Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Social Science
Ethics: Extensive Asur (+2) [7 -> 9]
Law: Extensive Asur (+2) [7 -> 9]
Literature: Extensive Asur (+2) [7 -> 9]
Music and Poetry: Extensive and Esoteric Eonir [10 -> 15, but also subject change from 'Music' to M'usic and Poetry']
Philosophy: Extensive Asur (+2) [10 -> 12]
Rhetoric: Extensive Asur (+2) [10 -> 12]
Theology: Asur (+1) [7 -> 8]
By the way, @Boney while i'm taking my pause to get breakfast, i will say i'm wondering why theres not any Eonir for stuff like Philosophy and Rhetoric. Wasn't there a mention of there being frequent and open to the public debates and similar as one of the aspects of Cityborn culture? Or am i misremembering?
 
Today, Lutz Schaefer is a Lieutenant and a father of five.
A common soldier risen to officer rank and managing to keep five children alive. A very successful life.

The only part you know of this initially is his rank, because he's currently dressed in his ceremonial best as he very insistently batters at your door at a time in the morning that is only seconds after the point where it would have been rude to be battering at your door.
Honestly surprised Mathilde has set opening hours. Perhaps Wolf organised it?

"It's possible," you say cautiously as you try to decipher his tone. It takes you a moment not because it's especially cryptic, but because you're not used to the idea of a father being excited to learn that his son might one day be a Wizard. You adjust the planned arc of this conversation.
The sheer level of culture shock Mathilde is experiencing here.

Undoubtedly there are those that would argue it builds character.
That seems depressingly likely. There are very few trials, tribulations or outright terrors that no one will say is positive because it 'builds character'.

Johann might have gotten along with the child more easily, but his example of Alchemical Thaumaturgy is perhaps a bit intense to be a child's first example of their future.
Yeah, transhuman-golden-punch-wizard is for advanced students. And foreign dignitaries we need to impress.

it's very unlikely to one day rival the Elemental-Mystical-Cardinal triune that currently dominated Collegiate magical theory, but it could very well join the ranks of the numerous other models that have all kinds of niche uses in specific areas.
There are n+1 competing models.

That aside, this is delicious lore.

While your library's security, having been constructed by Dwarven architects and residing within a Dwarven Karak, was judged as good enough for most purposes, there was one part of the Library of Mournings that requires a greater dedication to security, including a failsafe to destroy the contents should the vault that will contain them be forcibly breached. The scrolls in question are the largest you've ever seen, and covered with carefully-copied diagrams and notes in a language that seems entirely alien, even after you catch a glimpse of both Eltharin and Khazalid in its patterns. You get the impression that mere ink and vellum should be entirely incapable of containing the message within, and that it condescends to be contained in a merely mortal medium as an act of generous benevolence. It is beyond the peoples of the current era to even measure how many steps they are removed from the original lessons of the Old Ones, those that joined forces with the Dragons to shape this world and held back the onslaught of Chaos for long enough for life as you know it today to grow strong enough to take up the fight themselves.
Ok, that is the sort of thing I would gladly spend AP learning languages in order to read.
 
Hey just read this entire story for the first time a few weeks ago but wanted to hold off for an update to comment. Delightful to read, wish I found this years ago :) Interested to see what it's like to follow a new turn from the start next update!!!

Somebody has probably mentioned it already before in this massive thread but I like the Dwarf-Undumgi dynamic a lot. Reminds me of Laketown and how it interacts with the Dwarves in Tolkien's work a bit.

I guess if there's any input I'd have on purchases it would be to consider consolidating some of our spread out resources, namely by looking to sell off the Stirland lands. I know those go way back to the beginning of the quest so a lot of people might have an emotional connection to it but reading through everything since it has always felt sort of distant and unrelated to everything else that's going on. Between the college, the library stuff, and the EIC, it feels like it's always the poor relation and if anything interesting ever happened with the area it kind of feels like it would just take up even more action points that we don't have. I guess it's part of our noble title but if all we're caring about there is the title then being an unlanded noble doesn't feel like that big of a deal given that it's probably the least of our titles at this point anyways. We're not engaged in any sort of dynasty building. I definitely wouldn't be looking to invest anything more into the area. If the elf vacation is on the menu sometime soon bringing along a lot of gold to that for that brief period when we can seems like a good idea so I wouldn't want to spend like crazy anytime soon.
 
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It's not strictly impossible. 'Balthazar Gelt' is as likely as anything to be an assumed name.
How old was Gelt? Because based on this we're 25 years off
Piecing together scraps of canon, my current best guess is that Thyrus Gormann is Supreme Patriarch from 2503 to 2519. 16 years multiplied by Gelt's melodrama could qualify as 'long standing prominence'.
so the child would be mid - late 30's which would be young for a Supreme Patriarch.
 

Great. Thank you.

For that matter, and sorry for not mentioning it before, the elven colonists presumably have quite a lot of exposure to the sharp end of dwarven Runecraft/casting, in the same way that they have exposure to the Beastmen's Wild Magic, as they'd have fought against it extensively during the War of the Beard, and there were Runelords working in elven cities and presumably selling runecraft to elves who would have written about its properties. And that's assuming that the archmages who collaborated with runesmiths on runecrafting didn't write anything at all down.

Perhaps that was too sensitive to share though.

One thing I'm slightly surprised by is that they have no knowledge about Gazul written down, as the priests of Gazul seem more willing than most to share basic information with the cults of other death gods, if only to ensure that dwarves who die far from home are laid to rest properly. Given the way dwarves lived alongside elves, even if that knowledge was restricted to those who swore the relevant paths, I'd have thought that there's be commentaries on comparative practices and theology written, even if they didn't go into detail about secret practices.
 
How old was Gelt? Because based on this we're 25 years off

so the child would be mid - late 30's which would be young for a Supreme Patriarch.
I'd say that's probably roughly right for Gelt.

He arrived to the Colleges in the early 2500s as a young man that already had experience with Alchemy and Chamon. Don't think we have any more details than that.

(Except in 4e Roleplay where he arrived earlier)
 
You're not sure if you're entirely convinced by this logic. You suspect it may have come about in a time when the Colleges were less established and more in need of funding, and that it continues on at least partly because the Wizards making this decision had to deal with student debt in their youth, so they feel affronted at the idea that future students will not have to. Undoubtedly there are those that would argue it builds character.
I'd predict that the first College to do away with student debt will see a surge in students, eventually causing the other Colleges to do the same in order to compete. (If any College ever does so.)
Here's the delta for our library:
Adding those all up, I got a total of +202. (Or, +205, with The Old Ones counting twice. The number might still go up a bit.) IIRC it's 50 gc for each +1, meaning in total our library haul is worth over 10,000 gc. A quite literal fortune in books, even before you factor in how all these books were up till now inaccessible to anyone but the Eonir.
 
What a lovely update. And what lovely additions to our library! Two different Old Ones topics and a vault of Old Ones writings is nice I guess but who cares when you have THIS:
Cadai
Asuryan, the Creator +5 - Extensive and Esoteric Eonir
Eldrazor, Lord of Blades +2 - Extensive Asur
Hoeth, Lord of Wisdom +5 - Extensive and Esoteric Eonir
Isha, the Mother +5 - Extensive and Esoteric Eonir
Kurnous, Father of the Wilds +2 - Extensive Asur
Ladrielle, Lady of Mists +2 - Extensive Asur
Lileath, Maiden of Dreams +2 - Extensive Asur
Loec, the Shadow Dancer +5 - Extensive and Esoteric Eonir
Vaul, the Maker +2 - Extensive Eonir

Cytherai
Anath Raema, the Savage Huntress +2 - Extensive Asur
Atharti, Lady of Desire +5 - Extensive and Esoteric Eonir
Ereth Khial, the Pale Queen +2 - Extensive Asur
Hekarti, the Hydra Queen +5 - Extensive and Esoteric Eonir
Khaine, the Bloody-Handed God +3 - Imperial / Extensive Asur
Nethu, Keeper of the Last Door +2 - Extensive Asur

Ellinill and the Ellinilli
Ellinill, Lord of Destruction +2 - Extensive Asur
Addaioth, Bringer of Wrath and Fire +2 - Asrai, Asur
Drakira, Queen of Vengeance +2 - Extensive Asur
Estreuth, Herald of Famine +2 - Extensive Asur
Hukon, the Sunderer +3 - Extensive and Obscure Asur
Mathlann, Lord of the Deeps +2 - Extensive Eonir
I will, of course, start asking some questions about theology in short order...but first:

@Boney a few questions about this part of the book intake:

-Mathlann only gets Extensive Eonir, unlike most other Gods in the Eonir's inner ring. Is that because the Eonir haven't sailed in a while?
-The other Ellinilli all had Extensive Asur, but Addaioth just got Asur (actually he might have got nothing, we already had Asur books on Addaioth from the Elementalists). Is this intentional?
-No Morai-Heg?
-Eldrazor counts as Cadai?
-Is there anything about minor Eonir Gods, like Torothal or Sarriel or that one genderqueer elf God that I can't remember the name of?

[ ] [LIBRARY] Library of Mournings
Name two non-magical topics to hire Cityborn scribes to copy all available Laurelorn books on.
Should this option now be defunct, or are there somehow more books to squeeze ouf of the Eonir?
 
Dwarf Favour Purchases
Aethyric Vitae can be spent instead of favour at an exchange rate of 3 favour per gallon; for Rune-related purchases, this will also guarantee the cooperation of Runelords who may otherwise be disinterested. To use this, simply add 'paid by Vitae' or similar to an item you are voting for.
[ ] [DWARF] No purchase.
[ ] [DWARF] Write-in.

College Favour Purchases
[ ] [COLLEGE] No purchase.
[ ] [COLLEGE] Write-in.

Other Purchases
[ ] [PURCHASE] No purchase.
[ ] [PURCHASE] Write-in

So… is there actually anything we want this turn? Because we are getting just a little strapped for cash/favours at the moment. So I'm actually leaning to 'no' everything
 
I'd say that's probably roughly right for Gelt.

He arrived to the Colleges in the early 2500s as a young man that already had experience with Alchemy and Chamon. Don't think we have any more details than that.

(Except in 4e Roleplay where he arrived earlier)

Only a bit. It implies 2497. But yeah, Gelt's whole background is a complete mystery and it's an assumed name. He arrived in the Empire an experienced Wizard and just joined up.
 
I wonder if we could use the vault of Old One writings as justification for getting one of the Grey Lords to teach us Anoqeyån if we mention that we'll also get a Runesmith to teach us Arcane Khazalid and promise to share anything we can puzzle out from the Old One texts?

They won't expect results quickly and they'll know that they won't be able to be taught Arcane Khazalid (unless they already know it).
 
@Boney, I'd like to suggest swapping the positions of Social Science and Applied Science, because Applied Science is somewhat related to natural Science. Right now I looked at Anatomy and had to skip over Social Science to go look at Medicine.

The oddities and inefficiencies of the library's categorization system is a product of the way late medieval academia went about things. There might be a tipping point where these inefficiencies annoy me more than they entertain me and I fix it, but we aren't there yet.

By the way, @Boney while i'm taking my pause to get breakfast, i will say i'm wondering why theres not any Eonir for stuff like Philosophy and Rhetoric. Wasn't there a mention of there being frequent and open to the public debates and similar as one of the aspects of Cityborn culture? Or am i misremembering?

What the Cityborn are doing is to philosophy and rhetoric what WWE is to martial arts.

Should there be Asur books on the Druchii?

I imagine the Eonir don't have enough exposure for their own insight.

The Eonir were cut off from Ulthuan during the Sundering, and were only briefly and reluctantly brought back into Ulthuan's sphere of influence in the earliest phase of the Druchii's existence, and since then have been cut off almost entirely from both.

Great. Thank you.

For that matter, and sorry for not mentioning it before, the elven colonists presumably have quite a lot of exposure to the sharp end of dwarven Runecraft/casting, in the same way that they have exposure to the Beastmen's Wild Magic, as they'd have fought against it extensively during the War of the Beard, and there were Runelords working in elven cities and presumably selling runecraft to elves who would have written about its properties. And that's assuming that the archmages who collaborated with runesmiths on runecrafting didn't write anything at all down.

Perhaps that was too sensitive to share though.

The Grey Lords did all of Laurelorn's fighting against the Dwarves during the War of the Beard.

One thing I'm slightly surprised by is that they have no knowledge about Gazul written down, as the priests of Gazul seem more willing than most to share basic information with the cults of other death gods, if only to ensure that dwarves who die far from home are laid to rest properly. Given the way dwarves lived alongside elves, even if that knowledge was restricted to those who swore the relevant paths, I'd have thought that there's be commentaries on comparative practices and theology written, even if they didn't go into detail about secret practices.

Cults of Death Gods could afford to be a lot more secretive in a world that had yet to know Nagash.

-Mathlann only gets Extensive Eonir, unlike most other Gods in the Eonir's inner ring. Is that because the Eonir haven't sailed in a while?

Unlike the other prominent Gods, Mathlann has next to no relevance to most Cityborn. The books would exist in Mathlann's Temple and to the Major Houses dedicated to him.

-The other Ellinilli all had Extensive Asur, but Addaioth just got Asur (actually he might have got nothing, we already had Asur books on Addaioth from the Elementalists). Is this intentional?

No, fixing.


Fixing.

-Eldrazor counts as Cadai?

The categorization is not objectively correct, it is correct according to the knowledge available to Mathilde. Eldrazor isn't super prominent in Tor Lithanel, but He is highly respected.

-Is there anything about minor Eonir Gods, like Torothal or Sarriel or that one genderqueer elf God that I can't remember the name of?

Whether the Elves have minor gods at all is ambiguous, and whether it would make sense for them to have them raises a lot of big questions about the deep lore. Sarriel is sometimes referred to in Eonir writings as a Minor God, sometimes as a Major Spirit, and sometimes as a Grey Lord. Mathilde is 100% certain if she asks about the contradiction, every Elf within earshot will smugly say that there is no contradiction.

Should this option now be defunct, or are there somehow more books to squeeze ouf of the Eonir?

It should be, fixing.
 
The Grey Lords did all of Laurelorn's fighting against the Dwarves during the War of the Beard.

All of Laurelorn's fighting, sure, but aren't many of the Eonir descended from elves from other Reik Basin colonies that fled to Laurelorn after being on the losing end of dwarven invasions? They presumably would have brought their painfully earned knowledge with them.
 
By the way, @Boney while i'm taking my pause to get breakfast, i will say i'm wondering why theres not any Eonir for stuff like Philosophy and Rhetoric. Wasn't there a mention of there being frequent and open to the public debates and similar as one of the aspects of Cityborn culture? Or am i misremembering?
It looks like we only got either a Asur or Eonir bonus for each category. Which i think means the Asur results are for areas where their views have not yet diverged from Ulthuan. Though I am a little surprised there were no categories with some overlap of new concepts and still having records of the old orthodoxy.
 
The two spend quite some time mocking the fringe belief in simple physical forces shaping the world over millions of years.
Well. They're not wrong, really. The world presumably had mountains before the old ones showed up, but the world as it is is all because of them and the lizards shaping it.
The Old Ones: Extensive and Obscure Asur (+3) [New Subject]
Terraformation: Extensive (+2) [New Subject]
Ah, and here's Mathilde getting some info on that very subject.

As for ecology and forestry being new subjects, are there any Taal or Rhya worshipping libraries we could hit up for the imperial side of it? Maybe Talabecland has one.
 
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Whether the Elves have minor gods at all is ambiguous, and whether it would make sense for them to have them raises a lot of big questions about the deep lore. Sarriel is sometimes referred to in Eonir writings as a Minor God, sometimes as a Major Spirit, and sometimes as a Grey Lord. Mathilde is 100% certain if she asks about the contradiction, every Elf within earshot will smugly say that there is no contradiction.

And to be fair, in some Imperial writings Sigmar would be described as a formerly living human historical figure, in some as him being a Saint of Ulric, and in others as a major god, and almost all humans in the Empire wouldn't even conceive of their being a contradiction between those facts.

He very likely was all three.

Politically, having another person that is described both as having been both a living mortal and a god is potentially theologically awkward for the Cult of Sigmar, as they apparently claim that he's uniquely the only ascended mortal* and so has a special and superior relationship with mortals as he's the only god who started as one of them.

I doubt Mathilde would care much about that though.

* Myrmidia incarnating a mortal avatar is totally different. And Ranald and His cult are lying liars who lie, so He doesn't count either.
 
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I'm a bit surprised ther is no category for stuff like Flora,Physical art (painting,sculpture,etc),politic or a general history.
 
I'm a bit surprised ther is no category for stuff like Flora,Physical art (painting,sculpture,etc),politic or a general history.

General history is not a category in the system, this has been asked at least once in the Before Times (TM) that I recall (around when we were doing our second purchase of books I think). If you want the history of the Empire read books on the Empire, if you want the history of the Karaz Ankor read books on the Karaz Ankor etc...
 
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