Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
I enjoy the silliness of nagash just breaking the top of his skull to fit in the crown of sorcery with a stylized dwarf face on top. May be superglue though.Old-model Nagash's hat could make a decent stab at holding a set of orbs I think.
Here, with a regular-sized human for scale:
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Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
Children of the Horned Rat talks about a Warprail that runs between Skavenblight, K8P, and I think Hellpit?
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Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oh, fascinating. Though hopefully we'll never have to test it out, it's good to know.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
Interesting.
So Eike finishes off the "magical materials" skill, and starts on "magic materials, advanced", plus picks up some Windherding?
And she's average at enchantment - not bad, but not prodigal either.
So Eike finishes off the "magical materials" skill, and starts on "magic materials, advanced", plus picks up some Windherding?
And she's average at enchantment - not bad, but not prodigal either.
The Red Ones Go Faster
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
The Red Ones Go Faster
The sky was gold.
Noon sun through low-lying smoke had that effect sometimes, Belegar supposed, though the last time he'd seen it personally was when the caldera burned. This time he stood on a lower ridge, watching as the largest port in Kislev writhed with flames. An army of demons frolicked through it, the largest barely the size of ants at this distance. It was still too close. He felt his beard bristling at the sight.
"Situation?"
The woman who spoke at the head of the rough table looked grim, lean and certain of her death; almost seeming nostalgic in the feeling. Elector Countess Roswita van Hal had been fifth in command of the soldiers of the empire when the host set out north. The war against the everchosen had not been kind to the Empire either.
The bright wizard to whom she had spoken wasted no time in her reply.
"She says to tell you that she is ready for the plan tomorrow- she'll move on your signal. Empress Heidi will be here with reinforcements from Altdorf with the morning mist, if she makes it at all, and it's the best time for grey wizards anyways. And King Belegar? She asked that you paint it red."
"Thank you Adela, dismissed."
The two ex-employers of one Mathilde Weber, L.M., looked at eachother, then around the table to the assembled commanders, then down to the map and tokens upon it. Roswita continued, after a moment.
"The enemy's main force is occupied for the night. Fortunately, our efforts were not in vain- we bought the time needed to evacuate the city, and the demons that have been summoned will find little to sustain themselves on. This leaves them badly overextended, and thus we have our chance. Get some rest, get your troops rested, pray to your gods. When dawn comes tomorrow, we will strike."
"Countess! Do you really believe this will work? A small group when these abominations have chewed through regiments?"
Roswita just arched an eyebrow. It was Belegar who replied.
"Aye. You've never seen her work before."
*******
Adela was screaming. Hubert was screaming. Johann was screaming. Kadoh was more whooping in exhilaration, but was generally lost in the din.
The gyrocopter was screaming, streaking over the heads of the heads of chaos warriors pressing south, trailing smoke. Adela worked the petals and the stick frantically, desperate to ride the edge between lift and forward speed that would keep the rotors turning, her whole damn engine a casualty of some fuck-off big javelin that came out of nowhere a half a minute ago.
Mathilde calmly leaned over her shoulder and pointed.
"There. Aim for there."
Adela hated her boss sometimes. Sure, technically she knew what she was signing up for when she had agreed to being a pilot all those years ago, but here, now, with the bloody calm that almost wrapped around into smug in her voice, pointing right at the clear spot where the smoke was being blasted away by the sheer concentrated attention of the chaos gods, she had to be honest with herself. Still.
"Yoooooouuu gahhhhhhhhhhht it booooooossssss!"
The hand clapped down on her shoulder.
"Good job Adela. Now it's time for us to do ours."
She loved her boss sometimes.
******
The everchosen, who had been some random drunk before blue-feathered fate has conspired to give him his due, looked up from his rage-filled brooding. The sack had been a disappointment, the sudden attack on his army just after the time his demons started vanishing was a nasty surprise, and the hangover was just the cherry on the cake. Maybe this screaming approaching him meant something fun was finally on the horizon.
His eyes widened as the red-painted wreck of a gyrobomber streaked out of the sky at him, FAST, almost clipping the cool edgy horns spiralling up from his helmet and plowing a trench behind him as it crashed. But his attention was captured by the four figures rising from where they had jumped. He knew the one in front.
"Mathilde Webber. You still think I can't kill you?"
"Pft." She spat. "You should have stayed in that bar."
The sky was gold.
Noon sun through low-lying smoke had that effect sometimes, Belegar supposed, though the last time he'd seen it personally was when the caldera burned. This time he stood on a lower ridge, watching as the largest port in Kislev writhed with flames. An army of demons frolicked through it, the largest barely the size of ants at this distance. It was still too close. He felt his beard bristling at the sight.
"Situation?"
The woman who spoke at the head of the rough table looked grim, lean and certain of her death; almost seeming nostalgic in the feeling. Elector Countess Roswita van Hal had been fifth in command of the soldiers of the empire when the host set out north. The war against the everchosen had not been kind to the Empire either.
The bright wizard to whom she had spoken wasted no time in her reply.
"She says to tell you that she is ready for the plan tomorrow- she'll move on your signal. Empress Heidi will be here with reinforcements from Altdorf with the morning mist, if she makes it at all, and it's the best time for grey wizards anyways. And King Belegar? She asked that you paint it red."
"Thank you Adela, dismissed."
The two ex-employers of one Mathilde Weber, L.M., looked at eachother, then around the table to the assembled commanders, then down to the map and tokens upon it. Roswita continued, after a moment.
"The enemy's main force is occupied for the night. Fortunately, our efforts were not in vain- we bought the time needed to evacuate the city, and the demons that have been summoned will find little to sustain themselves on. This leaves them badly overextended, and thus we have our chance. Get some rest, get your troops rested, pray to your gods. When dawn comes tomorrow, we will strike."
"Countess! Do you really believe this will work? A small group when these abominations have chewed through regiments?"
Roswita just arched an eyebrow. It was Belegar who replied.
"Aye. You've never seen her work before."
*******
Adela was screaming. Hubert was screaming. Johann was screaming. Kadoh was more whooping in exhilaration, but was generally lost in the din.
The gyrocopter was screaming, streaking over the heads of the heads of chaos warriors pressing south, trailing smoke. Adela worked the petals and the stick frantically, desperate to ride the edge between lift and forward speed that would keep the rotors turning, her whole damn engine a casualty of some fuck-off big javelin that came out of nowhere a half a minute ago.
Mathilde calmly leaned over her shoulder and pointed.
"There. Aim for there."
Adela hated her boss sometimes. Sure, technically she knew what she was signing up for when she had agreed to being a pilot all those years ago, but here, now, with the bloody calm that almost wrapped around into smug in her voice, pointing right at the clear spot where the smoke was being blasted away by the sheer concentrated attention of the chaos gods, she had to be honest with herself. Still.
"Yoooooouuu gahhhhhhhhhhht it booooooossssss!"
The hand clapped down on her shoulder.
"Good job Adela. Now it's time for us to do ours."
She loved her boss sometimes.
******
The everchosen, who had been some random drunk before blue-feathered fate has conspired to give him his due, looked up from his rage-filled brooding. The sack had been a disappointment, the sudden attack on his army just after the time his demons started vanishing was a nasty surprise, and the hangover was just the cherry on the cake. Maybe this screaming approaching him meant something fun was finally on the horizon.
His eyes widened as the red-painted wreck of a gyrobomber streaked out of the sky at him, FAST, almost clipping the cool edgy horns spiralling up from his helmet and plowing a trench behind him as it crashed. But his attention was captured by the four figures rising from where they had jumped. He knew the one in front.
"Mathilde Webber. You still think I can't kill you?"
"Pft." She spat. "You should have stayed in that bar."
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- Location
- Earth
Alright, that's most of the remaining actions accounted for in rolls. Now it's just the Windfall paper and EIC RoW enchantment negotiation. I wonder if those will also be lumped in with the other things, or if they'll go in the next next update.
Anyways, I wonder if Mathilde's Enchanter trait basically means she got a 6 for Talented on her metaphorical enchantment suitability roll?
Anyways, I wonder if Mathilde's Enchanter trait basically means she got a 6 for Talented on her metaphorical enchantment suitability roll?
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- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
Honestly, I think that Grey Magic is, conveniently enough, just about the most useful magic when it comes to the Gyrocarriage.
There's some minor stuff that Gold or Bright magic enchantments can do with setting up a near-infinite fuel supply, and some stuff to make the whole thing more reliable and more sturdy wouldn't go amiss, but by far the biggest improvement in comfort would come from reducing the noise, and the biggest improvement in safety would come from making it difficult to spot against the sky.
We'd need to create a custom enchantment effect to actually create a field of silence, though - is an Illusion of absence of sound a thing?
There's some minor stuff that Gold or Bright magic enchantments can do with setting up a near-infinite fuel supply, and some stuff to make the whole thing more reliable and more sturdy wouldn't go amiss, but by far the biggest improvement in comfort would come from reducing the noise, and the biggest improvement in safety would come from making it difficult to spot against the sky.
We'd need to create a custom enchantment effect to actually create a field of silence, though - is an Illusion of absence of sound a thing?
Dermonster
The Shittiest Wizard
I think you'd want it to be dampened rather than entierly silenced. If you can't hear anything you won't know if something's rattling alarmingly.
Abby Normal
High Clerk of the Ymaryn
- Pronouns
- He/Him
!!! New spoiler update to the org sheet
Looks like it'll take 3-3.5 years (depending on when exactly in this turn it counts as being begun), so we can add that to the 'when canal completions?' timers
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Also a minor update to char sheet, with
New paper, and a net gain of 4 rep and 3 favours
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TimEd
Meteor maker
Actually, that might be the best result, since it means Windhearding is replicable, and achievable by someone with a "normal" level of talent.
Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Are these cumulative rolls, as with the Eonir cultural immersion action? Cause if so that'd be huge, but if not then it's still pretty good.
Yes. The trait Enchanter that Mathilde has is separate from the Enchanting skill - and the former isn't needed for the latter.
I think it's a bit of a shame that Enchanting is something Mathilde didn't really get up to all until she stopped being Spymaster for Stirland - I imagine for the people who were around back then, Wizard Chic wasn't just a funny misfortune but an actual frustrating bane to trying to use the trait they picked at character generation.
I'm glad we're using Enchanter more often lately, whether intentionally (with Egrimm) or incidentally (with the Red Rider action).
I do believe Boney's stated that Illusion could do it, but there was some talk (I think on our end, and he didn't confirm it himself) on how completely silencing the whole thing could possibly impede the pilot, who needs to be constantly aware of the sounds the machine makes - if there was some sort of mechanical failure then they wouldn't have any warning.
So... if Schadensumpf means "damaged swamp", and "weg" means "away"... Are the Eonir calling it "Damage Away?" Or, "Damage Way", as in it's literally a way through the Schaden? Are they saying they will do damage to anyone that dares meddle with this path? Or maybe trying to say this is a way to mend relations (the damage caused) with humans?
They're saying that all at once, aren't they? They absolutely are. Elves, I swear...
We already knew this was the case. Boney's IIRC stated it would take a normal wizard years of trial and error to figure it out.
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dinomannitro6
all your gender is belong to us
- Location
- The Land Where The Sunflowers Bloom
Or Mathilde teaching someone with a fairly detailed magesight.
And apparently Eike's Intuitive magesight let her achieve that level as an apprentice, though with Intuitive's drawback of being hard to communicate with other wizards it could be difficult for her to actually use unless she works to be able to overcome that.
NexusEye
Aspiring God
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I think that's the Reikspiel name for it, the Elves probably have their own name for it.
- Location
- Earth
Pretty sure "weg" means "road" or "way" in this context.
Shouldn't Egrimm go first in the credits, since he's the primary author?
Turn 42 Results - 2490.5 - Part 6
-[*] Attempt to create a liminal realm
-[*] Waystone: Foundation (Thorek, Hatalath, Sarvoi, Egrimm, Elrisse, Niedzwenka, Zlata)
-[*] EIC: Negotiate and plan a magical route through the Schadensumpf to allow for easier trade with the Eonir without compromising their defenses
-[*] SERENITY: Observations on the Windfall north of the Dark Lands (Egrimm as primary author)
-[*] Eike Study: Enchanting class at the Grey College (1 CF)
-[*] Waystone: Foundation (Thorek, Hatalath, Sarvoi, Egrimm, Elrisse, Niedzwenka, Zlata)
-[*] EIC: Negotiate and plan a magical route through the Schadensumpf to allow for easier trade with the Eonir without compromising their defenses
-[*] SERENITY: Observations on the Windfall north of the Dark Lands (Egrimm as primary author)
-[*] Eike Study: Enchanting class at the Grey College (1 CF)
You look over the gathered representatives of seven separate magical traditions from four different nations - Elves, Dwarves, humans, Wizards and Witches and Lords. "The Waystone Project has come a long way," you say to them, "and so far we've been the equal of every obstacle. At least part of the credit for that goes to each of you, as well as the power of so many disparate traditions pulling together, but I suspect a part of it is that this final piece of the puzzle is going to turn out to be the really tricky bit."
You turn to the projected diagram of the Waystone floating above the meeting table that you prepared earlier, and point to its base. "The tall, pointy, above-ground part of the Waystone that we're all familiar with comprises less than half of the mass of the total structure. As we've confirmed, that part is responsible for the attraction and absorption of magical energies, but the storage of them, and the introduction of them to the leylines below, is done in the foundation. The storage part is straightforward to replicate to some degree - we might not be able to match the capacity of the original designs, but storing and discharging magical energies is a well-trod path by enchanters of all stripes - but the part where it drops it into the leyline is going to be where the real challenge is."
You wave your hand and the familiar colour pattern of the Wheel of Magic appears next to the Waystone. "Magic is introduced into the leyline as between two and eight Winds orbiting a kernel of Dhar," you say. "According to my figures, that's two hundred and forty seven different combinations that it's capable of creating." Those figures were a page filled with every possible combination that you then counted. You're sure there's a more mathematical way to arrive at that number, but finding it and learning how to apply it would have taken longer than just writing them all out. "We can simplify that by only dispending the two Winds that the Waystone has accumulated the most of, even if this does reduce the throughput, but even then we're looking at twenty-eight possible combinations. I'm hoping there's at least one paradigm where that doesn't mean you need twenty-eight different enchantments."
"It would simplify matters a great deal if all of it was simply reduced to Dhar," Sarvoi says thoughtfully, "but that comes with a great many dangers of its own, and it does make it impossible to pull Winds back out again."
You nod. "That would be the brute force solution, and I don't want it to come to that. Even the creation of a small amount of Dhar to form the kernel is going to be politically difficult within the Empire. Speaking of which, the other focus of our research is going to be the method of putting the Winds into a proper stable orbit around the Dhar. This would seem like it would be the easier task, but Dhar interactions and manipulations are a rather suppressed topic of study in most places, so there's much less existing theoretical research to work from." There's nods from some and thoughtful frowns from others at that.
After some more discussion to make sure everyone's on the same page, the group breaks up as everyone goes to turn their respective crafts to the problem.
---
[Rolling...]
"Has anyone seen Zlata or Niedzwenka recently?" you ask a reconvened but slightly diminished group several months later.
"Caught in weather, perhaps," Thorek says. "There's been some terrible storms in the Sea of Claws recently."
"Well, we'll have to push on without them for now and update them when they get back. Lord Thorek, what have you brought with you?" Thorek arrived at this meeting with a large mechanism of gears, valves and cranks, and you're more than a little curious about what's up with it.
"It struck me that trying to do such rote and predictable work with any of our crafts was misplaced effort," he says. "The Engineers Guild of Karak Hirn put this together for me, a hand-cranked proof of concept for a mechanism that would be linked into Wind-sensitive valves. It would take input from the array of eight valves here," he points to eight small steel drums, and pushes three of them downwards. "Using mechanisms adapted from a stepped reckoner, it opens between two and eight valves when the input from enough of them is above some arbitrary threshold." He turns a wheel, and with a rattle of gears and a sudden click, three rods push downwards, and then retract back up again as the machine resets itself. "It seems to me that the most appropriate design would be based on a mainspring that would need rewinding once a month, but it could also work with vanes or a millrace or similar."
"And if those rods were conductive, it could bridge the storage batteries and the leylines," you say with a nod. "That does seem a lot more easily scalable than any enchantment-based solution. Lord Hatalath, what have you and your fellows produced?"
"Lords Skathrai and Yngra worked together on an orbital mechanism," he says, tapping on a stack of notes in what looks like an Anoqeyån-based shorthand. "They both have a long history of developing things for military use, so they know the importance of keeping mechanisms simple for widespread deployment." He slides over a set of thaumaturgic schematics towards you and you frown down at them. Sure enough, you're pretty sure that creating the enchantment detailed here would be within the capabilities of even most human enchanters, but that doesn't mean you understand how it works - it's all elegant interweavings and interdependent and recursively self-referential crosshatchings.
"Meanwhile, Lord Elrithish and I," Hatalath continues, "have reverse-engineered and replicated the original storage mechanisms - though I very much doubt we've recreated the way they were originally made. Even by the standards of that time, this would be a nightmare to have to create in any substantial number." The second schematic covers three and a half scrolls, and you feel a headache brewing before you finish skimming the second. This shows none of the elegance and efficiency of the other schematic, instead being a brute-force piece-by-piece recreation of every individual component of the enchantment, with a great deal of struts and scaffolding to prevent it all from collapsing in on itself before its completion. This might make a starting point for further refining - hopefully a great deal of refining - and perhaps as a basis for theoretical research into Elven enchanting techniques, but unless you stumble upon a few thousand underemployed Archmages its current form is not going to be usable for creating new Waystones in any usable number.
"There are some heavily guarded things in there that need to be even more heavily guarded," Egrimm says with a grimace. "But we did find a few relevant treatises on the subject of moving Dhar from place to place. Including, interestingly, a paper from your former colleague, Jovi Sunscryer, and a few collaborators. It seems they had some ambitions for Sylvania that his untimely death thwarted." Not the only knock-on tragedy from his miscast, as you recall. "There are Hysh cantrips that have a repulsive effect on Dhar - not enough to meaningfully damage beings that consist of or rely on it, but enough to shunt Dhar around within an enchantment without it actually touching and tainting the enchantment."
"We also did a delve of College libraries for Wind storage mechanisms," Elrisse says, "both enchantment- and material-based." The paper she slides over to you lists a number of options, charted by material cost, craftsman-hours, Wizard-hours, and approximate magical throughput. You slide it over to Thorek, who spends a moment calculating exchange rates before adding a few Rune-based options at the bottom.
Sarvoi, it seems, has a lot to share but little of it of immediate use - he and the Druchii Sorceress had apparently engaged in some rather recursive mind-games to try to winkle magical secrets out of each other, and while it seems both of them enjoyed the challenge and Sarvoi is eager to retell what he considers to be the most thrilling gambits of it, there seems to be a profound lack of usable results from it. Still, the meeting in general has been quite productive and the Eonir contribution specifically is very significant even without Sarvoi bringing something to the table.
Several weeks later, a harried-looking Zlata and a smug-looking Niedzwenka sail back into the city. Their plans to confer with other Ice Witches - well, Zlata's plans to confer with other Ice Witches while Niedzwenka loiters nearby and frowns at them - went astray when their path took them through the lands of a Boyar who launched what most would call a very minor and mostly symbolic show of force to try to keep secure the expanded rights of Kislev's nobility. Niedzwenka, as it turned out, called it justification enough to rain hell and nightmares down upon those lands in general and the Boyar specifically. A deeply mixed blessing for the newly-crowned Tzar, who already had plans to bring the Boyars to heel but now also had devastation and terror to rebuild and recover from.
That, you suppose, is one of the benefits to being an ancient terror - instead of working around others, you get to be the one that other people have to work around.
---
In front of a gathered crowd of House Fanpatar nobles, innumerable flying insects, and some curious ducks, you lay out your plan for allowing passage through the Schadensumpf without compromising it as a defensive barrier: a series of enchanted towers that can project your spell Rite of Way in the path of approved travellers, under the sole control of House Fanpatar so that it cannot be used as an invasion corridor in the same way that a road or series of bridges could be. The magical underpinnings of the plan attract much comment from the more magically-inclined parts of the crowd, at first because they insist that it can't work and then, after trying it themselves, insisting that it shouldn't. The more practical remainder are cautious but not quite skeptical, reasoning that as long as the infrastructure is mostly on their side of the swamp, they can always just knock it over and sink it into the swamp, should it contain any unwanted trickery. With sufficiently vigorous knocking and a sufficiently deep swamp, there's not much that doesn't work on.
With House Fanpatar giving cautious assent, you leave them to engage with the political side of things while you turn your attention to the technical. There's a curious kind of freedom to taking a spell that was designed to be contained within a single human soul and remaking it with all size constraints removed, but that joy evaporates as soon as you run into the primary adaptation you need to make: where the spell was based on the location of the caster, a version built into a tower needs to project the effect out along a specific path. The spell was built along the assumption that the spell would only need to be targeted directly in front of the caster, which not only simplified its design a great deal, but also bypassed a lot of inefficiencies that usually creep in when a spell is made to have an effect over a distance. This means the spell needs not so much adapting as it does complete rebuilding to work with a new set of targeting parameters, which would normally be nigh impossible but is merely extremely difficult because you're the one who made the spell in the first place and you still have all your notes.
You toy with a number of potential solutions - a path relayed by Waystone-inspired menhirs, some sort of beacon to be carried by those who have permission to pass, a sort of punt-mounted Battle Altar - but in the end the method that comes up most promising on paper is to split the enchantment over two towers, with the path being projected directly between them. It's nowhere near as efficient as the original spell, but it doesn't have to be.
[Planning the Waystone Towers: Learning, 57+29+10(Enchanter)+5(Library: Enchantment)=101.]
[House Fanpatar understanding: 17.]
You're sure that the schematics that emerge over several weeks of effort are, if not your very finest work, then at least a solid demonstration of the concept, but it seems House Fanpatar's Mages disagree. You'd hoped that the common origin of the enchantment paradigm of the Eonir and the Grey Order would make the gap between the two bridgeable, but many fruitless days are spent trying to blaze a communicable path through the intuitive leaps that your design is built upon. Eventually, to your relief and theirs, the higher-ups of House Fanpatar decide to bring in someone hopefully more able to understand the bizarre ways of human enchantment.
[Sarvoi interrupt: 82.]
Sarvoi reads over the schematics, laughs, frowns, mutters something about cobbling for centipedes, then disappears for several days. When he returns it's with an armful of scrolls and a manic gleam in his eye, and he spends several weeks walking the Fanpatar Mages through your logic and several hours getting you to include details so minor and self-evident you have to look up how to actually describe them. By the time the year starts to draw to a close the foundations are being laid down for the towers, one atop a southern rise of the Misty Hills and the other among the ruins of Vorbegwerk. Without any further assistance from yourself it will likely take several years for the path to be completed, but it is underway.
[Major Trade Route: The Schadenweg, from Middenheim to Tor Lithanel via the Schadensumpf (estimated completion: late 2493)]
---
"Great streamers of energy covering the sky from horizon to horizon, glowing so brightly that even the least gifted can see the shimmering in the air. Any one of those great ribbons would be enough to cause a storm of magic in more southern latitudes, but up here are entirely focused on their flight from the Frontier of Chaos. The Kurgan Sorcerers of all eight Winds learn techniques for drawing in magic from far above that in the Empire are the sole domain of the Celestial Order. It is only once they reach the mountains that frame the southern border of the steppes that a facet of their nature that we would recognize reasserts itself, and they plunge downwards in intertangling Windfalls, scattering pearls of forbidden iridescence across the bone-strewn wastes."
Egrimm's verbiage is a bit flowery for academia, but it seems to be entertaining Eike. You toy with the idea of working it into the paper to entertain your readers, but the tone ends up clashing drastically between the descriptions and the technical details, so you end up having to leave it out. The result is still a fairly readable description of a fascinating magical phenomenon in far too dangerous a place to be visited safely, so you're confident it'll garner a decent amount of attention. Especially since it is an undeniably natural phenomena that results in the creation of Dhar, which goes against a lot of orthodox Sevirric theory that argues that as it is inherently unnatural, it can only be created by corrupted beings. You're careful to avoid any suggestion that this in any way legitimizes the energy or its use - it is merely an unfortunate side-effect of an otherwise beautiful process.
[Writing the paper: Learning, 51+29-10(Freshness: Faded)+7(Library: Sevir)=77.]
[Egrimm's contribution: 6+23=29.]
[Max's contribution: 55+18=73.]
[Observations on the Windfall on the Road of Skulls, 2490. Subject: Rare, +1. Insight: Shattering, +3. Delivery: Competent, +0. Exotic, +1. Varied, +1. Unpopular, -1. Shared Credit, -1. Total: +4.]
---
[Rolling...]
On top of shadowing you for the Seviroscope development and the matter of the Schadensumpf towers, Eike has been attending enchantment lessons at the Grey College. How much of an affinity she'd have for the art of enchantment is something that it's only just occurred to you to be concerned about - it's come as naturally as the spellcasting for you from as far back as you can remember, but that definitely isn't the case for all Wizards, and there's no reason that it would be the case for Eike. So you keep a close but surreptitious eye on how her understanding of that art grows over the months. She is not, you quickly realize and reluctantly accept, a natural talent in the same way that you were, but her grasp of the Sevirric theory keeps the pace of her learning high anyway, and by the time the year draws to a close, she's at least halfway to the level where she'd be able to produce her own permanent enchantments.
But where she's really flourished is in her understanding of the interactions between magical energies and different mediums. You've typically stuck to the tried-and-true staples for magical conductors and insulators, and when you needed something exotic you consulted the various reference materials and often had to pay dearly for them - though often with someone else's gold. But Eike hasn't just memorized the known facts of material conductivity, she's developed a habit of evaluating the materials she encounters for how they'd react to different magical energies. Her earliest examples of enchantment, while as primitive and temporary as expected for someone just starting out, use all kinds of mundane-seeming materials that are perfectly suited for their place in the larger piece. Not only will this serve her well for any form of magical craftsmanship she sets out to learn, if she develops this skill further it would also make her a more formidable spellcaster, as she'd be able to cast her spells in such a way to take advantage of the material conditions of the terrain around her.
She's growing quickly, and not just in the sense that you now have to pat her shoulder instead of her head when she does well. You're confident she's going to grow into a very impressive Magister one day.
Eike has learned:
Enchantment (1/2)
Materials: Eike is able to quickly and precisely evaluate how conductive a material is to various forms of magical energy, and how to compensate for or take advantage of that conductivity. +1 Learning, Advanced will give +1 Magic
Windherder (1/4)
---
Your return to experimenting with the Vitae is a cautious one, but not a very cautious one, as you're performing it on a ledge of the mountain on the other side of Death Pass from Karagril instead of waiting for reality to have fully repaired itself within your White Tower. If this experiment goes similarly to the previous one, you're confident that you'll be able to put enough distance between you and whatever it is you attract the attention of that they will succumb to reality and dissipate before they can cause any meaningful trouble, and if necessary they can be given a little help in getting on their way by the artillery overlooking Death Pass.
After some minor preparations - not strictly necessary, but it's easier to focus on the task with somewhere comfortable to sit and some shade to keep the sun at bay - you prepare a measure of the Vitae and focus your will upon it. This time you know what to look for, and you're able to notice the very slight compression as the Vitae begins to succumb to the pressure. Or perhaps the Vitae isn't compressing at all, and the give you're feeling is actually a compression of reality itself as your will squeezes the Vitae against it? You wonder if there's a way to test for that, but you can't think of any ways to measure it that won't be occluded by the Vitae, and the thing about reality is that you don't often venture outside of it. And the few times you do are generally places you don't want to risk puncturing.
[Squeezing the Vitae: Learning, 84+29=113.]
Your attention is yanked back to the task at hand as the Vitae stops pressing back against your will, and seems to shrink down in size as it drains away through a newly-formed slit in reality. As before, the miniature realm you can glimpse on the other side of the slit seems to be entirely normal in every measurable way. You keep your attention on it, ready to act or flee as needed, but time ticks by without anything untoward happening, and eventually you exhale. Maybe you simply got unlucky last time, or perhaps the being in question had been waiting for an opportunity to make its pitch to you. Either way, it seems that while the creation of a liminal realm isn't necessarily safe, it also isn't guaranteed to attract unwanted attention from the other side of the liminal barrier. You note your observations on the slit, including that the word 'slit' is inadequate. A slit is a hole in a two-dimensional object, allowing passage through it in a third dimension. This is a hole in three-dimensional reality, allowing passage through it in a fourth dimension. But as far as you know, no words for such a thing exists in Reikspiel, which was a language built for three spatial dimensions. Perhaps Anoqeyån, or Daemonic, or some other magical language has a vocabulary to describe these kinds of shapes. For now, you settle for noting that the shape of the 'hole' appears to be dipyramidal or trapezohedronal, while the empty grey realm on the other side appears spherical.
You bring over some more Vitae from a supply cache a safe distance away - it wouldn't do to have it right there when you're doing dangerous magical experimentation, after all - and begin trying to introduce it to the slit. You've performed enough experiments with the Vitae to reasonably think you can predict how it will react in a given situation, and for this one specifically you've theorized three possible results: either nothing happens, or it dissolves into Winds, or it dissolves into Winds and then dissolves away into a size increase of the liminal realm. At first you were hoping for the third of those options, and that the reaction is possible indefinitely instead of only in the initial moments after it is created, before you realized that if that was the case, it might make it impossible to bring any of the Vitae into the grounds of the Grey College without it dissolving, since it occupies a liminal realm of its own. So you watch with as much detached neutrality as you can maintain as more Vitae runs down a glass stirring rod and into the slit. Sure enough, the Vitae shatters into Winds and then shimmers into nothingness as it is absorbed into the liminal realm, but the reaction also travels back up the rod to the rest of the Vitae in the beaker and detonates the lot, causing the beaker to shatter and a small vortex of Winds to form as you jump backwards.
You frown at the hole for a while as you think, then set up ropes to cordon off the area it occupies.
---
A few days later, the shot tower you'd asked some of the Karak's Dwarves to set up is completed. This one is much shorter in height than most you'd find throughout the Karaz Ankor and the Empire, as unlike those designed for turning molten lead into lead shot, this one only needs to be tall enough for falling Vitae to form into distinct drops, rather than also needing them to fall far enough to cool and harden. The only difficulty was in convincing the Dwarves to make it only strong enough to last out the experiments instead of something that will still be standing for centuries to come, but you managed it by making it clear that this was for dubious Zhufokri experiments, and thus would require lightweight structures to minimize the amount of shrapnel produced. With this tower, it will be simple to moderate the rate at which Vitae drips down, allowing you to achieve maximum throughput without causing the reaction to spread wastefully to Vitae still on the wrong side of the entrance. You set it up with a much larger measure of the Vitae than that which originally created the realm in the feed tray, and begin your observations from a safe distance, then move closer as nothing unexpected happens.
You could, of course, simply throw an entire beaker in all at once, or even an entire carboy, and that way the reaction wouldn't have time to spread before the entire volume is entirely within the liminal realm. You're mostly sure that would have the same effect as feeding it in one drop at a time. But 'mostly sure' would make for a poor epitaph. Once you'd confirmed that it's working as intended, you allow it to run and move on to your next stage of experimentation: poking it with a stick and seeing what happens. You'd picked this spot for its emptiness, which means there's no handy sticks for poking mysteries with, only a few scattered rocks. But being a Wizard of wisdom and experience, you'd thought ahead and brought several sticks with you. At first you simply poke it, and watch as it protrudes into the realm on the other side. It looks quite normal from behind, but looking at it from an angle makes it look like its bending as it enters the slit, though withdrawing and examining it shows that it's still straight, and it wouldn't be able to actually bend that way without breaking. It seems that your eyes, like Reikspiel, aren't able to fully make sense of four-dimensional movements.
Next you move the stick into the slit from side-on, so that the middle of the stick will come into contact with the slit while both ends will remain outside of it, and as it comes into contact it stops in place, and you feel a slight pulling, rather than an abrupt jolt. You wave it back and forth a few times to confirm that, then swing it with some strength and examine the stick for any damage. So there's no physical barrier around the sides of the liminal entrance to obstruct the middle of the stick from entering, but it is still prevented from doing so because it cannot stretch enough for the middle part of the stick to go further into the liminal realm while the ends of it remain outside. You had been concerned that the middle section of the stick would be simply severed by the edges of the liminal entrance as if it had run into an impossibly thin edge, such as what is manifested by the Penumbral Pendulum. That would have made this hole in reality rather dangerous to be around. As is... well, if someone tripped into the hole at full speed and the wrong angle the abrupt change in velocity might cause injury, but the same would be true of a large rock. And if the entrance was large enough for a person to easily pass through, even that problem would no longer be the case.
Speaking of which, you'd hoped that the slit would grow with the size of the liminal realm, but by your measurements it is the same size it was the other day, despite the constant drip of Vitae into it. A sounding line shows that the depth of the liminal realm has almost doubled, so if it has remained spherical on the inside, its size must have increased almost eightfold. Though it occurs to you that that calculation assumes that the depth from the slit is the radius of the liminal realm, which would only be the case if the slit was at the centre of the liminal realm, rather than at its edge. Circling the slit with your trusty poking stick reveals that it remains accessible from all sides, which must mean that it does lead to the centre, rather than remaining at the edge. You frown and climb up the ladder to turn off the drip - if it gets much bigger, then you'd face the real danger of someone who enters it being unable to reach the slit to leave it again. You make a note to bring a ladder and some rope with you for tomorrow's testing.
---
Part of you wants to be the first being to enter your liminal realm, but the rest of you is quite aware how foolish a way this would be to discover whether it's safe to enter, so instead you've secured a handful of mice as test subjects. You didn't want to just drop one of them in and have it stuck on the bottom of the liminal realm, running around the place making a mess and trying fruitlessly to scrabble up the sides, so you mildly sedate one of them with a very small dose of a tincture the Karak's farmers use on the goats, then attached a leather strap around its middle and lowered it into the hole with a rope and pulley. You pull it back out after a few seconds to confirm that it's still alive, then lower it back down again and wait several minutes. When you pull it back up again it takes some poking to rouse it from its drug-induced slumber, but that it does eventually open one eye and squeak sleepily at you confirms that the air is breathable on the other side.
You frown at the hole in reality, and then take a deep breath and stick your hand into it - your right hand, just in case you need the Seed of Rebirth in your left to regrow it. Your hand feels entirely normal, not even any sort of mystical tingle to signify it has entered another realm. You wiggle your fingers, then lean to one side and grimace as the change in angle makes your arm appear to bend unnaturally. You move your hand around the slit, frowning - your initial ideas for enlarging the slit involved simply trying to pull on it, and then trying an escalating series of mundane and magical blades, but there isn't actually a physical edge to cut, just a point in space where one realm gives way to another. To be able to address the slit with a knife, you'd need to be able to move your hand in a fourth spacial direction, that of the liminal barrier. The only part of you able to do that is your soul, which exists partially in the Aethyric realm and is able to delve deeper into it, most commonly during dreams. When magic enters a soul, it gets closer to the realm that birthed it, which is what makes magic so powerful and dangerous. Which means that if you pass magic back and forth between your soul and your body at the edge of the slit, sawing back and forth like a cheesewire, then...
With an indescribably unpleasant noise that echoes off the mountains, the tear grows unevenly and jerkily in the direction of your effort of will, widening the hole between reality and the liminal realm. As you circle around it you wince at the uneven shape of it compared to the slit that it had been, but at least it works. It's slightly alarming to create a rent in reality with such a small effort, though it makes sense that it's so much easier to enlarge an existing hole than to tear a new one.
With the hole enlarged to something that a person could fit through, you struggle up the drop tower with a cannonball you borrowed from the Undumgi and drop it down into the hole. The thud that echoes back out of it has an unnerving sort of resonance to it, but looking down into the hole reveals nothing unexpected, so you feel confident enough to carefully lower a ladder into the hole and to climb in yourself. You'd expected it to be cooler inside the hole than out of it, but it feels the same temperature inside than it was out, but that's the only real complaint you have. The uniform greyness in all directions is slightly disorienting, but as long as you keep a hand on the ladder to orient yourself, it's actually rather soothing. The surface is smooth to the touch, but not as slippery as that smoothness would suggest, and it does not give way to any amount of pressure.
Your measurements reveal the realm to be spherical or close to it, which causes you to frown in thought. Your promotion to Lady Magister was in a similarly all-grey realm that houses the Grey College, but that had a flat surface. Perhaps an Archmage skilled in High Magic could keep a grip on the primordial Winds and shape the realm that they form, or perhaps there's a way to shape the realm after it is created. Or it could be that the method Teclis used to create the Grey College - did he create the Grey College's liminal realm? Is it possible he simply made use of an already-existing one? - is entirely separate to the one you have stumbled upon here.
You spend some time at the bottom of that hole in reality, trying to figure out how to best make use of a perfectly spherical area, before doing the sensible thing and kicking the problem over to some Dwarves. You get a number of flat looks from the carpenters of Clan Ironspike as you lay out the requirements - building techniques to create structures within spherical caps of varying dimensions without drilling, nailing, or screwing into it. They ask you why, then insist you stop explaining why. After a great deal of thought, debate, and grumbling, they produce a set of schematics and joints that would allow one to build entire structures within a spherical realm, as long as they take up most of the space within it. Multiple completely separate structures within one spherical realm would, they speculate, be impossible to create with entirely mundane techniques.
Throughout all of this you've been keeping a very careful eye on the hole itself, which remains static in size while under use but, once you finish delving in and turn most of your attention to other tasks, begins to heal up - first at the tears you made and then, very slowly, at the initial slit. It seems like a liminal realm, or at least one created in the way you created this one, requires at least semi-regular comings and goings by living beings to maintain its entrance. The realm itself, however, remains unchanged. You begin to wonder how many forgotten liminal realms there might be out there, the entrances healed over but their contents remaining preserved, like an insect in amber or a pearl within an oyster.
Thus concludes the work Mathilde performed these past months, but not every waking moment was filled with work. With whom did she spend her free time? The five with the most votes will be chosen, not counting those locked in.
[+] Social interaction initiated by someone else (locked in)
Laurelorn
[ ] Eike
Have a discussion about faith, the Gods, and the role they play in one's life.
[ ] Swordplay
Test your newly-completed swordfighting style against the swordsmen of Tor Lithanel.
[ ] Niedzwenka
Ask Baba Niedzwenka how she feels about the new Tzar, and about the political landscape of Kislev in general.
Karak Eight Peaks
[ ] Okri
You've met Loremaster Okri of Karak Eight Peaks once before. Pay him a visit and see how his great ambitions for heavily-armed Ironbreakers delivered by Gyrocarriage are going.
Foreign Relations
[ ] Middenland
See how the Ulricans are going with their new Eonir coreligionists.
[ ] Nordland
See what's going on with the Ulrican schismatics that Nordland is backing.
[ ] Wissenland
Though the Elector Count is his usual self, some of their actions recently have hinted at the hand of someone a great deal defter. Investigate who took the job of his Spymaster after you turned it down.
[ ] The Black Water Canal
Attend the grand opening of the Black Water Canal as it finally bridges the waterways of the northern and southern halves of the continent.
[ ] Druchii Diplomats
Check in on these unexpected visitors to Tor Lithanel.
[ ] Eonir Tourism
Despite language and cultural barriers, some of the Eonir have begun venturing out into the wider Empire. Check how this is going, and get a glimpse of the Empire you were born in from the point of view of those to whom it is alien.
Friends Abroad
[ ] Tzar Boris Bokha
Attend the coronation of the new Tzar of Kislev.
Following Up
[ ] Amber College
Check in on the salamanders.
[ ] Skull River Ambush
Look into the investigation of the mining of the Skull River, and any consequences of it.
[ ] Kalashiniviks
Observe the fate of the Kalishiniviks, who have been made a scapegoat for the death of the Tzar.
- There will be a six hour moratorium to allow for people to suggest social actions.
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- Location
- Taken by the hand to a land that they understand
Pocket dimension get..?
Pretty sure we cannot take it with us.
- Location
- Florida
Human wizards are a menace to all right thinking elves.
You may not like it but this is what peak human wizardry looks like.
NexusEye
Aspiring God
- Pronouns
- She/Her