Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
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This does not work for a rather simple reason, the chain of mountains between Karak Waystones answer to elven instructions. It is how we saved Vlag.
Can we connect tributaries or create some for the dawi network? Because while connecting holds would possible be much better, that is a very difficult. Also we would need to get a military force to supplement wizards ir any other magic users because of mountains.
Do Mountains have spirits? Yes it is Malus so possible, maybe. We do have people we can ask like the Hag witch and maybe the dawi. But we have to create a whole new ritual that uses mountain spirits instead of water spirits. Which would be awesome and prove Mathilde to be even more dawi.
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And by 'Create' we of course mean ask the millennia-old Sea Hag to create one. Go Go
Loremaster Mathilde is in charge so yes she still gets credit for telling someone to do. Also Dame Mathilde is a noble so of course she takes credit for it. Wizard Mathilde would just be glad to see if it can be done.And by 'Create' we of course mean ask the millennia-old Sea Hag to create one. Go GoMiddleHigher Manager powers.
Something that could be done both on reasonably short notice, and reasonably safely, would be to use the river-based rituals and mechanisms developed so far to gather magical energy from the eastern parts of the Border Princes, send it down the Blood River, Skull River, etc and their various tributaries, and then feed that energy into the Dwarven network at Barak Varr.
Dark Lady Mathilde lurking in the back of her head is just cackling at all these important people obeying her every command.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Dwarven airships are not newfangled. They are oldfangled. Zeppelins are part of how the dwarves used to travel during their golden age, but they lost the ability to easily mass-produce "lift gas" as their magical infrastructure decayed.
The source of the gas is implied to be the "Gas Works of Morgrim," as I recall, which may be at Karak Eight Peaks, or may refer to 'works' in the plural sense that are present at multiple Karaks. It's implied that this is what Thorgrim used to create a sudden burst of fire around one of the mountaintops at Karak Eight Peaks- what we saw was him briefly switching on Karak Eight Peaks' gas works, turning on the pilot light, and 'flaring off' X kilograms of hydrogen.
The point is that while we do not have a Guild of Airship-Makers in the modern era, the designs are very much time-tested.
So to your pleasant surprise, it might well be that the runesmiths of the Karaz Ankor would be happy to put fire-suppressing runes on airships, just like their great-to-the-tenth-grand-daddies did, and maybe even be quietly happy that they still know how to Do The Thing that the aforementioned ancestors did.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It's "Gas-Forge of Morgrim." It's heavily implied to be one-of-a-kind, both in this update and when it was first mentioned:
Thinking about it, hydrogen can also be used as a fuel (as evidenced by the huge flames shown to Belegar). In a world where fossil fuels are not a thing, the Gaz Forges seem to present a very valuable source of fuel.
Runic hydrogen engines go! Nevermind the tiny details of storage, volatility, technical difficulties, dwarven conservatism, etc.
Runic hydrogen engines go! Nevermind the tiny details of storage, volatility, technical difficulties, dwarven conservatism, etc.
Given that the only instance we have in canon of an engineer making an air-ship is... really damn radical to say the least I suspect that all those old designs have been lost leaving modern dwarfs to reinvent them from practically scratch. Now mind they are the same thing as the old air ships, which are attested so the Runesmiths would be less hesitant to apply runes to them than it they were some entirely new thing, but even so it might be decades before they are willing to risk it.
Maybe there's a difference between Mountain Waystones and Karak Waystones.
Thorgrim said that the new holds are nothing but a drain on power. If any of those new holds were settled during the Golden Age, then the Karak-Waystones probably couldn't have been made by the Elves and Dwarves working together, because otherwise they would have just made those new holds with Karak-Waystones too.
If they didn't make more Mountain-Waystones (and/or Karak-Runes?) during the Golden Age, then why didn't they?
... A hilarious and terrible answer might be "They did; those New Holds just got disconnected from the rest of the Dwarf network by the disconnection of the 2 networks, by the war, by the Time of Woe, and maybe by losing key artifacts or lineages or something."
Meaning that maybe some New Holds (new compared to original-founding anyway) are technically potentially connectable... it's just the Azrilbezaz has been lost or destroyed, and the Dwarf lineage linked to the place or artifact was also ended. Or it relied on a waystone, or mountain, that got blown up or corrupted or conquered by somebody or something else.
Maybe some of the New Holds will come online if a few more Karaks are reconquered and reconnected.
After all. Karag Dum didn't send its power directly to Karaz-A-Karak. The power flow went by way of Karak Vlag. Lose the Waystone north of Vlag, and you lose the Karag Dum powerflow.
And do we know those are elven instructions rather than Old One instructions? Did the Elves create them, or inherit them? If they did create them, do we know that they didn't create them by poking at Old One architecture and magic and finding out how it worked or how to interact and interface with it? Teclis was able to interact with the Belthani Waystones, but is that necessarily proof those stones and methods were elf-derived rather than pre-shattering-Norsca-derived?
If it is elven instructions, do we know that it isn't convergent design to some degree? Do we know for sure that the elves didn't have to set the instructions -- or make the Waystones themselves to begin with, or even the Vortex to begin with -- in a way that was mandated or required by the magic-physics that the Old Ones set up when creating and separating the Winds?
There's talk about the Old Ones creating or dotting Waystones or ordering around leylines. It's sometimes ambiguous whether the Waystone Network is Elves and Dwarfs only, or some of it is Old One work and the Elves and Dwarfs just added to it.
If it is elven instruction, how do we know that the initial Dwarf-only-system wasn't connected by itself; but then connected to the Elves system. And then even when disconnected in the War of the Ancients... maybe that just cut off the flow, maybe the instructions couldn't easily be changed. i.e. Maybe the Karak-Waystones or the Dwarf waystone system, though made by the Ancestor Gods, were fiddled with to make it compatible with the Elf Waystone and Great Vortex; and then, this being Dwarf work, it is not so easily re-meddled with.
Furthermore... Grimnir and Aenarion met even during the time of the Coming of Chaos. Maybe the Waystones were built during the Golden Age, but maybe the seeds of the cooperation were laid even during that meeting way back when. After all, the Ancestor Gods would have probably known more about the Old Ones and the Glittering Realm, and the Elves might have had equivalent knowledge too.
A less speculative factoid though: Thorgrim said that the new holds are nothing but a drain on power.
If any of those new holds were settled during the Golden Age, then the Karak-Waystones couldn't have been made by the Elves and Dwarves working together, because otherwise they would have just made those new holds with Karak-Waystones too.
Perhaps the mountain we interacted with was not a full Karak-Waystone, but something like a lesser waystone. Something fitted mostly for transmission or a bit of power absorption. Maybe the elves helped the dwarfs make these lesser mountain-waystones to supplement -- or connect in the first place -- the various Karaks.
Thorgrim said that the new holds are nothing but a drain on power. If any of those new holds were settled during the Golden Age, then the Karak-Waystones probably couldn't have been made by the Elves and Dwarves working together, because otherwise they would have just made those new holds with Karak-Waystones too.
If they didn't make more Mountain-Waystones (and/or Karak-Runes?) during the Golden Age, then why didn't they?
... A hilarious and terrible answer might be "They did; those New Holds just got disconnected from the rest of the Dwarf network by the disconnection of the 2 networks, by the war, by the Time of Woe, and maybe by losing key artifacts or lineages or something."
Meaning that maybe some New Holds (new compared to original-founding anyway) are technically potentially connectable... it's just the Azrilbezaz has been lost or destroyed, and the Dwarf lineage linked to the place or artifact was also ended. Or it relied on a waystone, or mountain, that got blown up or corrupted or conquered by somebody or something else.
Maybe some of the New Holds will come online if a few more Karaks are reconquered and reconnected.
After all. Karag Dum didn't send its power directly to Karaz-A-Karak. The power flow went by way of Karak Vlag. Lose the Waystone north of Vlag, and you lose the Karag Dum powerflow.
Did we rescue Vlag by using Anoqeyan, or did we rescue Vlag by doing magic by rote in a way which just happened to turn off a Waystone? Because there's a difference between Waystone Permissions, like what we just got from Ulthuan right now, and what we had as just the Colleges of Magic before this.
And do we know those are elven instructions rather than Old One instructions? Did the Elves create them, or inherit them? If they did create them, do we know that they didn't create them by poking at Old One architecture and magic and finding out how it worked or how to interact and interface with it? Teclis was able to interact with the Belthani Waystones, but is that necessarily proof those stones and methods were elf-derived rather than pre-shattering-Norsca-derived?
If it is elven instructions, do we know that it isn't convergent design to some degree? Do we know for sure that the elves didn't have to set the instructions -- or make the Waystones themselves to begin with, or even the Vortex to begin with -- in a way that was mandated or required by the magic-physics that the Old Ones set up when creating and separating the Winds?
There's talk about the Old Ones creating or dotting Waystones or ordering around leylines. It's sometimes ambiguous whether the Waystone Network is Elves and Dwarfs only, or some of it is Old One work and the Elves and Dwarfs just added to it.
If it is elven instruction, how do we know that the initial Dwarf-only-system wasn't connected by itself; but then connected to the Elves system. And then even when disconnected in the War of the Ancients... maybe that just cut off the flow, maybe the instructions couldn't easily be changed. i.e. Maybe the Karak-Waystones or the Dwarf waystone system, though made by the Ancestor Gods, were fiddled with to make it compatible with the Elf Waystone and Great Vortex; and then, this being Dwarf work, it is not so easily re-meddled with.
Furthermore... Grimnir and Aenarion met even during the time of the Coming of Chaos. Maybe the Waystones were built during the Golden Age, but maybe the seeds of the cooperation were laid even during that meeting way back when. After all, the Ancestor Gods would have probably known more about the Old Ones and the Glittering Realm, and the Elves might have had equivalent knowledge too.
A less speculative factoid though: Thorgrim said that the new holds are nothing but a drain on power.
If any of those new holds were settled during the Golden Age, then the Karak-Waystones couldn't have been made by the Elves and Dwarves working together, because otherwise they would have just made those new holds with Karak-Waystones too.
Perhaps the mountain we interacted with was not a full Karak-Waystone, but something like a lesser waystone. Something fitted mostly for transmission or a bit of power absorption. Maybe the elves helped the dwarfs make these lesser mountain-waystones to supplement -- or connect in the first place -- the various Karaks.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Ah. So much for my hypothesis about there being more than one of them.
It would have made sense for there to be more than one of them, because topping off your zeppelin with hydrogen is the kind of thing you may need to do at more than one location.
But on the other hand, if there were more than one, then presumably Thorgrim could switch on one but not others, and then the power drain wouldn't be as extreme while still permitting some attempt to revive the old airships. Which he has not done.
But on the other other hand, says the three-armed alienoid, even if that were possible, Thorgrim might not have bothered, because despite having so much more energy, the Karaz Ankor has been in a state of power deficit and draining its batteries ever since the Great War against Chaos, which was something like 150 years ago as I recall. So Thorgrim would almost certainly prioritize topping off the batteries before doing anything 'extra' like that.
And it's a moot point since, as you say, the text clearly supports the Gas-Forge being a unique installation. Which, yes, would make sense to put at Karak Eight Peaks, given that apparently it was the hub airport for the Karaz Ankor as a whole.
In order:
- Yes those were elf instruction that the Colleges were taught by rote by Teclis
- Those were elf instructions, the Old Ones did not speak Anoqeyan, they had their own language ancestral to Anoqeyan and Runesmith Khazalid, Mathilde knows what Khazalid sounds like so she would have noticed if the instructions had more commonalities with that than Elathrin
- The dwarfs changing the passwords to one of the works of the Ancestors to be in another language is possible but I think highly unlikely just because of how their culture works
- Yes, Grimnir learned of Caledor, I do not think he would have met Anaerion, I do not think the latter ever left Ulthuan nor the former ever visited there would be no time to share magical lore via whatever means of communication they had, likely an elf on a ship, nor does it seem likely the dwarfs would have trusted that with their holy lore
- The mountain we turned off was not a Karak Waystone, Karak Waystones are Karaks, but without stones like that Karak Waystones also cannot exist as the magic would not move between them ergo they must have been built at the same time and again this one spoke elf
Also because I am a boring person who always looks for simple solutions like that I think the Super Secret Ancestral (TM) means of powering their wonders was just living in a world flooded with magic, as the magic levels dropped because of the growing Waystone network some of the magic in that network had to be sent to power the magic intensive infrastructure. Effectively that would be the same magic tying up everything with a neat bow.
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I'm sure this must have been floated before at some point, but what about using some kind of physical battery to move energy from the new holds into the network proper? If the Karaz Ankor isn't willing to take the step of tying into the Empire's network, and by extension the greater one, and we can't defend a connection between the two... then physically shipping the stuff is at least a relatively known and solved problem for the Dwarves if they had a dense enough means of storing it. Setting up runic arrays to capture and bottle it is a much smaller ask than building a network, and we just found out that airships might be on the menu. Low volume high value cargo is kind of their thing.
Failing that, a newly built string of connections across the Southern Empire is far from the worst place to build an infrastructure project. A second, entirely separate network crisscrossing the elven/empire one in order to get the magic from the western holds flowing east.
Failing that, a newly built string of connections across the Southern Empire is far from the worst place to build an infrastructure project. A second, entirely separate network crisscrossing the elven/empire one in order to get the magic from the western holds flowing east.
consequences
Not A Nice Person At All
- Location
- Jerkville
Any battery is also a bomb minus a couple of steps. If you can't reliably defend the connection, you also probably can't reliably defend your supply route for the menhir crackling with energy that all of the baddies will gleefully descend upon. Presuming your roads are good enough to keep it from just getting set off in transit without enemy action.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I support this because it opens up the possibility of epic heists to steal bottled magic, which sounds wicked.
Riverine, airship. Transporting volatile cargo is hardly a novel problem - we're talking about an era in which people are moving around large quantities of non-smokeless powder which is significantly less stable than the modern stuff. And that's presuming it's volatile in the first place - Mathilde carted Vitae halfway across the Empire in a wagon and it's probably less stable than whatever we'd settle on.
SaltyWaffles
I am dissapoint, son
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Sounds like a job for Bok.
Ah wait, it was Caledor Dragontamer that Grimnir met, not Aenarion.
Some of the Waystones were indeed made by the Old Ones (at least if you can trust the wiki and WFRP 4th, but even aside from that, I'm pretty sure some of the leylines/World Roots/whatever and/or some Waystones were, indeed, Old One creations at some point), and in Giantslayer when Ulthuan starts shaking, Teclis speculates that it may be due, in part, to some old Old One architecture that makes up the island.
What parts were made by the Dwarfs or Ancestor Gods, and what parts were made by Elves and Dwarfs? The Karaks' runes seem like they probably weren't Elf-Dwarf made. But the mountain we interacted with did get activated by what we did; though again, was that because of permissions, or because "This is the set of spells to interact with Waystone-like architecture"? Or "the set of spells or magic-work to interact with Dwarf-made waystones", which the Elves know because they studied and worked together with the Dwarfs.
Maybe it's like cutting an electrical wire, or pinching a wire; you don't need a computer password to do it.
When were the new holds made? If during the Golden Age, why're they a net drain? Could be simply just because the connecting parts between those Karaks were interrupted; both Vlag and Dum are Old Holds, but they got interrupted/hijacked just by one mountain passageway getting messed with?
I think it's probable that the small Waystones were Elf-Dwarf cooperation; but that the mountain Waystones were probably original Dwarf work.
Just, the Dwarfs wanted more power for their Great Works and to stockpile, and couldn't keep all of them running to the same extent and level, with just what they had.
I mean, you can build a Waystone with almost all-Dwarf or all-Elf components. So it stands to reason the Dwarfs could have had a system of their own, it just... they wanted -- or needed -- more. So they helped make Waystones, and helped seed the Old World with Waystones, and intertwined their systems too.
Some of the Waystones were indeed made by the Old Ones (at least if you can trust the wiki and WFRP 4th, but even aside from that, I'm pretty sure some of the leylines/World Roots/whatever and/or some Waystones were, indeed, Old One creations at some point), and in Giantslayer when Ulthuan starts shaking, Teclis speculates that it may be due, in part, to some old Old One architecture that makes up the island.
What parts were made by the Dwarfs or Ancestor Gods, and what parts were made by Elves and Dwarfs? The Karaks' runes seem like they probably weren't Elf-Dwarf made. But the mountain we interacted with did get activated by what we did; though again, was that because of permissions, or because "This is the set of spells to interact with Waystone-like architecture"? Or "the set of spells or magic-work to interact with Dwarf-made waystones", which the Elves know because they studied and worked together with the Dwarfs.
Maybe it's like cutting an electrical wire, or pinching a wire; you don't need a computer password to do it.
When were the new holds made? If during the Golden Age, why're they a net drain? Could be simply just because the connecting parts between those Karaks were interrupted; both Vlag and Dum are Old Holds, but they got interrupted/hijacked just by one mountain passageway getting messed with?
I think it's probable that the small Waystones were Elf-Dwarf cooperation; but that the mountain Waystones were probably original Dwarf work.
Just, the Dwarfs wanted more power for their Great Works and to stockpile, and couldn't keep all of them running to the same extent and level, with just what they had.
I mean, you can build a Waystone with almost all-Dwarf or all-Elf components. So it stands to reason the Dwarfs could have had a system of their own, it just... they wanted -- or needed -- more. So they helped make Waystones, and helped seed the Old World with Waystones, and intertwined their systems too.
Grimnir was most definitely not any kind of magician and Calledor was rather busy at the time, I doubt they talked about mountain passwords.
Even if some of the menhirs which eventually served in part or in whole as Waystones were made by the Old Ones their function would not have been 'Waystone' before the Fall of the Polar Gates as there would be no need for such a thing. Thus the software inside of them, the passwords would not have been put in there by the Old Ones.
Secondly and most relevantly we literally cast a spell with that password, this is relevant as it technically had a risk of miscast which is why the Vlag dwarfs under the power of the Protector understood that the risk of magic was losing your soul. A dwarf could not cast spells, ergo the functionality in that stone was designed to interact with spellcasters, elf spellcasters being the only reasonable possibility. This strongly sugests that at least part of the dwarf network was build in colaboration wiht elves.
We do not know if we can build a Waystone with almost all dwarf components, we have the option of attempting it, but it could be a dud. Also it involves advanced engineering that did not exist in the days of the Ancestors. Crossbows and gurdge-throwers were the height of technology back then. Lastly the one thing the maybe-posibile mundane dwarf stone cannot do is link to the leyline, we would have to use spirits. I do not think the Ancesor Gods were spirit binnder
- Location
- A Pit Of My Own Making
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Connecting up the New Holds stops them from being drains on the network, adds energy to the network, and in the (probably far) future it could lead to a new wave of karak creation.
Pretty much. Hellish mountain warefare.
DL's war was quite tame... from our perspective. Imagine how salty the Orc and Skaven Negaquesters must have been.
OG quest was Dynasty of Dynamic Alcoholism btw, great story.
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
Yeah he did. I mean, I doubt he met Grimnir or any of the Ancestor Gods, but Aenarion becomes Phoenix King after returning to Ulthuan during a Daemonic invasion. He'd been out exploring the world.
That's... not proof either way, as I've been saying. That there is a magical way to interact with that Waystone doesn't mean there isn't also a mundane or Runesmithing way of doing so. Nor does it tell us when the magical interaction method was introduced. Or if it's a magical equivalent of squeezing and tying off a powerline with rubber.
I wouldn't rely on the Protector as objective evidence though, because we were also fighting a battle and casting magic to rescue them, and were also fighting literal daemons who could potentially steal your soul or snack on it. So either Ranald focused only on the Waystone bit and decided to embellish "Technically, any act of magic could result in a miscast..." into "Risked her soul" -- or he more likely threw in the whole fighting-the-Daemons bit, given that it's more impressive and cinematic anyway.
Not that I disagree that it was magic, I'm just a bit skeptical on Ranald referring to "Also she could have lost her soul when poking the Waystone" bit rather than the "Also she was casting BATTLE-MAGIC and fighting DAEMONS" bit.