It's worth bearing mind that Boney's last word on the subject is that he couldn't find anything in canon supporting the existence of Ancestor Spirits.
In point of fact, there is proof in the lore that Dwarven Ancestor Spirits can affect the living world.
Gotrek and Felix, in one of if not the first in the series, shows Gotrek and Felix journeying to Karak Eight Peaks in person and meeting a King Belegar who had no one and nothing to aid him but Clan Angrund itself.
There, in the ancient depths of the Karak, Gotrek was visited by the spirits of the Ancestors of Karak Eight Peaks. They begged Gotrek for help, because an ancient evil had desecrated there tombs and forced them back to the lands of the living.
After a great fight, Gotrek slays the Chaos Troll that had taken up residence in the Tomb of the Ancestors. As an army of Goblins close in on the pair, the Ancestral Spirits rise up as one, forming an army of Dwarven Ghosts that slaughter the Grobi and finally leaves the tomb peaceful at last.
They then tell Gotrek of how his doom waits for him, far greater and more terrible than he could ever imagine. Then they vanish, allowed finally to rest once more.
Dwarven Ancestor Spirits are known. They are real, and they are quite possibly the Only Undead type that won't be turned to evil. Even in death, they are still Dwarves. Nothing and no one will break there will.
Looking at BoneyM's quote, he actually said
weaponized ancestor spirits.
Regular ancestor spirits could be a thing, but its not very dwarfly to deliberately weaponize your ancestors like that is it?
See, a big chunk of the stuff Mathilde's been doing to help the reclamation? The scouting, the assassinations? That's Eshin's bread and butter, and a force this size will have a decent number of assassins within its ranks, any one of whom could potentially do to the Karaks what Mathilde did the Orcs. The fact that they're going to be much harder for us to go assassin on ourselves to boot is just the icing on the cake.
Do keep in mind that full fledged Eshin Assassins are about as rare as Grey Magisters proportionally. I don't expect more than a pair.
"Fire. Lots of fire. Lots and lots and lots of fire." <--- somebody who heard about Mournguls, probably
It's said to be something borderline between living and dead, and "a thing of shadows and icy fog." Hard to see even in daylight, "like an evil mirage." Even harder to see in the dark. Can slip unseen through the darkness. Might actually be Ethereal. Not counted as a "Large Target" despite being a Monster. Hard to hit with shooting attacks and magic missiles and direct damage spells. Enemies around it are slowed by its frost, and it's immune to the cold. Heals itself by feeding on the enemy. If we're unlucky, it also has further shadow powers and shadow resistance than 'just' being super hard to see and to land a hit on.
It's strong and tough and terrifying. So... 's a Wendigo. If a Wendigo were a borderline Frost Elemental, Shadow Elemental, and Undead. Well I mean, it's Undead. But. It's got frost and shadow themes mixed into it too.
So... The prescription is probably lots of fire and light. Probably lots of Hysh and Aqshy. Shyish too. But it's hard to nail down with ranged attacks or direct damage magic, so. I dunno. Really decked-out people in runed armor and runed weapons? With lots of light and fire and some Wizard support too?
...the bit I bolded, we suddenly talking about Mathilde now?
Only immune to cold instead of fire.
It's an Ice Dragon. Despite what the thread appears to have decided, that neither a) automatically means it can use magic and b) doesn't automatically mean it's old enough to be the equivalent of an Emperor Dragon. It could 'just' be an Ice Dragon that's a couple centuries old. It'll almost certainly be hard to defeat, but an Emperor Dragon is the sort of thing that kills armies.
Pretty sure a younger dragon wouldn't be so cold that the snow line is visibly lower than it should be.
Slap dragon out of sky with Red Tower, turn WMD up to eleven and let it eat burning shadows until it tries to cast a spell on us then laugh and laugh and laugh as the belt burns millennia of knowledge out of it.
FYI, Burning Shadows is AMAZING at killing armies, because it hits a massive area and KEEPS hitting it round after round for as long as the shadow lasts.
It doesn't do a lot of damage to singular targets, and while Gazul's rune might have made it hit a fair bit harder, its not going to 'swat' a dragon, it's going to be "severely irritate a dragon".
You want to hit a dragon with something, try the Penumbral Pendulum.
If volcanic soil was the primary source of agricultural fertility but we have soil depletion impacting our crops now, which based on what Panoramia's said I think we do, that implies that our agricultural productivity isn't going to be able to match historical Karak Eight Peaks values. Heavy application of ghyran might make for healthy crops but I don't think mass-restoring minerals that simply aren't present anymore after three thousand years of exhaustion falls in its wheelhouse, so if it does substitute we'll be achieving that productivity by a completely different means than the original Karak did.
In any case, if the Tarn is receiving enough replenishment (via rainfall and snowmelt, presumably) to support our crops on its own, and it's situated on Karagril so it's getting only one peak's worth of precipitation for that replenishment, doesn't that reinforce the idea that the Karak is receiving a lot of rain and snow? Otherwise the Tarn simply wouldn't refill as fast as we tap it to water sufficient crops to feed fifty thousand residents. (Or more; seventy thousand? We have ~45,000 in combat-ready forces alone but I don't see civilian numbers anywhere.)
Note the minerals hadn't gone anywhere, its just that its now green and trying to kill you.
The slime should let us convert orc into cow poop into fertile soil again.
From a quick search, it seems the caldera is a result of the volcano
collapsing, not exploding.
Technically volcanoes don't explode in a way that forms a caldera anyway.
The eruption inflates it into a dome, then breaches the top of the magma chamber to vent the magma and volcanic gases, so once the pressure subsides and the magma goes back down, the resultant dome collapses when its not supported by pressurized magma anymore, and the magma subsides too fast(as the gases escape) to cool significantly.
Theres often still a central uplifted peak, because thats where the magma would have the longest to cool as it drains away.
That vacation trip to Mount Aso was surprisingly educational. AND scenic
That may something bad about Dreng rather than good about Johann. Note this:
Hubert Denzel, Journeyman of the Celestial Order
Armament: Sword and lightning
Speciality: ???
Mission: Glory
Martial: 17 - Eager for battle and skilled with a blade.
Learning: 14 - He's not dumb, but he has no affinity for book learning.
Magic: 3 - Hubert has yet to fully embrace the gift of magic.
and this:
Gretel Maurer, Journeywoman of the Amethyst Order
Armament: Summoned scythe
Speciality: ???
Mission: Wealth
Martial: 16 - Her talents in combat have begun to blossom.
Intrigue: 20 - She's small, thin, and quiet. It's not easy to look past those explanations to the genuine skill underneath.
Learning: 17 - She's whip-smart and very well read in the Lores of Shyish and Morr.
Magic: 3 - She has superb control, but not a lot of power.
Dreng has worse Martial than two Journeyman probably less than 20% his age.
We know Dreng is a very good Ranger and leader of Rangers. I think he's probably acting at Martial 20 for the purpose of Ranger tasks, 18 for Ranger-adjacent tasks and 15 for general high commandy stuff.
Who knows, maybe his fortification ability is merely adequate for a dwarf, but dwarfness wins out.
That seems to be the assumption Panoramia and the Halflings were working from.
This might be the best next magical megaproject - an Aqshy powered still with a Rune of Valyra to purify water from the depths.
Why use Aqshy when Ghyran can directly purify water though?
Bonus: something that does not eat and crushes things, but not so much that trolls can't get up later and stumble away.
That does seem plausible, such a thing would leave the orcs and skaven starving to death or bleeding to death, with their everything broken, while the trolls get up after a few minutes, but why didn't the dwarfs find it?
mmm why an Aqushy tower?
Surely a Hysh tower would be best?
Or does the Hysh and Uglu interact weirdly?
The Aqshy tower refers to the Aqshy spell here:
Inextinguishable flame: Makes one flame inextinguishable. Duration depends on Magic, up to one year
The Tower would allow it to burn as long as the tower stands without need for additional fuel.
Why is this important?
Magnesium flares burn extremely fast, like, a big pile of the stuff could be expected to burn through in minutes. Now this is good for illumination because its HELLA bright, basically white, and bright enough to cast a distinct shadow with a mountain.
Apply the enchantment, the fire now burns indefinitely without using up its fuel.
But the fire itself is not magical, the magic only goes to keeping the fire alive.
Using Hysh would mean the tower sprays Dhar everywhere potentially, which is like, so not good.
