Praag is also on a river. It's why I think understanding Kislev's network is critically important next turn--if we can figure out how to hook our stones up, we could start draining the Dhar with just two stones
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
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- 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
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The reveal that river spirit deals are one-and-done for any number of waystones makes me kinda wish that better future had gone with that as its riverine component - not necessarily because it would be cheaper (it might be? Could easily not be though), but because adding "the literal spirits of the land we built it on" to the list of entities who are keeping knowledge of waystones alive is a fucking wild perk and I'm all for it.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
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Ulric or Tael would also be a very suitable gods for the purpose.
Because people usually live close to flowing water, because you need water for agriculture, and the setting pre-dates large scale pumping of water from aquifers.
And the main proactive job of Waystones is to protect people who live in their vicinity. It matters much less if there's a high magic concentration where no one or very few people live. The leyline network approach requires building lines of expensive Waystones through the middle of nowhere where they're very hard to defend and aren't doing very much of use. The riverine approach allows you to cover a large proportion of the population using a fraction as many Waystones, so it can be done much faster and more cheaply.
It could take many decades to build enough leyline Waystones to connect all the places we need - and in Kislev, for example, the leyline Waystones may not work at all. And those leyline Waystones in the middle of nowhere will then always be vulnerable to attack and destruction, so why bother to build them at all, when there are so many places on rivers that need protection?
I thought about this options some more, and wondered if part of the value of this option might have turned out to be using this deal to build a foundation for future deals with those river spirits. The Empire might be prepared to pay handsomely for river spirits to carry high priority military and government comms instantaneously along their length, for example.
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Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
a) Ostermark
b) It's been about 15 years, the quest hasn't hit 25 years running.
Or Ranald even, if we wanted the waystones to be far harder to find.
Would definitely fit in with the ideals of the protector.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
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- Tempe, AZ
Ranald doesn't really fit. Even as the protector he tends towards flashy daring hijinks not infrastructure.
Maybe he could supply a ritual for stealing a large concentration of magic. But it wouldn't be a continuous thing.
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Well, the Protector is generally seem specifically as the Protector of the common folk against the tyranny of their social superiors, ie. from internal rather than external threats. I don't think he's a general god of protection from bad things happening to you. I think Boney discussed this way back towards the beginning of the quest during the attempts to convert the Stirland Guard.
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Maaan, it's been a long day, thanks for the catch.
A Ranaldian tributary has been on our action list for a few turns, though.
I *expect* they were more heavily involved in the crafting of the Karak waystones and the non absorbent linkage mountains.
I don't think this waystone is actually designed to pull magic *out* of a river, just put it in. I'm more envisioning a river dotted with pure riverine waystones, with every once in a while one of these dual stones serving as a linkage for branches of leyline stones so that if anything happens downstream on the leylines whole sections of the network can just keep dumping it in the river instead of blowing up into dhar sinks.
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So, I think there is tremendous value in having permanent waystones at settlements - no faster response time than "already here", after all, and morrslieb can wax at any time.
But at the same time, the idea of being able to have, like, waystone-FEMA roll up to somewhere with extra waystones is absolutely wonderful, and so is the idea of just sticking waystones on every ship we please, so I am super duper in favor of doing a low cost spirit riverine-only waystone after this. That shit sounds cool as hell. Longer-term, the idea of just, big military or trade ships in general having them would also be super baller - just, passively cleaning up any trade routes.
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Naturally, the Waystone Network was the greatest heist of all time. Caledor and everyone that contributed to the network stole an entire planet from the chaos gods. How could Ranald resist getting in on that?
This statement doesn't mean anything. It also does not address what I said, AGAIN. Why are you so incapable of addressing the points people bring up against you? Rivers and streams are where the Empire would be focusing on the most for the exact reason that you pointed out. So the vast majority of places where the 1,000 to 2,000 waystones in the Empire that need to be replaced will be places where there are not easy flows of water.
Does the average stream flow in the same location for thousands of years? Or even exist for that timespan? The team used the term "river" they did not use the term "flowing body of water". I see no reason to assume that it will work the way you assume.
Yes, loads of rivers exist that aren't typically on maps. That does not mean that riverine waystones can be used in all of those areas. Because there is a very big flaw with that.
Do you know what it is? I've been bringing it up for the past hundred pages. See, for the exact reasons that you mention, that rivers are necessary for civilization, the waystone network is the most secure along rivers. For places where it was destroyed or was never created, like Moussilon, Sylvania, and Troll Country that does not matter so much. But for places like Bretonnia and the Empire, that does matter! The vast majority of areas where you are pointing to as an example of where riverine waystones would be useful are already covered. And no, I do not want to replace vast sections of the network and add a thousand more waystones to the number of what the Project wants to replace.
Eltharion brought Mathilde's attention that it was difficult to get Caledor to make waystone gold, implying that was one of Ulthuan's major bottlenecks. And there's something funny here. The purpose of the reverse-engineered leylines is that it won't require Archmages forever. Isn't that what you were arguing before? Eliminate the need to have both leylines, and the waystone I proposed would easily satisfy that requirement.
And again, what's the best way to get Ulthuan's archmages to spend the most effort refining the enchantment? Making it so they need to do it to restore Yvresse's waystones the quickest.
Yeah I get wanting to be able to deploy waystones to Sylvania right off the bat. I even get wanting to have it as a backup system. But that is not the argument I'm criticizing. Purely riverine leylines are best used in places where the network is just completely gone like Sylvania. Not in places where civilization at its strongest. That being, along the rivers. Where the Empire can deploy the most soldiers to kill people who like toppling waystones.
(Edit: I should be more clear that I don't get why people are seeking out riverine waystones so much. The enthusiasm about it is just weird.)
Restoring the waystone network is going to be a project of decades. We have upwards of two thousand waystones to replace in the Empire alone. Stripping a waystone down to the bare components will definite put up more, but they'll be less effective in the long-run too.
I've mentioned this before but rivers are going to be some of the most well-off sections of the Waystone network. That's where the least waystones will need to be deployed to ward off magic and gribblies. Because that is where the Empire, Bretonnia, ect can deploy armies the best to destroy threats.
I was not criticizing the current winning design. I was criticizing building purely riverine designs. If it turns out that the Kislevite network won't work with keyphrases, sure. But on its own that sucks. That is a failstate. Not something to be desired.
It will take many decades to build any kind of waystones in the numbers you are talking about.
I already covered these points above, but I'll reply again. The areas where civilization focuses are the areas where the waystone network will be the safest. That means that along rivers, you would have the least need for waystones to be replaced. In those areas, the damaged would be much more limited. Therefore the most utility for waystones would be those that can interface with both riverine leylines and keyphrase functionality. And the least utility for waystones that only have riverine capacity.
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I mean, to be fair if we *were* going to do that we could theoretically just uproot the existing waystones along the rivers and put them somewhere else, not just delete them from existence.
Of the major gods with widespread presence across the Old World, Shallya's priesthood is everywhere, and might make a good candidate for a Tributary ritual if you conceptualise them as draining poison from the land?
Oh yes, they probably built their private network themselves. I meant with regards to the wider network.
And I think you're making the best the enemy of the good and not recognising the constraints we're operating under. Most of the Waystones in the middle of nowhere that are broken don't inherently mater that much, because they're in the middle of nowhere. And if they're in the middle of nowhere if we go in and replace them what stops the local nasties coming back and destroying or defacing them when we're gone? This, I think, was Eltharion's point. The Golden Age leyline based network assumes that your hinterlands where your connecting Waystones are is secure. If it's not, as the Empire's isn't, and Yvyrsse's suddenly stopped being when Grom invaded, then building expensive Waystones out in the wilds is just an invitation for the local Brayherd or invading Waaagh to turn them into Herdstones or Icons of Gork/Mork.
Having a bunch of intact Golden Age Waystones doesn't matter if they don't work because they're not connected to the wider leyline network and can't be securely connected because the route to the nearest nexus goes through hostile territory, which a large fraction of the land inside the Empire's internal borders is. From what I understand, human controlled lands are islands in a sea of hostiles, linked by the relatively safe rivers and much more dangerous roads.
And if we do reach the point where we can build and protect lines of leyline Waystones to reconnect the network, then we should be able to pick up the riverine Waystones we previously had there and move them to somewhere else they're needed. They're not wasted or redundant.
We've no idea if the average stream flows in the same location for thousands of years. If the Reik and other major rivers do, when there are far greater natural forces that would encourage their paths to shift, why not their tributaries?
Oh yes, they probably built their private network themselves. I meant with regards to the wider network.
And I think you're making the best the enemy of the good and not recognising the constraints we're operating under. Most of the Waystones in the middle of nowhere that are broken don't inherently mater that much, because they're in the middle of nowhere. And if they're in the middle of nowhere if we go in and replace them what stops the local nasties coming back and destroying or defacing them when we're gone? This, I think, was Eltharion's point. The Golden Age leyline based network assumes that your hinterlands where your connecting Waystones are is secure. If it's not, as the Empire's isn't, and Yvyrsse's suddenly stopped being when Grom invaded, then building expensive Waystones out in the wilds is just an invitation for the local Brayherd or invading Waaagh to turn them into Herdstones or Icons of Gork/Mork.
Having a bunch of intact Golden Age Waystones doesn't matter if they don't work because they're not connected to the wider leyline network and can't be securely connected because the route to the nearest nexus goes through hostile territory, which a large fraction of the land inside the Empire's internal borders is. From what I understand, human controlled lands are islands in a sea of hostiles, linked by the relatively safe rivers and much more dangerous roads.
And if we do reach the point where we can build and protect lines of leyline Waystones to reconnect the network, then we should be able to pick up the riverine Waystones we previously had there and move them to somewhere else they're needed. They're not wasted or redundant.
We've no idea if the average stream flows in the same location for thousands of years. If the Reik and other major rivers do, when there are far greater natural forces that would encourage their paths to shift, why not their tributaries?
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- Location
- Washington
[X] Plan Building A Better Future (With reverse engineering)
The way you pull magic out of the river is by sinking a Waystone or series of Waystones into the river, as detailed in this post, so they'll work perfectly well. And I don't think your idea would work, unfortunately. The leyline connections rely on the already existing Waystone network and the mind inside it to work. You can't put a dual use stone up in Prague and build out from there because that mind isn't going to extend through our riverine network.
You can theoretically disconnect the waystones and have the connected waystones still work... But why you would do such a thing is a whole different can of worms.
You can move them I guess, and that would cut down on the number we would need to make by a lot. I was also exaggerating a large amount because I would prefer not to make even so much as one waystone more than what we need to. It's probably closer to a hundred or so. I'm not confident enough in the waystones to do that. You can definitely cut off waystones and replace them. But cutting them off, moving in a new one, and moving the old one somewhere else just seems... unsafe. It's not just about the risk of destroying them in transport. The components were designed to be portable, but the finished waystone itself????
A large number of waystones are also religiously and culturally significant. I want to mess with as few of those as possible.
Yes, triage. That is the name of the game. Do you know what isn't triage? Putting waystones where shit is already working and they haven't even suffered a damn paper cut. I too, when I see someone with a broken arm go first to help the person who is jumping around with joy about how good their day is but is a decade away from tripping on a rock and falling off of a cliff.
I am aware that there are large sections that are cut off. That does not mean that even the majority of those waystone chains can be reconnected with riverine leylines. Whether it be that the rivers are just inconveniently placed or that waystones just won't attach to new waystones without being connected to the network. 50-75% of the Empire's waystone network does not need to be replaced. That number really does not imply that large numbers of intact waystones can be reconnected with One Wierd Trick.
The vast majority of waystones that need to be replaced in the Empire are certainly congregated together. With the riverine opportunities you point out being much rarer.
(also this isn't something Mathilde brought up as a possibility, as I've pointed out before)
You suggesting that purely riverine leylines can be temporary contradicts the rest of your argument. You point to riverine waystones as waystones we can build quickly to cover areas where the Network is gone. This is going to be a process of decades, so it's definitely possible for the Empire to cleanse several chunks in that time period. If the Empire can do it in that time span why erect a riverine waystone in that area and instead spend time building waystones in places that are either already secure and just need one or two waystones to reconnect to the Network or replacing the Network in the Drakwald or Sylvania? If the Empire has dozens of waystones that are a few decades off from exploding, then those areas are already fucked and riverine leylines won't be of much help.
Did they mention streams as possibility? No. They did not. The rivers of Empire have much more oomph behind them. Whatever caused it, it is certainly unnatural. If it is because of the strength of the spirits of the river and the yngra elthrai, then obviously the Reik and Talabec, ect would shift less than mere streams. If it was the artifice of the Old Ones, who knows which streams were engineered to remain in place and which ones weren't.
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As an example of what I'm talking about. Say that we take the town of Laer, which sits on the banks of the Drakwasser, which a tributary of the Talbec.
Let us posit that the Waystone in the town is intact. Unfortunately it's inactive, as Laer is surrounded by thick forests periodically infested by beastmen and forest goblins, and over the last millenia they're knocked out some unknown proportion of the line of Waystones that used to lead to the nearest nexus.
Now, to get Laer securely protected by a Waystone, I have two choices.
1) I can drop a series of menhirs on the river bed and install a single new generation dual transmission or riverine Waystone inside Laer. I can then take the original Waystone from Laer and ship it somewhere else it would be useful.
2) I can drive a road through the deep forests (probably up and down the Howling Hills) along the line of Golden Age Waystones, searching the forest along the various cardinal directions to find the next one (as there'll be no flow to follow yet). At each Waystone I find, I build and garrison a fort, and anywhere I find a missing Waystone, I install a new generation leyline Waystone inside the fort. When I've reached the last destroyed stone I need to continue to follow the flow, building more forts at every Waystone where there isn't human defences already, until I reach the nexus.
The first option is likely to be much cheaper and much faster, probably needs less Waystones in total and doesn't require that I continually spend money and lives to defend a line of Waystones in the middle of the wilderness. The Empire is constrained by more than just Waystone production. The reason much of the Empire is covered with forests and ruled by beastmen and greenskins probably isn't because of the lack of Waystones, it's because it doesn't have the military might to reconquer the land and the population to resettle it and keep it cleared.
I would probably be able to do the first option for multiple settlements on rivers for the cost of doing the second once.
Later on, in the happy future where the Empire can afford securely reconquer and settle the land between Laer and the nexus, you can install the leyline Waystones to close the gaps and move the riverine Waystone elsewhere while returning the original one.
I think most of the Waystones that have survived along rivers will be in the situation I posit for Laer. Rivers don't generally go in straight lines along the cardinal directions, so the Golden Age Waystones in the settlements along those rivers generally won't be connected to each other, they'll be have been connected to now severed lines of Waystones that pass through what is now hostile territory.
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I think a possible use case is an area where the network has been built out and fully connected, and then some link to the central hub gets cut off. In that case the hard work of connecting the Waystones has already been done using the oomph from the whole system, and it might be possible to have them discharge into the Dual use waystones on a river as opposed to shutting off or just building up dhar.
It seems like that could be possible but I'm not really sure if that's how it would actually play out.
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
Riverine's good because it sends the magic down the river, relying on rocks in the river instead of Waystones outside of it. A riverine Waystone can't be cut off from the network, so long as there's a Waystone at the end of the river to suck the magic back up. I can't think of an end to a major river we'd be using them on that isn't in very secure territory, because the mouths of major rivers are prime real estate. Even without that, the magic still makes it to the bottom of the river.
In contrast, a Leyline Waystone is cut off wherever a Waystone is damaged, causing Dhar to eventually build up at the last working Waystone in the chain, wherever that may be.
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You need the mind to make the connection in the first place, though. You'd need to build the riverine one, then haul a regular one up to reconnect the others, then connect the riverine one to that, then take the regular one somewhere else. It's doable, and a possible use case, but also likely to be a rare situation.
In general, I approve of having dual use waystones--there are a lot of cases where they're necessary or useful. I just want to also have solo river ones so we don't have to duplicate effort every time we put a new river Waystone in a river town.
Riverine waystones also allow us much, much more flexibility in where we put tributaries.
Well, you wouldn't remove anything. The idea is more if you build up the network normally, then if for example a Nexus gets cut off with no alternative routing to another Nexus for all the Waystones that feed into it, then all the Waystones in the hinterlands that relied on that connection might be able to instead feed into one on the river and discharge there.
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