You don't quite burst into King Belegar's private quarters. One does not burst into the private quarters of a King. But the unseemly haste with which you jam the necessity of a meeting with him through the usual procedures are the royal equivalent of doing so. "I need to know what your plans are for restoring Karak Eight Peaks' Runesmiths Guild," you open the conversation with when you finally reach him.
"Still being negotiated between the Thungnissons and the Ironbrows. Very much in the Ironbrows' favour, considering the circumstances. Why?"
"I approached Karak Vlag about a book exchange deal, thinking they might have books that the Fire Spire had left with them for safekeeping. The Fire Spire being a tower of magical research in Praag that was destroyed during the Great War Against Chaos, it predates the Colleges but it sounds like at least some of their precursors might have been involved with it, so ours would be the best remaining claim, and the only one that can be legally made under the Empire and Kislev's laws. The problem is, they had thought about what I might be after and come to a completely different conclusion, that I was there to solve the question of the property of their Runesmiths Guild."
"Weren't the Thungnissons claiming those, as the original Runesmiths Guild that all the others split off from?"
"They tried, but made their claim while also saying that the Vlagians with knowledge of Runesmithing they allegedly shouldn't have should also be turned over to Thungnisson custody. That didn't put the Vlagians in much of a mood to turn over anything. So their theory was that I was being sent as an adit to bypass the obstacle - if the books are turned over to the custody of the Karak that currently hosts Thorek and Kragg, then there's nothing to criticize and they can be held in trust until the Runesmithing Guild can be properly refounded - which could then happen alongside that of Karak Eight Peaks'. I didn't want to correct the misconception without checking to see if you might actually be interested in the idea."
Belegar's brow furrows, his initial wary frown giving way to one of careful consideration. "There might be something to that," he says after some rumination. "Part of why the debates are dragging on is because they can. The refounding of the Ironforges is going to be entirely from scratch, all of the secrets that were once unique to them are now all either lost or absorbed into the Thungnissons or the Ironbrows, so there's nothing to tempt anyone into transplanting themselves to here. But Karak Vlag's Runesmiths were descendants of those driven enough to go north on the research expeditions, but loyal enough to remain within the World's Edge Mountains - that's a respected combination. And they had a very respected reputation for stone-based Runes, where most others specialize in metal-based. All the orphaned knowledge that might be recovered from their notebooks and private libraries... that would get some heads to turn. It would give me a pick to wield in this whole situation." He looks to you. "For this to not come across as you intruding on business that you shouldn't, I would have to cast you as the avalanche that uncovered the seam. Not the most flattering role."
You shrug. "It wouldn't even be inaccurate. It's not the first time I've reshaped the landscape to fill the shelves, and knowing my luck, it won't be the last."
---
Your subsequent meetings on the matter are full of carefully-chosen words and intense silences, but after thoroughly vouchsafing the security of your library and when the talks were on the verge of being presented to the Runesmiths as a shored shaft, you find a place in conversation to gracefully bring up the matter - though the intense silence that was the initial response made you question whether you had actually done so. But after an equally intense sidebar, the worryingly lithe Vlagians lay the matter out for you. "If the Kron-Azril-Ungol were to come into possession of the originals of certain volumes in a more heavily distressed state than they were last known to be, would it be prepared to take on the burden of not answering those questions?"
That answers a suspicion you had and then some, all but confirming to you that in their long tenure in the Aethyr, not only did they bend the trust of the Fire Spire enough to peruse the books left in their custody - people already dead at that point, though the Vlagians had no way of knowing - but they did so thoroughly enough that there might be some dogears or margin notes or collateral damage that would raise unanswerable questions.
"It would be," you reply, "especially since I believe that nobody remains who would have greater authority than the Collegiate side of the KAU partnership to demand those answers."
"Empire authority over Kislev Wizards?" Interestingly, they use the Reikspiel word for Wizard instead of the Khazalid Zhufokri or any of the less flattering alternatives.
"Kislev's Ice Witches are dominant, and they see users of magics other than that of the Hag Witches as guests in their lands at best, to be cautiously watched and not allowed to outstay their welcome. The Fire Spire was able to exist in Praag because the Ice Witches avoided the city, not because they had any kind of agreement with it."
"Would they agree with that if the full facts were presented to them?" Their language is terse, even by Dwarven standards, and it would be easy to take it as hostility, but that just seems to be how the Vlagians speak of important matters.
"If the question was presented alongside a stack of books on magical lore looking for a claimant? Probably not. But to my understanding, that is the current state of affairs."
They take some time to discuss that answer between themselves, probably more time than it would have taken if you had given a less honest answer. But when they do return, it is with an estimate of weight and volume that will be added to the shipments already planned, and the quiet understanding that the matter is never to be discussed again. The main thrust of the discussion continues on, and the eventual conclusion is a simple one: when, in the fullness of time, the Runesmith Clans of Karak Eight Peaks and Karak Vlag are refounded, it will be as Brother-Clans, more so than is usual for even the descendants of Thungni. And until the day when they take shared possession, there will be an extremely well-defended chamber deep in your library that not even you can enter.
Concealed among those shipments is a few shelves worth of books for you to sort through at your leisure, mostly in Reikspiel with a minority in Kislevarin dialects. The distress the Vlagians referred to seems to not be any physical damage - they're actually shockingly well-preserved for their age - but a great deal of Khazalid notes in the margins that, from the brief skims you've been able to give them, would raise a great deal of questions that it is now your responsibility to not answer. You look forward to being able to carve out enough time to sort through them.
---
"So, what is it that made you look at ten million acres of spider-infested forest and say, yes, I think I can find one specific rock in that?"
"We could get lucky."
Johann gives you a searching look. "Do you know something I don't and you're being coy about it, or do you mean the other thing?"
"The other thing."
"Oh. Okay. Let's see this forest, then."
Johann is a treasure, and not just literally. You smile and clap him on the shoulder. "And besides, this isn't going to be just anywhere - it's going to be somewhere very significant to either the Beastmen or the Forest Goblins. That makes this a matter of information, which means we can use what the Dwarves already have as a starting point, and even if we don't actually find the stone, any information we do get along the way will still be useful in other ways."
He perks up. "Like old times, then?"
You return his smile. "Very much like old times."
---
"Not entirely like old times," Johann says after the first few raids, which fulfilled the primary objective of confirming the accuracy of Dwarven information but turned out rather dire on the secondary objective of incidental looting. Anything the Beastmen couldn't immediately make use of was immediately broken or torn or otherwise ruined, and anything in Goblin custody very quickly met a similar fate by accident. "Even different in that there's actually some normal coin, rather than those horrible warpstone ones. Why do they even keep them, anyway?"
"Both would take it just to spite whoever they were taking it from, but just as we have the Silk and Ivory Roads, so too do the Greenskins have a trade network that leads to the Chaos Dwarves - a 'Steel Road', or a 'Fire Road', I suppose one could say. And some Beastmen tribes have been known to collaborate with Chaos cultists within the Empire, and sometimes with the Norscans, and so know to accumulate the coins those trade partners would value." One might even call the trade link between Beastmen and Norscans an 'Ice Road', you consider. You wonder if it's worth pursuing more information on the subject with an eye to future papers - it's somewhat outside your usual specialities, but the pleasing symmetry of the names of the two conceptual roads begs to be elaborated further upon. And it might be something you can tie in to Roswita's research into the economies of the Vampires.
Tempting as it may be to just keep raiding outlying outposts to see how long it will take Johann to question whether you actually have a plan, his form of Magesight has proven more attuned to some forms of energy than yours in the past, so you bring him in on the overall plan: to prod the Goblins until a Waaagh forms, and then to see what happens. Ideally the point that it forms around will give you the general location of their most important rallying ground, which would hopefully be their foremost holy site, which theoretically would be where they keep their most important artefacts, which presumably would include any stolen nexus monoliths. On top of that, the mustering could potentially provoke the Beastmen into their own mobilization, which very easily could bring the two groups into conflict, or present an opportunity to trick one side or the other into thinking they already are.
You're not unaware of the staggering amount of provisos built into that plan. While it would be nice if everything goes off exactly as planned, perhaps due to some sort of divine intervention, you're completely prepared for this to break down somewhere along the way, and to take advantage of the opportunities that breakdown will present to learn more about the area and its inhabitants. It's a plan more in Heidi's usual mien than yours: go into a complicated situation, introduce a new disruptive element, and be ready to take advantage of the opportunities that will inevitably emerge as the knock-on effects ripple outwards.
The next few raids go according to plan, as does the consequences of those raids among the Forest Goblins, and even at this early point you're learning new things. Where the resonances of the smaller, reactionary Waaaghs you encountered in the Karak Eight Peaks campaign were choruses of contrasting notes and the larger, nation-destroying Waaaghs that carve themselves into history you imagine to be more orchestral, the incipient Waaagh of the Forest Goblins is a single tone, high and sharp, hovering incessantly in one specific point behind your eyes like the prelude to a headache. Presumably other forms of monocultural Waaaghs would similarly differ in their expression - it's a topic that has received some attention in papers you've read, but so far the only widely-agreed upon taxonomy is a division between the 'Little' and 'Big' Waaaghs, and even that would likely still be debated if it weren't for Waaagh Grom being such an undeniable demonstration. And as the processes of a Waaagh concentrate the forces of the Forest Goblins and force its regional leaders to vie for supremacy amongst themselves, you search the area around where this is happening for a Beast-Path.
A Beast-Path, in its most basic form, is a path through undergrowth kept clear by frequent passage of Beastmen travelling to and from their camps, water sources, and hunting grounds, and it is dangerously difficult to distinguish them from game trails carved by the hooves of goats and deer. But over time and as a Beastherd grows larger in both size and number, the paths are carved deeper and deeper until they form half-buried highways between encampments, holy sites, and meeting places. At their extremes, they burrow into liminal pathways called Worldroots that once linked the primordial Dreaming Woods together, allowing Beastmen to travel between areas of forest without care for the intervening terrain. It takes some time for you to find one since you've had very little experience with Beastmen, but when you get near enough all you need to do is follow the sinking feeling in your gut that would be an entirely natural response for someone less dangerous than yourself. You carve a path through the thick undergrowth that masks the edge of the Beastpath and then begin to prod at the Waaagh field emanating from the struggle for dominance occurring over the horizon, sharpening your Ulgu into nasty little jabs that only disperses the Waaagh for a moment, but causes it to roil as violently as a sizable skirmish would. With time and patience, there is only one possible response to such a provocation, and your Gyrocarriage takes you out of its path and allows the largely spider-carried response to flood into the Beastpaths.
In theory, such a conflict could escalate forever, drawing in Beastmen from across the continent through the Beastpaths and calling in more Waaaghs from the Badlands and World's Edge Mountains. In practice, such a conflict only serves the short-term belligerence of the two groups without catering to their long-term ambitions or desires, so it will only continue for so long. Perhaps one side will achieve local dominance, perhaps the other will decide to seek greener pastures elsewhere, most likely things will simply die back down to the baseline level of conflict between the two. If you put in enough time, effort, and perhaps the assistance of someone as knowledgeable about Beastmen as you are about Greenskins, you could probably keep the flames stoked for long enough to exterminate one side and greatly weaken the other, but that would be a far greater investment of time and effort than you've slated for the task at hand.
After a few hours for the Goblins to muster and charge off, you have Adela fly to the point where the Waaagh had been concentrated and find a point where the canopy is interrupted by a lattice of spiderweb. The battle between your curiosity and caution is decided when Adela points out that the clearing is too regular to be natural, formed by a rectangle of ancient trees that cannot have been cultivated by Goblin hands, and the girl needs only a word from you to unleash flames onto the webs and burn enough of a hole through them for the Gyrocarriage to fit through - though only after waiting long enough to see if there are any remaining spiders that might respond to this destruction, of course. Adela touches down inside the clearing without powering down the engine, and the moment you step out you can feel it. The power of Mork, yes, but it is out of tune with the power you're familiar with, underlaid with something else. This holy place is a pentiment, a palimpsest - a surface layer over something deeper and older and truer. The shadows here are impenetrably deep, and would remain so even if the webs above were removed entirely. They retreated in a circle around the hole of sunlight that Adela's fire let in not as a surrender to it, but as a welcome.
You called on a divinity to seek something ancient and lost, and in this place, it is impossible for that divinity to find anything but this. This place was sacred to Them before the name and form that you know, before the name and form that others know, before any name still spoken on this world. This place is more ancient than anything you can name, and more lost than anything you can comprehend.
"The Goblins don't have it," you say to Johann as the Gyrocarriage lifts back off. "It would be impossible for them to keep it anywhere else."
From above, you watch the Waaagh advance deeper into the forest, and then deeper still in a direction that cannot be found on a compass. Those that eventually emerge claim victory, and you have no way of knowing or caring whether they are telling the truth. The fulcrum you seek is held by the Shadowgor Warherd within the Beast-Paths of the Forest of Gloom. Recovering the legacies lost within the Forest of Gloom would take your full attention for more time than you can spare from the Waystone Project, but would be about much more than one specific rock.
---
The Empire's roads are thick enough with various subspecies of entertainment troupes that only the poorest and most remote of villages will go more than a season without a visit, and some of them boast histories and traditions older than some provinces - they probably don't really, but they boast all the same. The older ones claim to date back to a time when it was illegal for women to be professional actors in some provinces, which had the natural result of creating demand for the kind of men who could convincingly play the characters of women. Some troupes maintain that taboo for various reasons, some very complicated and some very not, and some of those that don't still find the dynamic to be an interesting one to play off of.
The immediate relevance of which is that when you request a Journeyman with auditory Magesight to assist with your idea for an auditory seviroscope, the Wizard that responds - a fellow Grey who is able to take a break from their undercover duties in a Reikland troupe due to their overwintering in Altdorf - has you unsure whether their aggressively contradictory approach to gender cues is a personal choice or a professional requirement. You do know that your inability to read how complimentary or not their calling you 'My Lady Sotto Voce' is, is going to get very distracting in the coming weeks. Their name, at least for the purposes of this collaboration, is Kas.
"This isn't that novel an idea," they say once you've laid out the idea: a device that translates the amount and type of ambient magical energies into something audible. "The Wissenland circuits are filled to bursting with expensive automata that perform a single task poorly. Ones that do music especially. Start turning a crank on the wrong corner in Nuln and local shopkeepers will beat you with sticks."
"It did strike me as a novel application of very well-established principles," Egrimm agrees. "There'll be some trial and error in getting the Wind-sensitive side to properly harmonise - sorry - with the musical side, but that's it."
"The immediate question is the exact form it will take. My initial thought was some sort of weathervane that can give a warning tone when needed, but going from silence to noise is a much more complex process than going from a 'correct' noise to an off-tone one, and I doubt many people will appreciate a constantly-shrieking weathervane they have to listen for shifts in pitch for. Some sort of 'wind chimes' would be an easy alternative, but it could be easy to tune out something that you're constantly hearing. So an alternative is for something that needs to be actively used and will be actively listened to - and to prevent completely reinventing the axe, some sort of already-existing instrument strikes me as the most straightforward route."
"Oma likes to say that if it's got to travel, best if it can be fixed by anyone with a forge," Eike pipes up. "Well, ideally by holding it against a big rock and hitting it with a smaller rock, but that probably isn't likely with this. Oma was talking about guns and carts, but it seems like it would apply here, too."
You nod in agreement. "If it's clockwork, then you'll need a clockmaker to fix it. That's probably not something you can find in all towns. Something more based on plumbing might be a bit easier to find, but still not ideal. Something musical, though, it's a dire village where nobody can repair at least a teufelsgeige. Even if it's closer to being an organ, there's always folks that can fix those circulating around the Sigmarite churches, even in the middle of nowhere."
"Entertainment troupes are happy to fix local instruments for a few coins, too," Kas says.
"There you have it, then," you say. "And if it's an instrument, then it'll actually see use as an instrument. It's all well and good to tell people to crank the noisebox every day to see if anything's off, but if it's what they use for music then they really will be listening to it every day."
"And be that much more able to pick out dissonant notes," Kas says. "I've seen reviews complaining about an instrument being a quarter tone out of pitch."
"It also has some folkloric weight to it," Egrimm muses. "An instrument that twists itself off-key in the presence of danger is the sort of thing I'm sure I've heard a folktale about somewhere. And if we say it works because it's made from some sort of holy wood or something, that'll be that much easier for some to accept."
"The reputation of your Order will make that more easy to convince people of," you say.
"And yours, in some areas," Egrimm replies with an odd little smile. The tone he used is odd, an inch away from well-practiced slickness but some element deliberately left out to prevent it all from harmonizing, which must have taken more effort than actually following through. Your first thought is that he's toying with you, but he's not watching you closely enough for that. He's not amused by your reaction, but by his own - he's mocking himself for defaulting to that form of oily flattery when it's entirely unnecessary.
"There are mystics in eastern province troupes that find grey to be the colour that gets the best reception," Kas... agrees?
"In any case," you find yourself saying to move the conversation along, "the question becomes one of which form of auditory seviroscope we'll be building."
[ ] Wind Chimes
Though more common in the southern realms, tinkling chimes hung up in open areas to ward off misfortune and evil spirits aren't unknown in the Empire. Their near-constant chiming would mean that anything it detects would be immediately announced, but could mean that those who could have heard that warning might have gotten in the habit of tuning out their sound.
[ ] Fiddle
Wherever you can find a man dancing, it is likely it will be a fiddle he is dancing to. How common it is in life and in folklore makes it a good candidate for this at first glance, but its simplicity might work against it here, as the most common form has half as many strings as you'd need for the full range of Winds to be easily audible.
[ ] Spinning Lyre
Known as a peasant's lyre in cities, indicating its popularity in rural areas. Its other name is the hurdy-gurdy, coming from the unmistakable and rather alarming warble caused by changes in humidity, showing just how sensitive it naturally is to small changes in its material. The instrument itself is a hand-cranked stringed instrument with keys to change the pitch of the 'melody strings' and separate 'drone strings' to provide a constant accompaniment, presenting plenty of room for eight strings for eight Winds, or having the Wind-sensitive components in the keys and having the drones sensitive to the presence of Dhar.
[ ] Portativ
The portative organ is a row of flues with associate keys played with one hand and a small bellows operated with the other, which can be easily carried on one's back or slightly less easily in one's arms. Its size makes it less convenient than more easily portable instruments, but will make it more easily maintainable by anyone that can work metal than something more fiddly might be. While full-size organs are most commonly associated with the Cult of Sigmar, more portable ones remain popular even in areas where Ulric or Taal and Rhya are more dominant.
[ ] Other (write in)
- The plan voted on did specify wind chimes, but I felt it was a matter that deserved some specific attention - not so much for the advantages and disadvantages of specific forms, but for the... what are the kids calling it these days? Ah yes, the a e s t h e t i c . It's also not going to cause the next update to take longer than it otherwise would because there's still the other remaining actions to be written without needing the result of this vote.
- Also it is often overlooked how musical the medieval world was - most people in the Empire would not go an entire day without hearing someone playing music, and you would have to go to considerable effort to avoid it for an entire week.
- Also also it is shockingly difficult to find a premodern wind chime design that did not involve penises.
- No kind of instrument is invalid for a write-in, I'll figure out a way to make it work if it turns out people really want Sevirotuba or whatever to be a thing.
- Reading through the new additions to the library (and getting a glimpse into the Vlagians' adventures in Worst Narnia) and sorting them into their proper categories will be a social action.
