Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

[MrHobbit]

Eltharion describes the Golden Age waystones as "the artisanry of the Inner Kingdoms" and "a Sapherian masterpiece". Yvresse is an Outer Kingdom.

This suggests to me that the mages and archmages of Yvresse do not know how to make waystones, or otherwise lack the resources for it (titan-metal, for example), and instead must commission them from Saphery and the other Inner Kingdoms. I imagine this is incredibly expensive.

The Project Waystone will still be valuable to him, because it means that not only can he get waystones from somewhere else, but he can contribute his own mages to the construction, lowering the overall price. This is absolutely a massive advantage for him, and whilst he'd probably prefer something that his people can craft by themselves, simply undercutting Saphery's monopoly is still a win.

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It might make sense that Saphery kept the designs to itself. I'm not exactly sure how that would have been accomplished in the mess that was the Sundering, but it would make sense politically.

Eltharion had to commission Belannaer the Wise to restore Yvresse's waystones. He was a Sapherian.

I mean, to slightly caricature, the discussion went:

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I am glad that you admit it is a caricature! pickle said that it was not as fragile as you were arguing. DragonParadox's vision of the waystones was pretty much entirely based on the production difficulties, with little thought spared to the leylines themselves.

And again, the problem you are talking about is one that is measured in the millennia. The problem is greatest for the Old World, not Ulthuan. Grom the Paunch was a very exception circumstance. Grom the Paunch threatened Ulthuan because of two reasons. For one he was going out of his way to destroy the waystones. The other is that the energies were flowing into Blacktoof. The waystones that Grom the Paunch overthrew weren't ones that ferried magic from the continent to the Vortex. That is accomplished by the Tralinia nexus. They only carried the Winds of Magic that flowed from the Annulii Mountains and from the Gates that reached Yvresse without first being captured by other waystones. (Edit: It is possible that the Tralinia nexus fell, but lol lmao on the possibility of riverine waystones fixing that problem.)

We were told it would take decades to build up the magical energies to replicate the speed that Caledor directed the energies to go. It is obvious that it would take much longer for the waystones to get to the point of becoming dhar bombs. Obviously the time would vary based on how far upstream a waystone is from the nexus, but the threat is still one that would be measured with decades and centuries.

Given that is the timeframe for dhar bombs and that Ulthuan spent several decades restoring the waystones, then the dhar bomb problem isn't what threatened Ulthuan. The threat that Grom posed would still exist even if all possible waystones on Ulthuan that could be both riverine and keyphrase leylines were both. I would guess that Ulthuan's waystones are used as focal points to stabilize Ulthuan, but I'm not aware of anything explicit saying that.

"Why would it be faster after a long wait?" Elrisse asks. "Does it build up the energy to restore the connection while it waits for it to be restored?"

"That might make sense to a much lesser degree, but not this dramatically," Hatalath says. "If we're in the realm of decades for any noticeable difference, such a drastic build-up of energies over merely a week would be completely disproportionate."

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I do think that current winning designs ar eprobably not optimised for what Eltharion wants, but I think he'll be ok with it. I also think he would really appreciate the suggested boat prototype, since it seems cheap as hell, which he will appreciate.

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I mean it's never going to be deployed in Ulthuan or beyond the Old World. My understanding is that the Rune is carved on sight. Good luck getting a Runesmith to Rune an item for the Asur, let alone travel beyond the Old World to do that. Also the vast majority of Runesmiths are xenophobic even for Dwarfs. It's traditional to help humans, but elves? The most xenophilic runesmiths would probably be needed to Rune Laurelorn's waystones. Ulthuan is another thing entirely. They'd throw a fit about it.

It being cheap as hell also means it fundamentally doesn't solve the problem. Eltharion wants to restore the network. The boat might be able to serve as a stop-gap, but that's still a large section of the network gone. It's a temporary solution. Eltharion needs to be able to restore the network permanently without needing to go to the Inner Kingdoms.

 

[LockedMind]

[X] Plan Simple and Functional
[X] Plan Building A Better Future

 

[Alratan]

I wonder how much funding could be squeezed out of imperial generals for boats with a built in waystone to protect the soldiers onboard from morrslieb and other corruptive energies spontaneously mutating them?

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It would probably also be useful during Storms of Magic.

There is already a perfectly good protection against morrslieb and its called a roof/ceiling.

In its absence, a sufficiently bolstered waystone network means that it would be nonissue anyway.

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Unfortunately you don't get to pick the time and place for all your battles. If the enemy attacks, you can't just choose to stay under cover.

And it could be a very, very long time until we have a sufficiently bolstered Waystone network, and lots of places the Empirenwould want to defend are on rivers. As an interim measure being able to sail a boat with a Waystone on to where you need it that week could be very valuable, and stay valuable for decades or centuries.

Also, I'm not sure but when Storms of Magic blow or the general magic level rises increasing Waystone density may also help to drain it away faster

 

[pucflek]

Unfortunately you don't get to pick the time and place for all your battles. If the enemy attacks, you can't just choose to stay under cover.

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If you are in a pitched battle, bit more magic flying around is the least of your issues.

Its arguably no issues at all, since, you know, your mages can cast more.

I feel like this use of waystone is the most out there, least practical edge case of their use. Its like bringing a main battle tank to weed garden.

EDIT: To elaborate even more, i feel like the point where you are putting bespoke waystones on a goddamn boat patrol, you are probably already done covering the land with Waystones. It reminds me of the talk Mathilde had with Eike about nature of suffering, where it ended "I doubt we will ever rid the world of enough evils that we get down to the ennui". A usage of boat waystone that you are talking about is about as far down the list for useful places to put them as ennui is on the list of sufferings to eliminate.

 

[deathofrats0808]

The waystones that Grom the Paunch overthrew weren't ones that ferried magic from the continent to the Vortex. That is accomplished by the Tralinia nexus. They only carried the Winds of Magic that flowed from the Annulii Mountains and from the Gates that reached Yvresse without first being captured by other waystones. (Edit: It is possible that the Tralinia nexus fell, but lol lmao on the possibility of riverine waystones fixing that problem.)

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How do you know there's a Nexus at Tralinia. Further, even if there is, Waystones still have to carry it from there to the Vortex, which would mean that any Waystone Grom destroyed could very well be doing that, not just capturing magic on Ulthuan itself.

 

[Parabola]

With all this talk of a boat waystone, I am obliged to remind people that if we'd be using Spirit transmission, the boats would probably be, as far as we know, limited to a single river each, probably only practical with major rivers.

Like, we don't know whether the river spirits would agree to "share" boats, or whether we'd need to negotiate with multiple river spirits per boatstone, or what. Let's not count chickens.

 

[pucflek]

How do you know there's a Nexus at Tralinia.

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By reading.

Finally, he delivers on Ulthuan's part of the requirement to disclose the location of the nexuses within their lands, rattling off a list of eight locations in Ulthuan that will mean nothing to you until you're able to consult a map - Tralinia,

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[Alratan]

I am glad that you admit it is a caricature! pickle said that it was not as fragile as you were arguing. DragonParadox's vision of the waystones was pretty much entirely based on the production difficulties, with little thought spared to the leylines themselves.

And again, the problem you are talking about is one that is measured in the millennia. The problem is greatest for the Old World, not Ulthuan. Grom the Paunch was a very exception circumstance. Grom the Paunch threatened Ulthuan because of two reasons. For one he was going out of his way to destroy the waystones. The other is that the energies were flowing into Blacktoof. The waystones that Grom the Paunch overthrew weren't ones that ferried magic from the continent to the Vortex. That is accomplished by the Tralinia nexus. They only carried the Winds of Magic that flowed from the Annulii Mountains and from the Gates that reached Yvresse without first being captured by other waystones. (Edit: It is possible that the Tralinia nexus fell, but lol lmao on the possibility of riverine waystones fixing that problem.)

We were told it would take decades to build up the magical energies to replicate the speed that Caledor directed the energies to go. It is obvious that it would take much longer for the waystones to get to the point of becoming dhar bombs. Obviously the time would vary based on how far upstream a waystone is from the nexus, but the threat is still one that would be measured with decades and centuries.

Given that is the timeframe for dhar bombs and that Ulthuan spent several decades restoring the waystones, then the dhar bomb problem isn't what threatened Ulthuan. The threat that Grom posed would still exist even if all possible waystones on Ulthuan that could be both riverine and keyphrase leylines were both. I would guess that Ulthuan's waystones are used as focal points to stabilize Ulthuan, but I'm not aware of anything explicit saying that.

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You're not addressing the point. One of Eltharion's specific complaints what we wanted Mathilde's design to resolve was that the original Waystone network was vulnerable to deliberate sabotage. Whether you agree with him or not, that was a concern he thought important enough to raise as something he wanted fixing.

We've produced a design with one potential vulnerability mitigated. As far as I know, it's the only vulnerability in the original design we've identified.

Do you think there's another flaw in the original network design that makes it vulnerable to deliberate sabotage that we haven't addressed?

It doesn't matter whatsoever to this discussion how resilient or robust the network actually is. What maters is that Eltharion flagged it as an important concern to him.

If you are in a pitched battle, bit more magic flying around is the least of your issues.

Its arguably no issues at all, since, you know, your mages can cast more.

I feel like this use of waystone is the most out there, least practical edge case of their use. Its like bringing a main battle tank to weed garden.

EDIT: To elaborate even more, i feel like the point where you are putting bespoke waystones on a goddamn boat patrol, you are probably already done covering the land with Waystones. It reminds me of the talk Mathilde had with Eike about nature of suffering, where it ended "I doubt we will ever rid the world of enough evils that we get down to the ennui". A usage of boat waystone that you are talking about is about as far down the list for useful places to put them as ennui is on the list of sufferings to eliminate.

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Storms of Magic can be very unhealthy for regular people to be in IIRC. It's not just that spells are strengthened, it's that reality goes haywire. Things like men reverse aging into babes in an instant, or the hills deciding to stand up and go walk about are quite possible.

And I think having portable Waystones that can be concentrated wherever they're most needed at any one point would be something you'd do well before covering the land with Waystones. They're an interim measure until you expand the network. In part because they're easy to move and if an enemy force advances you can take them with you easily rather than leaving them behind to be destroyed, or so you can concentrate them in dhar hotspots to clean up the place much more quickly before moving them to the next one on the list.

With all this talk a boat waystone, I am obliged to remind people that if we'd be using Spirit transmission, the boats would probably be, as far as we know, limited to a single river each, probably doable only with major rivers.

Like, we don't know whether the river spirits would agree to "share" boats, or whether we'd need to negotiate with multiple river spirits per boatstone, or what. Let's not count chickens.

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I don't see why a boat would be limited to a single river? The deal with a spirit is that if you drop dhar off in their river, they pick the dhar up and transport it somewhere else. I don't think the deal is tied to the Waystone? Once you've made a deal with a river, you can use whatever Waystone happen to be on the river, I don't think you need to negotiate on a per Waystone basis.

Is there something that suggests otherwise I've missed?

 

[pucflek]

And I think having portable Waystones that can be concentrated wherever they're most needed at any one point would be something you'd do well before covering the land with Waystones. They're an interim measure until you expand the network.

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Considering the fact that its bound to be pretty difficult, it seems like a rather counterintuitive thing to do when expanding the network is already something we will (hopefully) be able to do.

The fact that the Elves and Dwarves didn´t do that seems to imply to me that its either of very limited applicability or very difficult or both. I mean, of course part of it is that when they were making the network, they were quite sure of their ability to protect it since they were undisputed world superpowers. But Belthani seems to not have done it either and they would´ve had a reason, so...

 

[Alratan]

Considering the fact that its bound to be pretty difficult, it seems like a rather counterintuitive thing to do when expanding the network is already something we will (hopefully) be able to do.

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Why would it be difficult?

You make a cheap and easy Waystone and sail it up a river you've made a deal with the spirit of. The Waystone on it works like normal and just dumps the Dhar and Winds into the river as it would if it were stationary.

It's probably more difficult with the other riverine transmission methods, but not the spirit one.

This is something that would work particularly well in Kislev, where being able to pull Watstones back when hostiles invade could be very valuable, to avoid them being destroyed on a regular basis or needing to garrison them.

 

[pucflek]

Why would it be difficult?

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Because if things aren´t difficult, it posits the question of why the hell did noone do them before.

 

[Alratan]

Because if things aren´t difficult, it posits the questions of why the hell did noone do them before.

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How do we know they didn't back in the Golden Age? We've seen a variety of designs of unusual Waystones even on land, and if there was another rare type used on elven ships none of them would have stayed in the Old World so we wouldn't have had chance to examine them.

Plus, it's probably only really efficient and easy if you use spirit deals as a riverine transmission method, and Ulthuan may not have thought of that:

When you boil it down, a Waystone has two requirements: to actively draw in and contain ambient magical energy, and to do something that gets it going towards the Great Vortex. The traditional method of doing the latter has been leylines, which do require a fixed point. The spirit riverine method could work on a boat. The non-spirit riverine method would almost work with a boat, but it doesn't have an answer for what to do with Dhar. It wouldn't be difficult to work out some sort of swap-out storage mechanism that can be physically relayed to a fixed Waystone and dumped into the network that way, and some sort of air transmission tower that requires the boat to anchor, extend it, and aim it to work seems feasible.

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As we're told it wouldn't be difficult to make it work for non-spirit riverine methods, then by implication it would just work for the spirit transmission method.

 

[pucflek]

How do we know they didn't back in the Golden Age? We've seen a variety of designs of unusual Waystones even on land, and if there was another rare type used on elven ships none of them would have stayed in the Old World so we wouldn't have had chance to examine them.

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If its the first thing to disappear at signs of trouble, then its not really useful for what we need the waystone network for.

 

[MrHobbit]

How do you know there's a Nexus at Tralinia. Further, even if there is, Waystones still have to carry it from there to the Vortex, which would mean that any Waystone Grom destroyed could very well be doing that, not just capturing magic on Ulthuan itself.

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As pucflek pointed out, Eltharion told us there was a waystone at Tralinia. It is one of Ulthuan's eight nexuses.

There is nothing I am aware of that suggests that waystones are used to carry magic between nexuses. Every description of the flow of magic between nexuses is that it is directly between those two. Boney saying that trying to build one has a chance to depopulate a province if you fail makes me think that the waystones don't handle all that energy. The Karaz Ankor network sort of works that way, but their "waystones" are whole mountains in themselves. There's a lot about that network that is different.

Also I really doubt that Ulthuan dumped a bunch of waystones in the ocean between Los Cabos and Rokhame. Obviously Albion was connected to Ulthuan without throwing a bunch of rocks in the ocean and hoping for the best. Lyonesse too was almost certainly connected to Ulthuan by pointing the nexus, due to the mists of Albion.

You're not addressing the point. One of Eltharion's specific complaints what we wanted Mathilde's design to resolve was that the original Waystone network was vulnerable to deliberate sabotage. Whether you agree with him or not, that was a concern he thought important enough to raise as something he wanted fixing.

We've produced a design with one potential vulnerability mitigated. As far as I know, it's the only vulnerability in the original design we've identified.

Do you think there's another flaw in the original network design that makes it vulnerable to deliberate sabotage that we haven't addressed?

It doesn't matter whatsoever to this discussion how resilient or robust the network actually is. What maters is that Eltharion flagged it as an important concern to him.

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I wasn't criticizing your point, I was criticizing your arguments. That being your description of the interjections of people like picklepikkl. Your characterization of the timeframe of the threat to the Old World.


Anyways, the talk about spirits reminds me, might as well approval vote for it.
[X] Plan Building A Better Future (With reverse engineering)
[X] Plan Near-Original+

 

[pucflek]

guaranteed

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It says non-zero. Its guaranteed to kill anyone present however.

 

[Alratan]

If its the first thing to disappear at signs of trouble, then its not really useful for what we need the waystone network for.

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If you leave a Waystone standing there when a Chaos army rolls across the steppe, it's not very likely to be there when you finally drive them back.

It's a lot easier if you can sail the Waystone away when the chaos army arrives and sail it back when they're gone, rather than have to build a completely new Waystone.

I wasn't criticizing your point, I was criticizing your arguments. That being your description of the interjections of people like picklepikkl. Your characterization of the timeframe of the threat to the Old World.

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The entire argument was about meeting Eltharion's stated aims. I didn't discuss timeframes at all. This was all based on what Eltharion's perspecive would be and what he wanted. That's why I kept talking about what he said and what he wanted.

 

[pucflek]

It's a lot easier if you can sail the Waystone away when the chaos army arrives and sail it back when they're gone, rather than have to build a completely new Waystone.

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Its a lot easier to preserve a waystone by just dotting the land enough that chaos can´t muster enough power to meaningfully threaten them, thus preventing the need to move them in the first place.

A movable waystone is a nice stretch goal, not something we should focus on first.

 

[MrHobbit]

It says non-zero. Its guaranteed to kill anyone present however.

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I'll correct that.

The entire argument was about meeting Eltharion's stated aims. I didn't discuss timeframes at all. This was all based on what Eltharion's perspecive would be and what he wanted.

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I'm sorry, was this you? How is this post not arguing that the threat of waystones falling is an immediate threat for other waystones upstream and downstream of them because of the flow of magic?

Eltharion's perspective would be based on his own personal experience with the threat that sabotage to the network poses. Waystones can absorb plenty of energy on their own, enough that cutting off neighbors wouldn't directly threaten them. Furthermore, they have enough storage that it takes decades and centuries for it to cause calamity. But it was portrayed as an immediate threat for Yvresse and Ulthuan. Personally I think the solution is that waystones are used to stabilize the floating continent, because cutting off the flow of energy is explicitly a problem that happens over decades. But you seem to have been arguing that it was because of the flow of magic here.

That's exactly the scenario he faced, Waaagh Grom rocked up and invaded. Even cities and towns that didn't fall or hadn't even been attacked yet would have had their Waystones risk failure and so any Waystone powered infrastructure fail in turn because they lost control of the countryside and downstream Waystones were knocked out by the greenskins.

Leyline based Waystones are much more vulnerable to attacks on the wider network in a way that riverine ones aren't.

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[Alratan]

Its a lot easier to preserve a waystone by just dotting the land enough that chaos can´t muster enough power to meaningfully threaten them, thus preventing the need to move them in the first place.

A movable waystone is a nice stretch goal, not something we should focus on first.

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Having a fixed Waystone network doesn't do anything to stop a giant army of chaos marauders and warriors boiling out of the Wastes and killing everything in their path. And as spirit based mobile waystones don't cost any more and are no more difficult to make than fixed Waystones, and they have the advabtage that they're more flexible, why not make them? Those mobile Waystones are particularly valuable in the steppe where you don't have many fixed settlements, as they can partial follow the migrations of the Ingols and their herds when they go along the river, and they can do things like move north during the summer and then go south when the Uingols move their herds down to their winter pastures.

And it takes a long time to build a dense Waystone network. It's much quicker and easier and you need fewer Waystones if you can move them around to where you need them most. Most of the time in most of the northern steppe there'll be no one (uou like) there, so there's no one to protect a fixed Waystone from a chaos warband that sneaks south and no one for the Waystone to protect either.

 

[spiritualatheist]

Its a lot easier to preserve a waystone by just dotting the land enough that chaos can´t muster enough power to meaningfully threaten them, thus preventing the need to move them in the first place.

A movable waystone is a nice stretch goal, not something we should focus on first.

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The nice thing about boat Waystones is that we get them for free by building something we should build anyway. A spirit-based river Waystone is the cheapest, easiest thing we can do on a per-waystone cost level, so it shouldn't be a big issue to float a few of them. I agree that our primary focus should be on fixed Waystones, but having the ability to move them could come in clutch in some key situations.

If Praag gets besieged by the Everchosen again, frex, having moveable Waystones would let reinforcements march there much more safely and put any demons on a timer.

 

[pucflek]

Having a fixed Waystone network doesn't do anything to stop a giant army of chaos marauders and warriors boiling out of the Wastes and killing everything in their path. And as spirit based mobile waystones don't cost any more and are no more difficult to make than fixed Waystones, and they have the advabtage that they're more flexible, why not make them?

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Because if the current prototype works sufficiently it will be a lot better to just use that design everywhere. And it does stop them. The first Everchosen at head of massive army only showed up after Waystone network lost its protection, Skaven reared their ugly head and Nagash poisoned Nehekharra. Why do you think that is?

 

[Parabola]

I don't see why a boat would be limited to a single river? The deal with a spirit is that if you drop dhar off in their river, they pick the dhar up and transport it somewhere else. I don't think the deal is tied to the Waystone? Once you've made a deal with a river, you can use whatever Waystone happen to be on the river, I don't think you need to negotiate on a per Waystone basis.

Is there something that suggests otherwise I've missed?

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I guess we don't really know whether the deal involves the spirit familiarizing itself with a given waystone or what have you. I guess we'd have to see, or ask Boney.

 

[spiritualatheist]

Because if the current prototype works sufficiently it will be a lot better to just use that design everywhere. And it does stop them. The first Everchosen at head of massive army only showed up after Waystone network lost its protection, Skaven reared their ugly head and Nagash poisoned Nehekharra. Why do you think that is?

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The current prototype is very poorly scalable, is the thing. We want lots and lots of these things. What it does extremely well is act as an anchor for a chain of river Waystones and transfer all of their energy into the regular network, but using the design everywhere is going to slow everything down, because even if we solve the storage issue we still have a very difficult foundation that we don't actually need on most Waystones.

 

[Alratan]

I'm sorry, was this you? How is this post not arguing that the threat of waystones falling is an immediate threat for other waystones upstream and downstream of them because of the flow of magic?

Eltharion's perspective would be based on his own personal experience with the threat that sabotage to the network poses. Waystones can absorb plenty of energy on their own, enough that cutting off neighbors wouldn't directly threaten them. Furthermore, they have enough storage that it takes decades and centuries for it to cause calamity. But it was portrayed as an immediate threat for Yvresse and Ulthuan. Personally I think the solution is that waystones are used to stabilize the floating continent, because cutting off the flow of energy is explicitly a problem that happens over decades. But you seem to have been arguing that it was because of the flow of magic here.

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Yes. Nowhere do I say that failure was immediate. Hence why I said it would risk failure, not that they would immediately fail.

Also, although I didn't raise the timeframe before this, I don't think we've any evidence it would take decades or centuries for it to be a problem. The talk of decades in the relevant update was in the context of how long it would take for the induced leyline between Stones to fade naturally, and how much energy was used when re-establishing a recently disconnected Waystone to a leyline. No timeframe is given or implied for how long it would take for a Waystone to fill up with Dhar that I can find.

The rate is probably very dependent on the situation, on how much magic is flowing from upstream, how much magic is in the local area, and what proportion of dhar there is in both.

 

[Sparsebeard]

The way I see it, the current winning plan (Plan Building A Better Future (With reverse engineering)) will be a great solution for densely populated areas being a high quality, but expensive in material and manpower, option.

I'd love to produce a few dozens of them for high priority areas like :

- Praag and other waystone-less cities (Sylvania, Moussillon, etc.),
- Permanent military installations,
- Young Karaks.

Just to cover the most important of those areas would probably take at least a few dozens waystones and take at least a few years. Giving us the time to refine the reverse-engineered storage and see how it stands, poke a bit a the dwarven network, poke at nexuses and un-used tributaries to see if there is applicable stuff, wring out Ice Witches secrets of how to reroute Waystones on a different "network", etc.

Then, once we have covered the areas with the most "payoff" (I can't wait to see the effect of our waystone on a city like Praag), we can build another design or two if the current model isn't adapted to, say, the vast areas of land in Kislev, the Empire, Bretonnia, the World's Edge mountains, etc.