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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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I think that deploying more stones is going to depend a lot on how the elves react, but assuming it is not too bad (or even positive) I think Sylvania is probably our best bet since it actually goes some way towards fixing one of the Empire's major problems, and unlike many of the others this one is not going to burst back open with the Chaos invasion since the enemy in Sylvania is not Chaos. Vlad is chained up under that Sigmarite temple, Manfred is dead this is a good time to nail the place down so Stirland and eventually even Sylvania itself can become a source of troops and support not a hole in which those resources are shoveled.
 
Altom said:
Teclis, Prince of the line of Aenarion, High Loremaster of Hoeth, Warden of the White Tower , Archmage of Ulthuan: * shakes fist at detractors*.
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*applies the tiniest bit of his willpower to create a big ethereal fist to shake a detractors because moving his own so energetically would exhaust his strength for today*
 
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Tbh, i think this discussion is sort of... unnecessary for now? Unless actual Waystones can only be manufactured one specific way, its entirely possible to roll them out in two places at once. If they are and it creates a bottleneck, well, sad, and we can try to reprioritize then. But eh.
 
A Nordland rollout attempt gives us an excuse to stick our oar into the dispute. They'd certainly not be friendly and would probably require a sidequest before agreeing, but it'd be one step towards a rapprochement to have something good come out of Laurelorn.
 
Focusing on one place may be missing the forest for the trees.

The Waystone Network is a network. Repairing it - as in replacing Waystones that have been destroyed or damaged is going to have a greater overall impact since it'll get the entire network to perform better.

There's probably enough Waystones to replace for the next century without creating any new connections. If Mathilde can just set up a Waystone repair taskforce that can fully fix things up to the waystone nexus level then the Waystone project has fully achieved all of its goals.
 
Gavin Prince said:
A Nordland rollout attempt gives us an excuse to stick our oar into the dispute. They'd certainly not be friendly and would probably require a sidequest before agreeing, but it'd be one step towards a rapprochement to have something good come out of Laurelorn.
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To be fair, even Kislevites didn't like the idea of spending their resources towards a project that wasn't theirs (and one that didn't have large shiny results Right Now). Nordland isn't neutral-ish like Kislev, it's already hostile to Laurelorn.

I feel like shoring up the network in, say, Middenland (after Sylvania and Kislev) would send a message just as valid: the friendly people over there are reaping the rewards, maybe you should get over yourself before you get stuck in the back of the queue.

(and also support Middenland's decision - I feel like it's more important to reward cooperation than to cater to the unhappy crowd in hopes they'll become happier)
 
Mopman43 said:
I doubt Erengrad was an exit-point. There's not really much to point to Elven settlement in Norsca, and you would need that to route Magic from Erengrad to Ulthuan (probably by way of Albion).
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The Elves had a colony in Erengrad:
Codex said:
Realm of the Ice Queen Page 18 says this in the Kislev calendar on -5000 Gospodarin (Around -3500 IC or something like that):

"Elven colonisation of the Old World finally reaches the site of modern-day Erengrad. This outpost marks the furthest the Elves penetrate to the east and north."

So yeah the Elves had an outpost in Erengrad. I remember posting this in the thread before.
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One concern I have, which I would like to be on the thread radar, is the fact that it seems that while we are getting close to building an Elven Waystone (depending on what happens in the Foundation action), there is a very important thing that I'm worried about us missing out on: Dwarven Waystones.

Consider this. Mathilde goes hell-for-leather down the Elven Waystone tech tree and succeeds. What leverage, exactly, does she have to prevent Laurelorn from declaring the project done, thanks everyone, bye? After all, they're getting what they want; why should they invest the time of a Grey Lord and the Warden of Frost when they don't stand to gain, especially when the political balance in favor of the project is so tenuous? Title drop; even Team Good is not going to be purely self-sacrificingly prosocial, everyone has angles of their own.

I'm not saying this is definitely going to happen or that we should slowroll our work in Tor Lithanel to prevent it, that would just be being just as much an asshole about this from the other direction. Instead, I really want us to prioritize a Karaz Ankor Network investigative action so that we can at least get a scope for what would need to be done to start helping the dwarves expand their own network, giving her (and Thorek) something to push for in negotiation. Mathilde doesn't know IC what we do OOC, that the network is necessary to the survival of the Dawi, but she does know the power is actively being used for something by KaK, or at the very least actively monitored, and so there is strong reason to believe it's important.
 
picklepikkl said:
One concern I have, which I would like to be on the thread radar, is the fact that it seems that while we are getting close to building an Elven Waystone (depending on what happens in the Foundation action), there is a very important thing that I'm worried about us missing out on: Dwarven Waystones.

Consider this. Mathilde goes hell-for-leather down the Elven Waystone tech tree and succeeds. What leverage, exactly, does she have to prevent Laurelorn from declaring the project done, thanks everyone, bye? After all, they're getting what they want; why should they invest the time of a Grey Lord and the Warden of Frost when they don't stand to gain, especially when the political balance in favor of the project is so tenuous? Title drop; even Team Good is not going to be purely self-sacrificingly prosocial, everyone has angles of their own.

I'm not saying this is definitely going to happen or that we should slowroll our work in Tor Lithanel to prevent it, that would just be being just as much an asshole about this from the other direction. Instead, I really want us to prioritize a Karaz Ankor Network investigative action so that we can at least get a scope for what would need to be done to start helping the dwarves expand their own network, giving her (and Thorek) something to push for in negotiation. Mathilde doesn't know IC what we do OOC, that the network is necessary to the survival of the Dawi, but she does know the power is actively being used for something by KaK, or at the very least actively monitored, and so there is strong reason to believe it's important.
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Bluntly the leverage of 'you probably still do not want to all be killed my the Empire' and that kind of high-handedness would not help, it would alienate all their imperial allies bar Middleland, Keep in mind this is primarily a diplomatic effort for them. If it also happens to work all the better, but that is not what they started it for really.
 
picklepikkl said:
Consider this. Mathilde goes hell-for-leather down the Elven Waystone tech tree and succeeds. What leverage, exactly, does she have to prevent Laurelorn from declaring the project done, thanks everyone, bye? After all, they're getting what they want; why should they invest the time of a Grey Lord and the Warden of Frost when they don't stand to gain, especially when the political balance in favor of the project is so tenuous? Title drop; even Team Good is not going to be purely self-sacrificingly prosocial, everyone has angles of their own.
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Nobody especially believed the project would succeed at all when it started. The point from a lot of perspectives was to grab as many magical secrets as possible while giving away few of your own, and for Laurelorn to forge closer ties with the outside world now that it's clear the Bubble Kingdom strategy was no longer long-term viable.

Neither of those goals end with the construction of a Waystone. The Laurelorn factions supporting the Project are very very likely to want it to keep going longer than the half-decade or so it seems like it'll take to reach the first milestone, because in the end it's still a convenient excuse for what they really want to be doing.

EDIT: In some ways it's actually more convenient for Laurelorn for the R&D focus of the Project to shift away from Elven waystones, because it means they can take a step back and absorb more magical secrets from alien traditions without expectation of as much contribution on their own part. Meanwhile their craftsmen get money and political kudos (and thanks to Tindomiel, a chance to proselytise and spread their religious icons) while working on the implementation and rollout segments of the Project.
 
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picklepikkl said:
One concern I have, which I would like to be on the thread radar, is the fact that it seems that while we are getting close to building an Elven Waystone (depending on what happens in the Foundation action), there is a very important thing that I'm worried about us missing out on: Dwarven Waystones.

Consider this. Mathilde goes hell-for-leather down the Elven Waystone tech tree and succeeds. What leverage, exactly, does she have to prevent Laurelorn from declaring the project done, thanks everyone, bye? After all, they're getting what they want; why should they invest the time of a Grey Lord and the Warden of Frost when they don't stand to gain, especially when the political balance in favor of the project is so tenuous? Title drop; even Team Good is not going to be purely self-sacrificingly prosocial, everyone has angles of their own.

I'm not saying this is definitely going to happen or that we should slowroll our work in Tor Lithanel to prevent it, that would just be being just as much an asshole about this from the other direction. Instead, I really want us to prioritize a Karaz Ankor Network investigative action so that we can at least get a scope for what would need to be done to start helping the dwarves expand their own network, giving her (and Thorek) something to push for in negotiation. Mathilde doesn't know IC what we do OOC, that the network is necessary to the survival of the Dawi, but she does know the power is actively being used for something by KaK, or at the very least actively monitored, and so there is strong reason to believe it's important.
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On the other hand, dwarves are very, very touchy about their secrets, and even Thorek isn't aware of how badly things were going (at least if I understood the Thorgrim interlude right), so he doesn't have a powerful incentive to bend interpretations even more heavily in favor of Telling Us Things Is Fine.

...which means that yeah, actually, we should kinda poke more actively in that direction, since Thorgrim himself isn't likely to approach us or Thorek and say "hey look into expanding our network please, we really need it". With only one dwarven representative on the project, there aren't many voices to push things in that direction.
 
As far as we're concerned dumping Winds into the dwarven network is just as good as dumping them into the Vortex, right? We just want them gone, don't care where they go as long as they go.
 
Somic said:
To be fair, even Kislevites didn't like the idea of spending their resources towards a project that wasn't theirs (and one that didn't have large shiny results Right Now). Nordland isn't neutral-ish like Kislev, it's already hostile to Laurelorn.
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It's worse than that - rolling tributaries in Nordland isn't just supporting a project that isn't theirs, it means sending more magic to their Waystones which feed into the Laurelorn network. This will be Belegar learning about Thorgrim 'stealing' his magic but a thousand times worse.
Oh, and the new Waystones are dedicated to the elf Goddess of dark magic, we hope you don't mind.
picklepikkl said:
Consider this. Mathilde goes hell-for-leather down the Elven Waystone tech tree and succeeds. What leverage, exactly, does she have to prevent Laurelorn from declaring the project done, thanks everyone, bye? After all, they're getting what they want; why should they invest the time of a Grey Lord and the Warden of Frost when they don't stand to gain, especially when the political balance in favor of the project is so tenuous? Title drop; even Team Good is not going to be purely self-sacrificingly prosocial, everyone has angles of their own.
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I don't disagree with your actual point that we should look into the dwarven network, but there are reasons for the Eonir to keep the project going. House Tindomiel gains influence from the success of the project, and the pro-contact bloc gains politically from its very existence. Plus Mathilde is a golden goose that lays golden eggs wherever she happens to be nesting, and it's to the Eonir benefit if that happens to be Tor Lithanel for at least a while longer.
 
So here is a question, if and when Mathilde finds out about Albion what should we do? Like would we try to investigate with a small group slipping in or would a big expedition with as much backing from the colleges and other factions as we can?

Honestly I'd expect smaller investigation of Mathilde plus the experts from the project plus an escort. Then if we find something nasty we organize a larger response.
 
Sinsystems said:
So here is a question, if and when Mathilde finds out about Albion what should we do? Like would we try to investigate with a small group slipping in or would a big expedition with as much backing from the colleges and other factions as we can?

Honestly I'd expect smaller investigation of Mathilde plus the experts from the project plus an escort. Then if we find something nasty we organize a larger response.
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That assumes that we will be able to get inside before the Mists come down.

Even if she does find out about it (presumably through Hatalath spilling the beans), that doesn't give her much about Albion.
 
Sinsystems said:
So here is a question, if and when Mathilde finds out about Albion what should we do? Like would we try to investigate with a small group slipping in or would a big expedition with as much backing from the colleges and other factions as we can?

Honestly I'd expect smaller investigation of Mathilde plus the experts from the project plus an escort. Then if we find something nasty we organize a larger response.
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From the viewpoint of somebody who knows basically nothing about Albion: looks like an elf secret, maybe we shouldn't poke that until we've dealt with our research backlog (ha).
 
Her finely-tuned Booksense will surely be enough to navigate the Mists through to the other side. The pull of "+5, Extensive and Esoteric Albion" is simply too strong once she's been put on the trail.
 
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