[...]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'.
This is a big challenger for being the funniest punchline in the past year of updates, right next to Mathilde bringing along a poking-stick to test her liminal realm.
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?
Good thing we identified this so early on, since it could be trouble down the line for Karak Eight Peaks, given the relatively low population of dwarves. Karag Nar has
some formerly-Imperial Dwarves, but it's mostly humans. Kvinn-Wyr is of course filled with the We. And I recall that there's at least one Karak that's
definitely mostly empty - was it Yar or Zilfin?
Well, there's probably ways to make up for those voids within those Karaks - either filling them up or siphoning away those energies to where they need to go, somehow. Or perhaps organizing some of the dwarves of the filled Karaks to wander around the empty ones every so often? I don't know.
...And hopefully, K8P's dwarven population will soar in the same way the New Holds' populations do.
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 present at her 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.
Lol, lmao. It's a really funny and cute mental image for Mathilde to almost get jumpscared by forgetting Eike was there. She's already taller than you, Mathilde!
Oh god. Yeah, I don't think that's it for us, chief. Building waystones to supplement Barak Varr and K8P seems like the more viable solution for the near future. Even if we could extract the knowledge of making nexuses from Ulthuan somehow and feel secure enough in being able to create them without exploding a province-sized area, we shouldn't.
Mountain Vietnam was already hard enough when it was in the ideal territory for dwarves, but the Forest of Gloom is possibly one of the worst terrains you could fight goblins and beastmen, and let's not even mention the Vaults and what the Skaven would do to them. No, absolutely not. Unless literally all the human nations chip in for their chance at wealth and glory, that's not a fight that should be started for the next couple of decades. Maybe not even for the next dwarven generation, honestly.
