Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

[Boney]

Borders tended to be fuzzier back then, especially in geologically isolated places. Before you could reliably figure out longitude and latitude, you tended to go off geographical features, which can sometimes proved troublesome. There's a great deal of leftover trouble from treaties that mark a river as a border and then that river shifts course or ends up having an island in the middle of it. Then there's cases of marking the border at some natural boundary and then it turns out there's some valuable resource deposit under it. Even more fun is when you use a geographical feature that you're not entirely sure the shape of to mark a border. But it works well enough most of the time, and when that mountain range might be full of worse than just steep cliffs and cold winds, there's even more reason to just say the border is the mountains and call it a day, and worry about who owns which part of the mountains only if turns out there's some reason to.

The Old World has extremely dramatic natural borders, but it's still not immune to this. There's probably some treaty somewhere that says that the border between Estalia and Tilea is marked by language like 'east of Mount Whatsit or Fort Whatever is Tilea, and west is Estalia', and there's probably a bunch of villages on one side of the line but only accessible from the other, and the fort in question might have changed hands a half dozen times, and there's been border skirmishes a dozen times or more trying to take land that's on the other side of the line - the Tobaro-Vedenza drama in Monstrous Arcanum was all about an instance of that. These things existing is both historically accurate and narratively convenient, providing very useful story hooks and historical tensions. The same would be true of the Bretonnia-Empire border (how many Parravon Wars are we up to now?) and the Empire-Kislev border, though that one mostly settled down over the years after both sides realized 'I don't know how those weirdos manage to live in those horrible forests/steppes, they can keep them'.

Or possibly Nehekharan succesor states after Nagash destroyed the metropole.

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There is a pleasing symmetry to the idea of the Reman Empire being a kind of reverse Ptolemaic Egypt.

-Stone and Steel says the first human cities in Tilea turned up around -500 IC, and that Barak Varr began trading with humans at this time.

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Some of the old materials play coy about Tylos, treating it as a myth and gesturing cheekily at the lack of a known location for Tylos (which would, of course, be the modern site of Skavenblight) as a reason to be skeptical.

 

[Jyn Ryvia]

. The same would be true of the Bretonnia-Empire border (how many Parravon Wars are we up to now?) and the Empire-Kislev border, though that one mostly settled down over the years after both sides realized 'I don't know how those weirdos manage to live in those horrible forests/steppes, they can keep them'.
.

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an unintended consequence of retaking the nexus and setting up the Waystones in the area might be actually restarting that stuff in 10 years or so.

As the horrible forest/steppes becomes noticeably less horrific.

Still worth it, but a consequence all the same.

 

[Broccoliccoli]

But it works well enough most of the time, and when that mountain range might be full of worse than just steep cliffs and cold winds, there's even more reason to just say the border is the mountains and call it a day, and worry about who owns which part of the mountains only if turns out there's some reason to.

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Nitpicking, but unlike other state-level geographical barriers mountains without gribblies would usually be dotted with tiny settlements filled with people that do have strong opinions about where their animals get to graze.
Those kind of borders just would be below the notice of the higher governments, who probably just barely track which poor remote village they get to bully their tax collectors with.

 

[Mopman43]

Nitpicking, but unlike other state-level geographical barriers mountains without gribblies would usually be dotted with tiny settlements filled with people that do have strong opinions about where their animals get to graze.
Those kind of borders just would be below the notice of the higher governments, who probably just barely track which poor remote village they get to bully their tax collectors with.

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I'm not sure mountains without gribblies exist in the setting. Gribblies are kinda omni-present.

 

[pucflek]

The sort of people that occupy even real life mountainous contested borders in history are honestly probably tougher than half of those gribblies, so there are decent odds that these tiny settlements exist even in Warhammer

 

[NobodyImportant]

I'm not sure mountains without gribblies exist in the setting. Gribblies are kinda omni-present.

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Those mountains which are firmly in dwarf hands are probably fairly gribbly-free, but on the other hand, dwarfs are likely to be far more exacting on the exact placement of borders than human nations, so it all works out.

 

[Nimbus]

(how many Parravon Wars are we up to now?)

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Hmm. Idle curiosity: I wonder what the Bretonnians call them. 'The Reikland Wars'? 'The Wars of the Mountains'? Perhaps they don't categorise them in the same way at all and see them as individual conflicts with particular motivations rather than a series...

On a different note, been doing a little thinking about Waystone boats, specifically about the methods that were noted would be feasible for non-spirit transfer. While getting local river spirits to handle it would be the simplest solution, only being able to use it on rivers where those spirits have been successfully harnessed impinges on the flexibility of a system whose major feature is its flexibility. (In particular, in the case where a large amount of magic has been dumped on an area and surge capacity is needed, I'd prefer not to be relying on someone successfully carrying out rapid negotiations with local spirits to commence operations - especially given that all the cards would be in the spirits' hands.)

Of the non-spirit options, meanwhile, there's this:

The non-spirit riverine method would almost work with a boat, but it doesn't have an answer for what to do with Dhar. It wouldn't be difficult to work out some sort of swap-out storage mechanism that can be physically relayed to a fixed Waystone and dumped into the network that way, and some sort of air transmission tower that requires the boat to anchor, extend it, and aim it to work seems feasible.

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So, whether you want to put the Winds into the river on their own or not, you're at least going to need a connection to an extant portion of the network (leyline or riverine) to handle the Dhar. (This also means that you don't have to limit this Waystone type to boats, in truth - you could put one on a large wagon and achieve the same effect, though this is probably much less practical.)

The first option proposed for this is to forgo the transmission and make the Waystone storage mechanism mobile so that it can be regularly swapped out and transferred to a fixed Waystone for collection. This has major logistical advantages in that it renders the connection to the broader network entirely virtual - a group of Waystone boats could operate basically anywhere with a transport link back to a fixed Waystone and the means to get it there - which, conveniently, you can accomplish with more boats! On the other hand, this does mean that you've invented what amounts to a Dhar jerry can, which you'll want to avoid falling into the hands of dark powers. Either you'd need storage transfer boats as well-defended as the Waystone boats or you'd have to take Waystone boats away from channelling duty to do the transferring themselves.

The alternative is an aerial transfer system. I imagine you'd want to set this up with the Dhar being passed from one Waystone boat to another like pylons until reaching a fixed Waystone, meaning that the boats wouldn't all have to be in range of it. Still, this does require a line of boats to be set up to the nearest Waystone, which is substantially less flexible than the storage transfer method, and a current of Dhar running through the air is potentially vulnerable to being grabbed and misused by a local sorcerer.

Of course, there's nothing to say that a combination of these methods couldn't be employed! Have the spirit transmission as an ideal case, then use storage or aerial transfer when the local spirits aren't compliant. You might even want to combine the latter two - aerial transfer the Dhar to one or two of the boats, to make replacement and collection of the storage units easier and more convenient. And beyond even that, we might think of some other innovative concept in the interim that might introduce new possibilities for transfer! Sky's the limit and all that!

 

[deathofrats0808]

an unintended consequence of retaking the nexus and setting up the Waystones in the area might be actually restarting that stuff in 10 years or so.

As the horrible forest/steppes becomes noticeably less horrific.

Still worth it, but a consequence all the same.

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Probably not. Even if the Blood Fane Nexus gets retaken (and that's the only missing nexus near the border), and we dot the place with Waystones, it's not going to, for example, drive out the Beastmen. Ultimately, the problem for the Empire/Kislev is their respective military systems are unsuited to the environments of each other. Kislev's reliance on widespread horse archers serves poorly in forests, and the Empire's professional infantry are too slow and few to respond to everything on the steppe. Not unsurmountable problems but very expensive ones to try and fix.

Also, the current Tzar is the sensible sort.

Nitpicking, but unlike other state-level geographical barriers mountains without gribblies would usually be dotted with tiny settlements filled with people that do have strong opinions about where their animals get to graze.
Those kind of borders just would be below the notice of the higher governments, who probably just barely track which poor remote village they get to bully their tax collectors with.

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I mean, it's less "below" the notice of the governments and more that it's not really possible for governments to be able to track that sort of thing given the technology available, even though they'd probably really like to.

 

[Prime 2.0]

Hmm. Idle curiosity: I wonder what the Bretonnians call them. 'The Reikland Wars'? 'The Wars of the Mountains'? Perhaps they don't categorise them in the same way at all and see them as individual conflicts with particular motivations rather than a series...

On a different note, been doing a little thinking about Waystone boats, specifically about the methods that were noted would be feasible for non-spirit transfer. While getting local river spirits to handle it would be the simplest solution, only being able to use it on rivers where those spirits have been successfully harnessed impinges on the flexibility of a system whose major feature is its flexibility. (In particular, in the case where a large amount of magic has been dumped on an area and surge capacity is needed, I'd prefer not to be relying on someone successfully carrying out rapid negotiations with local spirits to commence operations - especially given that all the cards would be in the spirits' hands.)

Of the non-spirit options, meanwhile, there's this:


So, whether you want to put the Winds into the river on their own or not, you're at least going to need a connection to an extant portion of the network (leyline or riverine) to handle the Dhar. (This also means that you don't have to limit this Waystone type to boats, in truth - you could put one on a large wagon and achieve the same effect, though this is probably much less practical.)

The first option proposed for this is to forgo the transmission and make the Waystone storage mechanism mobile so that it can be regularly swapped out and transferred to a fixed Waystone for collection. This has major logistical advantages in that it renders the connection to the broader network entirely virtual - a group of Waystone boats could operate basically anywhere with a transport link back to a fixed Waystone and the means to get it there - which, conveniently, you can accomplish with more boats! On the other hand, this does mean that you've invented what amounts to a Dhar jerry can, which you'll want to avoid falling into the hands of dark powers. Either you'd need storage transfer boats as well-defended as the Waystone boats or you'd have to take Waystone boats away from channelling duty to do the transferring themselves.

The alternative is an aerial transfer system. I imagine you'd want to set this up with the Dhar being passed from one Waystone boat to another like pylons until reaching a fixed Waystone, meaning that the boats wouldn't all have to be in range of it. Still, this does require a line of boats to be set up to the nearest Waystone, which is substantially less flexible than the storage transfer method, and a current of Dhar running through the air is potentially vulnerable to being grabbed and misused by a local sorcerer.

Of course, there's nothing to say that a combination of these methods couldn't be employed! Have the spirit transmission as an ideal case, then use storage or aerial transfer when the local spirits aren't compliant. You might even want to combine the latter two - aerial transfer the Dhar to one or two of the boats, to make replacement and collection of the storage units easier and more convenient. And beyond even that, we might think of some other innovative concept in the interim that might introduce new possibilities for transfer! Sky's the limit and all that!

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TBH considering storage meaningfully affects the throughput of leyline-based stones, I think it's more there to smooth out variances in the leyline's ability to siphon built up energy. Less like a tesla powerwall, more like an Uninterruptable Power Supply. Or perhaps "less a battery, more a capacitor" would be the better analogy?

Anyways, a Dhar jerrycan would be far easier to make than a waystone yet does not appear to exist, so the "waystones on carts" idea stops at "we can't make a good enough battery", I think.

I admittedly have written a bit in the past about the "storage for areas without spirit pacts" concept your last paragraph brings up, but if my guess about storage mechanisms holds true, the price might not be worth it for that feature. Now, if we're selling to somebody who can tap into those winds stored in the stone on the other hand, then that storage suddenly becomes an added weapons system for any boat so equipped, and that's a different story.

The storage might make for a poor jerrycan in and of itself, but if the can keeps getting filled back up? Now you're cooking with gas.

 

[Tobtorp]

The storage might make for a poor jerrycan in and of itself, but if the can keeps getting filled back up? Now you're cooking with gas.

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The can is regularly filled with the juice-that-makes-you-evil so finding a use for it runs into the two pronged problem of it making you evil and the rest of the empire suddenly wanting to get more into woodworking and pyrotechnics.

 

[Nimbus]

Anyways, a Dhar jerrycan would be far easier to make than a waystone yet does not appear to exist... if my guess about storage mechanisms holds true, the price might not be worth it for that feature.

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Okay, so I had a whole post in the works considering the different traditions of Dark Magic and their competing means for accessing large amounts of magical power at a time and place of their users' choosing (Warpstone, Daemon-binding, ritual magic) and was about to make the argument that of everyone the Druchii are most likely to have Dhar storage for their Black Arks but there's no reason to suggest that this would be widely known...

And then I remembered Corpse Carts and Mortis Engines. Mobile capacitors of this type absolutely do already exist, though these ones are from a very different enchantment tradition to what a Runesmith, Eonir mage or Imperial wizard would (hopefully) be working with! And while a Mortis Engine is a rare magical artefact, a Corpse Cart is... Well, a group of corpses in a cart, presumably overlaid with magic in some way. (Edit: Apparently the corpses were infused with Warpstone from meteors that hit Sylvania in 1111, though Van Hal may have had a hand in enchanting and/or weaponising the results.) While I think the choice of materials should probably be different for our hypothetical replaceable storage unit, it does demonstrate that such a thing is possible!

 

[MrHobbit]

Probably not. Even if the Blood Fane Nexus gets retaken (and that's the only missing nexus near the border), and we dot the place with Waystones, it's not going to, for example, drive out the Beastmen. Ultimately, the problem for the Empire/Kislev is their respective military systems are unsuited to the environments of each other. Kislev's reliance on widespread horse archers serves poorly in forests, and the Empire's professional infantry are too slow and few to respond to everything on the steppe. Not unsurmountable problems but very expensive ones to try and fix.

Also, the current Tzar is the sensible sort.

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Kind of. Boney's mentioned that there are a handful of border disputes between Kislev and Ostermark & Ostland. The largest claim is Kislev's claim over the Veldt. The Veldt is a significant chunk of land. That'd include annexing Gerdouen, all the way up to Rundespitz. It's only a small part of Kislev that wants to push the claims though. Kislev also isn't in a position to do that. And Boris wouldn't want to do it. He is sensible, as you pointed out. He also has a lot of stuff to work so he can rebuild Kislev after more than a century of lying fallow. He also had his father killed by an Imperial assassin, so that would be awkwardness he would want to avoid.

That being said, I don't think waystones would impact it all that much. The people who want that land already exist. It's already inhabited, indicating that the waystone network isn't too damaged in those places.

When the Gospodars arrived and were colonizing Kislev, they also bit off a chunk of Ostland which was bitten back a couple of centuries later. The current borders have been more or less stable for a long time, but both sides still have claims to parts of each other - the part of Ostland called 'the Northern March' and the part of Kislev called 'the Kislev Verge'. The Ostermark border is a bit more stable because the Upper Talabec makes for a very firm natural border, but parts of Kislev would like to push the border south to the Brunwasser to snip off the Veldt, while parts of Ostermark would like to push it north to Vitevo to claim part of the fertile Southern Oblast and the rich mines in the mountains near Red Eye Mountain (formerly Karak Ungor).

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On a different note, been doing a little thinking about Waystone boats, specifically about the methods that were noted would be feasible for non-spirit transfer. While getting local river spirits to handle it would be the simplest solution, only being able to use it on rivers where those spirits have been successfully harnessed impinges on the flexibility of a system whose major feature is its flexibility. (In particular, in the case where a large amount of magic has been dumped on an area and surge capacity is needed, I'd prefer not to be relying on someone successfully carrying out rapid negotiations with local spirits to commence operations - especially given that all the cards would be in the spirits' hands.)

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I'm skeptical about waystone boats in general, I just don't see why it is appealing, but isn't one of the main bonuses of the waystone boat is the simplicity in making it? Having multiple transmission methods radically increases the difficulty of the transmission component. I'm also pretty skeptical about the dhar jerry can, as you put it. That would be a PR nightmare waiting to happen. I also don't like the idea of designing more components at this stage. We could spend that time building waystones or retaking nexuses or non-waystone stuff too.

That being said, you wouldn't have to negotiate with the spirits on the fly. Spirit negotiation is handled before you start placing waystones. There's no point in making waystones for a river unless the spirit has already agreed.

 

[SaltyWaffles]

Waystone boats is an inherently limited prospect because they're confined to rivers, which is also a great transmission medium we already know how to utilize and designed waystones to use. In other words, if you want more waystone coverage where a river is, just create tributaries or plop more waystones along the river instead. After all, if there's excess magic there, there's probably going to be excess magic accumulating there in the future even if you drain it now, so you might as well get it covered by a waystone or tributary permanently.

One of the great appeals of waystones and the tributary methods we've chosen is that they're permanent so long as the spirit/waystone isn't destroyed (and beastmen are the only common entities that seek to do so). If a bad ruler takes over and stops having waystone boats making their rounds, you have problems. If waystones and tributaries are permanently fixed there instead, it takes care of itself.

That being said, getting a model of waystone that connects to the KAWN would be a great achievement. Would it be possible to provide assistance to Thorek to design a waystone model that is dwarven-made that is compatible with the KAWN? Like, maybe it would have to be all-dwarven components due to secrecy, but that should be plausible with the components we've already developed. Is Thorek taking what the Project has developed and made plans to develop an all-dwarven waystone model, or is the ability to connect new waystones to the KAWN knowledge that has been lost to the current Karaz Ankor?

What about using the divine method? Building waystones and having Grugni or Thungni or Valaya direct the flow of energies directly into the KAWN?

 

[Prime 2.0]

Waystone boats is an inherently limited prospect because they're confined to rivers, which is also a great transmission medium we already know how to utilize and designed waystones to use. In other words, if you want more waystone coverage where a river is, just create tributaries or plop more waystones along the river instead. After all, if there's excess magic there, there's probably going to be excess magic accumulating there in the future even if you drain it now, so you might as well get it covered by a waystone or tributary permanently.

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Eh. The premise doesn't hold: Magic doesn't decay away, it stays forever unless it's removed. It is absolutely not the case that if a place is dhar-ridden, it must be connected to greater ongoing inflows of dhar than normal, and indeed we have multiple examples of places that became dhar poisoned wastes via individual catastrophe, most notably Praag.

Praag does not have greater inflows of Dhar than the areas surrounding it. It just got turbofucked by the everchosen. The concentration of waystones that would heal it the fastest is not the concentration of waystones it would need to retain a healthy level of ambient magic after it is healed. It would strain credulity to claim otherwise.

And Praag is just not unique for having a specific catastrophe making it a dhar-poisoned waste. It is uniquely severe, but not qualitatively unique in situation. Nor are such catastrophes going to remain solely in the past, whatever their severity.

So, the triage use case remains valid.

So does the attack-resistant infrastructure use case, where the waystones can service an area whose waystones are being actively targeted because they can sally out from fortified positions and retreat back into them. This would be useful in Kislev, where... well, see above about praag and why it's Like That, it would be useful in Nagarythe where the locals are chiefly nomadic and are routinely fighting off invaders who once tried to shut off the great vortex, and it would conditionally be appealing to the Dawi who are suspicious of standing infrastructure that isn't inside of a mountain and who otherwise have to significantly fortify any waystone location.

Do we generally want permanent waystones in most places? Of course! Can we generally get permanent waystones everywhere quickly? No.

And frankly, if trade roads are reliable enough to make a waystone transmission method out of because of how often they're used, I don't think trade rivers will fare much worse. "Rivers not being routinely traveled" will not be a significant issue to the efficacy of waystones on boats, because that's just not really a thing.

 

[MrHobbit]

Edit: Does anyone recall a post where Boney said that Mathilde had noticed magic going into Karaz-a-Karak, but none coming out? It was before we investigated their network. I think Boney was replying to a comment talking about if it was being used, with the whole 'dhar bomb' thing being discussed.

And Praag is just not unique for having a specific catastrophe making it a dhar-poisoned waste. It is uniquely severe, but not qualitatively unique in situation. Nor are such catastrophes going to remain solely in the past, whatever their severity.

So, the triage use case remains valid.

So does the attack-resistant infrastructure use case, where the waystones can service an area whose waystones are being actively targeted because they can sally out from fortified positions and retreat back into them. This would be useful in Kislev, where... well, see above about praag and why it's Like That, it would be useful in Nagarythe where the locals are chiefly nomadic and are routinely fighting off invaders who once tried to shut off the great vortex, and it would conditionally be appealing to the Dawi who are suspicious of standing infrastructure that isn't inside of a mountain and who otherwise have to significantly fortify any waystone location.

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None of the locations you mentioned are particularly viable. Take Kislev, its people are not sailors. They are horse nomads. Their military tradition does not involve hovering around boats. The benefit is marginal at best. Have you looked at a map of Nagarythe? There's not a lot of rivers to put waystone boats on. All their rivers are also pretty vulnerable to the Druchii, those invaders you mentioned. They make it a lot easier to navigate around Nagarythe and the Druchii are renowned sailors. You would also have to pull that magic out of the river, unless Ulthuan was fine with dumping the magic into the ocean. The Druchii would be able to target that for the same reason you mention that permanent waystone infrastructure is vulnerable. I also doubt the Nagarytheans have a particularly strong riverine military tradition.

The dwarves won't be convinced by any type of waystone. There isn't a way to get magic from riverine waystones into the Karaz Ankor's network without breaking the water and hoping the Karak-Waystone absorbs it before there are problems. That could be remediated with the elven nexus that Barak Varr has, but that means that the dwarves will start the Hellwars at some vague future point. The geography is also rather awkward for the Karaz Ankor. Barak Varr is pretty much the only option. I'm still skeptical of the idea that there are feasible options to expand the KAWN beyond reconntecting Ulthuan's network to it and the Barak Varr elven nexus.

Also note that for the energy from boat waystones to be absorbed into the network, rather than just dumped into the ocean, you have to build more leyline waystones around nexuses. Making boat waystones will slow down progress on permanent coverage, as you have to account for an increased flow elsewhere. Incidentally, the first waystone we made will do that for Praag when the Lynsk waystones are made. That is part of what makes me skeptical of the 'need' for a boat waystone. The Lynsk headwaters are pretty much route #1 for Chaos armies. The hell where on the continent are you going to find more attack-vulnerable infrastructure than that?

Additionally, trade road transmission method doesn't rely on the direct movement of people to function. It uses the metaphysical resonance of the movement of people to move magic. You still would be making permanent waystones alongside the road. Its functionality is not applicable to arguments regarding the waystone boat.

 

[Prime 2.0]

1. None of the locations you mentioned are particularly viable. Take Kislev, its people are not sailors. They are horse nomads. Their military tradition does not involve hovering around boats. The benefit is marginal at best. Have you looked at a map of Nagarythe? There's not a lot of rivers to put waystone boats on. All their rivers are also pretty vulnerable to the Druchii, those invaders you mentioned. They make it a lot easier to navigate around Nagarythe and the Druchii are renowned sailors. You would also have to pull that magic out of the river, unless Ulthuan was fine with dumping the magic into the ocean. The Druchii would be able to target that for the same reason you mention that permanent waystone infrastructure is vulnerable. I also doubt the Nagarytheans have a particularly strong riverine military tradition.

2. The dwarves won't be convinced by any type of waystone. There isn't a way to get magic from riverine waystones into the Karaz Ankor's network without breaking the water and hoping the Karak-Waystone absorbs it before there are problems. That could be remediated with the elven nexus that Barak Varr has, but that means that the dwarves will start the Hellwars at some vague future point. The geography is also rather awkward for the Karaz Ankor. Barak Varr is pretty much the only option. I'm still skeptical of the idea that there are feasible options to expand the KAWN beyond reconntecting Ulthuan's network to it and the Barak Varr elven nexus.

3. Also note that for the energy from boat waystones to be absorbed into the network, rather than just dumped into the ocean, you have to build more leyline waystones around nexuses. Making boat waystones will slow down progress on permanent coverage, as you have to account for an increased flow elsewhere. Incidentally, the first waystone we made will do that for Praag when the Lynsk waystones are made. That is part of what makes me skeptical of the 'need' for a boat waystone. The Lynsk headwaters are pretty much route #1 for Chaos armies. The hell where on the continent are you going to find more attack-vulnerable infrastructure than that?

4. Additionally, trade road transmission method doesn't rely on the direct movement of people to function. It uses the metaphysical resonance of the movement of people to move magic. You still would be making permanent waystones alongside the road. Its functionality is not applicable to arguments regarding the waystone boat.

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1. So, uh, are we just going to ignore that Kislev is currently building a canal? As in, deliberate infrastructure to link Kislev's river networks with the empire's? For trade?

Evidently there are both rivers to sail and a capacity to put sailors on them in Kislev, along with whatever military escort they require. I don't know why you thought there wasn't.

Meanwhile in elf land: brown water and ocean sailing are two extraordinarily different disciplines, and even if you ignore that you'd also have to ignore that Ulthuan is the premier naval power of the entire planet. You do not out-navy Ulthuan. That's silly.

It's also silly to forget that Ulthuan is a donut, and that not all rivers drain towards the side Nagarythe attacks from. Many will drain inwards. Just use those?

But while on the topic of... lol, out-navying ulthuan, no, the druchii being capable of sailing their own ships or otherwise attacking rivers does not make the rivers a death trap. The point of the waystones being mobile when around an enemy who targets waystones is exactly what I said last post: It can sally out from, and retreat back into fortified positions. Worried about being attacked? Send guards. This is much easier than posting guards at a fixed location forever.

Which is what the dawi are doing.

"Forty of these," you say, tapping on the schematics, "equidistant around the shore." You tap a map of the region around the Black Water. "According to the range of estimates of how much exposed warpstone there is underwater, the ambient level of magic in the water will reach an equilibrium at somewhere between a quarter to a twentieth of the current levels within a year of completion."

The King of Barak Varr and the King of Zhufbar look from the maps to Thorek, who nods once.

That is the end of the meeting.

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So yeah, (2.), the dawi already want to buy them without it going into their network. Removing the need for permanently stationed manpower around fixed locations they would otherwise have to defend is an advantage. It would put more areas in reach of being "worth it" for the KA to provide waystone coverage for by dramatically lowering the upkeep.

Since the skull river incident they've been increasing patrols anyways IIRC. Just make some of the new boats waystone boats, sail where you were going to sail. Much cheaper than building and manning a fort, and you can de-dhar someplace that gets hit hard if you need to.


3.) "But you will need more waystones to transmit to the nexus"... is a nothingburger. You have to overbuild at bottlenecks and linkages of the network anyways to deal with surges from the evil green moon getting up to bullshit, and river deltas tend to have these things called "ports" around them that need lots of waystones because people live there. And their existing waystones tend to be more intact, because again, people still live there.

Existing waystones that were up to the task of a much bigger network upstream of them.


4.) Frequency and reliability of trade/travel along fixed routes was my point, not the existence of some hypothetical... what, cart waystone? I argued against "waystones on a cart" earlier on this exact page.

It was a rebuttal to the notion that boat waystones would be an overly inconsistent source of coverage by pointing out that no, trade is actually a quite reliable a source of "being there, along the river".

Riverine trade is increasing, not decreasing in the old world. It's not an issue.

 

[deathofrats0808]

It's also silly to forget that Ulthuan is a donut, and that not all rivers drain towards the side Nagarythe attacks from. Many will drain inwards. Just use those?

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There aren't going to be rivers in Nagarythe that drain towards the Inner Sea, because the side the Druchii don't attack from is a mountain range.

 

[Prime 2.0]

There aren't going to be rivers in Nagarythe that drain towards the Inner Sea, because the side the Druchii don't attack from is a mountain range.

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Ah. Yeah, that'd be a problem for using it there then.

 

[MrHobbit]

1. So, uh, are we just going to ignore that Kislev is currently building a canal? As in, deliberate infrastructure to link Kislev's river networks with the empire's? For trade?

Evidently there are both rivers to sail and a capacity to put sailors on them in Kislev, along with whatever military escort they require. I don't know why you thought there wasn't.

This applies to both that and Nagarythe: brown water and ocean sailing are two extraordinarily different disciplines, and even if you ignore that you'd also have to ignore that Ulthuan is the premier naval power of the entire planet. You do not out-navy Ulthuan. That's silly.

It's also silly to forget that Ulthuan is a donut, and that not all rivers drain towards the side Nagarythe attacks from. Many will drain inwards. Just use those?

But while on the topic of... lol, out-navying ulthuan, no, the druchii being capable of sailing their own ships or otherwise attacking rivers does not make the rivers a death trap. The point of the waystones being mobile when around an enemy who targets waystones is exactly what I said last post: It can sally out from, and retreat back into fortified positions. Worried about being attacked? Send guards. This is much easier than posting guards at a fixed location forever.

Which is what the dawi are doing.
So yeah, (2.), the dawi already want to buy them without it going into their network. Removing the need for permanently stationed manpower around fixed locations they wouldn't otherwise have to defend is an advantage.


3.) "But you will need more waystones to transmit to the nexus"... is a nothingburger. You have to overbuild at bottlenecks and linkages of the network anyways to deal with surges from the evil green moon getting up to bullshit, and river deltas tend to have these things called "ports" around them that need lots of waystones because people live there. And their existing waystones tend to be more intact, because again, people still live there.

Existing waystones that were up to the task of a much bigger network upstream of them.


4.) Frequency and reliability of trade/travel along fixed routes was my point, not the existence of some hypothetical... what, cart waystone? I argued against "waystones on a cart" earlier on this exact page.

It was a rebuttal to the notion that boat waystones would be an overly inconsistent source of coverage by pointing out that no, trade is actually a quite reliable a source of "being there, along the river".

Riverine trade is increasing, not decreasing in the old world. It's not an issue.

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That Kislev sails on rivers does not mean that its military doctrine is based around rivers. Certainly not in the way that the Empire's doctrine would be. Its rivers are also much less convenient the Empire's. It's a more difficult to move cavalry by river. Boney's talked about how much of a blessing Grandfather Reik is before. Boris's Tsar Guard weren't even traveling by boat, and there wasn't even a road was only a dirt road. Though it should be noted that the riverine route wasn't direct, and marching could have been faster. But it's still something to keep in mind. Kislev would use boats to move soldiers around, but not to the extent you describe. It'll go up as Boris initiates his reforms, but there's only so much that can go.

We are talking about the Druchii. They quite frequently do out-navy Ulthuan. That's why Malekith is even able to launch full-scale invasions into Nagarythe. Point to me on a map where those rivers are. Where else is there for rivers to flow? Into the mountains? Mountains are on all of Nagarythe's borders save the sea itself. Rivers tend to flow from mountains and to the sea, not reverse. The same appplies to the other Outer Kingdoms. The Inner Kingdoms, meanwhile are quite safe from predation. You're going to need corresonding waystones for these boats in Nagarythe one way or another. It should also be noted that the only Druchii ship we've seen in-quest was quite adept at sailing up a river. They wouldn't be quite as adept at sea-faring as Norscans, but they have similar pressures.

Where would the dwarfs use them? The Black Water actively spits out gribblies. Dwarves are very unlikely to be convinced by the argument that they can just take a shortcut in... anything really. They want consistent, continuous effort. There really isn't anywhere else under the Karaz Ankor's control that qualifies for boats. They are all far too marginal. I'm also skeptical that dwarven captains would like the idea of making their ships attractive to magic. There would be human captains, sure, but I don't think dwarves would pay for that. I am also skeptical that the Karaz Ankor has the capability to garrison the Border Princes, but Thorek still thought that the dwarves would build waystones there. I imagine that is part of why the Barak Varr elven nexus is necessary. The elven nexus gives them a way to throttle transmission that is segregated out of it, if need be.

Marienburg and Altdorf are some of the last places on the continent that need waystones. They have waystones, Altdorf is pretty dense with them. Your argument for waystone-boats point out that it would speed up the speed that uncovered areas get waystones. But the problem is that you delay the construction of permanent waystones, because you need to overbuild permanent waystones in places that are already firmly covered. And I am still very unconvinced that zooming around with a boat would have a commensurate impact to the effort put into it. When that effort could just go into... normal waystones. Or tributaries, or whatever.

The road and (non-spirit) river transmission methods work because of the world habit. Move along a path long enough, and there will be metaphysical resonance. The vast majority of roads do not qualify. The Old Dwarf Road, and a handful of other roads, are valid candidates for the road transmission method for that reason. They are all millennia old. Similarly, the rivers have had flowing water along the same path for millennia. That is what created the world habit. That is why it was irrelevant for the topic at hand.

"No, use the rivers themselves. The..." He frowns, and says a few words in Was Jutonian. "World habit? These are old rivers, there's been constant movement of water along those paths for thousands of years. You sort of," he makes an indecipherable motion with his hands, "tie it onto that."

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There's the Old Dwarf Road that goes from Karaz-a-Karak to Marienburg via Stirland, Talabecland, and Middenheim, but while that one and a few others could be old and well-trafficked enough to do the trick, syncing energy up with that would cause it to flow both ways along the road. You'd need to figure out aw ay to enforce a single direction, weakening the correspondence and complicating what you have to build. That said, it's a possiblity. I'll add it to the options next turn.

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[Prime 2.0]

That Kislev sails on rivers does not mean that its military doctrine is based around rivers. Certainly not in the way that the Empire's doctrine would be. Its rivers are also much less convenient the Empire's. It's a more difficult to move cavalry by river. Boney's talked about how much of a blessing Grandfather Reik is before. Boris's Tsar Guard weren't even traveling by boat, and there wasn't even a road! Kislev would use boats to move soldiers around, but not to the extent you describe. It'll go up as Boris initiates his reforms, but there's only so much that can go.

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It has to go up far enough for their trade boats to not die. As they and the empire and the karaz ankor deepen ties, they will have considerable help doing this.

Also, you can like. Ride horses next to a river. Escorting a ship does not always mean "with another ship".

Marienburg and Altdorf are some of the last places on the continent that need waystones. They have waystones, Altdorf is pretty dense with them. Your argument for waystone-boats point out that it would speed up the speed that uncovered areas get waystones. But the problem is that you delay the construction of permanent waystones, because you need to overbuild permanent waystones in places that are already firmly covered. And I am still very unconvinced that zooming around with a boat would have a commensurate impact to the effort put into it. When that effort could just go into... normal waystones. Or tributaries, or whatever.

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...you don't seem to be getting it?

The spirits carry the magic to where the water flows. The place where they flow to will have the most intact waystones, such as marienburg and altdorf, because river deltas are valuable places to live.

If they don't have that infrastructure, we will need to build it there anyways for the operation of our other waystone model anyways, especially if we use our dual-channel models as 'trunk' lines to make islands on the network - you know, the thing we have to do to address problem areas right now.

Which we literally are doing right now, in Praag. Praag is not hooked up to the leylines. It is transmitting everything downriver. Praag being one of the most extreme cases of a place that needs surge capacity, if this is not causing problems, waystone boats aren't going to either.

Also, this entire proposition about delaying anything is like... there is neither a bottleneck of places we can build stones that would be impacted by having to wait for additional "trunk line" capacity that's currently accounting for boats, nor would a bottleneck of stone production materialize from making waystone boats.

Like, it's a rather considerable upside of the waystone boat concept that it can use primarily different and more plentiful sources of labor than our current model.

Waystone boats or other waystones is a false dichotomy no matter how you cut it. If there isn't enough trunk capacity to build permanent stones where the boats are right now, build the permanent stones somewhere else. The additional trunk capacity would have been needed eventually anyways if such a bottleneck exists, so the job didn't get bigger, and build-out is not slowed down on net.

Where would the dwarfs use them? The Black Water actively spits out gribblies. Dwarves are very unlikely to be convinced by the argument that they can just take a shortcut in... anything really. They want consistent, continuous effort. There really isn't anywhere else under the Karaz Ankor's control that qualifies for boats. They are all far too marginal. I'm also skeptical that dwarven captains would like the idea of making their ships attractive to magic. There would be human captains, sure, but I don't think dwarves would pay for that.

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I already answered this. They'd use them where they sail boats. Barak Varr has a rather considerable brown water navy, I'm given to believe.

Dwarves don't go out of their way to do things in the most pain in the butt way possible for its own sake, what they want is quality work and reliability. Being fixed infrastructure is not inherently higher quality and more reliable: Consider a closely related mechanism for making trade routes safer: brown water warships.

Is patrolling canals with warships less continuous effort than lining the whole canal with forts in eyeshot of each other and manning them? Definitely, that second one would definitely be more continuous effort.

But they don't do that. They use warships patrols instead. So why would they spurn the notion of making those warships - or other ships - make the trade routes safer in additional ways?


Likewise, when Mathilde and Thorek says "this works", dawi listen. These are not empire commoners we are convincing. These are heads of state we are talking to, because individual tradesman are not the people who waystones are sold to in the first place.

The road and (non-spirit) river transmission methods work because of the world habit. Move along a path long enough, and there will be metaphysical resonance. The vast majority of roads do not qualify. The Old Dwarf Road, and a handful of other roads, are valid candidates for the road transmission method for that reason. They are all millennia old. Similarly, the rivers have had flowing water along the same path for millennia. That is what created the world habit. That is why it was irrelevant for the topic at hand.

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But I'm still not talking about "the threshold where transmission becomes possible". I'm talking about "how often will the waystone boats be passing through."

The answer is "often enough."

As for Ulthuan - I copped to the geography already.

I can't say I'm interested in going in circles, particularly when we're not close to a vote yet, but I would suggest asking Boney before saying that we are going to be hindered by a lack of downriver waystones before the next time this gets brought up. I'm not going to entertain more speculation on that - if you're not convinced, then whatever.

 

[Nimbus]

I'm skeptical about waystone boats in general, I just don't see why it is appealing, but isn't one of the main bonuses of the waystone boat is the simplicity in making it? Having multiple transmission methods radically increases the difficulty of the transmission component.

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That's never been a core appeal for me, at least - that's the flexibility and, to a lesser extent, the novelty - but you're right that we should aim for simplicity if we can fit it around other priorities! Fortunately, a replaceable storage unit isn't a transmission component even if it has the potential to function like one, so any increase in complexity there should be additive, not compounding. The aerial transfer system, on the other hand, I imagine might well could count as a transmission component... Considering that operational gains for having it on top of the replaceable storage are probably relatively marginal - things like centralising storage unit collection at one or two boats rather than needing to collect from all of them - that's definitely something that could get filed off a streamlined final concept, particularly if there'd be a significant additional outlay of effort or cost.

I'm also pretty skeptical about the dhar jerry can, as you put it. That would be a PR nightmare waiting to happen.

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Mmm... I do think that the conceit of 'suck all the dark magic out from a place, put it in a bucket and then empty the bucket into the nearby Waystone' is simple and intuitive enough that people would be able to understand it during normal operation. That said, safeguards would be important to prevent accidents or sabotage - you'd want to build them as tough as reasonably possible (both physically and magically) and to ensure that they were only compatible with Waystones, so one couldn't release a payload under other circumstances.

That being said, you wouldn't have to negotiate with the spirits on the fly. Spirit negotiation is handled before you start placing waystones. There's no point in making waystones for a river unless the spirit has already agreed.

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For fixed Waystones, this is certainly true! For Waystone barges, on the other hand...

Okay, an illustrative example. Say that, in two or three years' time, Beastmen Bray-shamans try to enact a foul ritual in the forest near Wolfenburg, capital of Ostland. Ostland's armies repel them but the ritual's energies spiral out of control and leave a large area tainted with Dhar. Not exactly ideal! Possibly something you'd want permanent Waystones for but those will take months to plan, build, arrive and establish; fortunately, the fleet of Waystone barges can have Waystones present within days to start containing and reversing the damage. Huzzah!

Except that Wolfenburg lies on the Wolf's Run. It's a tributary of the Talabec, and the Waystone Project have by now negotiated with the Cult of Taal to petition him to purify Dhar on the Talabec from Waystones there, but they haven't got round to this local river and its native spirit(s) yet.* That means that, if confined to the riverine spirit network, the Waystone Boats that showed up for triage are going to have to wait for a Scythian-speaking ritualist to arrive and then negotiate with a local river spirit - who could then decide to be uncooperative and hold the Dhar-cleansing efforts hostage as a bargaining chip for better terms - rather than being able to start improving things right away. That could mean a delay of weeks or longer, and with it lives lost or irrevocably altered.

This is why I believe that Waystone barges need a transfer method, either on its own or more likely supplementing a spirit transmission system, that isn't dependent on the local geography of existing Waystone infrastructure (of which bound spirits and agreeable gods are a part). In the above scenario, Waystone barges with replaceable storage capabilities could start cleansing operations immediately by shuttling the Dhar fifty miles downriver to Kienbaum (or, potentially, by road to Castle Lenkster) to be discharged into the Waystone there. That's a comparatively short hop compared to what's possible; with sufficient logistical support, this could be done on any river navigable by barge in the Empire and Kislev, of which there must be dozens, potentially hundreds that don't show up on the maps we have, regardless of whether the allegiance of the local spirits have yet been secured - and, indeed, on canals where there are no spirits that could even theoretically do the job. Such an option guarantees the flexibility and independent action that Waystone barges would add to the overall Waystone Network.

*Of course, if a god or major spirit associated with a given large river can extend their authority across its tributaries, this problem is more easily solved! I have my doubts, though, since it's presumably the conceptual distinctiveness of a given river that's important. Living on a tributary of a major river myself, I certainly tend to think of the tributary as an individual river rather than as a part of the larger river's hydrological system!

 

[MrHobbit]

It has to go up far enough for their trade boats to not die. As they and the empire and the karaz ankor deepen ties, they will have considerable help doing this.

Also, you can like. Ride horses next to a river. Escorting a ship does not always mean "with another ship".


...you don't seem to be getting it?

The spirits carry the magic to where the water flows. The place where they flow to will have the most intact waystones, such as marienburg and altdorf, because river deltas are valuable places to live.

If they don't have that infrastructure, we will need to build it there anyways for the operation of our other waystone model anyways, especially if we use our dual-channel models as 'trunk' lines to make islands on the network - you know, the thing we have to do to address problem areas right now.

Which we literally are doing right now, in Praag. Praag is not hooked up to the leylines. It is transmitting everything downriver. Praag being one of the most extreme cases of a place that needs surge capacity, if this is not causing problems, waystone boats aren't going to either.

Also, this entire proposition about delaying anything is like... there is neither a bottleneck of places we can build stones that would be impacted by having to wait for additional "trunk line" capacity that's currently accounting for boats, nor would a bottleneck of stone production materialize from making waystone boats.

Like, it's a rather considerable upside of the waystone boat concept that it can use primarily different and more plentiful sources of labor than our current model.

Waystone boats or other waystones is a false dichotomy no matter how you cut it. If there isn't enough trunk capacity to build permanent stones where the boats are right now, build the permanent stones somewhere else. The additional trunk capacity would have been needed eventually anyways if such a bottleneck exists, so the job didn't get bigger, and build-out is not slowed down on net.

I already answered this. They'd use them where they sail boats. Barak Varr has a rather considerable brown water navy, I'm given to believe.

Dwarves don't go out of their way to do things in the most pain in the butt way possible for its own sake, what they want is quality work and reliability. Being fixed infrastructure is not inherently higher quality and more reliable: Consider a closely related mechanism for making trade routes safer: brown water warships.

Is patrolling canals with warships less continuous effort than lining the whole canal with forts in eyeshot of each other and manning them? Definitely, that second one would definitely be more continuous effort.

But they don't do that. They use warships patrols instead. So why would they spurn the notion of making those warships - or other ships - make the trade routes safer in additional ways?


Likewise, when Mathilde and Thorek says "this works", dawi listen. These are not empire commoners we are convincing. These are heads of state we are talking to, because individual tradesman are not the people who waystones are sold to in the first place.

But I'm still not talking about "the threshold where transmission becomes possible". I'm talking about "how often will the waystone boats be passing through."

The answer is "often enough."

As for Ulthuan - I copped to the geography already.

I can't say I'm interested in going in circles, particularly when we're not close to a vote yet, but I would suggest asking Boney before saying that we are going to be hindered by a lack of downriver waystones before the next time this gets brought up. I'm not going to entertain more speculation on that - if you're not convinced, then whatever.

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Can you not spaghetti post.

And where is the proof that their military doctrine acts in that fashion? We've seen it, and it doesn't really do that. You're portraying Kislev's military as sallying around the boat waystone, when we don't really have much proof that they do that much. And as I bring up later, there really isn't going to be much marginal benefit from it.

Praag is connected to the network. Mathilde specifically connected the first waystone that was dropped in the water to a waystone that was connected to Praag's nexus. The first waystone will be used to pick up energy from waystones that use the riverine function further along the Lynsk (it's for waystones in New Town). In contrast to places that are not-Praag, Praag benefits immensely from any waystone being placed in it. Altdorf does not benefit from it more than an area that is actually corrupted receiving a permanent waystone.

It is not speculation that you need to build leyline waystones, and place them in the water, if you don't want to dump the energy into the ocean or try to break the water. Look at how Mathilde talked about getting the magic out of the water when they first investigated the option. See what Mathilde told Boris about the limitations of riverine waystones, and why getting Ulthuan's cooperation (for the leyline codes) was a good thing. Without leyline waystones being placed into the river, you can't take the magic back out of the water without risking the safety of the area where you take it out.

Why would they do that though? You missed that. The rivers that the Karaz Ankor is patrolling along aren't corrupted significantly corrupted like the Black Water is. And any waystones that they would attatch to the boats would necessarily be worse. You've mentioned that the whole point is to make them easier to make, and that means lower quality.

To my understanding, a significant portion of the canal is underground. And we don't actually know how the mouths of the canal are garrisoned. I've checked the relevant updates and can see nothing about the fortification. If nothing else, they probably have a fortress where it meets the Black Water to collect tarriffs. The canal's locks are also probably fortified. They have to be manned (dwarfed?), after all. They might be where the tariffs are collected. Do you think Zhufbar would leave those workers without adequate protection? Please cite a source saying that it isn't fortified. I don't recall anything like that, and it seems like a much greater assumption than the reverse.

The rivers aren't dangerous though. The Skull River is safe for the dwarves. It won't be once the Hellwar starts, but no amount of boat waystones will help that. Boat waystones won't be able to provide the reductions that permanent, and higher quality, waystones can provide too. Combined with magophobia, and a group of dwarves who are, if they match human sailor behavior, particularly superstitious, I'm highly skeptical it will catch on. Low-quality waystones intermittently flitting on by in an area isn't going to make a substantial change.

As I said, the road transmission method is entirely irrelevant for the argument. Additionally, I did not see your reply to deathofrats, but did you even review a map of Nagarythe like I requested you to?

Underneath the hollow statue, and perhaps explaining the local fascination with it, is a Waystone that connects directly to the nexus underneath the Citadel.

With a hand on the statue's calf you bring yourself into contact with the local spur of a network that spans the world. You speak a very specific string of silences, and the eddy of magical energy causes a larger movement of magic within the Waystone, a ripple that fades away into the distance and then dies down. And though no sense you can identify can spot anything further happening - including several senses most humans lack - you know for a fact that somewhere in the world, something immensely powerful just started moving.

Uncaring of both common sense and the less common sort that can quote the propagation speed of magic through various mediums, a wave of magic approaches that makes visible the thin layer of power that sheaths the magic flowing through the leyline. That invisibly thin layer of power suddenly swells and stretches and shoots out a new tendril, pushing through the resistant rock below without any care for inefficiency in the direction you have indicated.

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The one I had in mind was just putting down a series of Waystones like channel markers along the run of the river, however many are required for the amount of magic flowing, and then feed it from there directly into a Nexus. Probably the one at Altdorf, though it could also be set up at Nuln and Talabecland if there's some sort of bottleneck."

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Yes, everyone else reacted that way at first too. "That may not be the best price to extract from them. The means of connecting a new Waystone to the network cannot be reverse engineered - it has a security mechanism of sorts protecting it - and must be acquired from either Ulthuan or Naggaroth. There are potential workarounds for that we've been working on, but they would be inefficient and could negatively influence the area around them. It was my hope that Ulthuan could be convinced to become a part of the Project, which would involve them providing that means."

He frowns. "Negatively influence, how?"

"It would involve using rivers to transport the energies, and then spilling them out to be reabsorbed by nexuses at the mouth of rivers - in Kislev's case, Erengrad and Castle Alexandronov. The exact effect would depend on the energies in question, but considering the priority for Kislev would be removing the Chaos taint from Praag and Troll Country, it could be very bad for the affected places. It's possible we could refine the details to minimize that problem, but if we had Ulthuan's knowledge, we could build our additions directly into the existing network and not have any of those problems in the first place."

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That's never been a core appeal for me, at least - that's the flexibility and, to a lesser extent, the novelty - but you're right that we should aim for simplicity if we can fit it around other priorities! Fortunately, a replaceable storage unit isn't a transmission component even if it has the potential to function like one, so any increase in complexity there should be additive, not compounding. The aerial transfer system, on the other hand, I imagine might well could count as a transmission component...
[SNIP]

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I still don't really see the flexibility. Waystones only have so much capability, and by necessity of getting these on boats they are going to have even less. The Belthani erected tributaries because elven waystones left the magic level above what was comfortable for humans. And waystones that are constantly moving and are of lesser quality than what was produced by the Golden Age are going to have a much of an impact? And if the boat waystone isn't simple and cheap, it can't be very flexible.

It is very unlikely that the difficulty is additive. We can see it from the update where we designed the waystone. The leyline transmission method was simple, Hedgewise riverine was also simple, Jade riverine was moderately difficult, and the spirit riverine had a varying difficulty. A combined method, no matter the method, is very difficult. I believe, don't quote me on this, that Boney has said you can have three transmission methods. I would be surprised if the difficulty didn't scale similarly.

No. The Cult of Sigmar, and likely more than just them, would jump on that immeadiately. It is a blatantly obvious vulnerability, that does not exist with other methods, which keep the magic out of grasp of non-wizards at least. Priests and Witch Hunters are going to see the big box of dark magic and be very suspicious of people associated with it. How many of the notoriously superstitious sailors would want boxes of dark magic on their ship? It'd be easy for cults to steal boxes of dark magic. It's much harder to take it from the network.

Wolfenberg has waystones, as evidenced by there still being human habitation. It could probably do with more waystones, it does lie in the Forest of Shadows. But it must be kept in mind that boat waystones are highly likely to be much less effective than waystones. Golden Age waystones only have a range of five-seven ish miles. Is the location you mentioned less than five to seven miles away from the river? The answer to that is that it has to wait a while before purification. Why should Mathilde spend an action on this very limited hypothetical? More if you want to use the air method. Mathilde shouldn't be building waystones for every single imaginable use-case. If we got down to it, I could probably come up with a dozen waystones that match the probability of your description, but why would we spend a dozen actions on all of those use cases?

Personally, I think the only future waystones we design should solve a political need. For instance, we probably shouldn't leave the host of the project off with a waystone design that isn't ideal for it. Laurelorn would do well with a well-designed leyline waystone. Maybe we should also make Ulthuan a design without dwarven components so we can use the leverage to get them to help more, potentially even in reconquest attempts. Beyond that I'm very skeptical of future actions in designing. We could be using it for less repetive tasks.

 

[Prime 2.0]

Can you not spaghetti post.

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You made separate points, so I responded to them separately. Maybe this would be more productive if you chose one novel claim to focus on in your post instead of throwing everything and the kitchen sink at me, but you did, so you get a whole bunch of replies bolted together in one post.

So let me be clear about something: Everything I am about to say is me pointing out that you have either not been grasping my position, or have been choosing not to engage with my position. It is not an attempt to continue the discussion, it is me explaining why I am not going to discuss it with you anymore.

I dropped the claim about Nagarythe completely. Why are you still talking about it, much less asking me to do homework?

Likewise, you're talking about the road thing again when the frequency (high!) of the boats was literally the only thing I was talking about. Something you're not addressing at all when talking about how "intermittent" they would be as if them moving across the canals reduces the average proximity any serviced area has to a waystone

Then, you're strawmanning what I said about forts on rivers. They use warships. They patrol the canals. Did they choose to replace the warships with more forts until everywhere was in proximity to a fort enough that warships were unnecessary? No? Then evidently they are fine with not using fixed positions for everything, which was my point. It was a pretty basic one! It shouldn't be that hard to understand that "forts across the entire canal" != "forts exist at key points along the canal".

And now you're making claims about the quality of the waystones. I'm not going to demand you to look up the design though you could, but if you're not going to, then don't go saying they're low performance. The reason more can be made at a time is not because we cheaped out on the parts it still has, it's because the remaining parts use different labor pools and because the mechanical base's drawback doesn't matter when it's part of a ship that will be constantly attended to anyways.


Just, dude. I said I didn't want to go in circles, and this evidently isn't going to go anywhere else. There are responses I deleted from this post because I do not want to engage with you when you are missing the most obvious things about what I am saying even after I repeatedly clarify them.

It is 2:00 AM. I want to sleep. There are other people you can discuss waystone boats with instead of me.

 

[Andres]

I just realised another reason why Tochter thought the Belthani came from Albion besides the fact that Albion was unknown at the time: elven names and languages have Celtic influences.

 

[Nimbus]

by necessity of getting these on boats they are going to have even less.

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I'm not entirely sure why this is being assumed - a Waystone is a Waystone and putting one on a boat shouldn't make it inherently less effective. There might be unforeseen difficulties in doing so, sure, but that's just it - until we try it, we can't see whether those difficulties exist or whether there aren't any such obstacles.

It is very unlikely that the difficulty is additive. We can see it from the update where we designed the waystone. The leyline transmission method was simple, Hedgewise riverine was also simple, Jade riverine was moderately difficult, and the spirit riverine had a varying difficulty. A combined method, no matter the method, is very difficult. I believe, don't quote me on this, that Boney has said you can have three transmission methods. I would be surprised if the difficulty didn't scale similarly.

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This is true for combining different transmission methods in one Waystone segment, as I noted with regard to the aerial transfer proposal in the previous post, and might be good grounds to avoid going down that route. As I also noted there, making the Wind storage unit replaceable isn't altering the transmission segment, it's altering the storage segment. In theory, a replaceable Wind storage unit shouldn't disproportionately influence the complexity of the transmission segment.

No. The Cult of Sigmar, and likely more than just them, would jump on that immeadiately. It is a blatantly obvious vulnerability, that does not exist with other methods, which keep the magic out of grasp of non-wizards at least. Priests and Witch Hunters are going to see the big box of dark magic and be very suspicious of people associated with it. How many of the notoriously superstitious sailors would want boxes of dark magic on their ship? It'd be easy for cults to steal boxes of dark magic. It's much harder to take it from the network.

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Mmm, fair concerns - ones that make sufficient security built into the storage units very important, as said above, but that can't be fully resolved by doing so either. While I suspect that trying to appease the extreme end of the cults when it comes to more experimental Waystone designs is a battle that we should be seeking to bypass rather than to fight, one thing I had been wondering about was whether the replaceable storage modules should store Winds by default if Dhar can't also be released via the spirit transmission, rather than letting the Winds flow into the river and retaining the Dhar. That would make it a 'magical energy box' rather than a 'Dhar box', which might be more politically palatable, even if it would be a less efficient transfer method.

(As a tangent: sailors' superstitious reputation is, to my understanding, generally ascribed to the sea's fickle propensity to occasionally and without warning throw non-survivable circumstances at a ship. Those plying the rivers aren't in quite the same - ha - boat!)

Wolfenberg has waystones, as evidenced by there still being human habitation.

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Drat, I knew something was off! Got mixed up with the Waystone Nexus list. Apologies - blame post-writing at an ungodly hour in the morning! As you say, though, being able to shuttle a whole bunch of Waystones to triage a trouble spot is useful regardless of that particular. Which brings me to...

Why should Mathilde spend an action on this very limited hypothetical? More if you want to use the air method. Mathilde shouldn't be building waystones for every single imaginable use-case.

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As I said in the prior post: the example given was illustrative. The generic situation and use-case that it illustrates - 'a dangerous quantity of magical energy is suddenly dumped at a given location and needs hoovering up as quickly as possible before it can do damage' - is, I suspect, not at all uncommon in the Warhammer World. This is exactly what Waystone boats would be good at.

Personally, I think the only future waystones we design should solve a political need. For instance, we probably shouldn't leave the host of the project off with a waystone design that isn't ideal for it. Laurelorn would do well with a well-designed leyline waystone. Maybe we should also make Ulthuan a design without dwarven components so we can use the leverage to get them to help more, potentially even in reconquest attempts. Beyond that I'm very skeptical of future actions in designing. We could be using it for less repetive tasks.

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I can see the logic! The Waystone Project was a major political undertaking and its outcomes should account for that, I agree. Nonetheless, Mathilde chose to undertake it first and foremost because it can unambiguously benefit all of the people and institutions that she is loyal to, because it has the potential to change the world for the better. If it looks like there's an opportunity to further that change by doing something novel and interesting, we should explore that too - and, while it's reasonable to disagree, I happen to think that this concept might be just that!