With a solid theory for where the energies end up used and what can be interpreted as a tacit acknowledgement from the High King that this is information that the Kings should know, even if he isn't able to be the one to tell them, your study of the Karaz Ankor Waystone Network (Eike tries to turn it into an acronym and grimaces at how it's pronounced) moves from examining the interstitial Rune-Mountains to examining the Karak-Waystones themselves - more specifically, the chamber deep within them that actually makes them a Karak-Waystone. This central chamber is at the heart of both the mountain itself and the many halls, passages, and tunnels that the Dwarves have interwoven within them, and are some of the least-walked and least-mentioned ones that could be found within it. No enforced taboo is necessary for this, as that chamber would spell the doom of most beings foolhardy enough to wander into them. Attractive force strong enough to pull Winds through a mountain's worth of stone - a material that is, of course, no slouch when it comes to insulating magical energies - would not be courteous enough to map a trajectory around even a Runelord, and every heartbeat spent within it is a chance for magical energies to carve a merciless path through the soul of a Dwarf or a Wizard, leaving a statue or a tragically literal lunatic in its wake. A being capable of laying eyes on the Runed structure at its center would require a very specific type of soul, one that can be suffused by a Wind without being permanently altered by it, one experienced in withstanding rapid and random changes to their mental state, one foolhardy enough to believe themselves capable of entering a chamber and emerging unharmed while dutiful enough to obey the instructions that will lead them to do so.
Within the cities of the Empire, such beings are generally known as 'teenagers'.
One such soul, his reliability vouched for by his superiors within the Undumgi and a soul unburdened by mutation confirmed by your own observations, walks blithely into a chamber that would doom Thorek to petrification and you to incurable insanity and has absolutely no trouble making a few sketches as energies that could reshape an entire battlefield pass through him. He later describes the experience as feeling 'strange, I guess', seemingly more because some sort of comment seems to be expected of him than because of any genuine flustration on his part. You thank and pay him for his time and add his sketches to what few pertinent observations you'd managed from several layers of hallway away, and Thorek confirms that though he recognizes certain characteristics of the Runes in question, they are not ones that are part of the corpus of modern Runesmithing. That makes sense, as it is a set of Runes that have only been carved... about twenty times? You double check your mental tally. Karaz-a-Karak, Barak Varr, Zhufbar, and Karaks Kadrin and Azul are the five never-fallen Old Holds, then there's the Eight Peaks, as well as Vlag and Dum. Then those that fell long ago and are still fallen, now generally known by newer names: Cragmere, Red Eye Mountain, Black Crag, Hoard Peak, and Mounts Gunbad and Grimfang. You check this tally with Thorek after digging through your memory for the original names of the fallen Holds.
"I make it twenty-five," he says after a moment's thought. "There's also Karaz Bryn and the volcanic Karags: Dron, Haraz, and Orrud. It's said they were tamer before the Time of Woes."
Ah, you think with a grimace. Silver Pinnacle, the Dwarfhold held by the progenitor of the Lahmian bloodline of Vampires, Neferata. And while you're thinking of Nehekhara... "Isn't Karag Orrud a thousand miles south of here, next to Nehekhara?"
"Yes," Thorek says with a sad smile.
That is, you suppose, the sort of feat of power projection that gets an era labelled a Golden Age. You turn your attention back to examining the movement of energies towards the central chamber. With, as Eike observes, the same unthinking wisdom as lightning charting a course through the heavens, the Winds are drawn from the mountain's surface through its stone and unerringly around its voids, no matter how many they are and how intricate or crowded they might be. In this, you consider, the Dwarven nature seems as though it could actually be enhancing the effect, as it would make the voids even less ideal a path for the energies. There's an artful elegance to that - the absorption of these energies are used in part to impart a resistance to magics in the Dwarven people, and that resistance is used to enhance the workings of the network that provides that power.
You spend quite some time lingering on that thought. That sort of elegance sparks the faintest hint of recognition in you, and you're not sure if it's simply an emotional resonance with the awe you feel when considering the enormous projects of the distant past, or if there actually is some sort of signature of interlayered efficiencies you're beginning to catch glimpses of. Could there be a commonality in the most ancient forms of these disparate magical traditions, in the same way that a common root is theorized for the languages of the world? A singular cunning knack of cunning beings that once allowed them to reshape this world and has been aped by those that learned from them? If so, would it be something of an artistic mien that would be truly unique, or would taking advantage of multiple parallel natural or induced efficiencies be a requirement for the greatest of achievements, a core skill once taught to or stolen by the Ancestor Gods, by Caledor Dragontamer, by the Belthani, by however many other ancient beings that have kept this world out of the gullet of Chaos?
Only with great difficulty can you tear yourself away from this line of thought - you can barely even call it a theorizing, as it has more of the aura of a mystic meditation - to return your attention to the task at hand. The mechanism of the Karak-Waystone might only partially be an effect of the Runes at its center, is your next line of thought. They might or might not take advantage of the natural impetus of the individual Winds to draw them in and keep them from meeting. But they could also be making a mirror between their own central chamber and the Great Vortex itself, which could only have been weakened by the severing of the two networks - not completely so, as the observations of the Eonir make it clear that there is still some propagation of useful information, but weakened nonetheless. Furthermore, the Dwarven resistance to magic might also have proven a... would it be a weakness, or a deliberate failsafe? In that without a Dwarven population to make the voids within a Karak unattractive to magical energies, the proper workings of the Karak-Waystone might break down, rendering them inoperable over a timeline of centuries or more?
That seems like it must be true to you. It had been a hovering question, why a fallen Karak no longer functions as a Karak-Waystone when it seems no living Dwarves would know how to deactivate them during a final evacuation or doomed defence. If so, you wonder if this might prove a problem for the Karags of Karak Eight Peaks not populated by Dwarves, or if there might be some mechanism to allow those which are working most properly to share their nature with the others. Even in the Golden Age, some of the eight were much more populated than others.
And if a Dwarfhold fell, you suppose, the lost energy could be replaced by the then-extant links to Ulthuan's Waystone Network for the brief moment before it was retaken. After all, the Empire of Elves and the Empire of Dwarves were the most steadfast of allies, as signified by the close friendship between Snorri Whitebeard, eldest son of Grungni, and Malekith, the youngest son of Aenarion. The system only seems vulnerable with hindsight, in a present where it is so grievously, well, vulnered. What system could survive the twin cataclysms of the War of Vengeance and the Time of Woes? If anything, it's a wonder that it has lasted long enough for a Silver Age to even be possible.
"Can we take it as a given that the High King is able to accurately identify and prioritize opportunities to retake lost Karaks?" you ask Thorek.
There is a long, quiet silence as Thorek gives that careful consideration. "Of all the Karaks that could be retaken, Silverspear is the one most directly under Karaz-a-Karak's influence, and would most directly enrich it," he admits. "During the War of Vengeance, they were not called upon to fight against the Elgi so that their silver could continue to flow into Karaz-a-Karak's coffers. It would be easy to suspect that as a factor for why it was chosen. But it is just as easy to argue that one does not rebuild an Empire from the outskirts in - one starts at the core and works their way out.
"All that said, even if there were shallower lodes to be found elsewhere, the state of the Karaz Ankor is such that the High King is the only one with the wealth and influence to perform such a campaign. King Belegar saw to that when he took every adventurer and outcast of this generation and settled them here."
"Okay. So if we can't retake old Karak-Waystones and we can't make new ones, the only remaining possibility would be to feed energy into the ones we already have." You take a breath and carefully consider the wording of your next question. It is possible you are the only human on the continent who could ask this of a Dwarf and get more than a one-word answer. "Is there any realistic possibility of reaching an accord with Ulthuan and reconnecting the networks so that part of the energy flowing to the Great Vortex could be redirected?"
"I believe it would be technically possible," Thorek concedes. "The two are not wholly separate, and sufficiently large tremors in one network still flow to the other. I have read accounts of strange fluctuations that I now know to be the work of the Khan-Queens of the Gospodars, and I recorded in my own journals ripples during the Great War that I once believed to be the result of the Elgi fighting over the Great Vortex, and now suspect to be the result of the destruction of Almshoven. But we have not retained the knowledge that let us stop any flow of energies during the War of Vengeance. The work of reconnecting it would have to be Elgi work, and it would be in Elgi control which way energies flow. It would be putting our throats to their speartips, and our childrens' throats to the speartips of whoever sits upon the Phoenix Throne in generations to come."
"Then all that remains is supplementing the Karaz Ankor network with chains of new Waystones. Now, I know that conventional Dwarven theory doesn't like relying on surface infrastructure," Thorek gives the grimace and waggle of a beard that's roughly equivalent to nonverbal grumbling, "but that's a line of thought that we're already breaking with in some places - the Undumgi along Death Pass, the Watchtower Clans along Mad Dog Pass, the
Slotchokri and Barak Varr's tributaries. That is a lot of already-secure territory that could be feeding power into the Karak-Waystones."
Thorek stares into nothingness for a while, his eyes moving as he carefully maps some sort of mental journey. "Leave it with me," he eventually says, and trumps off in a way that suggests that he doesn't like what he's about to do but anyone that tries to get in his way is going to like the results even less.
You exhale, and barely suppress a jump at someone doing the same next to you. You hadn't quite forgotten that Eike was there, but her presence at your side had become so normal that you hadn't reconsidered it when you'd decided to have such a sensitive discussion with Thorek. But then, you suppose, the idea of reconsideration would be alien to Dwarven thought - if you didn't trust her with your secrets, then she shouldn't be your Apprentice in the first place. Grey Order thought is rather more nuanced on the matter.
---
Clan Redbeard, the Runesmith Clan of Barak Varr, used to being the ones entreatied by beings from around the world who have heard of the legendary artifice of the Dwarves and wish to possess it, are not an easily-compelled group. The fractious mess of interrelated families that make up the Runesmiths Guild of Karak Izor and the Vaults are, if anything, even less so. But it is worth reminding yourself, accustomed to interacting with Kragg the Grim as you are, that Thorek Ironbrow is no average Runelord. While Kragg is certainly respected as the eldest of living Runelords, and the most skilled and knowledgeable of them, Thorek Ironbrow is considered the
greatest Runelord. Not for his artifice or his knowledge, as the unspoken truth of the matter is that he is, by Runelord standards, nothing special. What other Runelords look up to and respect is the two things that they could be doing, but very often aren't - spending long, tedious, unprofitable, and often thankless years in the forge churning out large numbers of weapons and armour that are individually unimpressive but collectively win battles, and going out there and risking life and limb to recover lost runic lore. And those two things are what Thorek has spent most of his centuries doing, before Karak Azul was reunited with the rest of the Old World. So when Thorek shows up and starts insisting, things happen. Not particularly quickly, and not without a great deal of grumbling, but they happen.
You see him again months later in Tor Lithanel, and he shoos everyone else out of the communal study and walks over to the massive map of the Old World fixed to one wall, where you have been constructing your best model of the nexuses of the Waystone Networks and the links between them that weave their way over and through the terrain. With care he takes a red pin, the colour of a nexus of the main Waystone Network, and affixes it right next to the blue pin already affixed to Barak Varr.
"Both?" you ask.
He nods. "Originally in the Varenka Hills, just outside of it. It hadn't been connected to the Network yet when the War of Vengeance began, and it's currently in the same vault it's sat in since then. Directly east of," he pauses and squints at a tiny label on the map, "Matorca," he hazards, inadvertently taking a position in an incredibly petty political dispute older than he is, "and directly southwest of Karaz-a-Karak. Also never completed, but left in place, would have been one about here." With a ruler and a pencil, he draws one line straight west from Karaz-a-Karak, and then two lines from Heideck through the narrow gap of Black Fire Pass, one as far west as possible and one as far east as possible. "That's a line of about ten miles it might have originally been on, but it only intercepts the road in two places, and it would have been at one of those."
"I take it it isn't going to be as easy as 'nobody thought to check along the road for massive mysterious magical menhirs' and we just have to walk in there with a wheelbarrow."
He snorts. "Of course not. This probably plays out one of two ways. Either the local
Grobi stole it - that'd be the Black Spider tribe of Forest Goblins - and made it into some sort of altar or effigy. Or the local Beastmen, the Shadowgor Warherd, took it to turn into one of their Herdstones."
"In either case, they'd defend it to the death. And, of course, neither would be so polite as to just tell us whether they have it or not, so we'd have to fight both to extinction and scour the woods in the hopes of finding it." And this is the Forest of Gloom, home to the largest spiders on the continent, which Cadaeth spoke of in the same breath as the Drakwald. Except there's no Eonir around to keep it in check, no local Taalite tradition to compete for influence over the woods. "That sounds like a war nobody wants to have."
Thorek gives a bleak chuckle. "Oh, you think that war would be bad?" He takes four more pins and pushes them into the Vaults, then connects them with string to form a crooked diamond. One of them is Karak Izor - directly northwest of Matorca, you note - but the other three are as unmarked on this map as they are on
almost every human-made map of the area. Foul Peak, Stronghold of Clan Ektrik, Thrall-Clan of Clan Skryre. Fester Spike, Stronghold of Clan Fester, Thrall-Clan of Clan Pestilens, so would now be either replaced by another Warlord Clan or realigned in the wake of the civil war. And Putrid Stump, Stronghold of Clan Treecherik, Thrall-Clan of Clan Eshin.
And while you're processing horrible thoughts, all this drawing of straight cardinal lines between points on the map makes it very easy to notice that Skavenblight looks awfully directly west of Foul Peak. Would the Skaven have left all that magical infrastructure untouched when they could be twisting it to their own foul purposes and pouring horrific amounts of tainted magical energy into Skavenblight? Of course not.
You manage to put the combined horror of all of that aside long enough to see what Thorek is getting at - if the Barak Varr nexus can be restored and reactivated and the flow between Matorca and Achaes severed - or possibly Achaes deactivated completely - then the Karaz Ankor can have its own little spur of the Waystone Network in the Border Princes. That alone would have potential, especially since that land includes five major rivers just waiting to be dotted with fresh Waystones. But the real potential is that either or both of the Forest of Gloom or the Vaults could, after undoubtedly incredibly brutal wars, be made a part of those spurs and at a stroke solve the energy problems of the Karaz Ankor, and as a side-benefit taming some of the darkest corners of the continent.
All you'd have to do is pull an even bigger set of magical secrets out of Ulthuan, and put the Karaz Ankor on a course to what could very easily be the nastiest war since the Great War Against Chaos.
You don't quite thank Thorek for what he's brought you, but he understands what you're getting at, and claps you on the shoulder with a sigh as he leaves the room. Leaving you to stare at the slightly more filled out and much more disturbing map.
Eike has learned:
Karaz Ankor: Her Apprenticeship to a Thane and Loremaster of Karak Eight Peaks made her a part of Dwarven culture almost by default, and she learned to operate within it early. +1 Diplomacy
- The exploration of the KAWN took a lot more writing than I expected, but with it wrapped up hopefully the rest of the turn will unfold with more alacrity.
- This unlocks two possibilities for future Waystone actions: building Waystones to supplement Barak Varr and K8P as-is, and trying to wrangle how to build a new nexus out of Ulthuan so you can annex all the magical energy in the Border Princes for the Karaz Ankor (which will also unlock the Forest of Gloom Hellwar and the Vaults Hellwar, and at that point the Dwarves would not need Mathilde's permission or involvement to start them).
- As far as I know, canon never specified which Clan holds Putrid Stump. Them having 'tree' in their name is not the only reason I put Clan Treecherik there, but it was a factor.
- Worn for the writing of the latter half of this update was this really quite incredible and touching gift from @vsh - it's minankari, a very old and recently revived art from the country of Georgia, which makes it very appropriate for it to arrive for an update featuring Thorek. This piece was commissioned from Bakmy Enamel.
As unfortunate as it is, elfcation is in a weird place at the intersection of narrative and mechanics... it would have been great to do it before the waystone project, but *glances at the karag dum expedition* not the right time as far as out of universe concerns go 
