Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

[SaltyWaffles]

I suppose technically they already are doing that, as the Stone Flower is a High Magic enchantment, so the precedent has been set.

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Very true. And the Jade component of the waystones proves that the Colleges have useful and unique capabilities to offer in return. Kind of a shame we didn't go with the Light College's cantrip solution to the Waystone enchantment itself, but I get the reasoning that the Light College has a more limited availability of capable wizards than other colleges and it would likely prove to be a bottleneck for widespread production. Though it does mean that future waystone models could employ that method without tapping existing labor pools for that component.

And I have to hand it to the Grey Lords for the Stone Flower itself. While not exceptional in its own right, it replicates the hardest-to-reproduce part of Golden Age waystones with a very simple High Magic enchantment and no precious metals, all without any loss in capability. In terms of mass production without sacrificing capability--and the fact that Ulthuan hadn't figured out a replacement component for the capstone themselves in all this time--it's an elegant solution worthy of their name.

Eltharion is probably doing his version of basking in vindication that the Waystone Project has outright produced wholly new, fully-functional waystones that can be made in numbers using means readily within Ulthuan's grasp, and affordably. I'd bet that a version using a non-dwarven rune is already in the works to be made solely by Ulthuan to shore up Yvresse's damaged network. And in his eyes, it cost Ulthuan nothing important anyway other than leverage best used for this exact purpose.

 

[picklepikkl]

Very true. And the Jade component of the waystones proves that the Colleges have useful and unique capabilities to offer in return. Kind of a shame we didn't go with the Light College's cantrip solution to the Waystone enchantment itself, but I get the reasoning that the Light College has a more limited availability of capable wizards than other colleges and it would likely prove to be a bottleneck for widespread production. Though it does mean that future waystone models could employ that method without tapping existing labor pools for that component.

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Do you mean this?

Speaking of enchanters, Egrimm and Elrisse found enough components, cantrips, and theoretical writings in the Light Order's libraries that a purely human-sourced enchantment could be cobbled together. While the resultant enchantment would be simpler than that designed by the Grey Lords, it would also make the Colleges directly implicated in the creation of Dhar. It is also dependent on the properties of Hysh specifically, so it would rule out seven out of eight Collegiate enchanters.

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Because excellent rolls kind of nullified all of its advantages:

The Grey Lords had delivered a set of enchanting instructions so complex and interwoven that they would have had reason to believe that human enchanters would be capable of no more than slavishly following them. Overwhelming smugness exuded from Elrisse and Egrimm as they reported to you in private that the Grey Lords were severely mistaken. Deep within the pyramid of the Light Order, the thaumaturgic schematics were scrutinized not just by their enchanters, but also by their mathematicians, philosophers, cipherers, and steganographers, as well as anyone else interested in locking horns with minds that predate the Empire. Under the collective scrutiny of minds honed by finding hidden messages in correspondence and hidden mental traps in benign-seeming books and pamphlets, the enchantment schema has been unravelled, studied, and recompiled in ways more conducive to the Light Order's enchantment paradigm. The insights gleaned from the process are making their way through the Colleges' publication process, though it remains to be seen whether anything of practical use could come of it, or if it is merely of academic interest as an insight into a specific subset of Elven enchantment techniques. Also produced is a block of shiny white marble, into which the enchantment and its material components have somehow been embedded while leaving the stone intact.

[Pharological Perspective on Recursion in Elven Enchantment, 2491. Subject: Rare, +1. Insight: Revolutionary, +2. Delivery: Competent, +0. Very Exotic, +2. Varied, +1. Contributor, -3. Classified, -2. Total: +1.]

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And then the Jades took a look at it too:

Monitoring their work with careful discretion, you're unsurprised to learn that the Jades are hesitant to turn over the details of their side of things, but as the Lights are working with someone else's secrets they don't hesitate. This brings a new set of eyes onto the vivisected enchantment and before long another paper is in the works and the Jades are able to make the necessary corrections on their side to bring the two components into harmony. You don't have time right now to give the papers more than a skim, but what you do manage to grasp from them convinces you that it could be wise to find the time in the near future.

[Agrological Perspective on Recursion in Elven Enchantment, 2491. Subject: Rare, +1. Insight: Agreeing, +1. Delivery: Competent, +0. Very Exotic, +2. Varied, +1. Contributor, -3. Classified, -2. Total: +0 (rounded to +1).]

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So, essentially, we now have the advantage of using an elven-sourced enchantment (compatibility with enchanting done by any Wind, no direct implication in the creation fo Dhar) and the advantage of the Light Order method (lower difficulty when done by Lights). Plus, smugness points at taking the Grey Lords' blackboxed work and publishing a paper going "here is exactly how it works and also some notes on how we were able to improve it," which as we all know is the most precious coin of all.

 

[A_Somebody]

Why was Teclis able to partially translate the Talastein Carvings? If he was unable to translate the carvings, that could make sense, since Ulthuan is far away. If he was able to, that could also make sense, since the Belthani helped out the waystone project with oghams. But him only being partially able? That implies the Belthani weren't important to Ulthuan in ancient times but are important to them now, and I don't know why.

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I vaguely recall this line of questioning is how Mathilde reasoned out the existence of the Old One's language. As in Teclis as wide learned as he is, has approximately zero reason to know the language of a human tribe across the globe from Ulthuan. This was implied to be an on the spot translation--thus no time to look stuff up--and he probably did not have the time to learn a whole ass dead language during his time in the Old War (fighting the Everchosen, making the colleges, etc). These fact imply somehow a dead language from a human tribe with zero practical way of contact with the elves shares enough linguistic similarities with a language Teclis already knew for him to derive meaning immediately.

I think missing a few steps, but from the above Mathilde ultimately intuited the existence of the Old One's language as a shared root between Anoqeyan and various other old and/or magical langauges.