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Finding someone who speaks Indic, is knowledgeable enough about magical theory to accurately translate treatises on Aqshy, can be trusted with that knowledge, and can be convinced to drop whatever they're doing in favour of making translations is one of those minor miracles that the Collegiate infrastructure manages on a daily basis, and you receive the translations back with gratifying promptness.
I think I found out how this particular miracle might've been achieved. WFRP 4e: Altdorf, page 21, the Thyrus Gormann section:


Agni is a Sanskrit word, and the Fire Stone of Agni is one of Thyrus' creations, and this is what he looks like:
I think Thyrus might be an immigrant from Ind or of Indic descent, and he might've been the one to translate our books.
 
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I think I found out how this particular miracle was achieved. WFRP 4e: Altdorf, page 21, the Thyrus Gormann section:


Agni is a Sanskrit word, and the Fire Stone of Agni is one of Thyrus' creations, and this is what he looks like:
I think Thyrus might be an immigrant from Ind or of Indic descent, and he might've been the one to translate our books.
I am unable to lookalike away from the fact that man has a cake for a hat.
 
Agni is a Sanskrit word, and the Fire Stone of Agni is one of Thyrus' creations, and this is what he looks like:
Wikipedia tells me that In Sanskrit, Agni means fire and also denotes the Vedic god of the same, so that's fairly appropriate. Probably one of the two gods referenced in the translation bit.

The inevitable result of this is that these Indic books on Aqshy are very different to Collegiate ones. Where the Colleges focus on the brute force that the fires of Aqshy can bring to bear, these books focus on the ability of the Wind of Fire to instill bravery and passion. An Indic Bright Wizard would be more of a leader than an artillery piece on the battlefield, and outside of it their most visible roles would be as leaders of festivals and counsellors against melancholia. There's also a bodily component of all this you don't quite understand that says that Aqshy concentrates most readily in the thumb, the eyes, and the stomach, and references to a pair of deities apparently associated with the Wind of Fire. You don't know if any of this would be compatible with the Collegiate use of Aqshy, but you shrug and send a note to the Bright College letting them know where to find the books if they're interested.
(I wonder which other Vedic-based deity is associated with fire?)

And speaking of Thyrus...
Come to think of it, if you were going to pick a Wizard to be given the job of destroying the Elementalists, it would probably come down to a choice between Mathilde, Walther Kupfer, Thyrus Gormann, and Gehenna.
...I wonder if there's a legit connection here, or just serendipity.
 
So this is rather unrelated, but the thought struck me: could Empire guns be about to get actually pretty good now?
Some of the design decisions identified and duplicated seem rather similar to the designs of your own Dwarven-made firearms, but anything in regular use by the Skaven is fair game for humans to reverse-engineer, even if they might have originally been stolen from Dwarven designs.
Like, we got this, which'll be a great potential improvement to the reliability of empire guns, but we also got that dwarven engineer who improved the reliability of guns in good condition, and those two fields wouldn't overlap, right? Mathilde said it herself when investigating those ratling guns, Skaven engineers expect their designs to be poorly maintained, used by untrustworthy soldiers, and to use incredibly dangerous materials, so they wouldn't bother with designs that work better if kept in good condition, which means this bounty could very well fit in with the more technical refinement the dwarven engineer gave.

Sure, the Empire still isn't really working with industrial machining, so we won't be getting automatic rifles anytime soon, but we might be approaching the point where misfires are outliers, rather than an accepted sacrifice for using handgunners.
 
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Securing test subjects and access to Waaagh energies isn't the problem. The problem is that Mathilde is not a Waaagh Shaman and therefore not capable of making enchantments made out of Waaagh energies that would be easily capable of detecting other Waaagh energies, and that there's no friendly organization of Waaagh alchemists out there that can supply her with Waaagh-reactive materials.
So what I'm hearing here is that we need a diplomatic coup with a Greenskin tribe to make permanent allies out of them. :V

...Or the "try it and find out" infiltration thing. I feel like Ranald would probably like the Infiltration thing: We haven't used the Night Prowler for pure theft and spying in a while and it would be cool to take a month or two to deep dive into Greenskin society and shamanism somewhere like Black Crag/Karak Drazh.

Actually, yeah, I love the quest's take on different societies and Mathilde's In-Character Xeno-Affinity would tie into such an arc pretty well. Right now we have the Elfcation to prep for and a Mummycation as a vague idea after that, but the more I talk about it, the more Greenskin infiltration sounds like a legitimately fun idea for a miniarc if we're ever in need of a change of pace for a bit.

*Pencils down "Orcation" for a project proposal sometime eventuallyTM after the Elfcation*

I assure you all, the sheer befuddlement that would come of Mathilde disappearing for a month or three and coming back with a book titled "Amongst the Waaagh! A deep dive into Greenskin society and magic" has nothing to do with the idea. :V

Yeah, it's a lot easier to build a Turing machine than it is to have the framework of knowledge and concepts that makes doing so significant. Mathilde's not a Connecticut Yankee so she's going to limit the applications of this to things that it makes sense for her to see the use of.
For what it's worth here, while I am excited by the Turing machine implications, I also realize that something like a general computer or rocket-ignition-sequence-control-unit grade of control system for a spell system spell is probably outside the scope of this quest. Even if all that is really fun to play with as ideas and fanfic about.

Most of my thoughts here are more on the level of something like one to five calculations, hence the talk about the same grad of simplicity as Minecraft redstone or (the user facing side of) Factorio logic components. A lot of cool things don't often need much calculation, just knowledge of how the underlying system works and a small handful of components that may not even talk to each other.

A lot of the ideas that come easily to mind for me are Waystone Project things but one of the other things in that vein that's been coming to mind for instance is river leyline controls. It strikes me that if you knew the possible failure states you could probably tie emergency controls into river waystones just by reading the local river conditions. Much the same way that Mathilde built up a comprehensive list of terrain obstacles so she could program the identifier for where the Rite of Way sends the Skywalks, really: A handful of controls distilling a large list of cases into a tiny list of actions that will solve most of them.
"If: Sevir > [some % of critical mass], Then: Throttle Inputs"
"If: Dhar > [more than the system can safely handle], Then: Start emergency purge line"

Another use case might be splitting a Leyline. If the Kislev circuit has a maximum capacity or needs to discharge something that mini-vortex can't handle on its own (Which are still "ifs") then it... seems? Like one could use the strength of the primary leyline to feed excess from the mini-vortex there to secondary networks. Be it the Karak Vlag nexus or a restored Forest of Shadows network. Mostly that one came to mind since it's occurred to me that the prophecy about a male Ice magic user "Tainting Ice magic forever" might involve something getting into the waystone network that both powers and is intimately tied to Ice Magic.

Aiding the Karaz Ankor in general by ensuring that lines cut off from flow to Ulthuan can go there instead would also be the same kind of project, I suspect. "You have too little" is a lot more diplomatically complex than "we have too much," but it seems like something that could be useful if and where we detect breaks with our mapping actions.

All this had definitely transformed into me just... gushing here, but this kind of design is just such a fun topic to think about.
 
Come to think of it, if you were going to pick a Wizard to be given the job of destroying the Elementalists, it would probably come down to a choice between Mathilde, Walther Kupfer, Thyrus Gormann, and Gehenna.
Huh, now that I look at this, I'm curious as to the logic about why these guys. Mathilde is clear enough: we already killed a college, simple as. I get that Thyrus Gormann and Gehenna qualify on being very killy (both seeming to be graduated battle wizards). But Kupfer is a little weird. My guess is he gets in because Grey Wizard, not busy with the college, and maybe something else? It's not that I don't think he'd be capable, more that others would also be capable too.
 
Huh, now that I look at this, I'm curious as to the logic about why these guys. Mathilde is clear enough: we already killed a college, simple as. I get that Thyrus Gormann and Gehenna qualify on being very killy (both seeming to be graduated battle wizards). But Kupfer is a little weird. My guess is he gets in because Grey Wizard, not busy with the college, and maybe something else? It's not that I don't think he'd be capable, more that others would also be capable too.
Probably this part:
Walther Kupfer: Known for fomenting civil unrest in the Druchii city of Clar Karond from within the city's slave pits, resulting in house feuds that still blow up from time to time.
If he can pit Druuchi houses against one another, the Elementalists aren't gonna have great fun against an instigator of his caliber.
 
It's unclear whether "magesight" is unified enough to count as a singular "sense" across all people with the ability to perceive magic, given the enormous number of forms it can take.
That said, if it is, or with sufficient study into the nature of wind-sight it can be treated as such, then suddenly fooling it with Ulgu becomes as simple as fooling any other sense.

Basically, imagine that you had a mastery of Illusion that let you manipulate magesight. In such a case, when you cast an Illusion of absence, the existence of the Ulgu that shapes the spell that fools the magesight becomes irrelevant, in the same way that a caster holding a bright shining light while under an Illusion still won't be seen by someone with normal sight.

Obviously there's no guarantees here, but if I was going to try to create that effect magically*, an Illusion of absence which targeted the non-traditional sense of magesight would be my first guess.

*Eshin's trick might not be a magical effect. We know that mundane materials can stop the winds, so it might be a technique where you're able to hide the winds within your soul by doing some meditative nonsense** that causes you to lose attunement with any of the emotions tied to any of the winds, which when combined with specially made clothing plus mundane stealth means you can blend in with the scenery.

**The ninja rats entering some sort of quasi-enlightenment state to enhance some of their abilities? Some sort of "sage mode", if you will? :thonk:

I think this is probably closest to the mark because we did not see the Sorcerer do this even before he started casting the Lore of Stealth. If thins was something their magicians could do their magicians would do it. I also think this is probably Cathayan because of how relatively alien it is to Old World Traditions. This might be something we could have found in those Eshin books if we had rolled better... and then been disappointment that we could not use it as a wizard with her soul half made of Winds.
 
This seems to be attributing different Winds to each god: Shyish for Morr, Hysh for Verena, Aqshy for Taal, Ghur for Rhya, Ghyran for Manaan.
That's a bit of a stretch, I feel. Focusing on "fury" in "fury of the lion" but on "bear" in "strength of the mother bear" seems inconsistent, and it also doesn't fit the actual domains of the Gods - if you want to associate Taal and Rhya with Winds it's easy to do so, but the Winds should be Ghur and Ghyran rather than Aqshy and Ghur. There's also a sentence right before that section where Ulric is described and Aqshy related emotions also appear:
"Yet Ulric's courage never faltered. His fury would not abate, and his strength did never waver."
So you might as well associate Aqshy with Ulric too (he's also associated with fire later in the myth) and that ruins the 'one Wind for each God' idea.
Maybe it's simply been lost in translation, but why would a sword of Ulgu be made of light? Was Ulgu hiding Hysh? Or... I kinda want to imagine that "Tlanxla's Sword of Judgement" is more mystical: Ulgu can be the shadows between light and dark, but it can also be the dividing line that separates (judgement) light and dark apart. Or it's something else entirely.
Well in LUMW it's not a sword of Ulgu, it's Morr's sword. This isn't the only way in which LUMW doesn't line up with LM (the story of how Verena responded to the Coming of Chaos in LUMW is very different to LM's account of Hoeth) but the reason I got into this specific point is that the story of Verena's sword doesn't quite make sense in the context of the LUMW myth itself, even without comparing it to other accounts of the Coming of Chaos. Whatever the truth nature of Tlanxla's Sword is, I'm pretty sure LUMW gets it mostly or completely wrong.
In fact, I wonder if we'd have to call the auditory version something else, given that 'scope' as a suffix simply means 'instrument for seeing'. What's the equivalent for hearing?
Winds Chime, obviously.
 
she saw that the danger was indeed very real and very great, and that these fiends would destroy all of the Beauty and Reason she had created."
Beauty and reason are Myrmidia and Shalya? Sounds like why the cathayan dragons stayed. If neither daughter were alive at the time then Verena may not have fought. Did Ranald make Morr laugh by helping him have children to get Verena in the fight? From a research station under the sand?
 
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You know I was thinking of what Boney said that a Hysh user might be able to turn the Rider's sword into a flaming weapon and that got me thinking... do we want to teach Egrimm the trick of this? I mean we already told him we learned how the Golds did the Hounds spell, we would not be revealing something he does not already know and hell I think he would like a summon spell. The Lights do not have one and he always wants more things to get his name out there. I am imagining a literal knight in shinning armor with a blazing sword.
 
Beauty and reason are Myrmidia and Shalya?
I don't think so. Shallya isn't reason, and She is mentioned later:
"Seeing all this suffering and loss, Queen Verena fell to her knees and cried. And her tears flowed over the battlefield, and from them came the goddess Shallya, bringing her mercy and healing to the injured and despairing."

Myrmidia is arguably both beauty and reason, as She's a patron of science among other things, or you could associate reason with Verena as the Goddess of knowledge as the myth seems to do. I think it's possible to interpret the mention of beauty and reason as a delibrate snub of Myrmidia, giving Her domains to Verena and implying that Myrmidia doesn't exist or is merely an aspect of Verena or something of that sort. Alternatively if the myth was written before Myrmidia was born, Her future aspects might still belong to Her parents.
 
You know I was thinking of what Boney said that a Hysh user might be able to turn the Rider's sword into a flaming weapon and that got me thinking... do we want to teach Egrimm the trick of this? I mean we already told him we learned how the Golds did the Hounds spell, we would not be revealing something he does not already know and hell I think he would like a summon spell. The Lights do not have one and he always wants more things to get his name out there. I am imagining a literal knight in shinning armor with a blazing sword.

There's a difference between telling him we learned how they did the Hound spell and that it wasn't suitable, and telling him the mechanism we learned from them. If we hadn't told him, I'd support it more, but since we did he's very much likely to be able to put two and two together.
 
You know I was thinking of what Boney said that a Hysh user might be able to turn the Rider's sword into a flaming weapon and that got me thinking... do we want to teach Egrimm the trick of this? I mean we already told him we learned how the Golds did the Hounds spell, we would not be revealing something he does not already know and hell I think he would like a summon spell. The Lights do not have one and he always wants more things to get his name out there. I am imagining a literal knight in shinning armor with a blazing sword.
I'm now picturing the whispering darkness converted into a golden cloud of scouring radiance and it's quite an image.
 
There's a difference between telling him we learned how they did the Hound spell and that it wasn't suitable, and telling him the mechanism we learned from them. If we hadn't told him, I'd support it more, but since we did he's very much likely to be able to put two and two together.
Not even that! There's enough ambiguity to interpret that negotiations didn't go through.

But do we care if he does? I mean we could just ask him to keep the secret, I trust him that far personally.
We do care. Despite having him on since the Laurelorn arc began, we still know relatively little about Egrimm and there's still a possibility that his loyalties are in doubt. And even if they weren't, telling a dude a secret we swore to keep isn't a particularly good way to inspire fellowship. If Egrimm finds out Mathilde is willing to betray the trust of a Patriarch, how is he to believe that she won't betray his trust?

If we had to tell him, it should really be "I found out how to bind a Rider in Red to a spell, you can probably figure out an equivalent for Hysh, here's my notes", not "this is directly taken from the Golds".

And even if he was totally trustworthy I would rather not hand over a magical secret that cost us a lot to obtain. If he wants the secret behind the Hounds, he can ask the Golds himself with a treasure trove of his own.
 
Not even that! There's enough ambiguity to interpret that negotiations didn't go through.


We do care. Despite having him on since the Laurelorn arc began, we still know relatively little about Egrimm and there's still a possibility that his loyalties are in doubt. And even if they weren't, telling a dude a secret we swore to keep isn't a particularly good way to inspire fellowship. If Egrimm finds out Mathilde is willing to betray the trust of a Patriarch, how is he to believe that she won't betray his trust?

If we had to tell him, it should really be "I found out how to bind a Rider in Red to a spell, you can probably figure out an equivalent for Hysh, here's my notes", not "this is directly taken from the Golds".

And even if he was totally trustworthy I would rather not hand over a magical secret that cost us a lot to obtain. If he wants the secret behind the Hounds, he can ask the Golds himself with a treasure trove of his own.

That is a very zero sum game way of looking at things, we do not lose anything if we just hand him the secret just because we had to pay for it.
 
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