Lore of Beasts: Before the spiders, I would have said that there wasn't a whole lot for the Ambers to do. The Ulricans have their wolves and I imagine the Undumgi would get some mounts of their very own, but aside from the ever popular 'turn into a bear and maul things' I wouldn't have seen much point in asking for some Amber wizard to set up shop nearby (beyond the usual 'keeps an eye on the wilderness', which is important to keep things like beastmen from sprouting up). With the spiders most of my prior reasons still hold, but I can't help but wonder if having one stay for a few years would help integrate the We into society. Overall I wouldn't be opposed to having some set up shop nearby, but I don't know about asking for any to swing by.
They're still very useful for scouting and exploration. Amber wizards are practically made for that.
Public, where anyone can make a donation to the library for its upkeep and access materials. Probably the largest of the collections (and having a good reason to access the books like 'I work for the king or his councilors' lets you avoid the fee). This lets merchants look up records of successful trade attempts to Ind, lawyers look of legal precidents, historians perform their research, etc.
Naw, I think no need for a donation for any citizen of Eight Peaks proper. Travelers more so though.
I really don't appreciate your condesending tone.
When applied to a magical discipline as young as the colleges "antiquarian" conjures up images of a collection about hedge mages from before the colleges were founded who might possibly have used something vaguely resembling grey magic at some point before they exploded into Dhar.
Which could be interesting but not worth the favour expenditure.
Important correction: Color Wind magic predate humanity, as its the Elves foundational magic art. Heck, even amongst Elves High Magic is pretty uncommon. Not every Elf is going to dedicate to mastering every Wind to START on High Magic.
Given the way the hive mind works (the concept of repeating information back and forth for memory, and no lying), it would seem that the spiders would be very susceptible to corruption, with the only defense being no one is talking to them.
The ever-repeated. This isn't 40k, the only major memetic hazards that aren't an explicit magical effect forcing it are things like Jabberslythes.
The nature of information relay means that corrupting one unit just means you get to insert garbage in, and the dialogue we've seen suggests that 'defective' units get error-checked and possibly flushed.
Its like if say, someone showed up in this quest repeating that raising Abelhelm as undead husbando is a good idea. Its too contrary to the beliefs and knowledge of the rest of the thread to be digested.
That and the spiders not seeming to have human emotion ranges helps a lot. The Four are tied HEAVILY to humanoid emotions. And we're looking at something that can think but only wants Food and Shelter.
Yeah, let us try not to optimize around the
Least Publishable Unit. It's annoying enough in real life
In our case we're looking for the most Favor-granting paper per attempt rather than maximum papers. Papers cost AP, and we lose one favor per paper to the writer, and another to repeat paper mills.
All within the Under-Empire. They haven't encountered any others since they entered greenskin territory. Some books on the subject theorize an entire separate ecosystem within the Skaven tunnels.
Almost certainly. We got entire separate ecosystems for preindustrial cities as it is. Theres going to be a LOT of stuff revolving around extracting resources the Skaven Underempire wouldn't miss.
Up to and including dozens of Skaven apparently.
Either very old or very daring. Thankfully, Eight Peaks is beyond the influence of Imperial censors.
Dream of the Fishermans' Wife?
It could very well have narrative influences on the literature tastes of the growing local community.
Hmm, might actually be worth it to buy Extensive collection on various fiction topics in that case.
Heroic Fantasy would be a nice literature taste to push in Eight Peaks.
Did he get a new trait from that roll?
Think we saw Anton pick up Pistols seriously and start training his Martial.
I think Boney's said that currently, the empire has wood carving and acid etched block printing tech, just not moveable type; it's why whole shelves of books don't cost much, much more than artisan gunsmithing.
Also for color illustrations its all by hand or else you are going to need to block print it for as many times as you have colors used, with a different engraving for each color.
All made by hand.
The major cost is in initial publishing and the binding I think.
Yes, though a trait that incorporates lessons from Gazul swordplay would be thematically different from one based entirely on Empire teachings.
I wonder if learning Bretonnian greatsword techniques in addition to Gazkul's would improve Mathilde's potential trait.
The reason this is interesting is because Bretonnian Questing Knights traditionally used greatswords from horseback, unlike the dwarves or imperials.
I think splitting it between trainers might suffer from a lack of focus. Bretonnians have some of the killiest knights humans can get, even if they sacrifice being decent people for it, and specifically it'll be stuff usable from horseback, so that's what I'd go for if we had a choice of preferences.
Depends on the trainer I guess:
-Bretonnians are mainly for mounted use, so lots of sweeps and slashes. Their focus is not getting stuck in and in doing a lot of damage on a rideby or charge.
-Gazulite would be for tunnel use, lots of half-sword techniques. Since a lot of them are likely crosstrained in axes and hammers, expect POWERFUL chops and mordhaus, as well as anti-gribbly action. Given dwarf history theres going to be very little defending tombs(a tomb in a standing dwarfhold is very unlikely to be broken into or attacked until the whole hold is dead), but a vast amount of prying invaders OUT of tombs, or chasing down a stolen body.
-Imperial Greatsword are for bodyguard use, a mix of executing an assassin quickly and fighting while preventing others from passing a chokepoint.
-Tilian/Estalian Greatsword should probably be as pikebreakers.
I think I see what you mean, but wouldn't that mean there's no direct way to vote for total expenditure?
I think one or both of us is misunderstanding the other. In the proposed system there aren't plans, just individual books and a question of 'which topics have 50% of voters*'. So if theres 100 voters (all of whom vote for at least one [Library] option for simplicities sake), and 51 of them vote for extensive books on dwarven war yodeling, then war yodeling is purchased. If only 30 vote for spending favor on war yodeling, then we don't. If you don't want to spend favor on dwarven war yodeling, then you can 1. vote for just [library] extensive war yodeling, or any other library topics you want, but dont include a line for [library] obscure war yodeling or the like, or 2. explicitly include a [library] no purchases vote, or 3. just dont vote for library purchases**. Meanwhile the dwarven war yodeling enthusiast can approval vote for:
[Library] Dwarven War Yodeling
[Library] Extensive Dwarven War Yodeling
[Library] Obscure Dwarven War Yodeling
[Library] Antiquarian Dwarven War Yodeling
[Library] Esoteric Dwarven War Yodeling
And then if 78 other people want basic DWY, 50 others want Extensive, 29 want obscure, 8 want antiquarian, and only 1 other person than the enthusiast wants esoteric, we can look at each:
DWY got 79% of the vote, its bought
Extensive got 51%, bought
Obscure got 29%, not bought
Antiquarian got 8%, not bought
Esoteric got 2%, not bought
Likewise, each other individual topic with 51+ voters in this 100-voter scenario would be bought. So the only way favours would be spent is if 51% of the voters wanted them to be, and that seems more than fair to me.
...Mind, as boney said and i agreed, hopefully future library votes will be calmer and a new system isn't needed, and honestly i personally think my system's biggest flaw is that either i'm failing at explaining it or people are misunderstanding it or both, so not really worth discussing anymore unless boney asks for more opinions on the matter
*again, this could either be '50% of all voters in the turn' or '50% of voters who had a [Library] vote at all'. I'd lean towards 'all voters', which makes it harder to get anything purchased, but also avoids plurality purchases spending favor as you fear. Theres pros and cons to both, but either way you can do a blanket 'no library purchases' vote either by just not voting for any [library] options in the first case, or by explicitly going [Library] No Purchases in either case.
**in the scenario where all voters are counted for the threshold, not just those with library votes
I'd offer a couple of words of support for this because:
-Specific items winning or losing doesn't matter in the long run. The opportunity never closes for generic library books. It has more to do with what kind of book the general community wants now. Books don't hurt.
-Expense matters, but with the approval voting for books we're unlikely to actually overspend unless a majority votes to overspend. It actually helps avoid overspending on Favors, you only spend favor if you specifically add a Favor book. This setup makes it easy to spend less than any given voter wants, and since its a free action thats not a problem.
-I'd suggest adding an explicit Buy No More Books option to mark where the cut off point is, rather than the organic 50% cutoff, due to approval voting in general encouraging people without an opinion to leave the option blank. E.g. if you have 30 votes for book A, 20 votes for book B, 10 votes for book C, and 15 votes for Buy No More Books, we'd buy books A and B. If even a single person votes for Buy No More Books we'd immediately eliminate the singletons.
@BoneyM probably wants a look at the idea in detail.
Bar Rikkaz
This is my attempt to translate Way Opener - but it got away from me.
In the Khazalid I found no word for "way" or "open" - so I went from the other side, and went for Gate Crusher.
Except it has too many meanings simultaneously and is confusing me.
Bar - a fortified gate or door, but also "bear in mind", "except for".
Rikkaz - tricky. Rikkazen - Crush, to beat to a pulp, to turn to rubble. -en signifies process or action. The dictionary gives the word Rikkaz the meaning "hammer", but it is also not the only word with this meaning and -az signifies a specific object, so I believe that more literally Rikkaz should be translated as "Crusher".
So, Bar Rikkaz can be translated as "Door Crusher". But it can also be translated as "Nevertheless, Hammer"
I am quite proud of this one.
Really like this name incidentally.
Being able to paralyse enemies makes it much easier to kill them.
Generally speaking unless they're really big(in which case you need a much larger dose) you're probably going to have better and cheaper results shooting them twice. Poisons take time to take effect, during which they can stab you more.
Livecaps are different though.
His punishment was to take a 3 month vacation in Altdorf as part of his job? I don't even think he merits a demerit tbh, not gonna fault someone for being sneaky and never fel in with the sociable = bad group.
He doesn't want a vacation. He wants to do Skaven research. Sending him to Altdorf means he gets ZERO Skaven research for a couple of months on account of physically not being able to reach any. He lost three actions worth of work in favor of faking a qualification he already has. He might learn some spells or skills, thats about it.
A couple of points of further disagreement.
I don't think Mathilde gets any real benefit from building up. For instance, an observation point could be worse than what she has now, since the penthouse already has 360 degree views and is at the top of a mountain. A little extra height isn't going to make that any better unless we decide she really wants to look at the stars or clouds, but like I said, that's a Celestial thing.
I think that we're also having a miscommunication on what we mean by 'reading room'. You seem to be thinking something that might be marketed as a 'reading nook', a place to be comfortable. I meant the old university meaning of a room attached to an academic library, where you can bring all the books you need to look at, sit down, and get to writing up your research. That sort of thing doesn't benefit from natural light or breezes.
We get explicit mechanical bonuses for building up after all, and with Mathilde's lens spell she(or any other observer) could see a really long way at high detail(with a sufficiently large magical lens)
Why would we need a study/reading room? We apparently have a roaring fire and a comfortable chair and a footstool doggo already, in our chambers at the peak.
For the study/reading room, it should have applicable bonuses to writing/dictating papers.
I'm not really married to Max's action, but I am a little cautious about, well, opening our new friends up to unsavory influences. Someone made a good argument about this that I cannot find at the moment because the thread is whizzing by.
Keep in mind that its really difficult to subvert them by writing. Its POSSIBLE, but likelihood depends upon the following factors:
-Peaceful contact with the spiders.
-Sticking around long enough to read what they write.
-Having something substantial to offer the Hive.
-Actually trusts the giant gribblies.
-Is actually literate enough to write back.
