I'm interested to see what the AV to CF exchange rates look like next turn. Both for making another set of Orbs and for just handing over some flasks for the colleges to play with.
For our reward… the main thing is that I want this to be something for Mathilde. It doesn't have to be practical, it doesn't even need to be useful. It just needs to be something that brings her joy and or smugness when she thinks about it being hers. So nothing that is just 'help with my job'. Nothing in the background, like political support. Not just a promise to help with a battle or campaign. Not a collection of eight random items.
A flying tower does seem like the sort of thing Mathilde would want just for the sake of having it. To proclaim her existence as a WIZARD for all the world to hear. A flying ship or giant robot/mech might be cool in the abstract but they aren't what Mathilde would fantasise about owning.
Seeing how much AV and Orbs are worth it the future will be neat.
There's been some talk about the Hellwars, but I've been thinking. The targets of the Hellwars can be taken by regular armies, where the presence of Wizards would be very useful but not completely indispensable. And if we leave them alone for some time, they'll just stay there.
However, there's a target where none of the above is true.
The Marcher Fortress.
Think about it. It's a really hard target, but we know its rough location in realspace (just follow the leyline), we have an idea of how to permanently bring it back while taking the forces inside by surprise, and if we gather the full might of the Colleges we could prepare all kinds of daemon-banishing rituals or battlemagic+ level spells aimed at it as soon as it comes back. It wouldn't be easy, and would require a lot of resources and Wizards, but if we accomplished it not only would we recover a Nexus, we'd get rid of a possible avenue of attack to the heart of the Empire by the forces of Chaos when the next Everchosen comes (and we know it'll be relatively soon). Having gained a Big Favor from All The Colleges this is IMO the best chance we've ever had, and the best we'll likely have in quite some time.
That would be a very cool place to take over.
Genuinely, why not? Let's imagine for a moment that the airship would bring us nothing new of value (which isn't true, but anyway) except for the fact that's it's super cool, why wouldn't it be a good idea to get it?
We've been doing this kind of thing forever. Like, I'm not exaggerating, Mathilde is a determinator and an utter machine of applied benevolence and groundbreaking research. She's got so many headpats, she's a headpat connoisseur now. Why must we continue doing the same things over and over and over again? I'm all for the research and rewards, but there's a point where it would be much more fun to get something that's cool than just make yet another step on the exact same path, and for me, here and now is very much this point.
Mathilde is an absolute machine and workaholic it's just that she loves what she does.
Armor of von Tarnus would stack with Aethyric Armour.
Nice.
Something about the update came to me just now. Feldmann must be wondering a little just how much that deal with Mathilde regarding apparition spells may have contributed to the study of Aethyric Vitae. No wonder she was so willing to give up so many skaven study materials, she had something better in the background being worked on.
Feldmann must be nerdraging hard, I think. He has no reason to believe we were interested in Apparitions before he told us about them -- we didn't know the Hounds were Apparitions, after all. But then the Golds sold the secret to us, and it looks an awful lot from his perspective like we then started investigating it, got curious about the properties of Apparition blood, and casually solved two major secrets of the Colleges using an insight the Golds already had. Incredible levels of malding.
Man is likely malting and seething so much. Also he's likely really impressed by Mathilde as well.
Sure, but we're not going to be hanging out in Saphery. We're going to be hanging out in
Nagarythe, with Shadow Warriors. I don't think every single Shadow Warrior is a master of
arhain to the point where they all rock Mindrazors and will make fun of the human who can only do the Miasma -- it seems unlikely to me that most elves would spend the decades it takes focused on magic to be able to cast the highest levels of Battle Magic unless their Thing is being a wizard. We obviously don't stack up that impressively compared to an
Archmage of Shadows, but you don't
get a lot of those in Nagarythe.
(Also, I was mostly thinking in terms of the dark elves who see a human in armor with an enormous sword and guess wrong about what sort of fighter we are.)
They're not the mage experts and Mathilde doesn't really look like a mage she looks like a warrior.
As a forward operating base when we go to investigate something.
Imagine if we were to head down South to investigate some Tomb King stuff, while it would be entirely possible to fly all the way back to K8P, that introduces a fair degree of risk and will eat into time. By having the tower (or Airship) we'd be able to bring a fully functional and equipped laboratory with us.
Additionally it would provide other amenities such as sheer comfort, a defensive position and would narratively make it a lot easier to bring the less martial inclined along with us.
Plus we can probably fit it with a super weapon of some kind. Which would be a strategic asset in a battle.
Looking into Tomb King stuff would be neat.
This is about what I was going to post, before I found myself caught on the possibility that Mathilde may have included her source of AV in the book. I've not found any such indication since in my search, but I'm still somewhat attached to the idea that Feldmann now assumes Mathilde knew all along and was only pretending. It means he gets his own Johann moment:
The second he's alone he's going to have his nerd rage moment. Also the salt over "fucking Greys" will be great.
Pedantic (if it was the silver seal, I would say pendantic): Mathilde is kind of mid at Ulgu. All her spells are low battle magic at most, she just casts them really well so that's impressive.
I always felt we overpayed for the Apparitions (though the magical knowledge has been quite useful). Feldmann being mad about is very satisfying.
Though finding out that no, it was actually an attempt to do something else entirely, which failed but then she did it anyway, twice, might actually be worse. It could only be worse if this was the negaverse where Mathilde bound Drycha and didn't get her soul eaten for it.
But yeah, it's similar to the Waystone deal with the magic house. They got the better of Mathilde, but are kind of regretting it when they got the super complicated design to work with.
Mathilde hasn't really delved as deeply as she can into Ulgu she's really strong but she's grown thrrough other means.
Thinking about it more…
I didn't really want a tangible reward for doing the morbs, I wanted a vague collegiate equivalent to the "you have broken the dwarf favor system" in terms of headpat scale.
It almost feels like it reduces the scale of the achievement in some ways to request something that can be framed as a "payment" for the Orbs - like it makes it merely transactional, where what Mathilde really wants is to be enshrined in the mythos of the colleges for all time, the same way Volans or Tarnus or Puchta were.
For me, I think the way to look at this boon that's most congruent with Mathilde's character is to think about legacy. To ask for something where if Mathilde gets got by an Eshin assassination tomorrow, the requested boon would still be shaping the world a century from now.
I mean we kinda made the legacy with the Morbs and AV Book by itself. We've effectively figured out how to do two things that the colleges have been wondering for their entire existence and will likely cause significant shifts going forward.
So I feel like asking for a big reward is just icing on the cake.
Breaking the favor system would be neat. But yeah her legacy is 100% cemented by solving the mystery of Liminal Realms and Morbs. AV and the AV Book is a really big deal and Mathilde will be remembered for it.
Nice.
One word: Elfcation.
We're basically signing up to go hunting Druchii invaders for three months. And that's also not counting the always possible "sudden Chaos/greenskin/beastmen/skaven/Drachenfels invasion" event where even if the entire College roster wasn't called up for action, we'd certainly be inclined to go help out.
We also have helping out Bretonnia with their chaos orcs problem on the backburner.
Lastly, remember that brushes with death can come without a lot of warning. Belegar asked us to go help out Roswita and we were promptly engaged with Alkharad in a duel where we came worryingly close to dying. The riverine ironclad rescue involved a dice roll where a 1 would have instantly killed us, and our input in that event was a single decision to engage in rescue operations. And while it might be a long while until we engage with a severe threat, the opportunity to get a unique set of magical armor like this probably only comes once, if we want to go for that.
Several plots threads where Mathilde will get a chance to be badass.
I wonder if another reason Ulthuan chose not to work with the Empire on this was Dieter outlawing the colleges. If your favorite new head loremaster spent a titanic amount of effort building up a way for the Empire to be less backwards about wizards, and then by Elven standards immediately betrayed that, It's hard to see why you would invite them to the table on a project that requires centuries of consistent work and a nuanced view of the Warp.
Teclis, who considers the colleges to be his children, might even have been upset enough by their abandonment to be a major contributing voice in the decision.
This would all make the Colleges being reinstated because the Empire got dunked on at Grootscher Marsh the height of irony, of course. Musta been a wild time in the Teclis Negaquest.
They likely where very pissed about that, Teclis especially.
Alberich was bisected the moment he became aware of Mathilde, and never even tried to do anything but run away from her after that. Drycha dodged Mathilde's opening attack, but was promptly chased off by seeing the overwhelming force suddenly arrayed against her. In neither of those cases was armor remotely relevant, because Mathilde's entire fighting style is about not giving the enemy the opportunity to fight back.
And before you say "but what if things go wrong", we already have multiple backup options for getting hit. The Red Rider, Kragg's belt, her robes, the seed which can literally bring her back to life. Blowing an entire great deed on what amounts to a minor redundant backup option would be the biggest waste I can think of, I'd rather just parcel it out for lore tidbits than go for the armor.
The thread has put in a lot of countermeasures and backups in case things go bad.
While I grant the validity of this logic, it's worth remembering that it's also a factor for anything we do. Resources we request as a reward for this are not available for other things. If we tie up the Colleges' best enchanters for a year making us a flying doom-machine, those enchanters aren't doing any of the other extremely useful things they could be doing that benefit the Colleges, the Empire, or "Order" as a whole. Now, sure, the argument could be made that we'll put it to better use so that the investment pays off relative to the status quo without Mathilde asking for anything... but, again, that also applies to the Armor of von Tarnus.
"This uses up an excludable resource so that it's not available to other worthy projects that exist in the narrative background" is a universal consideration. For every boon, we can consider "does this pay out relative to what other uses the costs could go toward", whether that be armor, a flying base, or a pass to deploy Battle Wizards to the conflict of our choosing.
Also something to keep in mind is that the Colleges are likely going to be scrambling to use the Orbs and make new ones and get their hands on AV.
For a singular bonkers request, how about:
[ ] Dispensation to study methods of destroying or beneficially transforming Dhar. 'I have seen Dwarven Rune magic that can burn Dhar into nothing or smash it into aspectless rune power, Qhaysh that can unravel Dhar, and the slow transformation under specific circumstances of Dhar into aspectless Earthbound magic, but have been unable to study them lest I fall afoul of the Articles. I would wish to study these and similar things I encounter (though taking care to not impinge upon Dwarven Runepriest secrets) in order to develop a form of destruction or beneficial transformation of Dhar that the Colleges of Magic can use.'
Edited to add: the intention here would be in part a way to attempt to launder our 'Second Secret of Dhar' knowledge into something usable by the Colleges without turning people evil or getting burned at the stake.
Edited to add: Also my intention is to try and get more Seilph and Sarumar - that scene with them was incredible.
Dhar and Dhar counter research would be interesting. Laundering the Second Secret officially would be very useful for the Colleges.
Something I've been wondering for a while but would it be safe to say that Mathilda is the Leonardo da Miragliano of magic?
Consider all the break-throughs in various fields she has made over the years:
- Whaaag and Peace, a breakthrough in understanding how the Whaaag of Orcs and Goblins functions, and how best to counter them.
- The double whammy of proving the existence of Eshin Sorcerers and non-necromancy magic that functions by mixing another Wind and Dhar (Ulgu in this case).
- Translating Queekish. Technically it's Low Queekish but the discovery that there are different dialects of Queekish is notable in and of itself.
- Having two spells added to the general Grey Wizard spell book is notable for how rare/uncommon such changes are made.
- And now the Aethyric Vitae, a study into the base mechanics of magic. Something which allows for the creation of more Orbs of Sorcery.
Not to mention the various minor contributions she has made over the years. Admittedly, wizards not read in on the Conspiracy of Silence won't have heard of her most impressive accomplishments.
Mathilde has researched some very interesting and ground breaking stuff, but so far it's kinda looking into shady stuff but it's been kept above board and been very useful for the Colleges.
Well, I've been wanting an extended expedition into Nehekara, with a look towards deep lore, the nature of the divine, and unearthing secrets of the Old Ones.
We can start by learning High Nehekaran and unearthing that tomb near Gretel's place, then translating the notes and scrolls we have, before moving deeper into Nehekara itself (depending on what we learn from the scrolls).
A mobile research base—such as a flying tower—would be ideal for that, and give us a safe location to operate from.
Those would all be very interesting research paths.
Maybe we could get a dispensation on rep alone, but I'm also thinking about how one of the things about Dhar dispensation is that they get harder to get successively, and how when you bring back anything to do with Dhar you get scrutinised; not just the circumstances around it but also your history for the possibility that you might be trying to eg hide that you have 'get burned at the stake' type stuff there. Doing this all this way we could probably get a wider scoped or longer term dispensation than rep alone, or maybe we could get an enthusiastic dispensation (which might mean the Light College sharing Jovi Sunscryer's work with us for instance, rather than stonewalling us; or it might allow us to more overtly bring in other people and share stuff with them - it could be the seed of cooperation if we can bring disparate groups with their own secrets together again - so many cool possibilities) rather than a wary one (that means we have to maintain deniability and wariness ourself; would still be fun and I'd still be keen but a very different kind of thing).
Edited to add: if we get the wide/enthusiastic dispensation, it could be the kind of thing we use the Waystone institution to bootstrap - the Waystone network depends on Dhar for its function, everyone used to have secrets for how to deal with it, but we have all lost enough stuff that those secrets are not things we can just use anymore. But it shows a way we have been successful in clawing stuff back through cooperation, and we also have a group of people who we know, who know us, and where we all know the others are legit. But instead of tiptoing around that (so we don't get burned at the stake) this might let us try to eg help the Ice Witches more widely deploy their 'transmute Dhar into uncorrupted frozen power' stuff and maybe in exchange be able to learn enough to help the Ulricans develop something similar. Or some collaboration between Runepriests and the Light College to build choruses of the smaller conversion runes to increase their conversion power the more of them that resonate together. Like, no guarantees we can get people to even say 'yes' to trying, let alone that it would work, but the big dispensation is more likely to allow us to attempt asking the question (and having those cool conversations and cool scenes) rather than having to do everything by stealth and by ourself. And also, it would be really cool if we could get a wide enough dispensation that we could (for example) actually discuss stuff with Seliph and Sarumar in a way that lets us open up a bit more.
Mathilde has a pretty reasonable reason to look into Dhar all things considered.