Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

[Alratan]

We can use rivers because they have been following that route for thousands of years. The Reik and its tributaries evidently don't move that much, but I imagine that streams would move a lot more. Rivers are also a lot more significant than streams, I assume that would be true metaphysically too. You probably could bury the menhir under the stream, but how many streams go to a useful place? And would it really be worth making Jade menhirs for every nothing stream in the Empire?

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I think it depends on what' else is there. If there's an important town or fort at the bridge or ford of a stream, then it might be worth burying a jade menhir under there as well as in the larger river it flows into.

This is somewhere that the spirit option may have worked better, if streams have spirits. It's not dependent on induced correspondence, and what a stream spirit acts for might be quite limited relative to a river spirit.

 

[MrHobbit]

I think it depends on what' else is there. If there's an important town or fort at the bridge or ford of a stream, then it might be worth burying a jade menhir under there as well as in the larger river it flows into.

This is somewhere that the spirit option may have worked better, if streams have spirits. It's not dependent on induced correspondence, and what a stream spirit acts for might be quite limited relative to a river spirit.

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Personally I think the Spirit option would have been better anyways, but the vote is as it is.

Still, you aren't pointing to common circumstances, just exceptions. Most streams in the Empire aren't individually significant except to the peasants that live near them. I wouldn't be surprised if they all had spirits. I would be surprised if the majority of those streams had yngra elthrai and lead to places we can dump the energies.

 

[Alratan]

Personally I think the Spirit option would have been better anyways, but the vote is as it is.

Still, you aren't pointing to common circumstances, just exceptions. Most streams in the Empire aren't individually significant except to the peasants that live near them. I wouldn't be surprised if they all had spirits. I would be surprised if the majority of those streams had yngra elthrai and lead to places we can dump the energies.

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Depending on what our production rate of Waystones is like, for the first few years I think it's quite likely that every location a Waystone goes is exceptional for one reason or other.

They'd need to be to beat out all the other options.

 

[French Cowboy]

Also, I really don't want the Rhunkit anywhere near the Project. They are only capable of rote, repeated actions. They do not have any understanding of the fundamentals of Runesmithing. I'm sure that the Rune is a lot more complex than light runes and breathing runes. Having them near the Project risks the Runesmithing Guild throwing a fit about Waystones in general depending on how they try to process them

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This isn't super related to the current vote, but I'm really excited to see what becomes of the Rhunkit. They have the capacity to become exactly the sort of runesmith's guild Thorek is trying to force the current one into.

They already have a culture of sharing all of their knowledge, as little as it is, and teaching as many as possible so as to better protect the whole of their society. Once they gain access to more runes, whether by reverse engineering then from already existing runed items or getting them from other places, they may become a magical power in their own right to rival the runesmith's guild. The cooperation of many of the Rhunkit may allow their magical knowledge to advance in much the same way technology advances in the modern day.

 

[fictionfan]

Depending on what our production rate of Waystones is like, for the first few years I think it's quite likely that every location a Waystone goes is exceptional for one reason or other.

They'd need to be to beat out all the other options.

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For the next decade or so I expect that most of our Waystone network work by wind volume will be tributary work. Even the cheapest waystone models are far more expensive than tributaries so for immediate improvements tributaries seem like the way to go.

 

[Tobtorp]

I think for the next decades (see the plural) wayetones will be used for important places that need them, or as political tools to reward allies (laurelorn) and incentives potential allies (bretonnia).
My personal list of places that get wayetones looks a bit like this
1) praag, still has people living in it, is the foremost city against chaos, will give Boris a huge leg up in pr.
2) mordheim, mostly because it needs less stones then Sylvania
3) Sylvania. Because: Sylvania
4) depending on if bretonnia joined either Mousillion or the blackwater (dwarfs like this)
5) drakwald or forest of shadows.
6) everything else.

[X] Plan Building A Better Future (With reverse engineering)

 

[Alratan]

For the next decade or so I expect that most of our Waystone network work by wind volume will be tributary work. Even the cheapest waystone models are far more expensive than tributaries so for immediate improvements tributaries seem like the way to go.

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Probably true. There's also the factor that in the places that most need help we may want to install a new Waystone and a set of tributaries to feed it, maximising the impact each Waystone has.

Thinking about it, optimising first for cost and then for ease of manufacture would probably be something like:

[] Cheap & Dirty
- [] [CAPSTONE] Runic Inductor
- [] [RUNE] Carved
- [ ] [STORAGE] None
- [] [FOUNDATION] Clockwork
and either:
[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Riverine (Hedgewise)
or:
- [] [TRANSMISSION] Riverine (Spirit)

That has a total of three negligible (after foundation discount) and one of a trivial or a unpredictable cost/service (stated to be expensive or annoying for an individual but easy for a state).

And even that requires the services of a runesmith apprentice and a clockmaker or engineer, and that's not cheap.

 

[fictionfan]

Absolutely, it's just even without investigating kislevs network (which we absolutely should do) we still can cover praag because of the riverine option.
Generally this was just my "who gets the shiny stones first." List.

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I sort of hope that the ice witches have been studying their own network in the background as we work. Because if they aren't able to help with developing their own network they might start obstructing us out of sher shame.

 

[Tobtorp]

I sort of hope that the ice witches have been studying their own network in the background as we work. Because if they aren't able to help with developing their own network they might start obstructing us out of sher shame.

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At that point we just gotta hope for some direct divine intervention... Have the widow smack some sense into someone...

 

[French Cowboy]

1) praag, still has people living in it, is the foremost city against chaos, will give Boris a huge leg up in pr.
2) mordheim, mostly because it needs less stones then Sylvania
3) Sylvania. Because: Sylvania
4) depending on if bretonnia joined either Mousillion or the blackwater (dwarfs like this)
5) drakwald or forest of shadows.
6) everything else.

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I like this list, I would put Sylvania above mordheim because I would like Sylvania to cease and mordheim isn't currently causing any issues. After that, I'd like to take a crack at troll country, because strengthening kislev in the face of a coming everchosen seems to be a solid investment.

I'm hoping that the next type of stone we build is one which can be entirely built in house by the colleges, just because we have more influence with them and can get them to throw more magical manpower at waystone creation, especially after we drop the orbs of power on them.

 

[Tobtorp]

I like this list, I would put Sylvania above mordheim because I would like Sylvania to cease and mordheim isn't currently causing any issues. After that, I'd like to take a crack at troll country, because strengthening kislev in the face of a coming everchosen seems to be a solid investment.

I'm hoping that the next type of stone we build is one which can be entirely built in house by the colleges, just because we have more influence with them and can get them to throw more magical manpower at waystone creation, especially after we drop the orbs of power on them.

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My thinking for mordheim is twofold, firstly Sylvania is currently occupied and pretty much under control. Secondly, mordheim is als pacified but not currently occupied and mordheim always has some gribblies, always.

And again it probably needs less stones then all of Sylvania.

 

[spiritualatheist]

Wrt building more waystone models, I think we're going to want at least two more to ease mass deployment. What we are making now works best as a receiver, to take in all the Dhar that we're dumping into a river and transmit it over to the original network. But the rest of our river Waystones don't actually need that functionality, so long as there's one receiver at the mouth of the river to get rid of the Dhar. Similarly, a leyline-only model would massively reduce duplication of effort and enable easier rollout.

I think for the next decades (see the plural) wayetones will be used for important places that need them, or as political tools to reward allies (laurelorn) and incentives potential allies (bretonnia).
My personal list of places that get wayetones looks a bit like this
1) praag, still has people living in it, is the foremost city against chaos, will give Boris a huge leg up in pr.
2) mordheim, mostly because it needs less stones then Sylvania
3) Sylvania. Because: Sylvania
4) depending on if bretonnia joined either Mousillion or the blackwater (dwarfs like this)
5) drakwald or forest of shadows.
6) everything else.

[X] Plan Building A Better Future (With reverse engineering)

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I agree that Praag and Kislev as a whole should be our top priorities, but I think Mordheim should be much lower on the list. Any Waystone that we put there would require an ongoing military occupation of Mordheim to secure it, and draining the dark magic away would definitely irritate all the gribblies who call the place home. Initial rollout should be focused on easy sells to build political capital, i.e. places where there already is a military garrison that can protect all our work.

 

[fictionfan]

I'm hoping that the next type of stone we build is one which can be entirely built in house by the colleges, just because we have more influence with them and can get them to throw more magical manpower at waystone creation, especially after we drop the orbs of power on them.

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Fairly sure we could assign the entire college to tributaries creation for the next few years and not run out of places to put them.

 

[Tobtorp]

Wrt building more waystone models, I think we're going to want at least two more to ease mass deployment. What we are making now works best as a receiver, to take in all the Dhar that we're dumping into a river and transmit it over to the original network. But the rest of our river Waystones don't actually need that functionality, so long as there's one receiver at the mouth of the river to get rid of the Dhar. Similarly, a leyline-only model would massively reduce duplication of effort and enable easier rollout.

I agree that Praag and Kislev as a whole should be our top priorities, but I think Mordheim should be much lower on the list. Any Waystone that we put there would require an ongoing military occupation of Mordheim to secure it, and draining the dark magic away would definitely irritate all the gribblies who call the place home. Initial rollout should be focused on easy sells to build political capital, i.e. places where there already is a military garrison that can protect all our work.

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Eh, if we tell Ostermark they can have a cleansed mordheim I bet they'll provide the occupation forces happily.

 

[Parabola]

I'd say Praag or Sylvania first, they may be occupied but waystones would improve things for their citizens. Praag's rate of mutation is extremely high IIRC, and Sylvania is still Sylvania - we want to make sure our victories stick.

 

[spiritualatheist]

Eh, if we tell Ostermark they can have a cleansed mordheim I bet they'll provide the occupation forces happily.

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They already bled themselves white pacifying it, I doubt they'll want to go back and bleed themselves again for something of such dubious short-term benefit. The place is pacified and not spitting out gribblies at the moment, which is fine. Better to spend the resources on directly helping people.

 

[Alratan]

I'm hoping that the next type of stone we build is one which can be entirely built in house by the colleges, just because we have more influence with them and can get them to throw more magical manpower at waystone creation, especially after we drop the orbs of power on them.

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Thinking about it more, my preference is for something that's officially an export model (but the Colleges can manufacture in extremis), a design that shouldn't be deployed in the Empire but we'd get the Ulthuani elves to license the design, pay us royalties, and countries that needed them could buy them.

What I'm thinking is this:

Export Model
[ ] [CAPSTONE] Collegiate
[ ] [RUNE] Wizard
[ ] [STORAGE] None
[ ] [FOUNDATION] Collegiate
[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Riverine (Spirit)

This is a design that the elves of Ulthuan should be able to manufacture at scale as they've (hopefully) plenty of people who can do Wind enchanting, possibly even using different Winds, albeit one at a time, and it's not very expensive. Two low costs, one trivial, and whatever you need to pay the local river spirit.

I think the Collegiate foundation is much more politically acceptable for a Waystone design that wouldn't be deployed in the Empire, as they would be out of sight and so out of mind, rather than having a College designed enchantment manufacturing Dhar on street corners.

Similarly, being dependent on making a deal with a spirit is much less of an issue for an export design, as it's the customers' problem. Kislev seems to have a good handle on its water spirits, so I don't anticipate it being a problem for them, and I think there are suggestions that on Ulthuan the elves have decent relations with the local nature spirits. In other places like the human inhabitants of the Southlands or the East, that's the local's issue to sort out.

The big, big thing about this design is that Boney has confirmed that it could work on a boat. This means that the Waystones would be vastly easier to deploy and transfer/concentrate where they're needed. Negotiate once with the spirit of the river, and afterwards any 'Wayboats' you have along it would function. That way, if, say a Storm of Magic blew in from the north, Kislev could sail a flotilla of Wayboats up the river to intercept the storm and drain it downstream. That would create a quite fun and quite flavourful squadron, who'd probably collect all sorts of bizarre stories to tell of their adventures. The stretch goal of this would be to see if you could learn to tap into the power flowing through the Wayboats in a controlled fashion to power a battle altar so if you sent them to intercept a Storm of Magic or similar they'd be better able to fight any nasties that accompanied it. You might need to add a Cheap enchncted battery for that.

 

[Parabola]

...You know, I do wonder just how many vampires from Sylvania may have fled to Mordheim after the Battle Wizards arrived. Seems like the natural first place to go to.

 

[Tobtorp]

They already bled themselves white pacifying it, I doubt they'll want to go back and bleed themselves again for something of such dubious short-term benefit. The place is pacified and not spitting out gribblies at the moment, which is fine. Better to spend the resources on directly helping people.

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Ok a) boney has stated that Mordheim always spits out gribblies, even after being pacified... And b) it's been 15 years since Ostermark "bleed itself dry." That's a long time for humans to build up their army again.

Edited for thinking it's been 25 years instead of 15.

 

[spiritualatheist]

Ok a) boney has stated that Mordheim always spits out gribblies, even after being pacified... And b) it's been 25 years since Ostland "bleed itself dry." That's a long time for humans to build up their army again.

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Sure but you're still asking for a massive amount of blood and treasure. It absolutely isn't going to be an easy sell.

 

[Tobtorp]

Sure but you're still asking for a massive amount of blood and treasure. It absolutely isn't going to be an easy sell.

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Eh, comparing the needed wayetones to cover Sylvania and mordheim makes it's more of a value proposition then some other trades. Not saying you aren't wrong but again, Sylvania is doing pretty decently and mordheim had 15, years of building up again. Putting a stop to that before it gets going again seems more prudent to me and a cheap option.

 

[MrHobbit]

Depending on what our production rate of Waystones is like, for the first few years I think it's quite likely that every location a Waystone goes is exceptional for one reason or other.

They'd need to be to beat out all the other options.

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And it is very likely that many of those exceptional areas wouldn't have streams near them in the first place. Because the areas where waystones fall the most often are far from rivers. The both leyline waystone is good because it would help us set up waystones in places where it is completely destroyed without waiting to link it up to the network, while still allowing that to happen in the future.

And again, this seems common with you. You didn't address whether the yngra elthrai would work for streams.

Wrt building more waystone models, I think we're going to want at least two more to ease mass deployment. What we are making now works best as a receiver, to take in all the Dhar that we're dumping into a river and transmit it over to the original network. But the rest of our river Waystones don't actually need that functionality, so long as there's one receiver at the mouth of the river to get rid of the Dhar. Similarly, a leyline-only model would massively reduce duplication of effort and enable easier rollout.

Click to shrink...

I don't see the purpose of designing more riverine waystones. It's a waste of time. Make keyphrase leyline waystones. That is the ideal method of transmission. We're putting up riverine waystones so we can put them up in areas where the network doesn't exist. Having both methods means that eventually these waystones can just send magic along the leylines and use the rivers as a backup.

I genuinely do not comprehend why people want riverine leylines so much.

Thinking about it more, my preference is for something that's officially an export model, a design that wouldn't be deployed in the Empire but we'd get the Ulthuani elves to license the design, pay us royalties, and countries that needed them could buy them.

What I'm thinking is this:

Export Model
[ ] [CAPSTONE] Collegiate
[ ] [RUNE] Wizard
[ ] [STORAGE] None
[ ] [FOUNDATION] Collegiate
[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Riverine (Spirit)

This is a design that the elves of Ulthuan should be able to manufacture at scale as they've (hopefully) plenty of people who can do Wind enchanting, possibly even using different Winds, albeit one at a time, and it's not very expensive.

Click to shrink...

Barely anything about this proposal makes any sense. Most of Ulthuan's waystone network is intact. They want to rebuild portions of it that were lost. No, Ulthuan does not need mobile waystones. Yvresse doesn't even have many rivers in the first place.

What bottleneck does the Project have that is the simplest to reduce? The Golden Age storage mechanism. What is the best way of getting Ulthuan's many more Archmages than entire Old World combined could put together to contribute to simplifying it? Giving them a waystone that uses the Golden Age storage mechanism.

Instead, something like this is much more reasonable.
[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
[ ] [RUNE] Wizard
[ ] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
[ ] [FOUNDATION] (this could really be any of them, but the Grey Lord will probably last the longest)
[ ] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline

 

[Alratan]

Fairly sure we could assign the entire college to tributaries creation for the next few years and not run out of places to put them.

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That's true. If we're looking for ways to further improve the Waystone Project deployment, then pragmatically we could do a lot worse than going back to the Tributary drawing board along with representatives from some new traditions and hammering out a few more methods to make Tributaries.

Finding more generally usable methods would be really helpful to accelerate deployment. Particularly if we could find one priests could perform as a big fraction of the 'magic users' in the Empire are priests. Sadly Sigmar probably has the portfolio that most easily lends itself to making the bad (ie. any) magic go away.

Eh, comparing the needed wayetones to cover Sylvania and mordheim makes it's more of a value proposition then some other trades. Not saying you aren't wrong but again, Sylvania is doing pretty decently and mordheim had 25, years of building up again. Putting a stop to that before it gets going again seems more prudent to me and a cheap option.

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This is why I think we should consider trying to design mobile Waystones. That way we can deploy a bunch of them at once to one hot spot, drain it of accumulated dhar, and then move them on to the next place.

And it is very likely that many of those exceptional areas wouldn't have streams near them in the first place. Because the areas where waystones fall the most often are far from rivers. The both leyline waystone is good because it would help us set up waystones in places where it is completely destroyed without waiting to link it up to the network, while still allowing that to happen in the future.

And again, this seems common with you. You didn't address whether the yngra elthrai would work for streams.

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Almost anywhere people live will in the Old World will have streams and rivers. Othewise they'd have starved to death for lack of food.

And it's impossible to know whether yngra elthrai would work for streams. I don't think we have any evidence either way. The only way we'd know is to try.

Barely anything about this proposal makes any sense. Most of Ulthuan's waystone network is intact. They want to rebuild portions of it that were lost. No, Ulthuan does not need mobile waystones. Yvresse doesn't even have many rivers in the first place.

What bottleneck does the Project have that is the simplest to reduce? The Golden Age storage mechanism. What is the best way of getting Ulthuan's many more Archmages than entire Old World combined could put together to contribute to simplifying it? Giving them a waystone that uses the Golden Age storage mechanism.

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Yvresse is the land in between a mountain range and the ocean. It's going to have rivers coming down from those mountains and pouring out into the sea. Most of them may not be vast behemoths so wide they're visible on continent scale maps, but that doesn't mean they're not there. If you look at a map of Europe very few rivers would be visible, but that doesn't mean there's only the Rhine and Danube and couple of others on the continent.

What Yvresse clams to want is something that can be made and deployed quickly, and that are resistant to attack and sabotage. Presumably because their Waystone network is a mess. This would meet that need, it would act as a stopgap until more permanent solutions could be made. Wayboats are designed as a temporary method to protect settlements or drain hotspots until the full network can be re-establsihed.

And note that my suggestion would not require any archamage labour at all. They can still be focused entirely on the storage problem for a longer term solution.

 

[French Cowboy]

I genuinely do not comprehend why people want riverine leylines so much.

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I think there's a couple of reasons, three of the regions we care about clearing have rivers: Sylvania, Mordheim and The Blackwater. The other reason is that a system which has riverine as a back up is more durable in the case of parts of the network shutting down, and because of that I think a lot of voters view it as being inherently superior to the golden age's waystones.

 

[spiritualatheist]

I don't see the purpose of designing more riverine waystones. It's a waste of time. Make keyphrase leyline waystones. That is the ideal method of transmission. We're putting up riverine waystones so we can put them up in areas where the network doesn't exist. Having both methods means that eventually these waystones can just send magic along the leylines and use the rivers as a backup.

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The keyword there is "eventually." In the scope of this quest, having a purely riverine design is going to massively reduce the time it takes to roll these things out in contested areas. In case you've forgotten, we need to get as many Waystones as possible up and running before the next Everchosen hits Kislev. Improving rollout speed as much as we can is absolutely critical, and absolutely worth two actions.

Its also important to note that making these things easier to put up is going to increase the speed at which the reverse engineered storage gets better, so it's even more worth the investment.