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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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GrimTheMad said:
I don't think requiring upkeep is entirely a bad thing.

A lot of the current issue is that people forgot or just never knew how important the waystones are. Needing to maintain them to keep them functioning could serve to keep them in people's minds.

Human memories are short, but they can be refreshed.
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Disagree strongly.

With Chaos loose in the world, Murphy's Law is an absolute. Over a long enough timespan, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. It'd be stupid to base the foundation of all our protections against Chaos on the regular and reliable performance of weekly rituals which any competent demon cultist can arrange to interrupt.
 
Alratan said:
If we do the riverine approach, we may also need to build Waystones with large amounts of storage inside those cities to act as buffers in case their are sudden surges of magic from Storms of Magic upstream.
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The whole scenario becomes increasingly interesting once you can optimize designs for different things. Having the network-less Kislev ones dump magic down the rivers and having a ring of buffered and ley-lined waystones to catch that extra is pretty damn cool.
 
LightLan said:
FOUNDATION Grey Lord can still be done by most Collegiate enchanters.

Yours limits it to 1/8 of them.
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Sure, but it's simpler so it can be done by less in-demand enchanters. In the end, I imagine that if needs must, the increased demand for hysh-based enchanters can be solved relatively easily by forming more hysh-based enchanters able to make at least simple enchantements.

Hell, such a project could even be a nice sinecure for a certain Light Lord Magister with a talent for enchantement and little interest in scouring the Old World of things that go bump in the night. Plus, considering he has experience directing a choir, I feel Egrimm would be perfect for the job of directing/teaching battle-averse light enchanters.

There is also the fact that this makes sure to lighten the load on elven polities who already have to deal with the reverse-engineered storage.
 
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GrimTheMad said:
A lot of the current issue is that people forgot or just never knew how important the waystones are. Needing to maintain them to keep them functioning could serve to keep them in people's minds.
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The problem is twofold. First, people could still forget it, and in that case it's worse than the alternative.

Second, what if there's no more people, or the waystone/tributary is too difficult/risky to reach? If a waaagh rolls in or a skaven plague erupts and depopulate the area, who knows how long the infrastructure will be left unattended? Without maintenance required, there's no hard limit to retake and repopulate the territory. If it's needed, things could worsen fast, and tainted land will be more difficult to retake than untainted land.

Sparsebeard said:
Hell, such a project could even be a nice sinecure for a certain Light Lord Magister with a talent for enchantement and little interest in scouring the Old World of things that go bump in the night. Plus, considering he has experience directing a choir, I feel Egrimm would be perfect for the job of directing/teaching battle-averse light enchanters.
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Egrimm is pretty ambitious, I strongly doubt he would be satisfied with a sinecure. Sending a LM do what is plainly a waste of their talent is a bad idea.
 
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Boney said:
These aren't lego, you can't just snap them together. There's going to be a lot of work needed to get everything to play nice together and that's work that has a lot better results when there's experts from a number of different traditions able to troubleshoot and workshop different solutions.
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I think this is a good reason for us to try to do [TRANSMISSION] Both. We have all the experts here, and we have the Coin on this. We're more likely to succeed on it here and now than we would be under most circumstances.
 
Something to keep in mind is that we already have a minimum viable product we can show off in the various tributary options. I believe we can afford to be more ambitious when setting the new standard for Waystones.
 
As Someday It May Happen That A Waystone Might Be Built: A Little List of Possibilities

This post catalogues different proposed Waystone builds by purpose, to facilitate discussion and voting. Please @ me if you'd like your plan included, or if I should rename or recategorize it from where I currently have it.

Quick & Easy Prototype (Not Meant For Mass Deployment, But Rather As Proof of Concept)
[ ] Plan Minimum Viable Product (expensive storage)
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[ ] [STORAGE] Expensive Material
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Collegiate
--[ ] Cast by an elf (Boney approved)
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
Proposed by @Abhorsen

[ ] Plan Minimum Viable Product (cheap storage)
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[ ] [STORAGE] Cheap Material
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Collegiate
--[ ] Cast by an elf (Boney approved)
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
Proposed by @Abhorsen

[ ] Plan Keep It Simple
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[ ] [STORAGE] [Moderate] Enchanted
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
Proposed by @Ergosum

[ ] Plan Keep It Simple, with Material
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[ ] [STORAGE] [Moderate] Material
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
Proposed by @Ergosum

[ ] Plan Keep It Simple, with more Runes
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[ ] [STORAGE] [Moderate] Runic
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
Proposed by @Ergosum, identical to Plan Simple and Functional and therefore withdrawn

Overengineered Prototype (Not Meant For Mass Deployment, But Rather To Impress)
[] Plan Political Victory
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[ ] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Both (Hedgewise)
Proposed by @Nerdasaurus Rex

[ ] Plan Better Than The Golden Age
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Runic Inductor
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[ ] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Both (Riverine: Jade)
Proposed by @Redshirt Army

[] Plan Building A Better Future
-[] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[] [STORAGE] [Expensive] Runed
-[] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[] [TRANSMISSION] Both (Jade Riverine)
Proposed by @Derpmind

Deployment Candidate: Leylines (Meant For Mass Deployment Along Existing Network)
[ ] Plan Eonir Build for the future Turns.
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[ ] [RUNE] Wizard
-[ ] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
Proposed by @Tasoli

[ ] Plan : Cooperation is magic
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Collegiate Fascis
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[ ] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Collegiate
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
Proposed by @Sparsebeard

[] Plan: Mass leyline
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Collegiate Fascis
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[ ] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
Proposed by @LightLan

[ ] Plan Mass Deployment Focus With Classic Storage
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Runic Inductor
-[ ] [RUNE] Carved
-[ ] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
Proposed by @Redshirt Army

[] Plan Political success, moderate cost
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Collegiate Fascis
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[ ] [STORAGE] [Moderate] Runed
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
Proposed by @henkalv

[ ] Plan: Repairing The Network First
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[ ] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
Proposed by @Enthusiast#117

[ ] Plan Boring as Possible
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Runic Inductor
-[ ] [RUNE] Carved
-[ ] [STORAGE] [Cheap] Material
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Clockwork
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
Proposed by @thisisinsane

[] Plan Simple and Functional
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower (simple)
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven (simple)
-[ ] [STORAGE] [Moderate] Runed (simple)
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord (moderately difficult)
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline (simple)
Proposed by @jkgbrz

[ ] Plan A waystone to build upon
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Runic Inductor
-[ ] [RUNE] Wizard
-[ ] [STORAGE] [Moderate] Enchanted
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
Proposed by @WorldSlayer

[] Plan Spend Money Not Effort
-[] [CAPSTONE] Runic Inductor
-[] [RUNE] Carved
-[] [STORAGE] Expensive Material
-[] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
Proposed by @Briefvoice

Deployment Candidate: Rivers (Meant For Mass Deployment In Frontier Territory)

Deployment Candidate: Hybrid (One-Size-Fits-All)
[] Plan: All-Stars
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[ ] [STORAGE] [Expensive] Enchanted
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Both (Jade)
Proposed by @LightLan (identical to Plan Tripartite Waystone by @Tasoli)

[] Plan Middle of the Road
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Collegiate Fascis
-[ ] [RUNE] Wizard
-[ ] [STORAGE] [Moderate] Enchanted
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Both (Jade)
Proposed by @Nerdasaurus Rex

[] Plan All Stars, Extra Dwarf
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[ ] [STORAGE] [Expensive] Runed
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Both (Jade Riverine)
Proposed by @TotallyNotEvil

[ ] Plan Boring as Possible hedgewise addition
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[ ] [RUNE] Carved
-[ ] [STORAGE] [Cheap] Material
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Clockwork
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Both (specify which Riverine)
--[ ] Hedgewise
Proposed by @thisisinsane

[] Plan Near-Original+
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[ ] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Both (specify which Riverine)
--[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
--[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Riverine (Spirit)
Proposed by @Alratan

[ ] Plan Boring as Possible cheap foundation
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Runic Inductor
-[ ] [RUNE] Carved
-[ ] [STORAGE] [Cheap] Material
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Clockwork
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] hybrid
--[ ] hedgewise
Proposed by @thisisinsane
 
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Plan 1: The FEMA Model.

[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
[ ] [STORAGE] None
[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
OR
[ ] [FOUNDATION] Collegiate
[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Riverine (Jade)

This is a waystone intended for a specific set of purposes. Namely, being set down on a river in damaged sections of the network or enemy territory and then largely seeing to itself. If a normal waystone is meant to be a piece of permanent infrastructure, then this is meant to be a portable bridge. EDIT: Ideally, it may even be one that can be picked up again after its done its work and been replaced by something more permanent.

The Jade Leyline is really the core of the idea here: This is meant to be something you can ship out to a damaged area and plonk down by, or even in, the local river.

It has no storage, which means a dark wizard, or just hubristic wizard, cannot use it for nefarious purposes.
The Stone Flower is used here as the more efficient capture mechanism that doesn't require the leyline. Which, again, makes it unappealing to Dhar-users.

I can see either the Grey Lord or Collegiate foundations being useful here. Neither one seems to interfere with the core idea, so it's really a question of whether the Empire has some political sway in this version. That said, I can see the light wizard variant possibly winning out since the Jade Stone involves its own kind of carvings.

There's no actual preference for a rune, but the Dwarven version is what's known to work and work well.

There's probably a really ambitions version of this model that uses both the jade leyline and a permanent waystone connection, but I'll leave this one here for now.

Plan 2: The Hinterlander

[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
OR
[ ] [Rune] Carved
[ ] [STORAGE] None
[ ] [FOUNDATION] Clockwork
[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Riverine (Hedgewise)

If the first plan is a fire and forget type waystone, this one is meant to be placed down in a riverside settlement, and then to teach the locals how to take care of it. The clockwork foundation and Hedgewise stones are used together here since both share the requirement of regular maintenance. It seems like it would be fitting if the tightening of the mainspring was part of the same ritual as the cooking of fish, after all.

Here, the stone flower is intended as something that takes what is needed, and only as needed so failures in maintenance don't cause massive problems. Again, any rune might work, but the dwarven rune is the one we know does work.
The carved rune is probably a bad idea, but it's an option for an alternate, even cheaper, variant.

As before, no storage means it's not a target.

The added benefit here is that basically everything is either simple and cheap, or has requirements that can be fulfilled by a wide array of people. Which seems like it fits with a mechanism meant to be shipped out to every scattered village.
 
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Boney said:
How so? It requires a Wizard capable of wielding Hysh. The closest thing to a term for that is Light Wizard.



Potentially.
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Sorry, I didn't put that well. I meant that a potential requirement for a perpetual light wizard might actually be less of a burden than a full magister for the other options because the light college has the most apprentices and there are much more perpetuals than magisters. The option itself is not misleading, but people might think that the Grey Lord option might have a bigger work pool while the collegiate option actually has a bigger work pool because of the apprentice vs magister demographics
 
picklepikkl said:
As Someday It May Happen That A Waystone Might Be Built: A Little List of Possibilities

This post catalogues different proposed Waystone builds by purpose, to facilitate discussion and voting. Please @ me if you'd like your plan included, or if I should rename or recategorize it from where I currently have it.

Quick & Easy Prototype (Not Meant For Mass Deployment, But Rather As Proof of Concept)
[ ] Plan Minimum Viable Product (expensive storage)
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[ ] [STORAGE] Expensive Material
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Collegiate
--[ ] Cast by an elf (Boney approved)
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
Proposed by @Abhorsen

[ ] Plan Minimum Viable Product (cheap storage)
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[ ] [STORAGE] Cheap Material
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Collegiate
--[ ] Cast by an elf (Boney approved)
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
Proposed by @Abhorsen

Overengineered Prototype (Not Meant For Mass Deployment, But Rather To Impress)
[] Plan Political Victory
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[ ] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Both (Hedgewise)
Proposed by @Nerdasaurus Rex

Deployment Candidate: Leylines (Meant For Mass Deployment Along Existing Network)
[ ] Plan Eonir Build for the future Turns.
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[ ] [RUNE] Wizard
-[ ] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
Proposed by @Tasoli

[ ] Plan : Cooperation is magic
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Collegiate Fascis
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[ ] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Collegiate
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
Proposed by @Sparsebeard

Deployment Candidate: Rivers (Meant For Mass Deployment In Frontier Territory)


Deployment Candidate: Hybrid (One-Size-Fits-All)
[] Plan: All-Stars
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[ ] [STORAGE] [Expensive] Enchanted
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Both (Jade)
Proposed by @LightLan (identical to Plan Tripartite Waystone by @Tasoli)

[] Plan Middle of the Road
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Collegiate Fascis
-[ ] [RUNE] Wizard
-[ ] [STORAGE] [Moderate] Enchanted
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Both (Jade)
Proposed by @Nerdasaurus Rex
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I'd shout out Alratan's Near-Original Plus for a Rivers Deployment Candidate. The reverse-engineered storage will get cheaper/easier over time if it's intended for mass deployment along rivers, and it's otherwise fit for purpose.
 
The thing about the MAXIMUM OVERSTONE is that, while the requirements might sound very high... They're not actually unique, you know? Elves can do high magic. Dwarves can do runes. Those sound high dollar because we're a human polity but they're still things that are available.

We even have an Elven noble house on call for crafting these things.

It might be that the storage method doesn't simplify as much as we might want it to over time, but I think that while full-mono-stones are a good idea for helping singular countries the Better Than The Originals are what we should be striving to create the most of.
 
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It's gonna be annoying if we go for Passphrase, and then our exploration of the KA network later this turn reveals that it won't work with that leyline method because the network is disconnected from the vortex. I'm hoping that won't happen as Mathilde generally performs dependent actions within a turn plan in the order they make most sense.
 
[] Draft Plan Building A Better Future
-[] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[] [STORAGE] [Expensive] Runed
-[] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[] [TRANSMISSION] Both (Jade Riverine)

@picklepikkl This is an "overengineered" prototype meant to create the highest quality waystone we can manage.

Edit: Had to put these plans way back here to avoid a vote tally formatting error.

[X] Plan Building A Moderately Expensive Future
-[X] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[X] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[X] [STORAGE] (Moderate) Runed
-[X] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[X] [TRANSMISSION] Both (Jade Riverine)

[X] Plan Building A Relatively Cheap Future
-[X] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[X] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[X] [STORAGE] (Cheap) Runed
-[X] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[X] [TRANSMISSION] Both (Jade Riverine)
 
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Gavin Prince said:
It's gonna be annoying if we go for Passphrase, and then our exploration of the KA network later this turn reveals that it won't work with that leyline method because the network is disconnected from the vortex. I'm hoping that won't happen as Mathilde generally performs dependent actions within a turn plan in the order they make most sense.
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The main problem is with Kislev, but I imagine the Ice Witches can probably get the Ancient Widow to use leylines eventually. Well, their delegate is Zlata, so the most I can do is shrug about if we can do it.

But we aren't going to add waystones to the Karaz Ankor network. They had the opportunity to do it during the Golden Age, when the Dwarfs were much less paranoid, and they did not. Dwarfs today are far more paranoid about extra-Karak infrastructure. Tradition and security concerns are on the side of not adding them and that is an argument we will not win. I don't think we will expand the dwarf network unless we figure out nexuses.
 
We're finally here. The light at the end of the tunnel is in sight, even if past the tunnel itself is the road known as 'actually deploying things'.

Boney said:
[ ] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
Requires Von Tarnus or an Elven Archmage. Very difficult, low cost. Difficulty and requirements will reduce over time if built in large numbers.
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...Omegahugger doesn't appear to be here, so in his stead I will say that I think we can source the solution for this problem via unconventional methods.

picklepikkl said:
So, there are a few broad approaches I've seen so far:
  • Quick and easy prototype, here to score a win and prove that our plan is workable, but taking tradeoffs of maximum effectiveness in exchange.
  • Overengineered prototype, here to impress the hell out of people but not be cost-effectively scalable.
  • Potentially final leyline-based option, here to be a deployment model for places where leylines exist.
  • Potentially final river-based option, here to be a deployment model for places like northern Kislev and Sylvania.
  • Potentially final hybrid option, here to be a one-size-fits-all deployment model at the cost of increased risk of failure.
A complicating factor is that in at least one place where we want to deploy Waystones, we don't actually know how we would connect to the local network because we haven't studied it, which is a thing I really wish we'd thought of during the planning phase for this turn (no blame aimed at the planmakers, as far as I remember nobody thought of that). It might be possible to hook into the leylines underneath Kislev, and it might not be, and we don't know which. So we need to make our decision blind on that count.

I think it would be really useful for this vote if we built a "catalogue" of options to allow for easier comparisons, because otherwise I think this vote's combinatoric explosion is going to overwhelm everyone. So I propose that planmakers @ me and categorize what purpose their plan is for, so I can build out a library of plans that will facilitate discussion and make voters' lives easier.
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I'm really against an overengineered prototype, the text right there says that hopefully the design we make right now would dot the continent.

I say we go with a hopefully-final river-based option first, then next turn we both do a leylines-based stone and check up on Kislev's network itself to see whether the leylines one works as-is or we need to do an extra action to interface with the Widow somehow.
 
[ ] Plan: Repairing The Network First
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
Requires High Magic. Simple, negligible cost.
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
Requires a Dwarven Runesmith. Simple, low cost.
-[ ] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
Requires Von Tarnus or an Elven Archmage. Very difficult, low cost. Difficulty and requirements will reduce over time if built in large numbers.
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
Requires a Wind-based Wizard. Moderately difficult, low cost.
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
Requires a speaker of Anoqeyån or Lingua Praestantia. Simple, trivial cost.

The idea here is to repair the existing leyline network. We can work on filling in places where the network doesn't reach yet next.
To do this, the focus is on maximizing the effectiveness and avoiding the need for maintenance.
It's also gambling on the requirements of Reverse-engineering decreasing enough over time to be more practical. If that doesn't pan out, we can focus on researching better alternatives than throwing money at it.
 
Enthusiast#117 said:
-[ ] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
Requires Von Tarnus or an Elven Archmage. Very difficult, low cost. Difficulty and requirements will reduce over time if built in large numbers.
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There's barely any human mages on Von Tarnus' level, and very few Archmages. That's a huge bottleneck for a piece of infrastructure that's supposed to be spread far and wide on the entire continent.
 
[ ] [CAPSTONE] Collegiate Fascis
Requires a Wind-based Wizard. Moderately difficult, low cost. Requires a connection to the Waystone network.
Requires the waystone network, this puts an obvious limitation on this choice.

[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
Requires High Magic. Simple, negligible cost.
Requires High Magic. High Magic is stupidly rare and difficult, so while it's a simple cheap job for a high mage it's actually ridiculously complex and expensive. A very harsh bottleneck.
Edit: That said there are actually more high mages willing to work on this than I expected (as many as 20) although we still need waystones in the thousands so I'm still not sure it's a great choice.

[ ] [CAPSTONE] Runic Inductor
Requires a Runesmith. Simple, negligible cost. Will result in more Dhar and less of the other Winds when large amounts of multiple Winds are present.
The only option without awful limitations. There's plenty of runesmiths around to be hired after all when they're apprentice level runes.

Yeah I'm definitely only going for the Runic Inductor here.


[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
Requires a Wind-based Wizard. Moderately difficult, low cost.
A solid option here. Uses something from the elves and is very applicable.

[ ] [FOUNDATION] Clockwork
Required an engineer or clockmaker. Moderately difficult, low cost.
The maintenance requirement here is terrible. Also a clockwork mechanism seems incredibly fragile in comparison to existing waystones.

[ ] [FOUNDATION] Collegiate
Requires a Light Wizard. Simple, low cost.
Another solid choice. The limitation of only light wizards though counteracts the simplicity and with the political issues the Grey Lord option looks better. The issues being that only the light college can make them and the dhar issue. Once again despite being simple the limitation of only light wizards hurts the supply compared to a moderately difficult choice with eight times the applicants especially as both are considered low cost.


My probable plan is currently:
[ ] Plan A waystone to build upon
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Runic Inductor
-[ ] [RUNE] Wizard
-[ ] [STORAGE] [Moderate] Enchanted
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline

A super cheap, super effective waystone that can be pumped out by idiots for low costs. Once this prototype is made I'd then like to do the action again except with a dual transmission system that allows for rivers as well.
[ ] Plan Waystones of the future
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Runic Inductor
-[ ] [RUNE] Wizard
-[ ] [STORAGE] [Moderate] Enchanted
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Both (specify which Jade)

All the options for Runes seem quite viable. But since it's just drawing a rune, having a wizard seems solid here. Lots of elves should count as super basic wizards as well so elven masons would be perfect for the job.

I'm the least sure on storage. We need at least some for the leyline transmission but it's a question of what type. I considered cheap material (anything higher value and I think the risk of looters might get too high) but if it's an enchantment then the magic can get refined over time in which case going for a moderately good enchantment to start with and then hoping to make it simpler and cheaper over time seems like the better option here.
 
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Gavin Prince said:
It's gonna be annoying if we go for Passphrase, and then our exploration of the KA network later this turn reveals that it won't work with that leyline method because the network is disconnected from the vortex. I'm hoping that won't happen as Mathilde generally performs dependent actions within a turn plan in the order they make most sense.
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Let's say for the sake of argument that you had already done that action and it had revealed that the leyline method is incompatible with the Karaz Ankor network. What alternate transmission method would that cause voters to pivot towards? The one that is also incompatible with the Karaz Ankor network or the ones that haven't actually been invented yet?
 
K von Carstein said:
There's barely any human mages on Von Tarnus' level, and very few Archmages. That's a huge bottleneck for a piece of infrastructure that's supposed to be spread far and wide on the entire continent.
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Adding to this Von Tarnus was the guy who made armor any wizard can cast in, not just a Bright, any wizard. Mathilde cannot do this in spite of having:
  • The Enchanter trait
  • The skill to enchant anything short of Battle Magic
  • 29 Learning
This is not just uncommon skill, this is nigh-unseen skill in a human.
 
I do believe that anything we can tout as "better than the original", by itself, it a huge political victory.

The jade menhir solution is simply excellent, much as I absolutely adore the fish-rock-pile. It's extremely robust, it doesn't require maintenance, and it's a clear upgrade over the original. Having a backup transmission method would keep things ticking very smoothly indeed.

Furthermore, while I agree that the ones that require maintenance should not be the first, and as stated the "default" model, they do have their place because, as Angelform puts it:
Angelform said:
The crippling disadvantage is that it requires constant upkeep. This thing cannot operate without people looking after it. The incredible advantage is that it is extremely easy to make. The Runes are barely apprentice level and the Hedgewise only need be on-site for a day at most. Otherwise no magical expertise is needed at all. We can have these things built by the dozen and still consider the cost insignificant. We can carpet places like Sylvania and Mousillon in these.
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It's the T34 of Waystones. Sure, it's not that good, it's not that reliable, and many will certainly break.

But that's the thing, we shouldn't forget how powerful of a tool they are, to fight things like Morreslieb. If you can make twenty semi-disposable waystones for the price (and, perhaps most importantly, expert man-hours) of one really nice one, many polities will be happy to build a bloody hundred. Even if nine in ten fail, you are still coming out ahead.

The real bottleneck for waystones isn't really going to be money, it's going to be the fact that there are only so many people that can work on it. Turning this bottleneck into a money-based one is a massive shift in how the problem can be overcome.

At the end of the day, you can pay for the storage materials, you can have the thousands of Vlag almost-runesmiths knock out capstones, you can have a normal-ass mason carve the rune, and you can pay for people to learn how to make the clockwork mechanism, which is arguably the most complex piece of it all. And you can definitely pay for the fish, or just teach people the Praestiana passphrases.

You can't pay to turn someone into a wizard.

Still, that's something for later.

LightLan said:
[] Plan: All-Stars
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I rather like this plan.

I would also raise that Expensive Runic storage might be better than Expensive Enchanted one simplly because enchantment tends to like more exotic stuff than runes, with the exception of gromril. And the dwarves have Money as a superpower, too.

Given the top and transmission would be wind-based, giving them something besides the apparently very simple Rune would be neat. Plus, "reliably storing energy" is precisely in the wheelhouse of runecraft.
LightLan said:
FOUNDATION Grey Lord can still be done by most Collegiate enchanters.

Yours limits it to 1/8 of them.
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Yeah, the Light-only foundation is pretty bad.

I don't appreciate that the Grey Lord one is so inscrutable, but giving the Light College all the influence in the making of such vital projects is not wise. It's also unnecessarily restrictive, when another, very good option is right there, even if, again, it's annoyingly inscrutable.

Hell, that might well change. You knock out a hundred of the things, I highly doubt you won't get a gist of how it works, especially when human magic is all savant-like.
 
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The purpose of this waystone model is to minimize magical components while maintaining increased functionality. Meant for mass deployment and to move from maintenance to maintenance free as time goes on. @picklepikkl
[ ] Plan Boring as Possible hedgewise addition
[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
Requires High Magic. Simple, negligible cost.

[ ] [RUNE] Carved
Requires a mason. Trivial, negligible cost.

[ ] [STORAGE] [Cheap] Material
No requirements. Trivial, low/moderate/high cost.


[ ] [FOUNDATION] Clockwork
Required an engineer or clockmaker. Moderately difficult, low cost.


[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Both (specify which Riverine)
-[ ] Hedgewise
Requirements as per Riverine component. Very difficult, moderate cost.

I want to keep the option open for Riverine transmission and I think the need for maintenance for the hedgewise option reduces as a downside if it only needs maintenance when it isn't hooked up to the regular network, and we could also use them as temporary beach heads.

I chose the stone flower because all the capstones are magic, but this keeps the Enoiri from being written out.
 
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