Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
[X] No
-[X] Specify why:
--[X] Add another clause, inserted before the currently final Clause 8:
--[X] A clause protecting Waystone infrastructure in case of wars and battles. The Waystone network can be fought over, but not intentionally damaged or destroyed.

[X] No
-[X] Specify why:
--[X] Add another clause, inserted before the currently final Clause 8:
--[X] A Clause pushing for some commitment between signatories to maintain participation in a forum where waystone information can be shared. The commitment doesn't have to be as in-depth as the current Waystone Project, but it should basically act as a backstop to make it easier to create a "Waystone Project 2.0" if the need arises once again some centuries down the line, and reduce the chances of the project falling apart if Mathilde gets killed in the near future. Having a diplomatic line open should reduce the chances of hostilities between parties, too.
 
Is it too soon to talk about Waystone legos?

When we prototype a Waystone - which we're definitely going to do next turn - we need to decide which of the proposed components to use. This is going to be even more fiddly then the usual Waystone action, so judging by previous turns there's a risk that some plan will gain a lead for its other parts and any discussion about the prototyped Waystone will be drowned by arguments over whether we should have Eike study the Liber Mortis with Egrimm or with Max, or by arguments over the library and EIC actions, or whatever else the thread manages to cook up.

I think we'll want to prototype at least two Waystone designs, though maybe not at once. We need something to give Ulthuan, which means we need a Waystone that can be made by the Asur, but we also want to make The Best Waystone where we are not so constrained and can use all of our components. I actually think we would have to make a Waystone that can be made by elves alone anyway, otherwise we're arguably reneging on our deal with House Tindomiel. I think the one we give Ulthuan is the simpler one to design, so let's start there.

So what does Prince Eltharion want? Besides the tributary rituals, that is.
"The Waystones we have covered your lands and ours in is the artisanry of the Inner Kingdoms. In every foreseen scenario, it performs its task perfectly. But it does not deal well with the unforeseen, or with deliberate sabotage. What you have created may not be fit for Saphery's libraries, but there may be a place in Yvresse's armouries for something that can be taught and deployed quicker and easier than a Sapherian masterpiece."
So we want something that Yvresse will find relatively simple to construct, and also ideally something more robust than traditional Waystones but for now let's just consider what potential Waystones Yvresse could even make. Boney made this list of Waystone components:
Capstone
Collegiate Fascis
Stone Flower
Runic Inductor

Rune
Carving
Dwarven
Eonir
Collegiate

Storage
Material
Enchantment (Collegiate)
Material + Collegiate Enchantment
Enchantment (Reverse-Engineered, Unrefined)
Runes

Orbital Mechanism
Dwarven Clockwork
Grey Lord Enchantment

Leyline
Riverine - Hedgewise
Riverine - Jade
Riverine - Spirit
Three parts are no brainers:
Rune: just go with the carving techniques Hatalath found. It's quick and easy which is what we're hoping for, so no need to try and prototype something completely untested.
Leyline: this is also easy since the Asur have the keyphrases and can use the traditional leylines.
Orbital Mechanism: we really only have one option - the dwarven design is probably a guild secret and I'm not sure if Yvresse even has crafters good enough to make it in a timely manner, but luckily the Grey Lord Enchantment was specifically designed to allow for easy deployment.

This leaves two parts we need to hash out:
Capstone: the Runic inductor is out, obviously. There's the Collegiate Fascis and the Stone Flower.
The problem with the Stone Flower is that it requires high magic. It's apparently a very simple High Magic enchantment, but Eltharion wants something that doesn't require Saphery's expertise. I don't know how common knowledge of High Magic is in the Outer Kingdoms
(can any loremasters (no pun intended) in the thread weigh in on this?) so I'm not sure how useful the Stone Flower will be to him.
On the other hand, I think the Collegiate Fascis will be easy to make. It requires eight different enchantments, but casters capable of making simple enchantments are probably far more common among the Asur than the Colleges - and in the case of the Asur one caster could potentially make all eight. The problem is that the Collegiate Fascis seems, uh, worse than the Stone Flower? It depends on a connection to the network to do the Dhar part of its job, and Mathilde seems not to be entirely sure that it'll even work without using Waystone gold.
So it seems to me that do the choice is to go with a safe option with the Flower, or risk outright failure of the Fascis for the chance of a superior solution.

Storage: again, Runes are out. The reverse-engineered enchantment is also out: "exactly what Saphery has, but a lot harder to make" is obviously not the way to go.
That leaves materials, the Collegiate enchantments, or a combination of the two. To be honest I have no idea how to evalute any of those options. Here's what Elrisse had to say:
"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.
Going with just materials or just enchantments will obviously give us Waystones that are simpler to make, but without actually looking at that list of costs and magical throughputs and such we can't really say if that's worth the tradeoff of making, uh, less reliable stroage I guess? And if we do decide to use just one of materials and enchantments then which one do we use? Which is easier to make? No idea.
Maybe we should go with materials and put Eike on that action. It'll be nice to foster her newfound talents, and it'll be great to give Ulthuan Waystones that were at least partly designed by a literal human child.
 
Is it too soon to talk about Waystone legos?

When we prototype a Waystone - which we're definitely going to do next turn - we need to decide which of the proposed components to use. This is going to be even more fiddly then the usual Waystone action, so judging by previous turns there's a risk that some plan will gain a lead for its other parts and any discussion about the prototyped Waystone will be drowned by arguments over whether we should have Eike study the Liber Mortis with Egrimm or with Max, or by arguments over the library and EIC actions, or whatever else the thread manages to cook up.

I think we'll want to prototype at least two Waystone designs, though maybe not at once. We need something to give Ulthuan, which means we need a Waystone that can be made by the Asur, but we also want to make The Best Waystone where we are not so constrained and can use all of our components. I actually think we would have to make a Waystone that can be made by elves alone anyway, otherwise we're arguably reneging on our deal with House Tindomiel. I think the one we give Ulthuan is the simpler one to design, so let's start there.

So what does Prince Eltharion want? Besides the tributary rituals, that is.

So we want something that Yvresse will find relatively simple to construct, and also ideally something more robust than traditional Waystones but for now let's just consider what potential Waystones Yvresse could even make. Boney made this list of Waystone components:

Three parts are no brainers:
Rune: just go with the carving techniques Hatalath found. It's quick and easy which is what we're hoping for, so no need to try and prototype something completely untested.
Leyline: this is also easy since the Asur have the keyphrases and can use the traditional leylines.
Orbital Mechanism: we really only have one option - the dwarven design is probably a guild secret and I'm not sure if Yvresse even has crafters good enough to make it in a timely manner, but luckily the Grey Lord Enchantment was specifically designed to allow for easy deployment.

This leaves two parts we need to hash out:
Capstone: the Runic inductor is out, obviously. There's the Collegiate Fascis and the Stone Flower.
The problem with the Stone Flower is that it requires high magic. It's apparently a very simple High Magic enchantment, but Eltharion wants something that doesn't require Saphery's expertise. I don't know how common knowledge of High Magic is in the Outer Kingdoms
(can any loremasters (no pun intended) in the thread weigh in on this?) so I'm not sure how useful the Stone Flower will be to him.
On the other hand, I think the Collegiate Fascis will be easy to make. It requires eight different enchantments, but casters capable of making simple enchantments are probably far more common among the Asur than the Colleges - and in the case of the Asur one caster could potentially make all eight. The problem is that the Collegiate Fascis seems, uh, worse than the Stone Flower? It depends on a connection to the network to do the Dhar part of its job, and Mathilde seems not to be entirely sure that it'll even work without using Waystone gold.
So it seems to me that do the choice is to go with a safe option with the Flower, or risk outright failure of the Fascis for the chance of a superior solution.

Storage: again, Runes are out. The reverse-engineered enchantment is also out: "exactly what Saphery has, but a lot harder to make" is obviously not the way to go.
That leaves materials, the Collegiate enchantments, or a combination of the two. To be honest I have no idea how to evalute any of those options. Here's what Elrisse had to say:

Going with just materials or just enchantments will obviously give us Waystones that are simpler to make, but without actually looking at that list of costs and magical throughputs and such we can't really say if that's worth the tradeoff of making, uh, less reliable stroage I guess? And if we do decide to use just one of materials and enchantments then which one do we use? Which is easier to make? No idea.
Maybe we should go with materials and put Eike on that action. It'll be nice to foster her newfound talents, and it'll be great to give Ulthuan Waystones that were at least partly designed by a literal human child.

I think you are dismissing runes too lightly. I mean yeah normally the dwarfs will be giving Asur runes on the tenth of never, but these are not normal circumstances and this is part of the 'keep the world from being eaten by demons' system. There would be much bead tugging and teeth gnashing, but if you want something robust that does not require High Magic Runes are the solution at the very least for storage of not capstone. The College solution for storage is bad and more to the point it is bad in a way that an elf would find exasperating. It does not lack a Dhar Component because none can be made, it lacks one because the humans who made it can't handle Dhar. We either need a new storage solution or we need to figure out the runic problem. Push come to shove we do have that Vlag favor and these are very simple runes.
 
Those people are illegal for stupid reasons, but Ranald is also the god of things that are illegal for very good reasons.

Is he though?

Like, his followers as aspired by his religion (as opposed to how some, maybe even most realistically are, but which religion doesn't have this problem?) are not the bandits and the murderers and the thiefs who shake down poor famillies.

His followers as aspired are closer to figures like Robin Hood, Arsene Lupin, Han Solo, Kelsier and Kaiji. Yes, technically they are all outlaws, but really, they are Chaotic neutral at worst, and only targetting the deserving and the ones who can afford it.

And yes, in real life thievery and gambling is not like that, but honestly, the only gods that are of things as they are are the Chaos gods, and they are insane because reality is mercurial. Everyone else also has an aspiration of how things should be. Blaming Ranald because his spheres include illegal things and ignoring the way he teaches is like blaming Sigmar and Myrmidia because their spheres include war, which is bad, or blaming Verenna because her spheres include law, where a lot of law is used to opress. These propositions are equally insane with saying that Ranald supports all crime because it is in his spheres.
 
I do think that you are missing the point. If our waystones are able to be produced consistently easier than Ulthuani ones, then the elves will gladly pay the dwarves for the runes.

I mean, there must be an agreement to be made there, and Eltharion is pragmatic enough for this.

The War of the Beard finished too long ago to matter right now.
 
I do think that you are missing the point. If our waystones are able to be produced consistently easier than Ulthuani ones, then the elves will gladly pay the dwarves for the runes.

I mean, there must be an agreement to be made there, and Eltharion is pragmatic enough for this.

The War of the Beard finished too long ago to matter right now.

Yeah, leaving aside the problems of design, it is going to be a hard sell to have elves just cast eight different color enchantments, because while single wind magic is more common among them in general finding 8 different mages who can cast from each of the 8 winds and enchant from them is not going to be easy for any one kingdom. One Kingdom may have a lot of Ulgu enchanters since they work with silk a lot, another may have a lot of Chammon enchanters since they have many smiths, finding one of each for the boring and repetitive work of making eightfold magic items is not going to be much easier than finding a high mage
 
Is he though?

Like, his followers as aspired by his religion (as opposed to how some, maybe even most realistically are, but which religion doesn't have this problem?) are not the bandits and the murderers and the thiefs who shake down poor famillies.

His followers as aspired are closer to figures like Robin Hood, Arsene Lupin, Han Solo, Kelsier and Kaiji. Yes, technically they are all outlaws, but really, they are Chaotic neutral at worst, and only targetting the deserving and the ones who can afford it.

And yes, in real life thievery and gambling is not like that, but honestly, the only gods that are of things as they are are the Chaos gods, and they are insane because reality is mercurial. Everyone else also has an aspiration of how things should be. Blaming Ranald because his spheres include illegal things and ignoring the way he teaches is like blaming Sigmar and Myrmidia because their spheres include war, which is bad, or blaming Verenna because her spheres include law, where a lot of law is used to opress. These propositions are equally insane with saying that Ranald supports all crime because it is in his spheres.
Ranald (iirc) is the god of nonviolent crimes. Things like burglary (when done without hurting anyone) or pickpocketing are well within the Ranald's spheres and are illegal for very good reasons
 
The War of the Beard finished too long ago to matter right now.
Maybe for the elves.

For the dwarves, if I remember correctly, Kragg the Grims first reaction to "hey would you mind coming with us to laurelorn" (after what the hell is laurelorn) was, while reaching for his axe "yeah I'd love to burn down an elven city with you". Though I can't find it so might have just imagined it
 
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