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@Boney what the heck is hek Since the Reikspiel word for witch would've followed the Khazalid one, does 'hek' come from contact with Hekarti or some other "heky" thing like 'bok' comes from the sound of hitting your head? Also, why do they use 'zhuf' when referring to magic instead of something derived from 'hek'?
I can see a couple explanations, the first is that it's a loanword from Reikspiel to Khazalid and Khazalid either didn't have a specific name for it before or they did have a name but it was taboo (like how we lost the original name for bear due to a superstition that saying it would cause it to come and we've had to painstakingly reconstruct it from linguistic remnants) or for whatever reason the old name they had fell out of fashion, the change of x to k could be because Khazalid doesn't have a letter corresponding to x so their closest equivalent is their letter that sounds like k, alternatively it could be Hex/Hek is a linguistic remnant from the Old One tongue which both Khazalid and Reikspiel can trace their roots to, which in turn may be derived from a fundamental "true" language for describing the world given the similarities between languages derived from the Old One language and those descended from Daemonic, it may be a basic truth of the universe that there exist Platonic metaphysically correct names for certain things or phenomena or possibly all things and phenomena.
 
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Looking at the wiki the remaining marks are:
Worth considering that Boney is under no obligation to stick to just these. And indeed we have seen other characters get marks not on the list (Melkoth's temporal uncertainty), or that manifest in very different ways to the standard description (Regimand's smokebeard which might or might not be Mantle of Mist).

That said it has been implied that getting more Marks is the path to becoming an Ulgu elemental and avoiding the whole 'finite lifespan' issue. So silver lining to even the worst of them.
 
That said it has been implied that getting more Marks is the path to becoming an Ulgu elemental and avoiding the whole 'finite lifespan' issue. So silver lining to even the worst of them.
Mathilde is already out of the weeds on that i think.

Not in for being Ulgu elemental yet alas, but considering what that could do to her mentally and Elspeth's canonical example does make me slightly apprehensive, even if still excited, to go that route.
 
Worth considering that Boney is under no obligation to stick to just these. And indeed we have seen other characters get marks not on the list (Melkoth's temporal uncertainty), or that manifest in very different ways to the standard description (Regimand's smokebeard which might or might not be Mantle of Mist).

That said it has been implied that getting more Marks is the path to becoming an Ulgu elemental and avoiding the whole 'finite lifespan' issue. So silver lining to even the worst of them.
True, I'm can't recall if Boney has shown his rolls regarding Arcane Marks, at the very least I can't find anything regarding the roll table that got us our latest Arcane Mark Shrouded, it's possible that in addition to the standard Arcane Marks he's added "come up with a custom Arcane Marks for Mathilde on the spot" as an option we could roll for but which we haven't yet. That said even if there is a possibility of rolling a nonstandard Arcane Mark I remain convinced getting a standard Arcane Mark is a more probable outcome, at the very least they almost certainly remain a possible outcome even in the unlikely possibility that the probability of rolling a nonstandard Mark outweighs the probability of rolling a standard Mark.
 
I think AV could be studied in most of the Colleges
The Greys and Lights are definitely in liminal realms and it's possible the Brights, Jades and Amethysts are too. If taking AV into the Collegiate liminal realms is a problem (and it strikes me as somehting that should be tested before Mathilde gives out warnings because it'll be quite embarasing if she's wrong) then most of them can't.
 
The Greys and Lights are definitely in liminal realms and it's possible the Brights, Jades and Amethysts are too. If taking AV into the Collegiate liminal realms is a problem (and it strikes me as somehting that should be tested before Mathilde gives out warnings because it'll be quite embarasing if she's wrong) then most of them can't.
The Lights as far as I can tell only hide their College through messing with people's sense of direction, it presumably still exists in the physical world and likewise likely so do the Jades and Brights, along with the Golds they were the only Colleges under direct siege within Altdorf after Wizardry was outlawed after the Night of a Thousand Arcane Duels, the other Colleges had magical protections or in the case of the Ambers were primarily located outside Altdorf, if the Jades and Brights were located in liminal realms they presumably could have hidden within them rather than endure a protracted siege.
 
The Lights as far as I can tell only hide their College through messing with people's sense of direction, it presumably still exists in the physical world and likewise likely so do the Jades and Brights, along with the Golds they were the only Colleges under direct siege within Altdorf after Wizardry was outlawed after the Night of a Thousand Arcane Duels, the other Colleges had magical protections or in the case of the Ambers were primarily located outside Altdorf, if the Jades and Brights were located in liminal realms they presumably could have hidden within them rather than endure a protracted siege.
The Lights are explicitly in a liminal realm: "There is no magical barrier surrounding the Order of Light and no spell hiding it from prying eyes. Instead, it is built where no less than six intersecting Leylines have created a location hidden within the folds of space".
The Jade College is bigger on the inside: "The Jade College seems to be substantially larger on the inside than on the outside", and while that might be something else, 'bigger on the inside' is easily explained as a liminal realm and hard to explain with what Jade magic does normally.
The Brights are more of a stretch, but there's somehtign a little weird going on with space there: "Visitors who find a way to pass through the magical barrier always find themselves standing in front of the main gates, no matter what direction they approached the College from.", which again could be explained without a liminal realm, but seems difficult to do with Bright Magic.

Uh, being in a liminal realm in no way stops a siege? Like, yeah you can hide in a liminal realm. But the people sieging you can still just siege the liminal realm. Which is why the Grey College was also under siege despite the fact we know for a fact that it's in a liminal realm. It makes using artillery to attack really useless, but the main purpose of a siege is to prevent you leaving, it's not actually necessary to destroy your stuff.
 
The Lights are explicitly in a liminal realm: "There is no magical barrier surrounding the Order of Light and no spell hiding it from prying eyes. Instead, it is built where no less than six intersecting Leylines have created a location hidden within the folds of space".
The Jade College is bigger on the inside: "The Jade College seems to be substantially larger on the inside than on the outside", and while that might be something else, 'bigger on the inside' is easily explained as a liminal realm and hard to explain with what Jade magic does normally.
The Brights are more of a stretch, but there's somehtign a little weird going on with space there: "Visitors who find a way to pass through the magical barrier always find themselves standing in front of the main gates, no matter what direction they approached the College from.", which again could be explained without a liminal realm, but seems difficult to do with Bright Magic.
Interesting, could you provide a source for this so I can look into this further? I couldn't find any posts from Boney saying these things so presumably it's from official material. The Jade College being larger on the inside could certainly indicate it being partially in a liminal realm but we also know when Teclis came he warped the topology of Altdorf in such a way it's virtually impossible to create a proper map of it, the Jade College being bigger on the inside could be a product of this space warping magic as could the Lights being located in "the folds of space" and the weirdness of the Bright College I feel is almost certainly space warping magic as opposed to liminal realms shenanigans, especially as the main gates are outdoors where the sun shines but that's shouldn't be possible inside a liminal realm, if the sun and stars aren't visible at their main gates it feels like an odd detail to be left out. As a side note I'd like to note the oddity of the Light College being located at the intersection of six leylines, assuming cardinal and ordinal direction there should be a max of four intersecting leylines possible unless some of the leylines involved deviate from these directions, presumably (in the Watsonian sense, the Doylist explanation is that the cardinals/ordinal thing is an invention of this quest and the original writers didn't adhere to it) it means that there are five leylines leading into the Light College and one leading out, it wouldn't be a proper intersection but rather a merging of five incoming leylines into one outgoing one.


Uh, being in a liminal realm in no way stops a siege? Like, yeah you can hide in a liminal realm. But the people sieging you can still just siege the liminal realm. Which is why the Grey College was also under siege despite the fact we know for a fact that it's in a liminal realm. It makes using artillery to attack really useless, but the main purpose of a siege is to prevent you leaving, it's not actually necessary to destroy your stuff.
As for liminal realms and sieges,
Might as well ask this. What did the 'siege of the colleges' exactly entail? As in a literal siege where most of the wizards had to stay locked up in their colleges? And everyone else had to go to ground?
For the Gold, Jade, and Bright Colleges, yes. The Light, Grey, Amethyst, and Celestial Colleges aren't very accessible to mundane visitors, and if any Templars started trying to poke around the Amber Hills they probably had a bad time of it.
Being in a liminal realm explicitly protected the Grey College from being in an actual siege, unless your liminal realm is built to be easily accessible from the outside and has no way of making it not easily accessible if you need it to be being in a liminal realm should help protect you from a siege.
 
  • Forgettable: People can't seem to remember your face.
    • Probable Intrigue bonus, possible Diplomacy penalty, probably a mixed bag mechanically but the one people are the most afraid of getting because narratively it means Mathilde's friends and lover will forget her face and that's sad.
On the other hand, consider: you know a person, you are in love with that person, and every time you see that person it's like seeing them for the first time. That actually sounds quite romantic! (May not work in precisely that way, of course; looked through the thread for this at some point and believe I found a post from Boney fairly early on suggesting that the exact effects would probably be rolled for from a variety of options, though I couldn't say where that post was.)
 
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On the other hand, consider: you know a person, you are in love with that person, and every time you see that person it's like seeing them for the first time, every time. That actually sounds quite romantic! (May not work in precisely that way, of course; looked through the thread for this at some point and believe I found a post from Boney fairly early on suggesting that the exact effects would probably be rolled for from a variety of options, though I couldn't say where that post was.)
I think that wizarding romance specifically was quite ready for the potential pitfalls of arcane marks.
 
Interesting, could you provide a source for this so I can look into this further? I couldn't find any posts from Boney saying these things so presumably it's from official material. The Jade College being larger on the inside could certainly indicate it being partially in a liminal realm but we also know when Teclis came he warped the topology of Altdorf in such a way it's virtually impossible to create a proper map of it, the Jade College being bigger on the inside could be a product of this space warping magic as could the Lights being located in "the folds of space" and the weirdness of the Bright College I feel is almost certainly space warping magic as opposed to liminal realms shenanigans, especially as the main gates are outdoors where the sun shines but that's shouldn't be possible inside a liminal realm, if the sun and stars aren't visible at their main gates it feels like an odd detail to be left out. As a side note I'd like to note the oddity of the Light College being located at the intersection of six leylines, assuming cardinal and ordinal direction there should be a max of four intersecting leylines possible unless some of the leylines involved deviate from these directions, presumably (in the Watsonian sense, the Doylist explanation is that the cardinals/ordinal thing is an invention of this quest and the original writers didn't adhere to it) it means that there are five leylines leading into the Light College and one leading out, it wouldn't be a proper intersection but rather a merging of five incoming leylines into one outgoing one.



As for liminal realms and sieges,

Being in a liminal realm explicitly protected the Grey College from being in an actual siege, unless your liminal realm is built to be easily accessible from the outside and has no way of making it not easily accessible if you need it to be being in a liminal realm should help protect you from a siege.
The quotes are all from Realms of Sorcery, the same place the Amythest College being sometimes a creepy deserted buildign and soemtimes a regular College is.

The problem with it being space warping (apart from for the Lights) is that that would interfere with a monowind environment. Because space-warpign is Light magic, and not something Ghyran or Aqshy can really do.

Leylines run in 8 directions, not 4. So if they are all ingoing, 6 is perfectly possible (and would also indicate the Light college is some form of Nexus). Even if one is outgoing, having five streams coming in and one going out would still work given the number of directions.

Honestly, I'd assume the problem with sieging the Grey College is less that being in a liminal realm inherently protected them and more that the Templars couldn't find the entrances. Meanwhile the Jades have a wall with one entrance and exit.
 
On the other hand, consider: you know a person, you are in love with that person, and every time you see that person it's like seeing them for the first time, every time. That actually sounds quite romantic! (May not work precisely in that way, of course; looked through the thread for this at some point and believe I found a post from Boney fairly early on suggesting that the exact effects would probably be rolled for, though I couldn't tell you where that post was.)
I don't think it's complete amnesia of one's ability to identify a person, it only applies to the face and would presumably be something like reverse prosopagnosia, instead of being unable to identify everyone else based on their face it would be everyone else being unable to identify you by your face. While there are multiple ways you could implement such a thing mechanically and narratively I suspect Mathilde will still be quite identifiable due to her non-facial characteristics, like her Witchhunter hat and her Lord Magister Robes and her height and her voice, there are lots of things prosopagnosics can use to identify people in lieu of subtle facial features and which they learn to use to function in everyday life. And every time you see someone being like seeing them for the first time is only romantic if it was love at first sight which was very much not the case for Mathilde and Panoramia, it took time for their relationship to develop from strangers to acquaintances to friends to tentative dating to proper lovers.

Leylines run in 8 directions, not 4. So if they are all ingoing, 6 is perfectly possible (and would also indicate the Light college is some form of Nexus). Even if one is outgoing, having five streams coming in and one going out would still work given the number of directions.
Except in geometry intersection implies going through a point not simply reaching a point and ending, there are a total of eight cardinal and ordinal directions but a line in an intersection of those would take up an opposite pair of those directions, either North-South, East-West, Northwest-Southeast, or Northeast-Southwest, a total of four possible pairs. And it can't be a case of six leylines going in and none going out, that would lead to a massive buildup of magic in the area since no outgoing leyline is removing it, the only places with leylines going in but not out are Waystones at the end of cut off Waystone chains which eventually turn into Dhar hotspots, Karaz-A-Karak which uses all the incoming energy to power ancient wonders, and the Great Vortex which dumps all the incoming magical energy back into the Warp.
 
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Unfortunately not quite everyone, Brettonia demanded that we do a favor first and after two years our already acquired recruits were starting to get impatient so we had to start the project without them and afterwards we made progress at such a blazing rate that we didn't have the time or the incentive needed to recruit them after the fact.
Brettonia technically wasn't any more demanding than Kislev, but they were more annoying about it in a way that emphasized that they will always act like they really don't feel like they need the help.

We could just as plausibly have started a quest chain for someone else that led to us accidentallying the Chaos Orcs. We didn't actually start out intending to do Kislev repeated solids when the Jades asked us to look into something odd.
 
Brettonia technically wasn't any more demanding than Kislev, but they were more annoying about it in a way that emphasized that they will always act like they really don't feel like they need the help.

We could just as plausibly have started a quest chain for someone else that led to us accidentallying the Chaos Orcs. We didn't actually start out intending to do Kislev repeated solids when the Jades asked us to look into something odd.
It wasn't really that they were more annoying about it, it's just that Boney said that it had been two years since we started recruiting and while that isn't too long for Dwarves or Elves it was a long time for humans and we should get started before there would be consequences. After that recruiting Bretonnia was always on the to do list but was always lower priority than further Waystone actions meaning it never actually got picked until eventually we ended up where we are now, a fully functional Waystone design we are deploying en masse without any contribution from Bretonnia.
 
Mathilde is already out of the weeds on that i think.
Probably, but she's also only in her 40s, eats well and exercises regularly, and has access to excellent medical care, so it's hard to be sure she's not just in very goid shaoe for her age.

Honestly, I'd assume the problem with sieging the Grey College is less that being in a liminal realm inherently protected them and more that the Templars couldn't find the entrances.
It's also really hard to effectively seige a force that has an apreciable number of people who can turn invisible and teleport even if you can find their house
 
Probably, but she's also only in her 40s, eats well and exercises regularly, and has access to excellent medical care, so it's hard to be sure she's not just in very goid shaoe for her age.
I think Boney mentioned that its not a concern off the cuff once or twice because she has left being entirely human several arcane marks ago, but i can't seem to find the relevant quote.
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Heidi is not a typical worshipper, and was hugely understating how much she would have had to do to make that happen for the purposes of showing off. For most people it isn't really an option. But it's not really a concern for Mathilde because as she delves further and further into Ulgu, she leaves behind ageing as a concern. Growing old is a human thing, and she stopped being fully human when she got her first Arcane Mark.

This one looks like it may have been it. Which reminds me, we should probably do more fieldwork :V
 
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I kind of forgot that it technically succeeded because it failed in the eyes of the voter base. It didn't result in an item worthy of on-screen relevance and most players lost the interest or will to try again (which to me was the most important consequence of the failure). The latter thing IMO was unwarranted though. Nothing in that action's results indicated that a subsequent attempt would be negatively influenced by our lackluster first attempt, be it narratively or due to lingering mechanical effects of low rolls.

I was under the impression that it succeeded as a proof of concept, but we didn't do any more because people were sold on the process rather than the results. So we found out we *could* windherd multiple enchantments with multiple winds into the same object, then realized we didn't really have anything that we wanted to do with the technique.

Giving away the saddle to the hochlander was a good move, but who else do we know that even needs magical items?
 
I was under the impression that it succeeded as a proof of concept, but we didn't do any more because people were sold on the process rather than the results. So we found out we *could* windherd multiple enchantments with multiple winds into the same object, then realized we didn't really have anything that we wanted to do with the technique.

Giving away the saddle to the hochlander was a good move, but who else do we know that even needs magical items?
I think Mathilde still has that candle thing that we could craft much more interesting variant of if we really applied ourselves but yeah. Maybe we could add to the Reikland's prince Panoply with a really, really cool armour thought. As some kind of gift, later on.
 
On the other hand, consider: you know a person, you are in love with that person, and every time you see that person it's like seeing them for the first time, every time. That actually sounds quite romantic! (May not work in precisely that way, of course; looked through the thread for this at some point and believe I found a post from Boney fairly early on suggesting that the exact effects would probably be rolled for from a variety of options, though I couldn't say where that post was.)
I don't think it's complete amnesia of one's ability to identify a person, it only applies to the face and would presumably be something like reverse prosopagnosia, instead of being unable to identify everyone else based on their face it would be everyone else being unable to identify you by your face. While there are multiple ways you could implement such a thing mechanically and narratively I suspect Mathilde will still be quite identifiable due to her non-facial characteristics, like her Witchhunter hat and her Lord Magister Robes and her height and her voice, there are lots of things prosopagnosics can use to identify people in lieu of subtle facial features and which they learn to use to function in everyday life. And every time you see someone being like seeing them for the first time is only romantic if it was love at first sight which was very much not the case for Mathilde and Panoramia, it took time for their relationship to develop from strangers to acquaintances to friends to tentative dating to proper lovers.
I should point out Mathilde has met someone with the Forgettable mark: one of the alternate candidates for the Hochlander's position, the Nordlander perpetual who had her magic dampened after a string of near-lethal miscasts. Her face and body were identifiable but only while actively looking at her, so the mark was affecting memory rather than perception.
The Nordlander is... a woman. You're fairly sure. You can recall her voice, husky and thick with the Nordland accent that sounds something like an angrier and faster Dwarven one, but the moment you take her eyes off her face all memory of it evaporates. Whatever the nature of her magical mishaps, they so marked her features with Ulgu that they can't be recalled by others.
 
On the topic of AV I wonder if we've included a warning to never bring it into the Grey College given that it's inside a liminal realm and the moment AV touches one of the hidden wormholes leading into it it'll dissolve into Primordial Winds and then the Primordial Winds into more reality, wasting the AV unless you deliberately wanted to conduct this experiment and possibly causing issues for the Grey College since the structures it's composed of within the liminal realm are presumably designed for a certain shape and size of the liminal realm and expanding it might change its shape and definitely its size meaning the structure might not fit properly, if it's designed to sit on a flat surface and the additional of AV expands the realm in such a way that it becomes closer to spherical and slightly curves the ground the College sits on that's a problem. We might also want to include a warning not to take it onto the grounds of the Amethyst College, it's located in a cathedral that appears abandoned if you're uninvited but if you are you enter an alternate version filled with people, Teclis might have used liminal realm shenanigans to pull that off as well.

The hard part would be doing it in such a way that it doesn't give away the secret of the Grey College's location while still being stern enough that people will take the warning seriously and doesn't engender enough curiosity that people will do so anyway. Maybe something as simple as "due to reasons that are beyond the classification level of the expected reader of this book under no circumstances should Aethyric Vitae should under no circumstances be allowed to enter the grounds of the Grey College or Amethyst College, if you are unsure of whether your clearance is sufficient to be allowed to learn said reasons it is insufficient, if it were we will let you know." backed up by official policies from Algard and Elspeth forbidding bring AV onto their College grounds on pain of severe punishment. Plus even if it doesn't get turned into new liminal realm upon touching the entrance due to some quirk of how Teclis set up the realm we don't want people creating new liminal realms inside existing liminal realms, there's an unknown but finite number of layers between reality and the Aethyr and if you punch through too many you're going to get an entrance to the Warp even without Daemonic meddling involved, and since we don't know what that number is it may be as small as one, trying to create a liminal realm inside a liminal realm might already be enough to create a literal portal to hell.
Doesn't trying to create a liminal realm inside of a liminal realm just result in growing the existing liminal realm? We tested it--expending AV inside of a liminal realm just grows the liminal realm. Realistically, trying to create an entirely new one inside of an existing one deliberately seems both impractical in terms of purpose and dangerous in terms of results.

On the other hand, we've seen Algard create his paperwork pocket dimensions inside of his office, which is inside of the Grey College liminal realm, so it presumably is more practical and safer than it seems on the surface, at least at the small scale.

@Boney : Can we get Mathilde re-enacting Two Gifts Day with the Colleges by presenting the Orbs on silk sheets, and proclaiming the revolutionary value of a new, abundant source of silk in the Old World, and how new College robes will be made of tough silk going forward...oh, and she's made a new set of impossible Orbs of Sorcery, there's that too.
 
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@Boney : Can we get Mathilde re-enacting Two Gifts Day with the Colleges by presenting the Orbs on silk sheets, and proclaiming the revolutionary value of a new, abundant source of silk in the Old World, and how new College robes will be made of tough silk going forward...oh, and she's made a new set of impossible Orbs of Sorcery, there's that too.

It's a Ranaldian holiday that's not usually celebrated in Reikland and when it is it's between close family members. Crowbarring it into this context would make it seem like an explicit dedication of both the silk and the orbs to Ranald.
 
One of the biggest parts of the Waystone Project was just getting everyone to the damn table. Mathilde was in the unique position to pull that off.
As we saw, you rarely get to just ask another group to come to the table for free. You've got to go and deal with their problems in exchange.

And Mathilde is a (magical) engineer. That means that she solves problems. Not problems like "what is beauty?" because that would fall under the purview of what you call 'philosophy'. She solves practical problems. Problems like "how do I stop some mean motherfucker from building me a structurally superfluous new behind?" And the answer is a greatsword. And if that don't work, use more greatsword.

Take this Greatsword-model blade, made out of gromril and triple-runed. Designed by Kragg the Grim. Built by Kragg the Grim. And you best hope...not swinging at you.
 
I think Boney mentioned that its not a concern off the cuff once or twice because she has left being entirely human several arcane marks ago, but i can't seem to find the relevant quote.
There's also this one from the early K8P days:
Natural went out the window when Mathilde started making candles nervous. If she stops doing weird wizard things from now on she'd die of old age at around the normal time for a healthy and active person, but every indication is she's going to be around unnatural influences indefinitely so any ability to predict it would be guesswork, even if Mathilde never goes out of her way to extend her lifespan.
And this more recent one:
High-level Wizards don't die of old age unless they really want to.
 
Crowbarring it into this context would make it seem like an explicit dedication of both the silk and the orbs to Ranald.
I mean, that's not exactly inaccurate, given how Ranald was essential to our obtaining AV (slash not dying to the snake just beforehand). And as far as ways of coming out about our dedication to Ranald goes, pairing it with "here's two revolutionary gold mines I'm presenting to you" seems pretty smart.
 
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