade.

And, like, worst case scenario (where we don't get good observations of the primordial winds) is that some hotshot researchers from the Colleges who think they have a clever idea buy more AV off of us to try to solve the problem themselves in a followup paper, which sounds great to me.
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The crowbar, the most powerful staff a wizard can own.

But yes, that's actually nice to know!
 
Mopman43 said:
The Eonir might be working with something like AV coming out of the Tarn of Tears.
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picklepikkl said:
has been repeatedly hinted that they have their own ways of accessing the undifferentiated substance of the Aethyr, such as the portal that we know exists in the Tarn of Tears
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There's actually no reason to think that the Tarn of Tears is a source of AV. When Mathilde first begun studying the AV she noted that magic coming into the world tends to turn into Winds or Dhar. Portals were called out specifically as one of the ways for magic to enter into the world, and as far as Mathilde knows portal are not sources of undifferentiated Aethyr:
Boney said:
Theory: The liquid no longer retains any influence from the Asp, and is merely acting according to its nature.
Fact: The known nature of raw warp energy is to enter the world from the Chaos Wastes, and dissolve into the Eight Winds.
Question: Is this entirely due to the nature of warp energy, or is part of this reaction inherent to the locations near the poles?
Question: How else can warp energies cross into the physical world?
Candidate: Summoning portals.
Fact: Warp energies from summoning portals typically dissolve into Winds or curdle into Dhar.
Candidate: Daemonic invasions.
Fact: Warp energies from daemonic invasions typically dissolve into Winds or curdle into Dhar.
Candidate: Morrsleib.
Fact: Warp energies from Morrsleib universally curdle into Dhar.
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To the best of Mathilde's understanding, what makes our snake box a source of AV is the fact that the Asp can move between reality and the Aethyr without weakening the barrier between them (how this is possible is itself a fascinating and afaik unanswered question):
Boney said:
Question: How could warp energy enter the world without the barrier being thin or pierced?
Fact: The Wisdom's Asp does not pierce the barrier between the physical world and the Aethyr. It moves between the two via the medium of mirrors.
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That's all assuming that there even is a portal, because the Eonir don't know and Nessie won't let them check:
Boney said:
"The Tarn of Tears," Prince Galenstra says. "The source of what you call the Schaukel, and also of much of Laurelorn's magic."

"A source of magic? How?" You focus on the water, and eventually you can make out a deep throb of magical energy far below, and a steady plume spiralling upwards to swirl through the waters of the lake and be drawn north to the outflow. Everything you've been taught says that all magic has its origin in the Aethyr.

"We don't know," he admits. "We believe there's some kind of portal at the bottom, but it has a guardian spirit that doesn't like us investigating."
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So there's no reason to think a portal at the bottom of the Tarn of Tears is a source of AV - it's more likely to just be a source of Winds - and if it is a source of AV there's no reason to think that it's readily available to the Eonir.

Now, that doesn't mean that the AV is going to be a shocking disocvery to the Eonir - I would imagine that at least the Grey Lords know about the stuff - but they might not have a convenient source.
 
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