That would be a decent workaround if there isn't a way to reproduce how the original Waystones work, but Mathilde is really hoping for a one-size-fits-all solution instead of needing to customize each branch of the network to match the local Wind concentrations.
My other idea depends on the rotational speed of the orbits being constant. Do winds of magic experience centrifugal force?
If the orbital speed can be assumed to be a constant, and the eight orbit enchantments have a way of 'feeling' out whether a given proximity to the dhar core is stable(that is to say, not automatically pulling the wind mote closer or further away), and a way of pulling back a mote from getting too close to the dhar, it may be possible for the enchantments to just randomly or systematically test distances until they happen across a stable orbit distance.
Then detect that it's stable and dump the orbital system down the line.
If each enchantment has some sort of memory of its previous action, so they all start their tests with the same distance as the last mote they dumped in the system, and only vary from that point, it should be possible to use the general consistency of what sort of winds you'll see in a given environment at a given time to prevent the system from wasting massive amounts of time testing until it finds a stable orbital system.
And that'll let it maintain the same maximum rate of drain during a storm of magic that you'd see from an Elven system.
Also this idea depends perhaps a bit much on thinking of the problem as two dimensional. If the position of a given wind mote in a single orbital plane affects repulsion(and it should), there should, I think, be considerably more than 247 possible orbital positions(because, for example, it turns -Ulgu-Ghyran-ghur-chamon- and -Ulgu-ghur-chamon-ghyran- into different systems with different orbital repulsion characteristics)(It does occur to me that the wind-wheel symbol may have been invented by the elves to arbitrarily standardize which two winds should be nearest to any given wind in an orbit), but that's not even the problem with a 'feeling out' system. If a system of winds can orbit out-of-plane in the waystone network then it becomes too complex for a 'feeling out' enchantment to get orbital distances right with more than two winds in the orbits.
My own thought regarding storms of magic has brought up another application of this technology that we might be missing with only tributaries derived from Belthani designs.
Most mutation happens when Morrisleb is out, or during Storms of Magic, if we could stick a tributary under every house in a city or village, all leading back to a waystone, it might reduce the mutation rate among humans more obviously than just enhancing the Waystone network in a region.
But if our current tributary designs have inherited the limit of going north-south east-west they can't saturate peoples' living areas like that, not without building an unnecessarily dense line of the extremely expensive waystones through the city in one direction.
@Boney
Do the winds orbit at a consistent speed, consistent relative order, and single-plane? Could that kind of solution work?
I'm not clear on whether out current tributaries have inherited the north-south east-west positional line limitation that the ones we used as a pattern had. Did they? Would saturating a site of habitation with magic drains reduce mutation?
