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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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@Boney Has Thorak said anything about Vlag's runesmith situation or has he completely avoided even mentioning the topic?

I know that he has at least looked into the situation enough to know about Vlag's metalsmithing and stone carving situation. It would be very odd if he could look into that and miss the thing most relevant to him.
 
fictionfan said:
@Boney Has Thorak said anything about Vlag's runesmith situation or has he completely avoided even mentioning the topic?

I know that he has at least looked into the situation enough to know about Vlag's metalsmithing and stone carving situation. It would be very odd if he could look into that and miss the thing most relevant to him.
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It's an open wound, a can of worms, and a hornet's nest all in one. If he's looking into it, it would be with extreme discretion and tact.
 
Preventer Squall said:
So Warhammer Fantasy was the equivalent of LoTR, and Age of Sigmar is equivalent to the Rings of Power show?
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It once was, though Age of Sigmar is good now.


WFRP 2e: Renegade Crowns uses the word 'Vaults' a single time in the entire book, twice if you count one of the pictures. The only information on the relationship between the Vaults and the Border Princes is the core rulebook of WFRP 1e, as old school as you get.

Thorgrim skill in Total Warhammer

Seems Thorgrim is outright commissioning the invention of tech, and invention of new runes too.

<Thorgrim Grudgebearer>
To Valaya's sorrow, the Dwarf race is one in decline, the older folk outnumber the younger beardlings by some margin.
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I'm wondering to what extent this is normal, given dwarf lifespans.

Overall, Thorgrim's chapter objectives in the game suggest he outright has issues with the Engineers Guild's traditionalists and their hindrance of progress. The last chapter outright goes 'sweep the traditions of stagnation away, bring innovation to its zenith!'.

WFRP 4e: Sea of Claws, page 43
Ravnshafnaz ('Raven's Harbour') lies in one of the Underdeep levels beneath Kraka Ravnsvake. The harbour contains the oldest shipyard, supporting craftsmen and a fair number of taverns. Many clear quartz gems inscribed with Runes of Light illuminate the cavern.
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Maybe these rune-inscribed quartz gems are what "glimstones" are?

You know, I'm reading The Old World Rulebook and Dwarfen Mountain Holds and neither of them have anything close to the DPG's history on gromril. It follows the older WFB lore. I don't know why DPG's gromril history was written the way it was. I am imagining a wiki editor attempting to reconcile it.
 

View: https://youtu.be/WuZlsNmfs6o?t=3
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So it looks like the Runefangs have more than just the Master Rune of Alaric the Mad. Based on the other rune's shape and its rotation relative to Alaric's rune, that looks like the Master Rune of Skalf Blackhammer. If so, that's very neatly answer the question of why Runefangs in the Empire army book ignores armour and auto-wounds, but Alaric's rune in the Dwarfs book only ignores armour: the auto-wounding comes from Skalf's rune. (It doesn't quite auto-wound in the rules, but it's close.)

It's pretty cool that Alaric managed two Master Runes on one item. The only other weapon I know that's done that is the Axe of Grimnir.

I'm curious about what the Master Rune of Skalf Blackhammer actually does in Divided Loyalties. I don't think it just hits hard because that's what the Master Rune of Kragg the Grim is about. Lightsabering sounds unlikely because Kragg's rune does that too.

The video also makes me wonder if Gehenna managed to create a downsized version of her cataclysm spell. Being able to summon fire-shot pistols like we can summon a sword would be good.
 
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Andres said:
So it looks like the runefangs have more than just the Master Rune of Alaric the Grim. Based on the other rune's shape and its rotation relative to Alaric's rune, that looks like the Master Rune of Skalf Blackhammer. If so, that's very neatly answer the question of why Runefangs in the Empire army book ignores armour and auto-wounds, but Alaric's rune in the Dwarfs book only ignores armour: the auto-wounding comes from Skalf's rune. (It doesn't quite auto-wound in the rules, but it's close.)
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I didn't think this was in question, the abilities exactly match the 6th edition version of Skalf + Alaric.
 
Derpmind said:
I agree that the Runic Inductor is a solid choice, (especially for a boat-model,) but I believe what @mathymancer was attempting to get at was that the Collegiate Fascis may have its own advantage. Our current, (still-unnamed) waystone design has the following:
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A Runic Inductor is a particularly solid choice for a riverine spirit model, as the spirit teleports the Dhar from where it enters the water to the exus where it leaves, so the additional Dhar isn't passing through the environment.
 
Derpmind said:
I agree that the Runic Inductor is a solid choice, (especially for a boat-model,) but I believe what @mathymancer was attempting to get at was that the Collegiate Fascis may have its own advantage. Our current, (still-unnamed) waystone design has the following:

The dual transmission means that if the leyline connection is severed, it will still send the magic through the river, thus avoiding the Dhar buildup that is a major flaw of old waystone designs.

For a leyline-only Waystone, the Collegiate Fascis offers a similar advantage: If the leyline connection is severed, the waystone turns off. It also avoids the major disadvantage of older waystones that turns them into ready-made Dhar generators.

The counterargumenst against this were 1. You want waystones to continue functioning when separated from the network. (I find this dubious due to the many cases of sabotaged waystones.) And 2. The Collegiate Fascis would somehow be less effective than the other two options. But this isn't supported by the text, which seems to show all three options being equally viable for their main function:

Basically, when considering the two options for a leyline-only waystone, I see the comparrison as the following:

Collegiate Fascis
+Doesn't require limited High Magic casters.
+Automatically turns off if the connection is severed.
-More expensive.

Runic Inductor
+Doesn't require limited High Magic casters.
+Cheaper.
-Creates more Dhar in high wind conditions.

Notably, the Runic Inductor may create more Dhar if the waystone is deliberately sabotaged. Possibly not a problem given the locations we want to deploy them to, but still. I really like the idea of creating multiple waystones that deliberately fix the major flaw of the waystones created by all those ancient, legendary, but not-so-flawless mages.
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That's a very good point; within the Empire, certainly, you don't have to sell "sabotaging this to corrupt an entire area is no longer as simple as blocking the input and waiting" even though we know that Waystones keep multiple Winds on hand*, the storage isn't going to turn them to Dhar unless it is overwhelmed by Winds coming in with no way to discharge them. This kind of implies that the Fascis is ideal for a low-maintenance leyline Waystone, which is nice for the use case of "tiling the landscape."

(Though, while we're at it, how do the cultists and necromancers sabotage the Waystones? Are the Anoqeyan command phrases for disconnection from the network that poorly-kept a secret? If it turns out they're fucking with the storage, I guess this plan goes from good to pointless.)

*How do we know this? Because there's a technique for drawing Winds out of Waystones which Jade Wizards use quite happily on functioning in-network Waystones, implying that they're drawing from a storage component that has Ghyran in it. And if the storage component usually has a bunch of Ghyran on hand, it stands to reason that it usually has a bunch of other Winds in it as well. So we can safely assume that any given functional leyline Waystone will, most of the time and assuming it's not in some sort of bizarre environment dominated by a specific Wind or Winds, have non-trivial quantities of each of the Winds in its storage.
 
picklepikkl said:
How do we know this? Because there's a technique for drawing Winds out of Waystones which Jade Wizards use quite happily on functioning in-network Waystones, implying that they're drawing from a storage component that has Ghyran in it. And if the storage component usually has a bunch of Ghyran on hand, it stands to reason that it usually has a bunch of other Winds in it as well. So we can safely assume that any given functional leyline Waystone will, most of the time and assuming it's not in some sort of bizarre environment dominated by a specific Wind or Winds, have non-trivial quantities of each of the Winds in its storage.
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Although they're probably drawing from the storage at least some of the time, they may well also be just tapping into the flow of Ghyran coming from upstream and from the Waystone's own intake from the surrounding area.

A Waystone will only have Winds stored in it either when the downstream capacity of the let line is saturated, or where there's been such an excess of one Wind in the flow that a stable helical orbit around the central stream of Dhar can't be established if the excess is sent downstream.

Much of the time a Waystone's storage will probably be empty or only contain a single Wind. It's only when there's a Storm of Magic or similar that I'd expect there to be some of more than one of the Winds stored, which implies that most of the time when the Jades tap a Waystone for Ghyran they're accessing the flow rather than the stock.
 
Alratan said:
A Waystone will only have Winds stored in it either when the downstream capacity of the let line is saturated, or where there's been such an excess of one Wind in the flow that a stable helical orbit around the central stream of Dhar can't be established if the excess is sent downstream.
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I don't think this is true, unless you have a source specifically saying otherwise.
Boney said:
You wave your hand and the familiar colour pattern of the Wheel of Magic appears next to the Waystone. "Magic is introduced into the leyline as between two and eight Winds orbiting a kernel of Dhar," you say. "According to my figures, that's two hundred and forty seven different combinations that it's capable of creating." Those figures were a page filled with every possible combination that you then counted. You're sure there's a more mathematical way to arrive at that number, but finding it and learning how to apply it would have taken longer than just writing them all out. "We can simplify that by only dispending the two Winds that the Waystone has accumulated the most of, even if this does reduce the throughput, but even then we're looking at twenty-eight possible combinations. I'm hoping there's at least one paradigm where that doesn't mean you need twenty-eight different enchantments."
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This implies that the Waystone accumulates multiple Winds in its storage on a regular basis. Now, it's possible that you're correct and it's just that the downstream channel has sufficiently small bandwidth that, while it's constantly active, above-average levels of Wind activity cause the storage to accumulate Winds faster than they can be transmitted, and so Wind levels rise in storage until lower levels of activity allow the storage to net discharge. (Note that this applies to both leyline transmission and other forms of transmission, because at the point where this conversation was had we hadn't learned the leyline codes yet, so it must be foundational, ha, to the Waystone design.) But I think that if that were true then it wouldn't make sense that severing a Waystone from the network would cause it to Dhar bomb, because surely the Waystone designers would have realized that this could lead to Dhar bombing under normal circumstances (if Wind activity was sufficiently sustained over a long-enough period of time that even constantly discharging resulted in net accumulation until storage overflowed). So I think instead the design is more pulsed than always-draining, where Winds get dropped in after storage reaches certain levels, but that threshold level is high enough that some is generally around -- that would explain all the datapoints we have.
 
picklepikkl said:
I don't think this is true, unless you have a source specifically saying otherwise.

This implies that the Waystone accumulates multiple Winds in its storage on a regular basis. Now, it's possible that you're correct and it's just that the downstream channel has sufficiently small bandwidth that, while it's constantly active, above-average levels of Wind activity cause the storage to accumulate Winds faster than they can be transmitted, and so Wind levels rise in storage until lower levels of activity allow the storage to net discharge. (Note that this applies to both leyline transmission and other forms of transmission, because at the point where this conversation was had we hadn't learned the leyline codes yet, so it must be foundational, ha, to the Waystone design.) But I think that if that were true then it wouldn't make sense that severing a Waystone from the network would cause it to Dhar bomb, because surely the Waystone designers would have realized that this could lead to Dhar bombing under normal circumstances (if Wind activity was sufficiently sustained over a long-enough period of time that even constantly discharging resulted in net accumulation until storage overflowed). So I think instead the design is more pulsed than always-draining, where Winds get dropped in after storage reaches certain levels, but that threshold level is high enough that some is generally around -- that would explain all the datapoints we have.
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Having extant quantities of winds on hand within each storage section also simplifies sorting -- all you need is to charge each battery and connect it to a neutral conductor and let the nature of the winds themselves handle sorting.

Which could be one of the reasons why Teclis would've really preferred if they stopped tapping into those reserves, because if they empty one of them it might cause problems.
 
picklepikkl said:
I don't think this is true, unless you have a source specifically saying otherwise.

This implies that the Waystone accumulates multiple Winds in its storage on a regular basis. Now, it's possible that you're correct and it's just that the downstream channel has sufficiently small bandwidth that, while it's constantly active, above-average levels of Wind activity cause the storage to accumulate Winds faster than they can be transmitted, and so Wind levels rise in storage until lower levels of activity allow the storage to net discharge. (Note that this applies to both leyline transmission and other forms of transmission, because at the point where this conversation was had we hadn't learned the leyline codes yet, so it must be foundational, ha, to the Waystone design.) But I think that if that were true then it wouldn't make sense that severing a Waystone from the network would cause it to Dhar bomb, because surely the Waystone designers would have realized that this could lead to Dhar bombing under normal circumstances (if Wind activity was sufficiently sustained over a long-enough period of time that even constantly discharging resulted in net accumulation until storage overflowed). So I think instead the design is more pulsed than always-draining, where Winds get dropped in after storage reaches certain levels, but that threshold level is high enough that some is generally around -- that would explain all the datapoints we have.
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I don't think that's necessarily true. That, I think is part of the significance of Mathilde saying they can simplify the enchantment from 247 to 28 combinations by having the Waystone build up multiple Winds and sequentially discharging them in pairs, which does requires more storage, at least to buffer the flow between each pulse being sent, but I don't think we know what the original designers did.

They may have done, but if they went for the higher complexity design that could produce 247 configurations I don't think they'd need to. They could just send whatever combination of Winds was on hand
 
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[x] Druchii Diplomats
Check in on these unexpected visitors to Tor Lithanel.
[x] Lord Seilph, the Mystic (NEW)
The Grey Lord, Lord Seilph, is currently erecting Waystones in Sylvania, and the suspected reason for one of the usually-reclusive Grey Lords to be so far from home is an interest in questionable magics. An interest that one could describe you as sharing. See if there's anything of interest to be found in a very cautious talk on the matter.
[x] Pan's Treehouse (NEW)
Panoramia has previously been quite happy with her cottage, but when you're a Jade Wizard and you create a mind-bogglingly enormous tree, you can't not build a house in it. Witness how a Druid flexes.
[x] Orb Reveal (NEW-ish)
The Orbs are made, the books are written, the time is right. You'll show them. You'll show them all.
[x] Silk (NEW)
At long, long, long last, Francesco has finally figured out how to weave the We-silk into something that can be worn. Be there for its debuts into the various markets it is destined to disrupt, and make sure that one of the first pieces off the loom - or whatever it is they use - will be your silk sheets.
 
Alratan said:
I don't think that's necessarily true. That, I think is part of the significance of Mathilde saying they can simplify the enchantment from 247 to 28 combinations by having the Waystone build up multiple Winds and sequentially discharging them in pairs, which does requires more storage, at least to buffer the flow between each paiue being sent, but I don't think we know what the original designers did.
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We definitely know what the original designers did for storage because the Grey Lords reverse-engineered the original enchantment and we deployed it in our first model of Waystones because SV is addicted to long-term efficiency. I agree that this is potentially a change to the function of the foundation that links storage and transmission, but 1) back when we took the action to launch the Project Sarvoi was talking about how the simple way to do it would be with two Winds around a core of Dhar, so it's possible that this was how it was done originally as well 2) Mathilde doesn't talk about the Waystone accumulating Winds like it would be a new thing or a change to the design, so that to me reads like the original Golden Age Waystone accumulates multiple Winds on a regular basis.
 
picklepikkl said:
(Though, while we're at it, how do the cultists and necromancers sabotage the Waystones? Are the Anoqeyan command phrases for disconnection from the network that poorly-kept a secret? If it turns out they're fucking with the storage, I guess this plan goes from good to pointless.)
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I could be wrong, but wouldn't it be very straightforward to sabotage a waystone by like, just hitting it a lot of times? There's waystone gold from the times their caps got stolen. Manually wrecking a waystone doesn't seem.. all that difficult?

And if it's not just 'destroy Waystone' but turn it into a Dhar factory.. I mean, I'm pretty sure some experimentation and you can get Dhar pretty fast. It's easier to tear down than to build up, after all. Maybe they manually dam up the leyline the Waystone would use to transfer dhar downstream.
 
Shard said:
I could be wrong, but wouldn't it be very straightforward to sabotage a waystone by like, just hitting it a lot of times? There's waystone gold from the times their caps got stolen. Manually wrecking a waystone doesn't seem.. all that difficult?

And if it's not just 'destroy Waystone' but turn it into a Dhar factory.. I mean, I'm pretty sure some experimentation and you can get Dhar pretty fast. It's easier to tear down than to build up, after all. Maybe they manually dam up the leyline the Waystone would use to transfer dhar downstream.
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You can just destroy the Waystone immediately downstream, I think.
 
picklepikkl said:
(Though, while we're at it, how do the cultists and necromancers sabotage the Waystones? Are the Anoqeyan command phrases for disconnection from the network that poorly-kept a secret? If it turns out they're fucking with the storage, I guess this plan goes from good to pointless.)
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The only component they actually need to sabotage is the transmission mechanism, as obviously they prefer it to keep attracting and storing magic. Said mechanism requires both Dhar and two opposing Winds, so if you deny it Winds by just flooding the storage with enough Dhar to consume them all, the connection would break down and you're left with a Dhar accumulator.
 
Whose goals can be furthered by a Chaos worshipper breaking Waystones? Really think about it. Breaking a Waystone makes the world one incremental step closer to being claimed by Chaos, but there's actually very few people for whom that is their ultimate goal. There's many that would deliver the world to Chaos for the rewards the Chaos Gods promise or various other motives, but not really many people for whom the ultimate victory of Chaos is the entirety of the motive. And any victory that a broken Waystone might contribute to is beyond mortal lifespans, so it's pretty useless for anyone that wants the credit.

As an act of devotion in itself? There are arguments to be made that it could be a reasonably resonant act of devotion for Nurgle or Tzeentch or Khorne, though none for Slaanesh leap to mind unless you really stretch a metaphor, but there's ones that resonate more purely with the God in question and are more conducive to pleasing the God and attracting their energies. Why spread broken Waystones instead of disease? Why spread magical energy instead of magical cults? Why smash the magic rock instead of someone's face?

Even the Daemons don't exactly want to deliver the world to Chaos, they want to deliver the world to their God. There's exactly one Daemon Prince of Chaos Undivided in the setting, and he's not exactly a team player these days.

To get the sort of person that would dedicate their life to smashing Waystones, you need to posit some sort of entirely unselfish true believer who thinks that the world needs to be in the grip of Chaos, but feels no need to be rewarded for making that happen and has no loyalty to any individual Chaos God. Someone arrogant enough to think that they know the path the world needs to be put on, but humble enough to think that there's no more direct path they are capable of achieving. That thinks the Chaos Gods are worthy of having complete control over the world, but are unable to achieve that themselves. It's not impossible for such a person to exist, but I really don't see them being a common enough archetype that Imperial doctrine needs to be shaped around countering that sort of person.
 
Honestly, a lot of arguments for why noone is destroying waystones en-masse are just a sort of dark mirror of the arguments for why noone until Mathilde really put their backs into relearning how to expand the network.

Its not lucrative, its a mostly solved issue (the network is failing but it will still hold in mostly the same shape for the next few millenia vs it IS failing eventually so why bother with targeted hits), its useful (as its primary use vs misuse by dhar snorters), and honestly lot of people probably don't even really know what it does so why bother.
 
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