NexusEye
Aspiring God
- Pronouns
- She/Her
You have two bracketed X's for your vote for Lord Seilph, unless you fix that by removing one of them the vote counter will read that as a distinct and separate vote from all the other votes for Lord Seilph.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
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- Tags
- warhammer warhammer fantasy fantasy be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist pansexual protagonist ck2 quest divided loyalties mountain vietnam ranald is real this is a dwarf quest (dwarfs) this is maybe an elf quest this is not a vampire quest this is not an empire quest try it and find out open voting
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
One option one could take is threading the needle between organizational verisimilitude and gameplay and story writing pleasure by having all the members definitively agree that they are done with the project, but that they keep it on paper as a way to keep open potential future communication avenues and for cynical prestige reasons, thus making the reality you mentioned more stark and less subtle for the readers while also having a conclusive end that doesn't leave questions on whether we can continue voting for random acts of Waystone collaboration.
- Location
- Under your bed
[X] Pan's Treehouse
[X] Orb Reveal
[X] Silk
[X] Skull River Ambush
[X] Orb Reveal
[X] Silk
[X] Skull River Ambush
The Phoenixian
The Glacier Witch
- Location
- My own little world
To put my two cents into the ring, I feel like a list of objectives for the waystone project would consist of a set of goals that each played into the ability of project members to restore, expand, and maintain the waystone network in the long term.
- Restore damaged sections of the tributary system, and provide the means to maintain them long term. (Check)
- Provide means to repair the main waystones in the long term (Check)
These two seem self explanatory: If the goal is long term maintenance, then each of these is about direct capacity to maintain waystones. They could be more achieved but I feel like both of them are at a point where they're sufficient.
- Stretch goal: Create new models of waystones/tributaries who's points of failure and skillset to construct are meaningfully different. (Not finished)
The intent here is to prevents single points of failure due to any institutional collapse (or fallings out) among project members, and also to aid the ability to expand the network in the event of greater ambition or sudden calamity. Not strictly necessary, but useful to the goal.
- Rebuild a Nexus, and provide a reliable means to reclaim them. (Not finished)
The major thing we haven't been able to do yet, and liable to be more involved the more piecemeal if it ends up being a matter of reclamation rather than reconstruction. Being able to establish a new nexus would be the ideal, but reliable reclamation and restoration of a subverted nexus would also be useful to furthering long term ability to maintain the network.
- Use waystones to solve several major headaches for each involved polity and prove their efficacy. (Arguable)
This one is a political goal, rather than an production goal. Inasmuch as waystones are a procurement project, people and institutions need to want to procure them for their production to be viable in the long term.
Between Sylvania, Black Water, Laurelorn forest and Praag this one is making good progress at the most pessimistic.
-Ensure the redundancy of the Old World Waystone Network as a whole. (Not finished)
This is basically about ensuring there are no single points of failure, and ideally ensuring that even pairs of critical points can't be undone by a coordinated effort. At a very rough suggestion I'd hazard the desired amount of redundancy would be to have... we could say three, but let's say four routes for their section of the network to drain out of the world. Whether by connections to the Great Vortex or their own methods, a la dwarven power storage or Kislev's Ice Vortex.
- Subgoal: Map the Waystone Networks of the Old World polities, and issues or points of failure within it. (Not finished)
Identifying the network's broad state across the Old World will help for identifying where any issues exist. Exactly how broad such a map should be is up for debate. I could see it extending as far as Nehekhara and Araby, or being just Project members and Brettonia. I feel like larger is better here, though. (This is also an excuse for a road trip.)
There may be something else here I'm overlooking, but I feel like all of these together present a set of goals that when completed would, definitionally, mean that the ability to restore, expand, and maintain the waystone network in the long term had been achieved, even after the main project and its members go their separate ways.
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And with that all said, Votes.
[X] Orb Reveal
[X] Silk
[X] Pan's Treehouse
[X] Middenland
[X] Wissenland
[X] Reading on Nehekhara
[X] Lord Seilph, the Mystic
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Lord Seilph, the Mystic
[X] Pan's Treehouse
[X] Orb Reveal
[X] Silk
[X] Karak Vlag books
[X] Pan's Treehouse
[X] Orb Reveal
[X] Silk
[X] Karak Vlag books
Thorek would never go for this kind of chicanery that basically leaves him with a hollow title for which he has to do no work.
Good list. A few comments:
I think it's inarguable that we did not solve any major headaches for at least one involved polity, since the Nordland Hedgewise got nothing out of the project so far. It's not like Aksel is in any position to argue, but there's really no reason to do him dirty just to save a few AP. At a minimum we should investigate the Forest of Shadows nexuses and then do some sort of rollout, where the exact nature of that rollout will depend on what we find.
At a minimum, we'll want our map to follow the paths the magic takes from the Old World to Ulthuan, since any failure downstream of Imperial nexuses will eventually percolate upstream. This means that at a very bare minimum we'll definitely want Bretonnia and Estalia, because we know for a fact magic from the Empire passes through those two. You can maybe cut out Tilea if you don't care at all about the Border Princes and if it turns out that magic isn't flowing from Bretonnia to Tilea, but we'll probably want to map Tilea anyway, if only to get some idea about the Skaven held nexuses there.
You can definitely afford to cut out the Badlands and Araby, since they don't connect to the Old World network (unless Araby is connected to Tilea via Sartosa or something, which I'm pretty sure isn't the case but we'll know for sure if and when we map Tilea). Thorek also said that the Badlands network is completely destroyed. We can still map those two (it's just the 1AP, and can be done through WEB-MAT if we take our friends on a roadtrip) but we don't really have to.
One thing that's absent is the question of utilizing the Waystone network to our own ends, which would probably involve studying the Laurelorn and Kislev networks and maybe the Bugman's network (where the dwarves were apparently utilizing a single Waystone nexus, which is a much smaller scale use of the network than the other examples). Even if we don't intend to use the network in that way ourselves, getting a better of how the network can be utilized could be useful information, if only because it'll better inform us about what our enemies might be up to with their pieces of the network.
Which brings me to a factor that's absent from your list, and from a lot of other people's analysis: people often talk about lost nexuses and reclaiming them only in terms of The Good Guys regaining a piece of the network and cleaning the world of Dhar, but we haven't done any investigation into what those malign forces are actually doing with their pieces of the network.
The Skaven have at least three nexuses! Two different nexuses in the Empire are held by the forces of Chaos, one of them was occupied during the last Everchosen invasion, and we know that another Everchosen is on its way! We have no idea who, if anyone, is squatting on the Mordheim nexus! It might be that we decide that reclaiming those nexuses is more trouble than its worth, but to decide that we would need to at least check what's up with them.
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
People have argued that any magical infrastructure that makes use of the Waystone Network is beyond the remit of the Project, because it'll be the Empire benefiting and no one else. This is possible - although I do recall all the Project members eyeing each other at the prospect of creating more infrastructure, a quick search hasn't found me the update in question.
Still, even if we take it as read that it'd be building something only something the Empire would be interested in, I think it might be worth at least considering if we can get the Project members to put their heads together for best practices on drawing the energies out of the Network in a reliable manner. Yes, the Jades can draw Ghyran in person, but there might be a better solution for a static piece of infrastructure to use.
Still, even if we take it as read that it'd be building something only something the Empire would be interested in, I think it might be worth at least considering if we can get the Project members to put their heads together for best practices on drawing the energies out of the Network in a reliable manner. Yes, the Jades can draw Ghyran in person, but there might be a better solution for a static piece of infrastructure to use.
- Location
- North Wales
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
[X] Orb Reveal
[X] Silk
Neither need help here, but Silk is time-sensitive and the Orbs have effectively been waiting for a while now. The other new stuff does comprise a bunch of things I'd like to see, but none are so urgent that they displace things I've been wanting to see longer.
[X] Skull River Ambush
[X] Amber College
[X] Middenland
[X] Sarvoi
[X] Silk
Neither need help here, but Silk is time-sensitive and the Orbs have effectively been waiting for a while now. The other new stuff does comprise a bunch of things I'd like to see, but none are so urgent that they displace things I've been wanting to see longer.
[X] Skull River Ambush
[X] Amber College
[X] Middenland
[X] Sarvoi
At least some of the people at the table actually believe in things and so wouldn't be open to engaging in that level of corruption. The fell magic of zombie bureaucracy only works if everyone's talking themselves into actually believing in it.
In any case, it's a needle that doesn't need threading. Enormous flaming letters are going to appear in the sky over Mathilde's head saying PICK YOUR NEXT ARC and I'll come up with the story justifications for whichever way it goes after the fact.
Sure, it's called the Dragon Crown. The Rune of Ages was based on the Master Rune of Kingship.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I think that, at the very least, seeking to understand how magical infrastructure works is within the scope of the Project, and then after the Project formally concludes the various member polities are free to pursue whatever nonsense they feel like as private matters.
Things I'd like to do as a bare minimum:
Things I'd like to do as a bare minimum:
- Examine some more Nexuses (Mordheim and Forest of Shadows at least)
- Examine at least one Network that's doing magical infrastructure of some kind with it (Kislev or probably Laurelorn)
- Design a new Waystone model that is less overengineered for "literal beachhead in the face of corruption" and more mass-produceable for the "normal" case
- Give something to Aksel's people, as the only member group that has yet to see benefit (setting up Nordland Haléthan tributaries are the obvious thing, since that would both give his people extra influence in Nordland with a monopoly on supplying this and make their home safer)
- Map more of the Network
- Accelerate Tributary deployment in Kislev to continue to fortify the likeliest invasion spot for the next Everchosen (though can you imagine if they invaded somewhere else, we'd feel so dumb)
- Take the second investigation action for the Karaz Ankor Network and/or check out Bugman's (grouped together as "further insight into the dwarf network")
- Bring Bretonnia into the Bokha Palace Accords at a very good price (which is probably "military support for unspecified future Nexus reclamation, not part of the scope of the Waystone Project itself", since I think we've got the actual magic needs on lock unless they have some really juicy secrets)
- Poking at Nehekhara's Network -- I'm kind of leaning towards a post-Waystone-Project sabbatical arc where we do a bunch of smaller projects instead of having a Big Overriding Project, and we have a fair amount of things pointing at Nehekhara already, so I don't totally feel like we need to do this right now?
- Negotiate with Ulthuan to get Barak Varr's Nexus up and running again, because on the one hand anything called a "Hellwar" is something I'd really rather not unleash, but on the other hand the current thing that the Karaz Ankor is doing to get more power (Hold reclamations) is already really dangerous so maybe it's six of one half a dozen of the other, and the Ten Kingdoms of Ulthuan very openly and directly partnering with the Karaz Ankor (not just hired mages like what Zhufbar is already doing) is an extremely potent symbolic action.
The lists thus far have been fairly comprehensive, so I think I'll just reemphasise Alratan's barge-borne Waystones as a possible secondary goal. They're achievable through current knowledge and assets (by virtue of the EIC's potential for a riverine navy) and they'd give the Waystone Network an efficiency and, more importantly, a flexibility that it hasn't ever had, the possibilities inherent to which are substantial. Potentially most importantly, they're fundamentally new and thus exciting, demonstrating the potential in the Waystone Project to do innovative things even with a very old concept and hopefully getting stakeholders to sit up and take notice (more than they have already, that is).
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- Location
- Actually pretty lost
...Hmmm. Do you think the Waystone Project is a big enough item they'd be willing to trade the secrets of their magic for it? Not the Waystone-specific ones, but general Damsel understanding of magic, as a price for entry? It's been hammered in that everyone hates giving those up, but Waystones are a big deal...
I think it's probably a step up from hold reclamation in that regard, though maybe not up from the Silver Road War's current goal. It's achieving the same thing Thorek is hoping to get out of those (Waystone juice), it's clearing out enemies that are a bit closer to home and causing problems than wherever the next hold reclaimed is likely to be, and at the end of the war they don't have to worry about not having enough population to hold the location indefinitely, the way they do for populating Karaks.
- Location
- Finland
I suspect the big thing (having multiple lores while not elf) is going to be something not applicable to us.
Damsels are not just wizards, they are, at least officially, chosen presentatives of a god, nad while there is large amounts of training involved, their special trick might not be just training.
Good to see Adela isn't neglecting her wizardly development since becoming a pilot.
Isn't really another path if they hit somewhere we care about.
They can come down through Kislev. They can go east a bit and hit the Dawi Zharr. They can go east a lot and hit Cathay. They can go west a lot and hit the Druchii. Or they can try fitting a vast horde onto boats.
We really aren't in any position to fortify anywhere except Kislev.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
We'd probably get Gretel involved as well, the Forest of Gloom is roughly in her 'demesne'.
I expect part of the hellwar would be largely removing the 'Forest' from the equation, which would be freeing up herdland for her.
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
I doubt we'd be able to replicate everything they do directly, for sure, but getting another polity's understanding of magic to draw from is still a very big deal. This entire Project has demonstrated that to a degree, both with the Project members and with the Network itself!
- Location
- California, USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
If we're going for goals like that, kinda maybe sounds like something divinely enforced extreme trust would help with. Maybe something like. Maybe from-
Tasoli
Life is for Living
- Location
- Behind the Keyboard.
[X] Orb Reveal
[X] Silk
[X] Lord Seilph, the Mystic
[X] Pan's Treehouse
[X] Karak Vlag books
Or there might be other options and one of them might be their understanding of magic but I am not sure if it is worth it. Empire wizards would benefit but that might have less impact than whatever Brettonia offers. Wizards after all number too few so even a dramatic increase of power would help Empire only so much compared to an army or two for a battle.
[X] Silk
[X] Lord Seilph, the Mystic
[X] Pan's Treehouse
[X] Karak Vlag books
I feel like it is going to end up like "pay off" option that Elves had. Every faction is going to demand something be it money or favors or somethig else and one Brettonia pays it all they are in.
Or there might be other options and one of them might be their understanding of magic but I am not sure if it is worth it. Empire wizards would benefit but that might have less impact than whatever Brettonia offers. Wizards after all number too few so even a dramatic increase of power would help Empire only so much compared to an army or two for a battle.
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