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.