I feel like our first Waystone design should be something robust that requires zero maintenance and has minimum potential to cause problems. And it should use the existing Waystone network. That way we can put it to work plugging holes and fortifying edges. If we can get that to work, we can work on a riverine design later.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
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- Tags
- warhammer warhammer fantasy fantasy be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist pansexual protagonist ck2 quest divided loyalties mountain vietnam ranald is real this is a dwarf quest (dwarfs) this is maybe an elf quest this is not a vampire quest this is not an empire quest try it and find out open voting
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
Now taking bets on who it could be. Verena? Myrmidia? Rhya? Shallya????
One of the problems we might have is that the spirits may ask for things that are religiously problematic, like human sacrifice, especially if such has been offered to them in the past by other worshipers, but in general I agree that it makes sense to at least poke the spirits eventually.
I am not sure if we should try to do that with our first stone though, especially on such a tight schedule. Odds are good every single untested component adds risk of it not working and there might be a baseline risk below that. All in all I think KISS should be our plan for this first attempt, keeping in mind the enormity of what a Waystone, any Waystone represents. Even if it is not a perfect fit for the Bretonians it is still a way to keep their people from mutating their crops from dying and their land from being ruined by Chaos in a way they have no recourse to. All they just like everyone else had was old stones and the hope that the elves will save them if something too important breaks... now all that is changed. I think handing them a minimal viable miracle is quite enough to be getting started with.
Note that many of the spirits of the major rivers in the Empire are already worshipped as local gods and so have adapted to the restrictions put on what gods can demand of their cults without getting proscribed. They and the rest have the implicit threat hanging over them that if they get difficult then Taal can always subsume another river into His domain. The river spirits of Bretonnia probably answer to the Lady, and we've already seen what happens to uppity Kislevite river spirits.
Basically, the river spirits of the Old World are sapient beings who can be offered both carrots and the unspoken threat of a big stick when they're dealing with states rather than relatively powerless peasants and the local minor gentry they usually directly interact with. Unlike the other options we can talk to the spirits and persuade them to meet us halfway. We might also learn some interesting things in the process.
I'm not even sure that the spirit option needs a dedicated component in quite the same way as the other riverine options. It just dumps the Dhar in the river and the spirit picks it up and transports it where it needs to go. It doesn't need an enchantment to mess around with symbolic correspondences like the other options, so in terms of the Waystone design itself is probably simpler as there's one fewer component built into it. It just needs a river spirit there and willing to do that part of the job that an enchantment is doing in the other designs.
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Obviously it's Ranald.
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
We're not really on a tight schedule, I think?
This project has been proceeding at a ridiculous speed by the standards of the non-human contributors. We've gone from no waystone to a legitimate (if uncertain) shot at Better waystone within half a decade.
We can build up the expertise to do things faster later, but there doesn't feel like a really big reason to rush the first one, and the potential benefits of knocking the first model out of the park can't be overlooked just because they're really obvious.
A dwarven mono-polity waystone would be awesome. Even the winding mechanism of the current components isn't necessarily going to be required forever, given what we know about the ability of runes to provide small motions (as observed in our luxury apartment).
The threat of death isn't very diplomatic, even if they're not receptive to our request, but the ability of people to intelligibly provide spirits with carrots is definitely a good one.
The thread likes cool old people like Baba Niedzwanka. Well, here's a whole system of them.
As I say, you would never directly threaten them or even hint at it, but both they and you would know that the option was on the table if they were unreasonable enough. After all, Taal has done that to plenty of nature gods/spirits before. You'd still speak softly, but the big stick would be there in the back ground.
Sigmar, clearly, in deep cover, pretending to hate magic so no one would ever guess 'his' real identity.
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It'll probably be a minor/regional god who's cult can't complain about being co-opted by the elves. Assuming there's no gender switch, my money would be on Dark Helgis, a Middenland goddess of widows. Specifically, she creates widows by "stealing their loved ones". I think Helgis could be rebranded to be more Hekarti-like.
The other possible option is Haletha. Not sure on a gender switched version—Loerk, God of Dance? Forsagh, God of Auguries?
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
I present the following plan, it is terrible, don't vote for it. Not for the initial prototype.
[] Plan Dawi bitch at Caledor
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Runic Inductor
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[ ] [STORAGE] [Cheap/Moderate/Expensive] Runed
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Clockwork
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
[] Plan Dawi bitch at Caledor
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Runic Inductor
-[ ] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[ ] [STORAGE] [Cheap/Moderate/Expensive] Runed
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Clockwork
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
Dark Helgis seems more likely to be the Ancient Widow, tbh. And Loerk really seems like Loec. Forsagh is apparently an aspect of Morr.
On Haletha being Hekarti, did we ever interact with Sarvoi on a turn with the Father active? Although the effect may be diluted as sane elves aren't henothesists.
I would laugh if Hekarti has rebranded as the Lady, which would be why her High Priestess can wield all Eight Winds and her lesser priestesses can use more than one.
We did, actually. We recruited the Hedgewise and Tindomiel on the same turn, as well as the foundations action where we first met Sarvoi, and we also had a social action with him that turn.
It's not clear if the coin did anything to Tindomiel or Sarvoi.
A couple thoughts.
Any design will have only one bottleneck in production. For example, if a design calls for an elven archmage, than availability of skilled crafters for the other steps shouldn't be a consideration, nobody is going to be in less availability than elvish archmages, so don't worry about that component. Similarly, if a design calls for runesmiths, college wizards, and elvish mages, only one of those design restrictions is going to cause the bottleneck, even if the other two have limited availability, there'll be more of them than whatever the limiting factor is. I'm not sure if Elvish mages or runesmiths are harder to source, but whichever it is, will be the limiting factor.
While cost and availability of skilled workers both stack to some extent, they can also be balanced against each other, if a design is otherwise cheap, it can afford to pay extra for skilled labor. Vice-versa, If a design already needs a lot of skilled labor, the marginal cost of material components is less of a factor, since it's a smaller percentage of the total cost.
We expect a rising wave of chaos in the near future. So designs that can only handle low amounts of chaos or dhar are going to be of very limited use.
Some components all work about equally well, or have similar costs and so selecting between them will be about making tradeoffs in secondary or even tertiary elements.
Any design will have only one bottleneck in production. For example, if a design calls for an elven archmage, than availability of skilled crafters for the other steps shouldn't be a consideration, nobody is going to be in less availability than elvish archmages, so don't worry about that component. Similarly, if a design calls for runesmiths, college wizards, and elvish mages, only one of those design restrictions is going to cause the bottleneck, even if the other two have limited availability, there'll be more of them than whatever the limiting factor is. I'm not sure if Elvish mages or runesmiths are harder to source, but whichever it is, will be the limiting factor.
While cost and availability of skilled workers both stack to some extent, they can also be balanced against each other, if a design is otherwise cheap, it can afford to pay extra for skilled labor. Vice-versa, If a design already needs a lot of skilled labor, the marginal cost of material components is less of a factor, since it's a smaller percentage of the total cost.
We expect a rising wave of chaos in the near future. So designs that can only handle low amounts of chaos or dhar are going to be of very limited use.
Some components all work about equally well, or have similar costs and so selecting between them will be about making tradeoffs in secondary or even tertiary elements.
- Location
- Before the Ninth Gate
There's a difference between the number of elf high mages and elves capable of casting a Hysh Cantrip. @Boney, do we have any sort of estimate as to the number of elves that can enchant cantrips, or would be capable of with a little tutoring?
Technically able, pretty much all of them. How many are also willing and possessing of enough aptitude to make it a practical return on investment is a trickier question.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Having fallen well behind the thread, I'd just like to put my preference towards engineering for
A: High effectiveness, and
B: Sabotage resistance/robustness.
We want these in Sylvania, and they'll need both over there. Best I can tell, that'd mean...
* Stone flower capstone
* Dwarven Rune
* Any Expensive storage method
* Grey Lord foundation
* Dual-channel transmission (probably not Riverine/hedgewise)
A: High effectiveness, and
B: Sabotage resistance/robustness.
We want these in Sylvania, and they'll need both over there. Best I can tell, that'd mean...
* Stone flower capstone
* Dwarven Rune
* Any Expensive storage method
* Grey Lord foundation
* Dual-channel transmission (probably not Riverine/hedgewise)
That's only true if there are sufficiently large numbers of them, or if there's very good coordination. Both runesmiths and archmages, and others, may work on very lumpy discrete projects which they have to switch between as the relative priority of Waystones compared to their other commitments shifts over time.
There could well be periods where archmages and runesmiths have more capacity because Ulthuan and Karak Azul aren't at war but the Collegiate wizards are all busy because a Waaagh is brewing up in the Vaults and looking like it's heading north east.
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- Location
- Before the Ninth Gate
With this, I'm all in on having elves doing the Hysh foundation. It maximizes throughput, and avoids giving one college too much importance.
So I've got a question about the project overall. Do the waystones we're building work as nexuses? If not, do we plan on building nexuses or are we planning to just fill in where the old nexuses broke with smaller waystones and connect to the other nexuses through leylines and stuff
Based on everything we've seen, no and there are no current serious plans to tackle the construction of new nexus locations or anything about the rebuilding of damaged ones.
Thing is, as mentioned above, constructing the foundation is unlikely to be the rate limiting step, and it reduces the competition for producing the component if the goal is to reduce the opportunity cost.
I'd prefer to make it possible for the Damsels to be able to manufacture the foundation at scale so that for them it's not entirely foreign built and designed, to give them more of a sense of ownership of the end product.
Talking of ownership, if we include the spirit riverine option that would ensure that the local traditions were an integral part of deploying the Waystones in their area as they'd be the ones negotiating with their local spirits/gods. It would hopefully give them more of a sense of skin in the game.
I'd quite like to look at it post-Elfcation as a stretch goal.
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Wiadi
Uncompromising Radical Leftist
- Location
- Something Clever
- Pronouns
- She/Her
...hm, now I'm doubting my memory. Are leylines a thing purely as a consequence of the Waystone network, or are they existing lines along which the Waystones need to be placed to function? I was thinking the latter (in which case you'd only be able to turn by taking a different line at an intersection) but I could be mistaken.
Is it though? We definitely need them on something but I'm not sure we need them on two things, especially if the one thing we have them on is "literally just the same as the Golden Age Waystone version" (and therefore presumably pretty prestigious, compared to some of our other kludges).
At any rate, on consideration, I think I'm gonna be a single-issue voter in favor of Reverse-Engineered Storage. Yes it's ridiculously hard to do right now, but the sooner we start refining it down the better. I'm of the opinion that we should make multiple designs - at least "easy/cheap" and "hard/expensive" variants - and this is the only thing that's directly sensitive to the order we do those in.
- Location
- Before the Ninth Gate
This is the least costly option. The others are more expensive, both in difficulty and materials.
Damsels can (maybe, but at least in base 40k) cast Hysh at some point. I forget the specifics. But we could teach them too.
So this is probably going to get lost in the shuffle, but I really feel like we're tripping at the finish line here. We shouldn't be considering making sure each polity contributed a component to the final model like they are kids at a science fair. We should be making the best model to roll out at scale.
Do you know what the various polities that contributed to the project get then?
Cheap Waystones that they can implement now!
That's a huge win and they can just brag about how they were part of the project, it's not like most of the people putting up or even ordering waystones will take a detailed look at our project history.
Remember way back in the stirland arc:
To that end:
[ ] Plan Boring as Possible
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Runic Inductor
-[ ] [RUNE] Carved
-[ ] [STORAGE] [Cheap] Material
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Clockwork
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
And in acknowledgement that budget matters a lot for wide deployment infrastructure
[ ] Plan Boring as Possible cheap foundation
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Runic Inductor
-[ ] [RUNE] Carved
-[ ] [STORAGE] [Cheap] Material
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Clockwork
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] hybrid
--[ ] hedgewise
That's right, I included the hedgewise transmission method specifically because it's noted to make the foundation cheaper to make!
I beg of the thread to treat this as the last chance we get to work on this because our boss has already gotten everything they want out of the project. Lurelorn has all the legitimacy it needs with the treaty and now we are bleeding money.
Everyone assumes that we will show this off and get more time to work with it but what happens if we show a too expensive boondoggle and the queen says "Awesome, great work everyone! I'll take it from here," and then gets confused when none of the humans will buy her awesome human made way stones that each take half a magic user year to make and need hundreds per providence to take effect.
Prototypes are not a thing culturally yet.
Treat this like the end it is.
@picklepikkl Thank you for your work on this
Do you know what the various polities that contributed to the project get then?
Cheap Waystones that they can implement now!
That's a huge win and they can just brag about how they were part of the project, it's not like most of the people putting up or even ordering waystones will take a detailed look at our project history.
Remember way back in the stirland arc:
If a way stone needs 4 or 5 different enchantments per stone and each of those takes a magic user month then the project has already failed. We owe it to the old world to try every mundane solution first before resorting to magic.
To that end:
[ ] Plan Boring as Possible
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Runic Inductor
-[ ] [RUNE] Carved
-[ ] [STORAGE] [Cheap] Material
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Clockwork
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
And in acknowledgement that budget matters a lot for wide deployment infrastructure
[ ] Plan Boring as Possible cheap foundation
-[ ] [CAPSTONE] Runic Inductor
-[ ] [RUNE] Carved
-[ ] [STORAGE] [Cheap] Material
-[ ] [FOUNDATION] Clockwork
-[ ] [TRANSMISSION] hybrid
--[ ] hedgewise
That's right, I included the hedgewise transmission method specifically because it's noted to make the foundation cheaper to make!
I beg of the thread to treat this as the last chance we get to work on this because our boss has already gotten everything they want out of the project. Lurelorn has all the legitimacy it needs with the treaty and now we are bleeding money.
Everyone assumes that we will show this off and get more time to work with it but what happens if we show a too expensive boondoggle and the queen says "Awesome, great work everyone! I'll take it from here," and then gets confused when none of the humans will buy her awesome human made way stones that each take half a magic user year to make and need hundreds per providence to take effect.
Prototypes are not a thing culturally yet.
Treat this like the end it is.
@picklepikkl Thank you for your work on this
Tasoli
Life is for Living
- Location
- Behind the Keyboard.
Do those goals have to be done as the first Waystone? IT makes no sense to me to go for such irrevelant targets when we have not even proven that we can build waystones at all. There is nothing stopping us from building otherkinds of waystones later but for the first protype I want a muscle car not a microcar with tacky paint.