Long after your decision is made, your mind continues to linger on the irony of the Bridge of Death being one of the safest places in Praag. Its other name - the Empty Bridge - is an example of what your task here seeks to banish, as it seems that some sort of haunting means that anyone crossing at night finds themselves followed by a figure that is always growing closer but never quite reaches them. This level of benign disquieting seems to be the norm in Old Town, in stark contrast to the constant threat of death and worse to be found in New Town.
This is information you're not about to share with the crowd of onlookers that assembles as soon as the town criers spread word of what you're up to. Inconvenient, but quite necessary, as the population of Praag would likely react badly to unknown foreigners performing unknown magic in the heart of their city. As it is they're keeping a safe distance despite their curiosity, most likely because the town criers made it very clear that any attempt to interfere with what was announced as 'a bolstering of the City's defences against Chaos' would be considered treason of the vilest sort.
With the aid of a treadwheel crane that usually lifts cargoes out of the river instead of much more literally into the river, the Waystone is very gingerly lowered into the Lynsk, to a very relieving lack of anything unexpected happening. And then it continues to be lowered, and after its peak dips below the waterline and quickly out of sight in the murky waters, continues still. You were told that the river was about seven meters deep here, which sounded a lot shallower in your head than it does as you watch more and more rope disappear into the murk. You'd be a lot more concerned about that if it wasn't for the magic of delegation and specialization.
Niedzwenka clambers over the railing with surprising grace, and the Lynsk seems to jerk alarmedly as she makes contact with it, the water level dropping as the watercourse tries desperately to shrink away from her and then rippling fretfully as she disappears underneath. There's much comment and discussion among the onlookers about this, especially as seconds stretch into minutes, but nobody seems to think that the woman is at any actual risk. When she emerges again, pulled up by the rope that lowered the Waystone, she is, of course, dripping wet, but the water coming off her seems to lack any of the foulness that flows in the waters below. As soon as her feet are back on the bridge, there's a momentary writhing from one of the spirits entrapped somewhere upon her person, and the water pours hurriedly off her and slinks away before something worse than mere eviction happens to it. "The weight of it sunk it good and hard into the silt," she says, "and the river knows exactly where it is. This will suit."
Some of the crowd find themselves entertained enough to trail behind you as you make your way up the road to the beginning of the switchbacks that lead up to the Citadel, where a statue with weather-worn features stands squinting at what once was the far distance but is now the wall of a building that has grown several stories since the statue was erected, which itself bears innumerable layers of paint that have covered generations of graffiti depicting what the citizens of Praag thought the statue would like to be staring at. Underneath the hollow statue, and perhaps explaining the local fascination with it, is a Waystone that connects directly to the nexus underneath the Citadel.
With a hand on the statue's calf you bring yourself into contact with the local spur of a network that spans the world. You speak a very specific string of silences, and the eddy of magical energy causes a larger movement of magic within the Waystone, a ripple that fades away into the distance and then dies down. And though no sense you can identify can spot anything further happening - including several senses most humans lack - you know for a fact that somewhere in the world, something immensely powerful just started moving.
Uncaring of both common sense and the less common sort that can quote the propagation speed of magic through various mediums, a wave of magic approaches that makes visible the thin layer of power that sheaths the magic flowing through the leyline. That invisibly thin layer of power suddenly swells and stretches and shoots out a new tendril, pushing through the resistant rock below without any care for inefficiency in the direction you have indicated. As the tendril reaches the river it almost seems to hesitate for a moment before it continues, acting with caution that was absent a moment ago, and with oozing slowness it engulfs the Waystone, energy moving to and fro as it explores this new addition to the network. Then it fades away again to almost nothing, and the scraps of ambient magical energy that the new Waystone had already absorbed from the Lynsk begin to flow underground towards you. For now the flow is aggravatingly molassic, but with time the stone below the city will adapt in nature.
And just like that, it's done. The first Waystone in countless generations planted with the only hint of a ceremony being a series of satisfied nods shared between you, Niedzwenka, and Zlata. That's because the next Waystone is going to be paid for in blood, as a foothold is carved out of the tainted ruins of Newtown. And not just blood, because the resources and expertise to build that Waystone are going to be assembled and paid for by Kislev, because part of being a sovereign state is that you become distinctly less sovereign if you just let foreign interests build infrastructure in your country. So you've laid out the requirements for the Tzar's people, including lists of where the required expertise might be found, and when the Tzar has chosen and negotiated with whoever will be assembling Kislev's new Waystones, they'll be given instruction in how to do so, and they will go about their work as you turn your attention to the next corner of the world in need of Waystones.
---
"The Waystone network in Sylvania is in better shape than you might think," Markgraf Nyklaus says, unrolling half a dozen maps showing different corners of Sylvania and weighing down the corners with an assortment of weaponry he had concealed on his person. "The Von Carsteins infamously saw humans as cattle, but morality aside, that meant they had a vested interest in keeping them alive. So they kept the network in working order near population centers, and used something called 'balefire' to create wellsprings of
Dhar where and when required instead of just having a constant sky-high level of corruption. There seems to have been something of a self-balancing mechanism to it - the less forward-thinking Vampires would be less prone to caring about long-term wellbeing of the human population, but they'd also be the ones that would want all of the Necromancers under them focused on conquest and expansion, so they didn't want to dedicate Necromancers to having undead do the mining and smelting and treefelling and blacksmithing that would arm and armour their armies."
You suppose that makes sense. Despite Sylvania's reputation, the continued existence of a human population within it that is sane enough to function puts a limit on how bad the taint could be. "It seems to already be concentrated along the rivers," you observe.
He nods. "That's where the people are, because most of the rest of Sylvania is either hills or forest. But there's opportunities for your riverbound Waystones if you look for them - upriver of Drakenhof, the former site of Drakenhof Castle, is pretty severely tainted, as is the upper half of the Eisig, where Vanhaldenschlosse was. There's also economic opportunities in the east if the woods there can be tamed and some farmland carved out of them, which the Waystones would make easier. On top of the direct benefits of more acreage to tax, if a few baronies can be carved out, that's some blank slate territories that can be populated with people that don't have thousands of years of Vampires on their necks."
It seems the Markgraf has been keeping an eye on your exploits. You let a raised eyebrow be your only comment on the matter. "Very good. The model of Waystone we've developed requires contributions from a Runesmith and a High Wizard. For Stirland, the most viable source of High Magic would be the Eonir, either from their magically-inclined Major Houses, or from the Grey Lords."
"Runesmiths isn't going to be too much of a problem. I was reaching out to Zhufbar before I had even stepped foot inside Drakenhof's walls. Eonir I'm less familiar with. What would sway them?"
"The Major Houses are wading cautiously out into the world of international trade, so trade goods and hard currency aren't without value. You might be able to garner their curiosity as well, as Sylvania is not just steeped in a form of magic they know next to nothing about, it also has a history as deeply marked by the Skaven Wars as their own."
He gives you a long, evaluating look. "They're not going to be the wrong sort of curious about it, are they?"
"They already have a strong theoretical knowledge of pure
Dhar use - the sort the Druchii use, if you're familiar with that - and they very rarely use it outside of academic study of it. And they already have the sort of Dendromancy the Asrai have, and make very limited use of that. Besides, these are beings that already count their ages in the thousands, so the main draw of Necromancy just wouldn't be there for them." And if they were going to be tempted by it, there's very little you could do to get in the way.
"Academics, then? If they're cut from the same cloth as the Order of Lorekeepers, I can live with that."
The rest of your service to Sylvania is fulfilled by coming back some months later when the Markgraf is able to free up the time to be ferried to Laurelorn. As it turns out, after House Tindomiel made their contractually-owed and very emphatic first refusal to delve into the land of necromancy and corruption, the Markgraf beelines straight towards an audience with the Grey Lords instead. You don't know what conversation went on in the Wishing Woods, but when he emerges it is with the promised aid of two Grey Lords, Seilph and Sarumar. From what you've managed to glean from their reputations, Lord Seilph is likely motivated by what some might consider an unseemly interest in questionable magics and Lord Sarumar is there to yank on his leash if he fails to obey the 'look but don't touch' rule. And with the Grey Lords actively involved in the project, it will become trivial to shake loose High Wizards willing to do scut work if it gives them the ability to work alongside their usually-reclusive neighbours.
While you're handling that, Elrisse and Tochter follow up on what the Markgraf said by doing a very cautious survey of the eastern woods of Sylvania. What they find is that by Sylvanian standards the woods are positively quaint, and even by the standards of the rest of the Empire they're only moderately terrifying. The factors that have led to this are seemingly manifold, from the geographic distance between them and the more central hearts of corruption of Vanhaldenschlosse and Mordheim, to the buffer zone of relatively pure running water that flows from the titular torrent of Zhufbar, to a proportion of secret worshippers of the Dark Moor among the local population, to the simple fact that marching a necromantic army through there won't get you to anywhere worth conquering.
As far as you can tell, the only reason that the woods are as untouched as they are is reputation. If the maps drawn so long ago had had the border between Ostermark and Sylvania follow the Templa instead of the North Stir when the rivers split at Hundham, then there would probably be at least one more town and three or four villages in the same area. If anything, the main service Waystones would do to this area would be to reassure would-be colonists that the Sylvanian-ness of the area is being seen to. And when steel does the job of taming that land, it is stone that will get the credit. Adding on that tamed frontier to the already relatively tame lands between the Drak and the Templa, as well as the ongoing efforts in the Hunter's Hills and the Council of Manhorak taking the lands between the Eisig and the Drak as their natural heartland, the terrors of Sylvania will be hemmed in to the woods between the Eisig and the Steinbach, a chunk of territory that measures in at perhaps a fifth of their original range.
Sylvania is, appropriately enough, already dead. There's just a lot of work left to do with axe and flame before it gets the message.
---
"Forty of these," you say, tapping on the schematics, "equidistant around the shore." You tap a map of the region around the Black Water. "According to the range of estimates of how much exposed warpstone there is underwater, the ambient level of magic in the water will reach an equilibrium at somewhere between a quarter to a twentieth of the current levels within a year of completion."
The King of Barak Varr and the King of Zhufbar look from the maps to Thorek, who nods once.
That is the end of the meeting.
---
Okay, sure, a great deal of discussion about logistics and details and timelines with all sorts of people went on in the coming weeks, but there was no more that needed actual debating after that point. You had given the Dwarves a path to tame the land on their doorstep, and they began marching down it immediately. That moment is a memory you will treasure, even if the messy little details take away from some of its shine when candor forces you to mention them.
---
Praag-Lynsk Waystone Expansion, using Riverine Waystones, by Cothiquan Wizards. Began 2491, focused on cleansing of Chaos taint from Praag.
Templa Colonies, using Riverine Waystones, by Grey Lord Seilph and Grey Lord Sarumar. Began 2491, establishing farming and logging villages in the Misty Wood and Tangled Wood.
Cleansing of the Black Water, using Riverine Waystones, by Lothernian Wizards. Estimated completion date: 2496. Estimated completion of all currently planned fortifications of Waystone sites: mid-2500s.
