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Looking at some maps of Kislev, it looks like both the upper and lower branches of the River Lynsk originate very close to the entrance to High Pass. A canal might be plausible there, and if we put it under the Redbeards leadership (so the Vlag dwarves don't have to go outside), then a port and market on the western end of High Pass seems very possible, and could easily grow to rival Uzkulak as a Silk Road trade centre.
Might want to add "and also canal between Vlag and Lynsk" if that's the case.
 
I am firmly against using Vlag for canal digging. They have zero experience with canals, and if it truly is as simple as digging a really big ditch, then it is a waste of their talents. Would rather have runepokers reinforce Kislevian fortifications as much as they can stand, since that's something Kislevian cannot replicate with their peasantry.
I am also fully against spending our Vlag boon on this, though I'd like to spend our lesser dwarven favour on this, and our Great Deed if it would somehow be useful.
 
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Regarding canals, can we involve Vlag with a Transcendent Boon?

This feels analogous to the Nuln deal, when we were willing to pay quite a bit for one thing (a Great Deed/our immortal soul for Nuln University/the keyphrases) and ended up securing a deal where we pay a much more palatable price for way more (A Boon we didn't have much use for/working with an Asur for every single library in Nuln/Waystone knowledge from the polity that made the Waystones, including but not limited to the keyphrases). In my opinion this one wins and it's not close.
I like this framing.

maybe we can ask Boris to covertly use state resources to help shelter those Hedgewise and ensure they cross the border safely?
No need for covertly. He's the supreme ruler of Kislev. If we want, we can just ask him to make hedgefolk legal and that's that.
 
Also I would like to remind people we have a serious limitation on runic capstones and Vlag is one of the only large scale sources for that. If we do use the Vlag favor for this it would seriously harm the project. Dwarfs generally do not like to mass produce things, but that is just what the Project needs in this instance.
We absolutely don't need six thousand rune-pokers to do runic capstones. It's quite possible that House Tindomiel would go with the Stone Flower capstone to make the Empire's waystones. On the other hand, six thousand rune-pokers improving Kislev's fortifications and infrastructure would have a much greater and immediate use.

Besides, for something as important as making waystones, I don't think dwarves would have many objections with doing mass production.

We can spend Great Deed to get Empire involved and split the cost that way. And once canal is done profits from it would split same way so everybody wins.
We might not even necessarily need the Great Deed for that, given that the entire navy, Nordland, Ostland, Ostermark and Talabecland would benefit from this automatically. People would do a lot to just spite Marienburg, but if they would also benefit from it? They might start lining up to get in Boris' good graces.
 
Looking at some maps of Kislev, it looks like both the upper and lower branches of the River Lynsk originate very close to the entrance to High Pass. A canal might be plausible there, and if we put it under the Redbeards leadership (so the Vlag dwarves don't have to go outside), then a port and market on the western end of High Pass seems very possible, and could easily grow to rival Uzkulak as a Silk Road trade centre.

@Boney would vlag be amenable to a project like this? If so would this overstrain kislev to do another canal project at the same time?
 
We absolutely don't need six thousand rune-pokers to do runic capstones. It's quite possible that House Tindomiel would go with the Stone Flower capstone to make the Empire's waystones. On the other hand, six thousand rune-pokers improving Kislev's fortifications and infrastructure would have a much greater and immediate use.

Besides, for something as important as making waystones, I don't think dwarves would have many objections with doing mass production.

House Timonel needs to use high magic for that, not a lot of high magic but that is still far above apprentice level for the Eonir who have a lot less mages than Vlag has rune-pokers.

As for dwarfs not objecting to mass production if it is important... I am less sanguine at that prospect especially when we are talking about something as fraught as runes.
 
House Timonel needs to use high magic for that, not a lot of high magic but that is still far above apprentice level for the Eonir who have a lot less mages than Vlag has rune-pokers.

As for dwarfs not objecting to mass production if it is important... I am less sanguine at that prospect especially when we are talking about something as fraught as runes.
Sure, but we're not trying to get as many waystones as possible, we're trying to get as many waystones as we can handle for this. Waystones still need to be placed strategically and protected, we can't just place them wherever. That puts a solid limit on how many we will need at any given time. Frankly, even 60 rune-pokers might be overkill for that.

Also, we haven't even confirmed yet that the Runic capstone plays well with the rest of the components. The regular existing waystones doesn't have runic magic mixing with wind-magic, for all we know that could fail and runic capstones would only be applicable alongside dwarven methods. Again, I really think we should spend the KV boon on boosting Kislev's defenses against Chaos. Please take this into account.
 
Like, a Vlag version of the Eye of Gazul, or something similar? I'm not completely sure Kragg would agree to building another one, being busy as he always is, but even if he doesn't Thorek might, and I'm sure the Colleges would be onboard too for the right price. The Eye itself could be counterspelled, but if our own mages keep theirs busy we could wipe out armies at a time. Maybe we could cash in the Boon from the KaK Runesmiths?
Involving the Dwarven Death God was cool, but not actually a structural requirement of our enchantment, which hypothetically should have done basically the same thing according to our understanding of the spells involved, but probably slower or weaker and definitely less underworld-ish-ly. (Our own work was good enough to get the project approved to begin with, we should remember).

We can build more Mountain Shadow Towers without involving Kragg, just not Named Character versions of the unit (unless we choose to spice it up somehow).
 
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You know when Mathy promised to change the world she lived in I wasn't expecting it to involve this much landscaping. Reshaping the geopolitical map? Yes that was expected. The actual physical terrain? Not so much.

I am thinking of zeppelins.
Dwarfs won't use airships without a safe lighter-than-air gas. They used to get theirs from the 'Gas-Forge of Morgrim', but that hasn't worked since their power supply issues started. Re-wiring their part of the Waystone network might get it working again but I suspect Thorgrim would have other priories for the surplus power.
 
You know when Mathy promised to change the world she lived in I wasn't expecting it to involve this much landscaping. Reshaping the geopolitical map? Yes that was expected. The actual physical terrain? Not so much.
During the Sylvania campaign, Mathilde chose to only destroy Castle Drakenhoff and not the entire mountain it stood on.

The rest of her career has been spent trying to make up for this huge lost opportunity.
 
I dont think we need to micro-manage things too much regarding the channel.
We are working with competent people here, so we should trust them a little to make reasonable choices.

Regarding boons: I guess we could use this one "Karaz-a-Karak (Minor) / Runesmiths Guild (Moderate): You gave Kragg the Grim an opportunity to begin reverse-engineering several ancient Runes."
to request the dwarves send some advisors to help with the channel? Maybe the ones who designed the new dwarven channel?

if we think they need the help
 
How do people feel about spending one or two gallons of AV to source some specialists for the canal instead of spending the boon we got from Kragg? Worthwhile, given that K-a-K (Minor) isn't quite as good as Runesmiths (Major)?
 
How do people feel about spending one or two gallons of AV to source some specialists for the canal instead of spending the boon we got from Kragg? Worthwhile, given that K-a-K (Minor) isn't quite as good as Runesmiths (Major)?
Do you want Runic support specifically, or are you trying to leverage Runesmith favor into non-runic canal specialists?
 
How do people feel about spending one or two gallons of AV to source some specialists for the canal instead of spending the boon we got from Kragg? Worthwhile, given that K-a-K (Minor) isn't quite as good as Runesmiths (Major)?
I don't know if it works as a direct conversion like that? We can generate runesmith favour with AV, but that's not a mechanism for getting boons out of other segments of the Karaz Ankor.

Having broken the dwarf favour system, the way to do get aid like that is by direct appeal, and they say yes or no or "yes, but..." and ask a price in return.
 
Like, a Vlag version of the Eye of Gazul, or something similar? I'm not completely sure Kragg would agree to building another one, being busy as he always is, but even if he doesn't Thorek might, and I'm sure the Colleges would be onboard too for the right price. The Eye itself could be counterspelled, but if our own mages keep theirs busy we could wipe out armies at a time. Maybe we could cash in the Boon from the KaK Runesmiths?
I'm rather agnostic about what it actually is. The Eye sounds like a great option, but no doubt there's some other cool option as well. I don't care what, just that putting stronger locks on the front doors to the old world seems like a good idea.
 
I don't think we even need to spend AV, let alone a boon, on dwarven canal expertise. The EIC is officially partnered with King Byrnnoth, we can just hire experts with EIC money. It wouldn't even cost Mathilde anything—it would just be a line item on the annual expenses report.
 
Do you want Runic support specifically, or are you trying to leverage Runesmith favor into non-runic canal specialists?
I don't know if it works as a direct conversion like that? We can generate runesmith favour with AV, but that's not a mechanism for getting boons out of other segments of the Karaz Ankor.

Having broken the dwarf favour system, the way to do get aid like that is by direct appeal, and they say yes or no or "yes, but..." and ask a price in return.
True... I suppose if we really need a Major favor from the Runesmiths we could just spend a lot of AV all at once.

Yeah, that would make the more general boon worthwhile.
 
We really haven't made a lot of use out of our dwarf status. I think the only time post-Dum that we've put a call out without having accrued a boon ahead of time was in the Bookmining expedition. Oh, and recruiting Thorek at all, I suppose. It's possible without Mathilde's clout he'd have turned us down rather than a "yes, but..."
 
How do people feel about spending one or two gallons of AV to source some specialists for the canal instead of spending the boon we got from Kragg? Worthwhile, given that K-a-K (Minor) isn't quite as good as Runesmiths (Major)?

That is a good point: do we even need to spend a boon here? We dont even need to convince a runesmith here. We are not even asking the dwarves to build the channel for Kislev. We just ask for some expertise to make the project easier

We might be able to just ask for that.
 
Also I would like to remind people we have a serious limitation on runic capstones and Vlag is one of the only large scale sources for that. If we do use the Vlag favor for this it would seriously harm the project. Dwarfs generally do not like to mass produce things, but that is just what the Project needs in this instance.
Thorek is much to involved in the Waystone Project to get Karak Vlag's Runepokers involved in the project. Thorek is a firm traditionalist. The Runepokers break just about every tradition in the Cult of Thungni except one. He wants Runesmiths more involved in the Karaz Ankor. He certainly doesn't want a third of a Hold's population practicing runepoking. Of course trying to get them to stop would be difficult at best for him to accomplish. But that doesn't mean he won't get annoyed.

Oh, and the Runic Inductor (the Capstone) is made from Runes that Thorek recovered. He would have to teach them.

"This was one of the first Runes I ever recovered," Thorek says, tapping on a stone cube bearing a Rune on its top that looks uncomfortably like the Star of Chaos, only with the arrows pointing inwards. "It's very simple in itself. The tricky part is that it just attracts and absorbs energies, it doesn't do anything with them. Before the Time of Woes we used to use this to seal away malign energies to be buried in exhausted mineshafts." He turns the cube over, revealing another Rune on the bottom, this one of a line that loops three times. "This one's only slightly trickier and most of it's the chiselwork, any Apprentice worth the title should be able to manage it by their third decade. It discharges the energies back out again."
 
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