Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Reader mode
Mopman43 said:
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.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Albion and especially it's waystones and traditions would be invaluable to the project. Plus those Lizardmen ruins and secrets we could uncover.

Somic said:
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).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It has a lot of interesting stuff there, including old Lizardmen ruins, native magical traditions that built their pseudo-waystones and is also where Belakor is currently sealed away.

Also the central point of an old portal network that at least has an exit portal in Sylvania. This network should not be used due to consequences but making sure they remain locked up is important.

Oh and there is a lizardman temple that has dead slaan sealed within it's pillars.
 
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?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Why would we do anything? Albion is useful in order to have a complete map but its remoteness makes it outside of Mathilde's sphere of interest.

picklepikkl said:
What leverage, exactly, does she have to prevent Laurelorn from declaring the project done, thanks everyone, bye?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The very real possibility of cutting off Laurelorn from the Waystone network.

Really if Waystones don't require Qhaysh elves aren't needed and if they do there's two groups of elves other than the Eonir that the Empire can talk to. This means that the Eonir have a permanent incentive in maintaining good relations - they're by far the most convenient partner but they are by no means indispensable.
 
Sinsystems said:
Lizardmen ruins
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Sinsystems said:
Lizardmen ruins
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Sinsystems said:
lizardman temple
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I am going to take a wild guess and say you are really interested in Lizardman ruins, he?

I am not sure ransacking a Lizardman ruin is a good idea, the Lizardmen have this annoying habbit of hunting down whoever takes their stuff with an army and eat them, even if they run to the other side of the world.
 
Mystic Pentagram said:
I am going to take a wild guess and say you are really interested in Lizardman ruins, he?

I am not sure ransacking a Lizardman ruin is a good idea, the Lizardmen have this annoying habbit of hunting down whoever takes their stuff with an army and eat them, even if they run to the other side of the world.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The special thing about Albion is all the lizardmen are dead and while they will be sending an expedition eventually that only gets triggered if Belakor is allowed to get up to his tricks with the Dark Emissaries. Otherwise we can loot in peace.
 
Last edited:
Zero Gravitas said:
Why would we do anything? Albion is useful in order to have a complete map but its remoteness makes it outside of Mathilde's sphere of interest.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Albion in one of the key points in the network and the cultures there were directly helped by the Lizardmen when setting up their own network. It would likely be one of the few ways to get info from them for the project, even if it is second hand.
Mystic Pentagram said:
I am going to take a wild guess and say you are really interested in Lizardman ruins, he?

I am not sure ransacking a Lizardman ruin is a good idea, the Lizardmen have this annoying habbit of hunting down whoever takes their stuff with an army and eat them, even if they run to the other side of the world.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I am interested in those Ruins because in canon they are a key part of the network, to the point where a few Chaos Sorcerers who didn't fully understand what they were doing were using it as a portal network not realizing that they were siphoning enough magic away from the elves that there was a very real risk of Ulthuan sinking beneath the waves.

In the book it appeared in this was enough of a threat that Teclis had to go fix it personally without enough time to gather support.
 
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.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Do we need dwarf waystones ? Can't we just build new elf waystones that would direct power towards the Dawi ? At the very least we could do this with tributaries.
The networks would have been interconnected in the past, it's definitely possible.
 
T_of_A said:
Do we need dwarf waystones ? Can't we just build new elf waystones that would direct power towards the Dawi ? At the very least we could do this with tributaries.
The networks would have been interconnected in the past, it's definitely possible.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'd say having more Waystone designs would be useful, especially when it comes to deployment. Like we don't need them, but having an option that can be rolled out by other groups could help.
 
T_of_A said:
Do we need dwarf waystones ? Can't we just build new elf waystones that would direct power towards the Dawi ? At the very least we could do this with tributaries.
The networks would have been interconnected in the past, it's definitely possible.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Can't really do it with river leylines, though.

(Rivers tend not to flow up mountains)
 
Mopman43 said:
Can't really do it with river leylines, though.

(Rivers tend not to flow up mountains)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
On the plus side, dwarves can be trusted with material transmission. In the hypothetical Magical Christmas Land where we crack how to make new Karak-Waystones and Mountain-Waystones, running filament from New Holds between mountains until we hook up with the original network is a totally viable solution. And if we don't, I guess we can take some of the new Waystones we make and hook them up as feeders for their network -- not as good as a proper Karak-Waystone, probably, but better than nothing, if the dwarves are willing to accept it (which is by no means guaranteed).

But we're just speculating; Mathilde has never investigated Karak-Waystones or Mountain-Waystones, apart from verifying that Mountain-Waystones, at least, respond to the Anoqeyan commands she knows, so we don't really know how different they are from the ones we've studied. Say the line with me, everyone: we'd need to try it and find out.
 
picklepikkl said:
On the plus side, dwarves can be trusted with material transmission. In the hypothetical Magical Christmas Land where we crack how to make new Karak-Waystones and Mountain-Waystones, running filament from New Holds between mountains until we hook up with the original network is a totally viable solution. And if we don't, I guess we can take some of the new Waystones we make and hook them up as feeders for their network -- not as good as a proper Karak-Waystone, probably, but better than nothing, if the dwarves are willing to accept it (which is by no means guaranteed).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I don't think filament is a viable solution to the dwarves, because it's a weakness in a siege.
 
Dragonofelder said:
Not after we visit.

Books go bye bye~
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Two ways to make the biggest library in the world.
  1. Make copies of all the books everywhere.
  2. Steal everyone else's books.
Mopman43 said:
Can't really do it with river leylines, though.

(Rivers tend not to flow up mountains)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
picklepikkl said:
On the plus side, dwarves can be trusted with material transmission.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'd like to add in that in some locations, wind will flow up a mountain. Airborne transmission in places with a strong, steady wind may be viable, if limited in where it could be deployed.
 
picklepikkl said:
On the plus side, dwarves can be trusted with material transmission. In the hypothetical Magical Christmas Land where we crack how to make new Karak-Waystones and Mountain-Waystones, running filament from New Holds between mountains until we hook up with the original network is a totally viable solution. And if we don't, I guess we can take some of the new Waystones we make and hook them up as feeders for their network -- not as good as a proper Karak-Waystone, probably, but better than nothing, if the dwarves are willing to accept it (which is by no means guaranteed).

But we're just speculating; Mathilde has never investigated Karak-Waystones or Mountain-Waystones, apart from verifying that Mountain-Waystones, at least, respond to the Anoqeyan commands she knows, so we don't really know how different they are from the ones we've studied. Say the line with me, everyone: we'd need to try it and find out.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It's a shame we can't make Leylines out of like, Oaths of Fealty. It'd work much better for the Dwarfs than anywhere else, given that the King is always king of Karaz-a-Karak and every Hold of a big enough size has a King or Queen (except Vlag).

Not sure how viable high-transmission lines from the Grey/Black Mountains to Zhufbar/KaK/Barak Varr would work out. That's a long way, and a break anywhere along it would spell trouble. I suppose you'd need forts/minor holds/watch towers to act as relay points with a Waystone built in if only to isolate where along the line the break is?
 
The Lone badger said:
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.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I'm not sure if Mathilde and Thorek necessarily know this. When they were discussing purifying/handling dhar, the conversation focused a lot around "yeah Valaya's rune ain't gonna cut it," and not a ton of "YES GIVE US EVERYTHING." That the Dwarfen race depends on a bunch of Waystone powered megaprojects is still a Thorgrim only secret even if Mathilde kinda sees some stuff behind the curtain

Found it
Boney said:
"Unless there was a way to convert Dhar into some other, more benign form of energy." You turn your look to Thorek.

"It is said," he says heavily after a long period of thought, "that the Ancestor Gods and those that learned from them could create Runes with that capability. Some of the very least of those techniques were rediscovered by the Runelord Alaric, but he drove himself mad seeking more than that. And only a very few Runelords are capable of reliably using them."

"Would they be at all scalable?" you ask.

"If Kragg had spent his entire long life doing nothing else, then he would perhaps have managed enough to protect a tenth of Altdorf."

You grimace. "And it stands to reason that even if any logistical concerns were handwaved away, any still-existing examples of the greater Runes would have a finite throughput."

Thorek takes even longer to consider this answer. "It does stand to reason," he eventually concludes.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yeah...I have a feeling Thorgrim would want to scream "YES WE'LL TAKE IT ALL EVEN THE DHAR WE CAN USE IT." but alas he was not there
 
Last edited:
We'll go to Thorgrim after like two years of tinkering with other options, and be likes, "Hey, hate to do this to you, but we really don't have any better options; can you take another few waystones worth of magic flow without breaking anything? We swear it won't be forever, and you'd be doing the whole world a real favor."

And Thorgrim will be like, "Ah. Sure. Don't worry about us, we can handle it as long as we need to." And everyone else will be like "Hey, those dwarves- standup guys, right?"
 
picklepikkl said:
On the plus side, dwarves can be trusted with material transmission. In the hypothetical Magical Christmas Land where we crack how to make new Karak-Waystones and Mountain-Waystones, running filament from New Holds between mountains until we hook up with the original network is a totally viable solution. And if we don't, I guess we can take some of the new Waystones we make and hook them up as feeders for their network -- not as good as a proper Karak-Waystone, probably, but better than nothing, if the dwarves are willing to accept it (which is by no means guaranteed).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Thorek's first thought when suggesting material leylines was to use it in settled areas:
Boney said:
"Some form of aqueduct for magic," Thorek suggests. "Needn't even be that large. Rope or wire, perhaps."

"I suspect unattended rope or wire would have a habit of disappearing entirely overnight," you reply.

Thorek frowns. "In areas where Grobi and the like lurk, aye, but what of more civilized areas?"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Dwarves could keep the parts of the leylines that pass inside Karaks safe, sure, but that's just the ends of the leylines. Most if it will be in the wilderness, and I don't think it's feasible to guard tens or hundreds of miles of rope.

But yeah, we should look at the dwarven network sometime soon. We can't think about ways to help it before we have a better idea of how it looks.
A_Somebody said:
I'm not sure if Mathilde and Thorek necessarily know this. When they were discussing purifying/handling dhar, the conversation focused a lot around "yeah Valaya's rune ain't gonna cut it," and not a ton of "YES GIVE US EVERYTHING." That the Dwarfen race depends on a bunch of Waystone powered megaprojects is still a Thorgrim only secret even if Mathilde kinda sees some stuff behind the curtain

Found it


Yeah...I have a feeling Thorgrim would want to scream "YES WE'LL TAKE IT ALL EVEN THE DHAR WE CAN USE IT." but alas he was not there
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The Rune of Eternity probably does have a finite capacity, because it's not literally all powerful, which is relevant to the conversation Mathilde is having with Thorek because they're talking about fallback plans in case the network is cut off from Ulthuan. Boney clarified this a bit later in the discussion:
Boney said:
The question Thorek was asked was along the lines of "if we plugged the entire continent into the Dwarven network, it probably wouldn't be able to handle that". I'm trying to reword it to be a bit clearer but Mathilde is trying to tiptoe around everyone's secrets and the term 'bandwidth' doesn't exist for them.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That said, the Karaz Ankor network is almost certainly nowhere near its theoretical cap since there used to be a lot more holds feeding into it, so if we figured out a way to hook up Waystones to the dwarf network and the dwarves agreed to this and didn't consider an outside source of magic to be a security risk then we could probably hook up at least some of our new Waystones to it to the mutual benefit of the Karaz Ankor and the Empire. If we ever manage to reclaim and rebuild the Mordheim nexus (eggs, counting etc.) then that might be one good candidate for such a connection, since it was probably connected to Karak Kadrin in the past, and there's a ton of Dhar in Mordheim that needs to be drained so the more routes magic has to leave Mordheim the better.
 
For the record, the action to bolster the Laurelorn network with tributaries is mechanically [X] Tributary: Dreaming Wood (Nordland) even if Laurelorn is technically a foreign polity.

Boney said:
The Forest of Laurelorn will be dealt with as part of Nordland for this purpose. You can either go with the Dreaming Wood tributaries and focus on Laurelorn, or go with the Halethan ones and focus on the Forest of Shadows.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 
Re: Leylines, I would love to explore whether the Roads option that popped up this turn is viable. If it is, maybe the Dwarven Underway, or what remains of it, could do it. If not that, then the Old Dwarf Road is still right there and in modern use - spanning through many Empire cities, Laurelorn, and Marienburg.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top