Boney said, and I quote, that "none of this is quantifiable." That is not proof that your quantification of the cost of components is correct. You have still provided no proof for your assertion about how the cost works. All of the waystone components can reasonably be deployed across the entire continet. It'll just be simpler for some than others.
"He's in the Chaos Wastes protecting a fallen Karag", or the stuff Mathilde's sworn to not tell anyone?
I think that was more of a joke about how god-killing is an apocalyptic event.
High Magic is about using all eight winds simultaneously together, in harmony. That's quite difficult, because it's not just using eight winds at the same time, it's knowing how to use them all combined into one greater spell. To do that, your soul needs to be clean of arcane marks, which rules out any individual human using High Magic (it's not theoretically impossible for a human to slowly master all eight winds without getting any arcane marks, but you'd probably need to have some version of eternal youth or agelessness to have the time to manage it). It might be possible for eight mono-wind human wizards to combine their efforts to produce High Magic, but no one has attempted it and I imagine it would be extremely difficult to disperse eight components of High Magic that still have to use it together simultaneously in perfect harmony without something going wrong.
"Uncoloring your soul" is not really useful to human mages, because human souls are highly malleable and thus extremely likely to transmute into a given Wind if channeling enough of it. Thus, any good human spellcaster worth their salt will develop arcane marks as they grow in power, and once you have an arcane mark of one wind you can no longer safely channel any others.
Maybe, but then either the training is based on skill, or it's not just that because Teclis could cast with all the Winds and High Magic by the time he was like, 150. And yes, he's kind of absurdly good at that sort of thing, but the fact it can be sped up still leads to the question of why he wouldn't write it down, when it's not like having it is problematic.
I mean, sure. But even ignoring the fact that a lot of their abilities are almost certainly "be a forest spirit flight school", the Asrai do all of that? Like, they imprison spirits in specific parts of the forest, they use the world roots, and so on.
Yes, but presumably being able to get Winds that aren't your color out of your soul would still be useful. And presumably an Elven technique for removing such would work on any Wind.
Oh I was wondering why that old omake suddenly had a surge of reactions. Cool to see someone else coming to a similar idea down the line.... good lord I wrote that nearly 4 years ago?
Question: the part where Abelhelm was mortally wounded and Kasmir tried to get a healing spell but nothing happened (twice)--what could cause that, in-story, other than Sigmar deciding to let one of his devoted and important agents die an easily preventable death? Does Mathilde know if a dhar-corrupted environment can hamper divine spellcasting? Or Sunscryer's massive miscast--can events like that screw up spellcasting in the area for a time?
I think there may also be something similar with clothing. The wiki and Tome of Salvation page 124 say Grungni is god of artisans, but I haven't been able to find information noting him as a god of artisans in general. Every other source I could find associates him with things related to minerals - stone, metal, gems - and never anything else.
Now maybe the dwarf was just taking what he could get in Blackfire Pass, but could also be that the availability of human artisans allows dwarves to master trades more respected than tailoring and shoe-making, which aren't in fact associated with Grungni, but with no Ancestor God at all.
Nice omake! It's always fun to see something you made pop back up years later.
[B][U]Conversations you can never have[/U][/B]
There are some conversations even the greatest of friends dare not have, lest they no longer be friends. It has been almost two years since Kasmir last spoke to Mathilde Weber, but news of her still reaches him. He was extremely pleased to hear of her promotion to Lady Magister when the news reached him last year, but awed whispers of her dragging Karak Vlag back from the warp itself are both inspiring and disturbing.
It has been almost ten years since Count Abelhelm van Hal fell in his assault on Drakenhof. Ten years, and Kasmir can still vividly remember the prayers passing his lips, begging Sigmar's aid that his holy radiance might heal the stricken count. Can remember the terrible horror and guilt as Sigmar's light fails to shine. A pistol pointed at his face in grief and rage. Try again. And again. And again. Of Mathilde, hunched and broken beside Abelhelm's corpse.
Kasmir had wandered the wilds of Sylvania for three years after Ableheim's death. Cut off from all news of the lands beyond Sylvania's blighted borders, he searched for understanding. A crisis of faith, and yet even when he doubted, Sigmar's power had still answered when more often than not when he prayed. Eventually, he came to an understanding. There was an old belief, originally of Norsca, then Ulric, then Sigmar. It said that if a man was struck by lightning, then his God had urgent need of him. Ableheim had been called, because for all his good work in the world, Sigmar had greater need of him in the realms beyond.
Three years, before he'd seen the face of one of his friends again. A little older, Magister rather than journeywoman, and from her face when you spoke of the resolution to your crisis of faith, with any faith in Sigmar far more damaged than yours. Perhaps it was unsurprising. Between the notorious zealousness of too many witch hunters, Dieter IV's banning of the colleges at the behest of the then Grand Theogogion Wizards had notoriously poor relations with the Church of Sigmar. To his shame Kasmir's own actions and prejudices in earlier years had not helped heal this rift.
When Sigmar's light failed to help one of his most worthy servants, even Kasmir had doubted for a time.
But as the years passed and he began hearing news of the outside again, another suspicion began to build in him. As he heard before she had found him, she was seen approaching the Elector countess with a bodyguard of Dawi hammerers, being granted a gromril sword bearing the finest power of Dawi Runecraft for her part in beginning the reclamation of Karak Eight Peaks.
In 2283 he first heard a dawi merchant (a rare sight still) call her [I]Azrildrekked. [/I]For she had completed the reconquest of Karak Eight Peaks.
And now Karak Vlag, lost some two hundred years ago was returned by her hand.
[I]Aid Dwarf folk. [/I]Second of Sigmar's strictures.
He still believed Ableheim was a most worthy servant of Sigmar. That he still served Sigmar in the great beyond. Yet, he wondered. Could this have been the future Sigmar saw a decade ago? Might Abelhelm have been called to help create [I]this future? [/I]He wonders, if Abelhelm had been able to see this future, what would he have said. If he could have seen the possibilities, what would he have said?
Kasmir will never speak this idea to Mathilde. Never voice the words that would destroy their friendship and might destroy the woman she had become. But he wondered nonetheless.
Either way, Kasmir was certain that whatever the truth, Abelhelm would be smiling at them from the afterlife.
======
AN: A character piece, because for a chosen of Sigmar, doesn't the question of "what if Abelhelm lived?" bring about more questions? Hopefully I didn't get Kasmir too far wrong.
One possible explanation? Divine casting is still casting, and Kasmir simply failed twice in a row.
For what it's worth, 2e Realms of Sorcery does say that there's something different about elves:
Barak Varr began developing ironclads in 2231 IC and completed the project in the 18th century IC - a very quick research task! Presumably Mathilde could work just as quickly if she devoted more of her AP to research.
I think you're misreading that.
I think you may be correct, with the DPG's issue here being a layout issue. It had the 2231 IC incident and Barak Varr's decision together in the same paragraph, implying that one directly led to the other. If the last sentence had been separated out to its own paragraph, then it would've cleanly read as Barak Varr responding to the multiple challenges that were laid out over multiple paragraphs, rather than responding only to the contents of that last 2231 IC paragraph. All in all, not something that would've been worth talking about had I caught it.
That would contradict the account from Dreadfleet, which says that Barak Varr started building ships after the War of Vengeance, in an effort to show that anything elves could do dwarfs could do better.
I would say that a high-Dhar environment can hamper divine spellcasting, but another possibility is also simply that everyone can fail to cast a spell, and maybe Kasmir was having a very bad day.
Yes, and I was not focusing on the cost specifically, but the picture overall. We have to balance cost, skilled labor, speed, and quality. Waystones do not all provide the same level of protection. A lesser quality waystone is going to be less capable of lowering the magic equilibrium than a higher-quality waystone. That means if you want to get the equilibrium to closer to the quantity humans prefer, you'll need to spend more resources on top of that: time, skilled labor, money, ect. We do not need to deploy waystones right now. The waystone network is stable. The people who come after us will have time to restore it.
Talk about quality headpats, lol.
Maybe he did not consider it important, maybe he intended to but was called back to Ulthuan before he got to it, maybe he did and the first gen Patriarchs decided that it was actually harmful for whatever reason...
