It's a logical inference to 'they must be connected to the network to move Dhar' something must be pulling the Dhar and that something must be of limited quantity or the ancients would not have built it into every Waystone they made.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
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It's a logical inference to 'they must be connected to the network to move Dhar' something must be pulling the Dhar and that something must be of limited quantity or the ancients would not have built it into every Waystone they made.
In, say, Sylvania? Would a Sylvanian Waystone standing in an area of average corruption by Sylvanian standards, and that isn't sending its magic anywhere, last centuries? Are the storage capacity of Golden Age networks that good?
I think that something is the Vortex. I assume the pull of the Vortex isn't literally infinite, but I imagine our new Waystones won't be enough to strain it.
Let's not discuss the properties of a spherical frictionless Sylvanian Waystone in a vacuum. The average corruption of Sylvania is heavily influenced by places where corruption has been deliberately cultivated, and step one of doing that is to destroy or repurpose any Waystones. That means that any intact Waystone in Sylvania is going to be in an area of below-average corruption by Sylvania standards. And with the corrupted area of Sylvania attracting ambient magic away from the areas where Waystones remain, yes, it's not impossible for them to last centuries.
Quick question: Do we know of anything that prevents a Dawi Zhar VIP from becoming Everchosen while still being in a position to command Dawi Zhar armies?
If we are considering the possibility of a Chaos invasion coming from the East rather than the North then worst case involves them having a whole artillery train of Hellcannons.
If we are considering the possibility of a Chaos invasion coming from the East rather than the North then worst case involves them having a whole artillery train of Hellcannons.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
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I'm not sure that it's possible to perform the neccesary acts of devotion to the Chaos Gods while still being a Dawi-Zharr in good standing with the empire and Hashut. I don't expect they take apostates well.
Not sure it'd make much of a difference either way, the next Everchosen will almost certainly have that already- they just need to pay for it.
Yeah, and it's a downside compared to the stone flower, or even the runic inductor. Which isn't stated to have those problems about dhar or the winds.
Yes, I'm aware of that. That's how they work. The energy gets shunted along for as far as possible until you come across to a waystone that doesn't have any connection to the network. That waystone then gradually corrupts the surrounding land for centuries until it gets blown up. That there are still waystones formerly attached to Mordheim around today necessitates waystones being able to go significant periods of time disconnected from the network. I hope the Empire would be able to replace waystones on a quicker time frame than Ulthuan could. The Empire shouldn't need to ship expertise and products all the way from Ulthuan.
Hatalath said it would take decades for the waystone to build enough energy for its reconnection to be noticeably different. He made no caveat that it was incapable of lasting decades cut off from the network.
Realms of Sorcery described the time frame like this. It's on a significant time scale.
I'm not saying it would be completely functional. When you cut off waystones, eventually the winds will curdle into dhar and turn the waystone into a radioactive pillar of death. Just read the quote above about how it can go. That's why you go in to build a waystone where the chain got cut off. You shouldn't leave it alone for as long as Sylvania has gone without waystones. But the Golden Age storage was designed to be able to be turned off for maintenance without problem. Production of waystones was monopolized by the Inner Kingdoms during the Golden Age. The colonies couldn't replace them by themselves. The Empire shouldn't need to reach out to Ulthuan to replace waystones now. Or at least if it does it will only strictly need to get them to make one of the simplest components.
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Maybe I phrased my question badly. I'm trying to understand something about the storage capacity of Waystones and their ability to withstand clogs, mostly because I want to know what problems our new Waystones will have to deal with. So I'm not purely interested in existing Sylvanian Waystone, I'm also interested in what would happen with a hypotetical new Waystone that is placed somewhere that is very corrupted. My understanding was that a Waystones that isn't sending magic anywhere is a problem - it'll draw in some magic, but it will eventually reach capacity and bad things will happen. The question is how long "eventually" is, and I get that this depends on how much magic is in the area so there won't one answer to that question, but the claim has been made that the storage capacity of a Waystone with Golden Age storage is large enough that it won't be a problem for centuries, and I'm trying to understand if this would be the case for a Waystone placed in a fairly corrupt area - say, the corrupt parts of Sylvania.
It seems like you don't like the answers I have given you and are trying to rephrase the question until you get a different one. Why is that?
NexusEye
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I think he's just trying to get a ballpark answer for how long a cut off Waystone in corrupted area can last in a worst case scenario. It doesn't have to be Sylvania, the Chaos Wastes or areas near Mordheim would also be potential scenario's, I think the real question is "if a Waystone gets cut off in the worst possible circumstances how long do we have to reconnect it before it becomes overloaded, months, years, decades, or centuries?"
That's honestly not what's happening here, but I'm obviously not making myself clear so I'll stop bothering you.
consequences
Not A Nice Person At All
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There being functionally infinite Druchi who will backstab you in a heartbeat(your last one specifically) to get in good with the Eonir does not make poking around there a more attractive prospect when you can just raid elsewhere for the next decade or ten until Malekith makes an official pronouncement on the subject.
Every single Golden Age Waystone that exists today is one that has survived four thousand years of neglect. Any in what you might think of as a corrupted area no longer exists, usually because destroying or corrupting them was step one in making it a corrupted area. Any corrupted area where the Waystones were not destroyed stops being a corrupted area because that's the entire purpose of the Waystones. The modern Waystone network is in an equilibrium where all of the surviving ones are on metaphysical 'high ground'. So there's no feasible situation where this worst case scenario actually happens.
consequences
Not A Nice Person At All
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- Jerkville
So roughly they may get rendered essentially non functional due to lack of supporting tributaries feeding them or receiving waystones for them to dump to, but there are probably failsafes as seen with the K8P crown to put them on standby rather than melt, explode, launch into orbit, and then implode trying to fight an unstoppable tide?
No, there's no failsafes. If disconnected long enough, bad things happen. But any that are below the high water mark are already gone. The ones that exist today are the ones in places without unstoppable tides.
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Good ol' survivorship bias.
Personally I think the Runic Inductor would make a solid choice for a simpler "mass-production" model, whether that be a standard leyline model or the portable-riverine-spirit model people have been kicking around - the drawback relative to the Stone Flower is that if you have 1) multiple winds present 2) in high quantities, some additional Dhar gets created. But I think that's not a huge problem compared to the benefit of "you don't need High Magic to make every single one" -- while runesmiths aren't exactly commonplace, ones capable of the Runic Inductor (which Thorek literally described as Apprentice work) are nonetheless thicker on the ground than High Mages. I think the Stone Flower was a good choice for a model designed in part to impress the hell out of everyone, matching and in some ways exceeding the Golden Age's capabilities, but different tasks suggest different design parameters.
Personally I think the Runic Inductor would make a solid choice for a simpler "mass-production" model, whether that be a standard leyline model or the portable-riverine-spirit model people have been kicking around - the drawback relative to the Stone Flower is that if you have 1) multiple winds present 2) in high quantities, some additional Dhar gets created. But I think that's not a huge problem compared to the benefit of "you don't need High Magic to make every single one" -- while runesmiths aren't exactly commonplace, ones capable of the Runic Inductor (which Thorek literally described as Apprentice work) are nonetheless thicker on the ground than High Mages. I think the Stone Flower was a good choice for a model designed in part to impress the hell out of everyone, matching and in some ways exceeding the Golden Age's capabilities, but different tasks suggest different design parameters.
Random thought: Does the Great Maw count as 'corrupted'?
Follow up thought: Waystones may be able to remove the Great Maw.
Temptation: Do you want to kill a god?
I mean, the Ogre Butchers would probably smash the Waystones.
Or the Great Maw would do it itself rather than sit idly while its power is slowly drained.
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That's not everyone though. You have your young and eager cultists in the Order lands who you can lie to. And then they can lie to their own followers.You are Bongo the Greater Daemon, you now have to explain to the glory-hungry barbarian to with three eyes and six mouths what these allegedly 'great' runesmiths and wizards are doing that is so great as to be worth risking their lives and their shot at Everchosen to kill them. Your audience may or may not be able to count to 20 without taking off their shoes and/or hallucinate extra toes when they do take them off.
The Ogres would protect the Maw. That would make any attempt to get rid of it kind of hard. You'd have to beat them to do so. And you'd have to fight off the Dawi Zharr and Hobgoblin and all the other nasties in the Darklands to keep doing so too. But if we somehow managed it... Hm.
The Ogres might even desire to instead use Waystones to empower and feed the Maw (and not just by tossing them into the Maw, though that would probably be the go-to method as the funniest option come to think of it). Is the Maw an evil god like Hashut and the Horned Rat, which fucks over Ogres? Or is it a malfunctioning satelitte? Or a "warden" like Morghur ((or the Monkey King? Or not?))? Or something else?
What exactly are its effects on the Ogres -- and why are those effects happening? Is something wrong? Or is something intentional? Was it initially accidental or unintentional... but became malevolent and evil and thus is now evil?
Is it just a weird eldritch magical giant space monster with no real good upsides to it - hypothetical or in some distant past - at all? Predating on the physical earth of Warhammer as much as it predates on the Ogres?
The Ogres might even desire to instead use Waystones to empower and feed the Maw (and not just by tossing them into the Maw, though that would probably be the go-to method as the funniest option come to think of it). Is the Maw an evil god like Hashut and the Horned Rat, which fucks over Ogres? Or is it a malfunctioning satelitte? Or a "warden" like Morghur ((or the Monkey King? Or not?))? Or something else?
What exactly are its effects on the Ogres -- and why are those effects happening? Is something wrong? Or is something intentional? Was it initially accidental or unintentional... but became malevolent and evil and thus is now evil?
Is it just a weird eldritch magical giant space monster with no real good upsides to it - hypothetical or in some distant past - at all? Predating on the physical earth of Warhammer as much as it predates on the Ogres?
Sure, but they are a lot less likely than Mr Six Mouth Chaos Warrior to actually prove any kind of threat to a Waystone, much less the members of the project. Your average cultist is just not very skilled compared to the ancient Champions in the Wastes. In fact their brains might melt from seeing Bongo the Greater Daemon.
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I think when looking at "Who might be motivated to disrupt a Logistics/Infrastructure Project?", you have to look at ways to entangle this "Boring But Practical" Chaos-goal, with some other Prestige-gaining-goal or Personal-vengeance-goal.
i.e. The best way to get somebody to work against the Waystone Project, is to pick somebody who has cause to want to see Laurelorn, Middenland, or Karak Eight Peaks, taken down a peg. Or they have grudges with individual members of the Project involved; rivals of Hatalath or Niedzwenka or Mathilde or whatever. In which case, foiling the Waystone Project or discrediting the participants of it -- whether the nations or the individuals involved -- would be a method to achieve the real thing the Chaos patsy wants; personal satisfaction, the lessening of a rival polity's prestige, or the elimination of a threat to their personal or group prestige or wealth or something.
Like somebody from Marienburg or Nordland maybe.
You know how people have mentioned that it didn't feel like there was a "main villain" opposing us? Well, that's because even when there was a villain -- the Countess Von Carsten, and Alkharad -- they didn't always enter the narrative stage in a theatrically-appropriate way which easily raised heat. Alkharad was introduced doing an assassination attempt on Roswita, and we dramatically foiled it; then we learned more about him in the next update, and resolved to hunt him down; we then investigated him (and several other vampire locations too I think, briefly?) in the next turn or so; and then we went and assassinated him. 3 "turns" total of being an arch-nemesis to Mathilde; introduced in an interlude/campaign turn; investigated in a main-turn; investigated and assassinated in another main turn. ((I forget if we observed his mist projection on the same turn we assassinated him... I don't think we did. I think those were two separate turns.))
And yet, Alkharad was a significant nemesis to Stirland in his backstory which Mathilde did not interact with until she stumbled upon him at the end of his "story". He was tearing through Roswita's greatswords; he was launching constant assassination attempts. He was training up an entire Necromancy college. He was a severe threat and antagonist, and could have been a major or moderate Warhammer novel or RPG adventure villain for the entire province. Even as-is, he was a threat to the province, one of many if probably the most organized one. It's just... we ended him. And then all the rest of the Vampires kind of crumpled in the face of Stirland's army and the Battle Mages.
Countess Von Carstein we never met or talked to at all. Did anybody ever even retrieve her Vampire Skull from where it was? Did we confirm her death? Eh. Whatever. She's dead. A lot of what was going wrong in Stirland and Sylvania was her doing; but we spent a lot of time rooting out corruption and turncoats in Stirlanders, and a lot of organizing. While Van Hal was Preparing(TM). So while we faced off against her at the end of a chessboard... it was a bit impersonal in some way. We just happened to play Civ/CK better than she did, and play Total War better than she did.
That's not even to mention how many "main villains" of Karak Eight Peaks got swatted by the Throng, or by one of the rival enemy armies, or whatnot.
Even aside from obvious-name-recognition ones like Skarsnik or Sleek Sharpwit... how many characters in Karak Eight Peaks had -- or were -- the potential to be Arch-Nemesises of Mathilde or Belegar? There was a Goblin Warchief making deals with Moulder; we Accidentaly'd him. Well. It was intentional, we just didn't know we killed somebody really important. There was probably a leader of Moulder present too, who could have had impressive chops. There were the Eshin Skaven. Hell, remember that one 1d6 roll for "Who is the Eshin Sorcerer betraying" we got? The 1 on that d6 would have been a fucking Verminlord.
It would have been a sudden antagonist, and a very horrifying fight -- if we had made it a fight at all, rather than deciding "Screw this, I'm getting the army/telling the Ice Dragon/using Clan Mors to kill this guy!"
The problem is it would have been sudden... It's hard to write a novel-worthy longrunning antagonist that your protagonist faces off with, again and again, in the type of game that this quest runs.
Who was the guy behind the Skull River Ambush? He managed to have intel on when the Okral were going to leave -- something easily enough achievable if you have some informant in Eight Peaks, just somebody who sends a letter or news to somebody else going "Wow, the Dwarfs from Karaz-A-Karak are leaving!" without even knowing much more than that, even if it looks really hard for somebody who's not in Karak Eight Peaks to learn -- and prepare an explosive for them.
We never tracked him down. We never even spent much thought on him, other than desperately but busily hoping that this doesn't cause 8 Peaks or KAK to aggro on Marienburg and/or Ulthuan to retort, while we busied ourselves with Karag Dum. We just... sort of moved on from him. Does that make him a bad antagonist? Was he supposed to do other stuff to us? What if he did and we just didn't notice that stuff? We didn't notice him putting up whatever intelligence infrastructure that allowed him to know when the Okral were intending to leave, after all! What if he also took several other potshots to us, like being behind the Blackwater Canal disruption?
Did he fail miserably, and then get rolled up by Marienburg in their purge? Or did he succeed? Was he a Nurglite or Tzeentch worshipper who pivoted from "Disrupt the Karaz Ankor" to "Destroy my Slaaneshi pleasure cult rivals"?
Algard did say that fights between the 6-cult of the Soulflayer and the 9-cult of the Eldritch Watcher had erupted in the Empire -- perhaps Marienburg was another such fight, wherein the Eldritch Watcher's cultist outmaneuvered the Soulflayer's cultist?
If he is extant in Marienburg, how would we go about detecting that? How would we, an Imperial Shadow Wizard, do skullduggery in Marienburg? Marienburg wouldn't want an Imperial butting in. It wouldn't want a Shadow Wizard doing so. It wouldn't want Literally The Head Of The EIC and friend to Laurelorn/Middenland/Karak Eight Peaks doing so either. We could still do so. We could even do so as an official Imperial ambassador or whatever. Just... Would be hard. Or we could do so surreptitiously; we're good at that, and we have the Deceiver and Night Prowler coin facets. We could sneak in. How would we gather information though?
If there is a cultist left in Marienburg, and is even more successful in his lord's esteem, what might he pull off in the future? What if he assassinates Teclis (or Tyrion, or some important functionary or ambassador of the Phoenix King) who comes to Marienburg on their way to fight the Everchosen in the north?
If we suddenly found out that Teclis had died in Marienburg as we were gearing up to fight the Everchosen, would that feel "cheap" and sudden to us? I mean, it's not that necessarily every misfortune or enemy action that occurs in the future, has to be coming from an enemy NPC that was spawned at the start or midway through the quest which Mathilde could plausibly have pursued or managed to catch wind of and then theoretically taken care of like it was an MMO quest or forum quest; it's entirely possible for Boney to roll dice for cultist or Norscan activity and interference and success levels when plotting the Everchosen's war campaign, and to declare that Phoenix King Finubar's personal ship got sunk by a mercenary Dawi Zharr sub or something. That would feel cheap and sudden, but it could happen. It could happen as a result of a Quest-original enemy NPC from the start or middle of the game that was never encountered and wound up doing their stuff on the other end of the continent from us up until his activities suddenly intersected with us again; or it could happen as a result of a general series of rolls of "How well does Chaos do? And how do I justify or explain this action?" that would be reasonable or expected to make as a general world-building thing. Hell, maybe it would be a Malekith or Morathi plot rather than a Chaos plot; some way to spike Ulthuan's influence in the Old World, piss off Ulthuan at Marienburg or whomever was nearby, or just cause decision paralysis in Ulthuan as they rushed to deal with their own problems. Maybe it'd be a Druchii plot from the guys dealing with the Eonir, who had found no success in Laurelorn but went for a longshot; or maybe the reverse. Maybe if the Druchii were successful with getting some ins and trade with the Eonir, this resulted in them being able to set up a spy ring that reached through the Empire or into Marienburg, and so knew how to hit an important Ulthuani visitor.
All these things could happen, and we might never know, or we might blame ourselves for not "obviously" dealing with or heading off this or that problem. But, like... Enemies setting up spy rings in the huge ass territory of the Empire or the Old World is just a thing that happens. The use of merchants and mercantile connections to spy or smuggle stuff is just a thing that happens. ((Which can be one reason that nations might frownyface at foreign merchants. Or any easily subverted or infiltrated enterprise. But at the same time, they might like to do their own subversion and spying, for the exact same reasons, so...)) That's just life. That's just life in progress. At some point, you have to accept that you can't preemptively snuff out every problem, and that you have to rely on bodyguards and armies and stuff, and having a quick sword hand or trigger finger. That you have to rely on the things you did do right and the preparations you made -- armies, supply routes, friendly foreign diplomatic contacts, spy rings of your own, bodyguards, personal training -- to fight off the entropy and enemy action of all the other active actors in the rest of the world.
i.e. The best way to get somebody to work against the Waystone Project, is to pick somebody who has cause to want to see Laurelorn, Middenland, or Karak Eight Peaks, taken down a peg. Or they have grudges with individual members of the Project involved; rivals of Hatalath or Niedzwenka or Mathilde or whatever. In which case, foiling the Waystone Project or discrediting the participants of it -- whether the nations or the individuals involved -- would be a method to achieve the real thing the Chaos patsy wants; personal satisfaction, the lessening of a rival polity's prestige, or the elimination of a threat to their personal or group prestige or wealth or something.
Like somebody from Marienburg or Nordland maybe.
You know how people have mentioned that it didn't feel like there was a "main villain" opposing us? Well, that's because even when there was a villain -- the Countess Von Carsten, and Alkharad -- they didn't always enter the narrative stage in a theatrically-appropriate way which easily raised heat. Alkharad was introduced doing an assassination attempt on Roswita, and we dramatically foiled it; then we learned more about him in the next update, and resolved to hunt him down; we then investigated him (and several other vampire locations too I think, briefly?) in the next turn or so; and then we went and assassinated him. 3 "turns" total of being an arch-nemesis to Mathilde; introduced in an interlude/campaign turn; investigated in a main-turn; investigated and assassinated in another main turn. ((I forget if we observed his mist projection on the same turn we assassinated him... I don't think we did. I think those were two separate turns.))
And yet, Alkharad was a significant nemesis to Stirland in his backstory which Mathilde did not interact with until she stumbled upon him at the end of his "story". He was tearing through Roswita's greatswords; he was launching constant assassination attempts. He was training up an entire Necromancy college. He was a severe threat and antagonist, and could have been a major or moderate Warhammer novel or RPG adventure villain for the entire province. Even as-is, he was a threat to the province, one of many if probably the most organized one. It's just... we ended him. And then all the rest of the Vampires kind of crumpled in the face of Stirland's army and the Battle Mages.
Countess Von Carstein we never met or talked to at all. Did anybody ever even retrieve her Vampire Skull from where it was? Did we confirm her death? Eh. Whatever. She's dead. A lot of what was going wrong in Stirland and Sylvania was her doing; but we spent a lot of time rooting out corruption and turncoats in Stirlanders, and a lot of organizing. While Van Hal was Preparing(TM). So while we faced off against her at the end of a chessboard... it was a bit impersonal in some way. We just happened to play Civ/CK better than she did, and play Total War better than she did.
That's not even to mention how many "main villains" of Karak Eight Peaks got swatted by the Throng, or by one of the rival enemy armies, or whatnot.
Even aside from obvious-name-recognition ones like Skarsnik or Sleek Sharpwit... how many characters in Karak Eight Peaks had -- or were -- the potential to be Arch-Nemesises of Mathilde or Belegar? There was a Goblin Warchief making deals with Moulder; we Accidentaly'd him. Well. It was intentional, we just didn't know we killed somebody really important. There was probably a leader of Moulder present too, who could have had impressive chops. There were the Eshin Skaven. Hell, remember that one 1d6 roll for "Who is the Eshin Sorcerer betraying" we got? The 1 on that d6 would have been a fucking Verminlord.
It would have been a sudden antagonist, and a very horrifying fight -- if we had made it a fight at all, rather than deciding "Screw this, I'm getting the army/telling the Ice Dragon/using Clan Mors to kill this guy!"
The problem is it would have been sudden... It's hard to write a novel-worthy longrunning antagonist that your protagonist faces off with, again and again, in the type of game that this quest runs.
Who was the guy behind the Skull River Ambush? He managed to have intel on when the Okral were going to leave -- something easily enough achievable if you have some informant in Eight Peaks, just somebody who sends a letter or news to somebody else going "Wow, the Dwarfs from Karaz-A-Karak are leaving!" without even knowing much more than that, even if it looks really hard for somebody who's not in Karak Eight Peaks to learn -- and prepare an explosive for them.
We never tracked him down. We never even spent much thought on him, other than desperately but busily hoping that this doesn't cause 8 Peaks or KAK to aggro on Marienburg and/or Ulthuan to retort, while we busied ourselves with Karag Dum. We just... sort of moved on from him. Does that make him a bad antagonist? Was he supposed to do other stuff to us? What if he did and we just didn't notice that stuff? We didn't notice him putting up whatever intelligence infrastructure that allowed him to know when the Okral were intending to leave, after all! What if he also took several other potshots to us, like being behind the Blackwater Canal disruption?
Did he fail miserably, and then get rolled up by Marienburg in their purge? Or did he succeed? Was he a Nurglite or Tzeentch worshipper who pivoted from "Disrupt the Karaz Ankor" to "Destroy my Slaaneshi pleasure cult rivals"?
Algard did say that fights between the 6-cult of the Soulflayer and the 9-cult of the Eldritch Watcher had erupted in the Empire -- perhaps Marienburg was another such fight, wherein the Eldritch Watcher's cultist outmaneuvered the Soulflayer's cultist?
If he is extant in Marienburg, how would we go about detecting that? How would we, an Imperial Shadow Wizard, do skullduggery in Marienburg? Marienburg wouldn't want an Imperial butting in. It wouldn't want a Shadow Wizard doing so. It wouldn't want Literally The Head Of The EIC and friend to Laurelorn/Middenland/Karak Eight Peaks doing so either. We could still do so. We could even do so as an official Imperial ambassador or whatever. Just... Would be hard. Or we could do so surreptitiously; we're good at that, and we have the Deceiver and Night Prowler coin facets. We could sneak in. How would we gather information though?
If there is a cultist left in Marienburg, and is even more successful in his lord's esteem, what might he pull off in the future? What if he assassinates Teclis (or Tyrion, or some important functionary or ambassador of the Phoenix King) who comes to Marienburg on their way to fight the Everchosen in the north?
If we suddenly found out that Teclis had died in Marienburg as we were gearing up to fight the Everchosen, would that feel "cheap" and sudden to us? I mean, it's not that necessarily every misfortune or enemy action that occurs in the future, has to be coming from an enemy NPC that was spawned at the start or midway through the quest which Mathilde could plausibly have pursued or managed to catch wind of and then theoretically taken care of like it was an MMO quest or forum quest; it's entirely possible for Boney to roll dice for cultist or Norscan activity and interference and success levels when plotting the Everchosen's war campaign, and to declare that Phoenix King Finubar's personal ship got sunk by a mercenary Dawi Zharr sub or something. That would feel cheap and sudden, but it could happen. It could happen as a result of a Quest-original enemy NPC from the start or middle of the game that was never encountered and wound up doing their stuff on the other end of the continent from us up until his activities suddenly intersected with us again; or it could happen as a result of a general series of rolls of "How well does Chaos do? And how do I justify or explain this action?" that would be reasonable or expected to make as a general world-building thing. Hell, maybe it would be a Malekith or Morathi plot rather than a Chaos plot; some way to spike Ulthuan's influence in the Old World, piss off Ulthuan at Marienburg or whomever was nearby, or just cause decision paralysis in Ulthuan as they rushed to deal with their own problems. Maybe it'd be a Druchii plot from the guys dealing with the Eonir, who had found no success in Laurelorn but went for a longshot; or maybe the reverse. Maybe if the Druchii were successful with getting some ins and trade with the Eonir, this resulted in them being able to set up a spy ring that reached through the Empire or into Marienburg, and so knew how to hit an important Ulthuani visitor.
All these things could happen, and we might never know, or we might blame ourselves for not "obviously" dealing with or heading off this or that problem. But, like... Enemies setting up spy rings in the huge ass territory of the Empire or the Old World is just a thing that happens. The use of merchants and mercantile connections to spy or smuggle stuff is just a thing that happens. ((Which can be one reason that nations might frownyface at foreign merchants. Or any easily subverted or infiltrated enterprise. But at the same time, they might like to do their own subversion and spying, for the exact same reasons, so...)) That's just life. That's just life in progress. At some point, you have to accept that you can't preemptively snuff out every problem, and that you have to rely on bodyguards and armies and stuff, and having a quick sword hand or trigger finger. That you have to rely on the things you did do right and the preparations you made -- armies, supply routes, friendly foreign diplomatic contacts, spy rings of your own, bodyguards, personal training -- to fight off the entropy and enemy action of all the other active actors in the rest of the world.
I'm not sure how you got from 'this cultist managed to get a dwarf timetable and some warpstone laced blackpowder' to '...and then he killed Teclis or Tyrion'. Those are different skillsets. In the case of Tyrion the skill set is just 'god' I think
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Pretty sure the Great Maw, coming from magic-free space, has no particular need for the Winds of Magic. Also if need be it can physically pick up and eat the offending Waystones, thing has giant tentacles and teeth and zero compunctions against using them.
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