So, currently I'm leaning towards Laurelorn for the first deployment, not for reasons of prestige and people feeling snubbed, but for this reason:
Could we just ask the Ice Witches if Leyline-based Transmission would work for Kislev? Not any detailed questions about how their sub-network works just a yes or no on whether Leylines work for them. After all, presumably, they would want us to make a Waystone model that they can use and I don't think they'd lose much by answering the question.
You did and they shrugged. They probably wouldn't be here if they still had the level of understanding that completely rebuilt the Waystone network within Kislev.
We don't actually know whether we can plug Waystones into Kislev's Waystone network. This is the reason why I have said that, to me, investigating Kislev's network next turn is non-negotiable, i.e. I will not vote for a plan without it and I will actively campaign for something
with it to dethrone a leading plan that doesn't have it.
"But Pickle," you might say, reasonable and wise (and, dare I say it, stunningly attractive) interlocutor that you are, "we can double up! One action to investigate the Kislevite network, then one action to roll out in Kislev. Mathilde will do the investigation first, test out the Anoqeyan commands or get the Ice Witches to test it, and then if it works that's awesome and if not we've still got rivers as backup while we figure out how to plug into their leylines, right?"
Imaginary interlocutor, you are entirely correct from a practical standpoint, as befits someone of your reason, wisdom, attractiveness, &c. The
problem is that we justified our exchange with Ulthuan to Tzar Boris by explaining to him the degree to which cleaning up Kislev's Dhar by dumping it in Erengrad and Castle Alexandronov was a
bad idea we didn't want to do:
He smiles. "The wealth of Ulthuan is legendary. I can think of many ways Kislev could be convinced."
Yes, everyone else reacted that way at first too. "That may not be the best price to extract from them. The means of connecting a new Waystone to the network cannot be reverse engineered - it has a security mechanism of sorts protecting it - and must be acquired from either Ulthuan or Naggaroth. There are potential workarounds for that we've been working on, but they would be inefficient and could negatively influence the area around them. It was my hope that Ulthuan could be convinced to become a part of the Project, which would involve them providing that means."
He frowns. "Negatively influence, how?"
"It would involve using rivers to transport the energies, and then spilling them out to be reabsorbed by nexuses at the mouth of rivers - in Kislev's case, Erengrad and Castle Alexandronov. The exact effect would depend on the energies in question, but considering the priority for Kislev would be removing the Chaos taint from Praag and Troll Country, it could be very bad for the affected places. It's possible we could refine the details to minimize that problem, but if we had Ulthuan's knowledge, we could build our additions directly into the existing network and not have any of those problems in the first place."
If we then go to him six months later and say "we couldn't get it working just yet so we're instead going to do the thing we specifically told you we didn't want to do and passed up
your impoverished nation getting a mountain of gold in order to avoid doing," we look like an idiot and, worse, a callous asshole. I'd much rather investigate Kislev's network and then, assuming that it's nontrivial to hook into their network, dedicate resources to solving that problem so we can clean up Kislev
properly rather than dumping dark energies into their port cities. Maybe it will eventually turn out that there's no alternative except to do that! But it should be our
last resort, not our immediate backup plan, which is what will happen if we try to hook up our dual-function Waystones and it turns out we
can't hook them up to Kislev's leyline network.
So that's why I personally champion "investigate Kislev's network and start the rollout somewhere else, probably Laurelorn but Sylvania isn't a bad choice either" for next turn. In the best-case scenario, where it turns out Kislev's network is plug-and-play and there will be zero problems, we can just start rolling out in Kislev on the turn after -- I 100% agree that it is the highest priority in a vacuum. The six-month delay shouldn't be a huge deal compared to the egg on our face we avoid in the
not best-case scenarios.
