Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Reader mode
Nexuses seem like they could be harder to figure out than Waystones are, or at least more work. If Waystones have four components, and Tributaries are basically a one-component project, then a Nexus might easily have five or more components. In addition to serving as a bigger Waystone, Nexuses are designed to do stuff with all that magic, often on a geographic scale. Plus they're more touchy politically, since some Nexuses and what they do are very important secrets for many powerful groups or countries.
 
Derpmind said:
Nexuses seem like they could be harder to figure out than Waystones are, or at least more work. If Waystones have four components, and Tributaries are basically a one-component project, then a Nexus might easily have five or more components. In addition to serving as a bigger Waystone, Nexuses are designed to do stuff with all that magic, often on a geographic scale. Plus they're more touchy politically, since some Nexuses and what they do are very important secrets for many powerful groups or countries.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Fortunately, with what we have learned I don't think anyone's going to object to extending the project to Nexuses once (if) we finally crack regular Waystones. Solving the risk of 'massive system failure followed by Dhar all over the continent' is in everyone's interest.
 
Honestly, once we actually have a working Waystone design being built somewhere I would kinda want to have Mathilde grant her position to someone else and wander off to the next fun goal. At that point the project has a concrete fantastic success to show off and rally around meaning it can sustain itself without direct attention by a Protagonist.
 
Just finished Oppenheimer and suddenly glad that the aim of our project made of a wide and varied selection of cutting edge experts is much more unambiguously good than WMDs, with slightly dodgy edge cases the worst we're dealing with.

Although, if we do ever figure some one weird trick that could potentially exploit Aetheric phenomena to create a super weapon in a similar way to nuclear fission allowed, that would be a hell of a story.

…think I'm still glad AV turned out to not be able to create a city sized Pit of Shades or anything of the sort.
 
FallenPears said:
…think I'm still glad AV turned out to not be able to create a city sized Pit of Shades or anything of the sort.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Not by itself, thankfully, but with it you can make Orbs of Sorcery, and those are nothing to sneeze at. So I guess it's more like making low-grade plutonium? Idk, I don't think I want to speculate on magic nukes all that much.
 
I'd say Orbs are closer to internal combustion engines or portable nuclear reactors. Power sources which are not weapons in and by themselves but can be used as part of the weapon. Or they could be in principle, used for civillian purposes, but given how rare they are military gets to hog them all
 
Then again, "Waystone Nuke" was one of the possibilities on the Dum table, so I guess it's fair to say that Waystones can also cause lots of conventional damage (as opposed to drowning the environment in Dhar) if you fiddle with them the right way.
 
FallenPears said:
Just finished Oppenheimer and suddenly glad that the aim of our project made of a wide and varied selection of cutting edge experts is much more unambiguously good than WMDs, with slightly dodgy edge cases the worst we're dealing with.

Although, if we do ever figure some one weird trick that could potentially exploit Aetheric phenomena to create a super weapon in a similar way to nuclear fission allowed, that would be a hell of a story.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I believe those are called Cataclysm Magic, and all you need is a storm of magic and a mage who's good enough to cast.

Or you can just wait for Skyre to invent their nukes
 
FallenPears said:
…think I'm still glad AV turned out to not be able to create a city sized Pit of Shades or anything of the sort.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Might still be on the table, honestly?

We can use Av to make a Liminal Realm after all, and a Pit of Shades is basically just a portal to a non-existant liminal realm if I understand things correctly, so if we can use AV to make just the portal without the realm existing, and if "More AV = Bigger Portal" ..... I'm not saying this is super likely, but for all the ways for AV to potentially become a WMD, this is one of the methods that's most on the table.

And there's a lot of methods we can try.

Like, there's other potential methods that we might not even glance at, and city sized Pit of Shades isn't our current goal, but at the bare minimum I'm pretty sure we intend to try to make a Liminal Realm again, and that's at least step 1 in learning if that's possible via AV or not.

This is ignoring the Orb's of Sorcery of course, which is, how do we put it, big danger.
 
FallenPears said:
Just finished Oppenheimer and suddenly glad that the aim of our project made of a wide and varied selection of cutting edge experts is much more unambiguously good than WMDs, with slightly dodgy edge cases the worst we're dealing with.

Although, if we do ever figure some one weird trick that could potentially exploit Aetheric phenomena to create a super weapon in a similar way to nuclear fission allowed, that would be a hell of a story.

…think I'm still glad AV turned out to not be able to create a city sized Pit of Shades or anything of the sort.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Let's not forget that the next* phase is figuring out how to power things with the Waystone network.
CeBrudras said:
Honestly, once we actually have a working Waystone design being built somewhere I would kinda want to have Mathilde grant her position to someone else and wander off to the next fun goal. At that point the project has a concrete fantastic success to show off and rally around meaning it can sustain itself without direct attention by a Protagonist.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Even once we have a Waystone we have so much more to do on the project. Nexuses, but also figuring out how to actually use the Waystone network to power things. Kislev seems to power a god and maybe an entire field of magic with their network. The dwarves have ancient wonders they powered with theirs. While the Riekland nexus isn't exactly powered by the Waystone network, it's definitely the kind of thing it'd be nice to know how to do.

This is where the politics will get even harder. So far we've been doing stuff that's unambiguously good and beneficial for everyone, but the next* phase is going to involve stuff that can benefit individual nations.

*Next is perhaps being generous; it might be more accurate to count making a Waystone nexus and starting widespread deployment as the next steps. But "how do we power nation scale magical workings" is on the agenda, though definitely IRL years down the line.
 
Last edited:
Still rereading, now at page 3119. Did someone seriously try convincing people that Mathilde could and should clear Karag Wyr by herself? That's even dumber than the mammoth thing that popped up during the Dum Expedition, what the hell.
 
infinityDivided said:
Still rereading, now at page 3119. Did someone seriously try convincing people that Mathilde could and should clear Karag Wyr by herself? That's even dumber than the mammoth thing that popped up during the Dum Expedition, what the hell.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I will have you know that the mammoth thing was not dumb at all. Who knows what we could have done by now had we also had a mammoth with which to do it? :V
 
Ergosum said:
Fortunately, with what we have learned I don't think anyone's going to object to extending the project to Nexuses once (if) we finally crack regular Waystones. Solving the risk of 'massive system failure followed by Dhar all over the continent' is in everyone's interest.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Indeed, we pretty much HAVE to figure out how to add new Nexus unless you want a single point of failure to blow the whole thing.

Like Marienburg currently
 
There's a great number of things remaining for the project to do, yeah- we aren't "done" by any stretch just because we get a working Waystone prototype (and even that is getting ahead of ourselves, we aren't even there yet).

We will want to:

• Create new tributary types suited to open plains.
• Expand tributary coverage throughout all participating nations, especially within the most blighted regions.
• Erect new Waystones, both to supplement the general network where it has become eroded and to outright create new coverage in places like Sylvania where the network was destroyed by hostile action.
• Determine a method of reasonably hooking our new Waystones to the the existing network. Ideally, determine a way to create, or at least repair, existing leyline based Waystones.
• In particular, finding a way to send power to the Dwarf Waystone network would be very nice, though Mathilde is unaware of the urgency of the situation in-character.
• Clear out, through military force, some of the worst bastions of evil in the Old World, to reclaim corrupted Waystone Nexii.
• Find a way to siphon power from the Waystone network and use it to fuel works.
• Find ways to create new Nexii, then use them to create new transmission routes and curb the dependence of the Old World on Marienburg and Athel Loren when it comes to not dying horribly.

I agree with the earlier suggestions in-thread that bringing in the Damsels, the Tallites, the Cult of Ulric, and the Amber Order may make sense once we crack the initial "create a Waystone" hurdle, since all of those groups can help dramatically when it comes to further research or deployment.
 
Redshirt Army said:
• Create new tributary types suited to open plains.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
There is the Halethan tributary, though it has the obvious bottleneck of 'how many Was Jutone casters are there?'.

If we want a tributary we know works in open terrain, we should study the Scythian tributaries.

Might need dispensation from Kislev for that though, not sure how many are in the Empire.
 
Mopman43 said:
There is the Halethan tributary, though it has the obvious bottleneck of 'how many Was Jutone casters are there?'.

If we want a tributary we know works in open terrain, we should study the Scythian tributaries.

Might need dispensation from Kislev for that though, not sure how many are in the Empire.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think the dispensation is already there since Kislev is a part of the project.
 
einargs said:
This is where the politics will get even harder. So far we've been doing stuff that's unambiguously good and beneficial for everyone, but the next* phase is going to involve stuff that can benefit individual nations.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well, I imagine it's much easier to use these to power effects in the nation than it is to project the power outside of the nation, so it might actually help keep the peace?

As long as people don't get clever and use it to create mass scale magic artifacts or super magic artifacts, I imagine this is the sort of power that's hard to directly use offensively against other nations. Indirectly, sure, increasing crop yield or even nutrition, destroying enemies in the nation, or buffing troops in the nation, would lead the nation to be individually stronger, but if we crack that sort of thing every involved nation would have a similar benefit and thus similarly grow stronger at roughly equivalent rates .... outside of the Dawi and the Eonir.

Which, shame for them, but I think the Dawi are confident enough in being able to trust the Empire that they won't mind, and the Eonir .... even if their rate of "grow stronger via more food/defeating invaders with less causalities" would be lower then other nations, I think they'd be confident they can boost their defensive capabilities enough to offset the other factions advanced growth.

Like, just off the top of my head, if they start gearing up a few years ahead of time, with all of their mages I think they could give their forces all a "see through fog" enchanted object pretty easily, set their nexus power to "permanent dense fog everywhere in their own territory" and be basically untouchable to invading armies as long as no one starts shutting off Waystones.

I'm not saying you're wrong, in fact I'm confident you're right, but I think it's going to be hard to use this sort of thing outside of a factions territory, and that fact is gonna be enough to get the various factions on board with this, even if begrudgingly.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top