To Gretel's delight, you pass over the material wealth in favour of the unknowns of the black gem and the vat of organs, the latter of which is sent to the Colleges for someone with more time on their hands to poke at.
...well, we got bonus points from Gretel for this
Dang girl, you're a wizard and one with pretty high Learning. Wheres your love of knowledge?!
Though your previous experience with canines are limited to working dogs and whatever it is that Wolf is, your need for one that will be content sharing even a roomy cell with their companion leads you further afield to the lap-dogs of the nobility. After some thought you bypass the currently-in-vogue Bretonnian Phalène in favour of the less energetic Spaniel Gentle, an offshoot of fowling Spaniels more comfortable with dozing with their owner than diving into a lake to fetch a shot duck. The books can be introduced the customary way accompanying Qrach's meals, but introducing a puppy the same way is likely to result in a fat puppy and no meal, so you do so in person instead.
Well, given how Qrech has been isolated for a full year now, I imagine the puppy is going to be quite spherical regardless.
@BoneyM noticed a typo in Skaven name?
Though he seems thankful but relatively unmoved, when you leave the cell and the newly-supplied curtain swings back into place, your observations reveal a different side of the Skaven, as he chatters in Queekish to it while bribing it with food he'd stashed away in his bed-nest to overcome its wariness towards an oversized bipedal rat.
Okay, more reveals:
-He's still keeping the "No weakness" facade in front of us when he thinks we're watching.
-The curtain request seems to stem from genuine stress from the relatively wide and airy dungeon layout(which would be humane for a human), the curtain helped wind it down significantly. I suspect a traditional human dungeon would be downright comfy, they have some degree of inherent agoraphobia.
-He has food hidden away in his bed. More rodenty behavior, hoarding isn't unique to rodents of course, but we're getting an interesting psych profile here. It does suggest Mathilde might be overfeeding him.
--Extrapolation, the Black Hunger isn't really a thing, stressed rodents will compulsively hoard any excess food, and their teeth also means they'd habitually gnaw on everything, creating the APPEARANCE of perpetual hunger when your only source of information is how much food is disappearing.
-He's lonely to the point where he almost immediately broke down into babbling queekish at the dog, the first living creature he could actually trust not to want anything from him except a snack.
--This bodes well for learning Spoken Queekish from listening in, though we still need Wolf to learn to talk, Mathilde can't spend that much time with him while he wouldn't give Wolf's presence a second thought.
Puppy appetite trumps concern, and soon enough Qrech's claws are gently scratching the spaniel behind its ears and it's quickly won over. You make a mental note to install a flap when Qrech is next asleep so that Wolf can take the pup for a walk every few days, and trickle your stash of stolen Clan Mors correspondence in over the coming weeks. Sure enough, Qrech's plates (now licked clean by the spaniel) are soon accompanied by translations, and you subject them to careful examination, first to ensure they're consistent and then to extract any useful information they might contain.
Wolf is the jailor huh?
I'm reasonably sure he'd translate anything we can verify for ourselves honestly.
Its the everything ELSE that's dodgy, but since he's convinced we can get the real translations to verify a cunning prisoner would translate everything honestly until he finds information he can turn against us AND get his tail out of the fire.
Clan Mors situation, you discover, is better than they appeared during your raids. Most of their forces are rebuffing the constant assaults from Karak Drazh, and between the Clan's discipline, fortifications, overlapping fields of fire and a stockpile of ammunition they've been building up for centuries, they're doing damn well to the point where they're actually gaining more in food than they're losing in clanrats and supplies.
Orc farming.
Do we wind up importing nutrients from Karak Drazh via the Orc -> Skaven -> We lifecycle?
With an inside perspective, their piecemeal defence against Clan Skryre is revealed as a deliberately elastic defence, ensuring only the least useful or favoured Skaven are exposed to surprise attacks from Skryre technosorcery, and with the element of surprise lost, a response can be tailored to whatever devilry Clan Skryre has brought forward this time.
Hmm, we should take notes on that. Fighting Skryre is incredibly unpredictable, so use an expendable decoy to tank the first round, have a specialist figure out what bullshit this is, then translating THAT into useful strategies.
Or we can raid them by stealth, steal their notes, steal their samples and figure it out that way before they start killing our dudes.
Wonder if the Advanced Skaven Tactics skills are clan specific.
And Clan Eshin has been remarkably uninvolved, though Clan Mors doesn't realize it since they've been attributing to them the attrition of the We and the raids you and your fellow wizards have been engaged on. A stalemate, then.
Extremely suspicious.
What is Eshin up to?
Theres so many of them but they aren't taking visible action.
Can't do shit about them without taking half the remaining peaks first though.
We can't advance through Zilfin, so it has to be the other side. Preferably via the Underway so they know as little as they can.
Though if the Red Fang become distracted and Clan Eshin remains on the sidelines, Clan Mors would be able to turn their full force on Clan Skryre.
Hmm, kind of doubt the Red Fang will back off. Mors battlelines are their favorite kind of good fight.
Still, I'm wondering if we should push a Skryre visit up the schedule. We need to know what they might use if pushed into a corner.
And since Qrech said he's willing to translate Skyre documents...
[Building a lexicon: Learning, 89+26+9(Library: Linguistics)+5(Strategy - Skaven)=129]
Clan Mors, more than just about any other Skaven clan, focuses on the fundamentals of warfare rather than a niche speciality, and it shows. The reports flowing between the Skaven leadership and the outposts are detailed and varied, and the beginnings of a lexicon starts to come together, and as he reaches the end of what you've got to pass on to him, you've developed an understanding of basic sentence structure and developed a rather broad dictionary of Queekish military terminology. It's not an entire language, but it's undeniably useful - not just to any future intelligence operations against the Skaven, but also for Max and his long slog through the anatomy textbook.
Interesting, and extremely tactically useful. Being able to understand their military terminology is probably the best gain of the lot.
It means we can understand what KIND of orders are being given if we steal them, troop counts, supply inventories, all useful stuff.
I think we want to raid Skryre next for documents, if we want to expand the lexicon enough to start extrapolating we want technical texts next, which should generate the most novel vocabulary instances.
Go Invisible and stalk.
[Max vs textbook: Learning, 3+17+10(Patient)+6(Library: Anatomy)=36.]
Which he desperately needs, because without a basic framework to build upon he's definitely struggling. With a foundation of grammar and common words, he throws out his accumulated notes and begins anew.
[Max vs textbook, round 2: Learning, 21+17+10(Patient)+10(Queekish foundation)+6(Library: Anatomy)=64.]
It's still a long, slow process, but slow is better than stationary. Like a jigsaw where each piece needs to be hand-carved from a block of featureless wood, fragments of information begin to emerge from the text.
Poor Max has just been having such a no good bad time lately.
Still, he has the ideal personality for this.
With time much more at a premium than your influence within the Colleges, you expend enough of your accumulated goodwill to bend the schedule to your will. When you arrive at Altdorf, it's with the full knowledge that every moment of your time here will be spent fruitfully, rather than wasting time waiting for things to line up.
[Learn Cloak Activity: Learning, 23+26=49.]
Cloak Activity is not, in theory, a difficult spell. But it is one that by definition requires you to split your attention. You can maintain it well enough when you give it your full concentration, but when you try to do something else - and there's no point to the spell if you're not doing something else - it frays at the edges before collapsing in on itself. You're right on the cusp of grasping it, you know you are, but with your schedule so efficiently filled there's no more time to give. You curse your own hubris and move on.
This spell is going to bug us forever. JUST barely convenient enough not to skip it but that AP...
[Learn Shroud of Invisibility: Learning, 74+26=100.]
[Rolling...]
[Rolling...]
Shroud of Invisibility proves much simpler, as it proves similar to
Substance of Shadow, but much easier to maintain. This proves to be a mixed blessing, because while it does mean that
most of what you know from
Substance of Shadow is directly applicable, that's not the same as
all. You slip into the habits you picked up from the more complex spell one too many times, and as you ground what you can of a malformed spell and cough up thick grey clouds of billowing flog that flickers between real and unreal, you notice how drawn to you it seems, and later discover it's apparently universal to any sort of visible gas or vapour. You take the lesson on overconfidence to heart, and thoroughly memorize the process for casting
Shroud of Invisibility before resuming practice, and you're able to finally fill that gap in your arsenal.
[Arcane Mark acquired: Mantle of Mist]
Well, one of the more benign Ulgu Arcane Marks.
Theres like...three left of those?
The last two are really terrible.
[Learn Illusion: Learning, 41+26+20(Partial)=87.]
[Learning Universal Confusion: Learning, 90+26+20(Partial)=136.]
You're also able to wrap up some unfinished business from Illusion, finishing off what the lessons you took a year ago started without any trouble, but you're not sure you're able to say the same for Universal Confusion. Though you're quickly able to successfully cast the spell, you're not immediately able to keep the spell from immediately being drawn back to you until it becomes dense enough to collapse into a cloud of bewildering fog. It takes a fair bit of work to finally manifest the spell as it should be, and then a little more to study the interesting possibilities of the spell as it has entwined itself with your latest Arcane Mark.
[Mastery acquired: Universal Confusion]
Ranald: "This is what you want if you want to engage orcs ten to one like you have been, right?"
[+1 Magic due to total spells learned]
Woohoo!
With Max splitting his time between the massive chalkboard on one wall and the nest of pillows he's built next to the fireplace, you've no need to pull rank to commandeer the desk in the Room of Serenity and you settle yourself in amongst the gentle trickle of water and the occasional gentle chorus of chalk in use to write what may be the most influential paper of your career thus far.
Well now.
We've driven Max to make his bed in the Room of Serenity.
A pillowfort.
The magic of the Waaagh has proven far too alien for anyone to wrap their mind around and instead attempts at countering or dispelling it ended up being a contest of raw power, and with greenskin Shamans empowered by the Waaagh field their allies generate and lacking any sense of self-preservation in the heat of combat, it's a contest that rarely goes well for human spellcasters. But you've had an insight glimpse of the mind of Mork Himself, and have successfully applied cunning instead of brutality to spells of the Waaagh on multiple occasions.
A helpful comparison would be that mercenary tactic we saw. Poke the Waagh and it will lash out, so you prepare a trap for it. Done right you can make the Waagh field charge RIGHT out of their hands.
You take a deep breath, flex your quill hand, and begin.
[Putting Waaaghbane into words: 42+26+4(Library: Waaagh Magic)=72.]
[Waaagh paper: Learning, 57+26+10(Partial Waaaghbane)+4(Library: Waaagh Magic)=97.]
It's... okay. It definitely communicates some of what you're trying to say and would prove useful to anyone going up against the greenskin and their Shamans. But in a haunting reminder of your very first paper, you know that just out of reach is something earth-shaking, something brilliant. "Max," you say, breaking the companionable silence that has dominated the room for weeks. "Take a look at this."
[Max interrupt: Learning, 48+17+10(Amanuensis)=75.]
In the strange time-dilation that takes hold when something you wrote is being read, you wait impatiently for Max to weigh in. "Why are you doing it backwards?" he asks, confused.
"What do you mean?"
"You're starting from the actual magic and then breaking it down into the foundational elements over the course of the paper. You're not trying to prove how it works, you're trying to show where it's weak. Lay out the groundwork and then use the actual magic as demonstrations of the principles."
You ponder his words for half a second, then give a hurried "thanks" as you grab the paper back and scrabble through the drawers to find a pair of scissors to rearrange the attempt into a draft of a proper paper, as Max returns to his cushion nest with a satisfied smile.
[Altered result: 57+26+10(Partial Waaaghbane)+4(Library: Waaagh Magic)+5(Max interrupt)=102.]
[Delivery: Diplomacy, 89+10+9(Library: Greenskins)=108.]
Mathilde was writing it from the perspective of the caster by accident?
Also Max needs more headpats.
[Waaagh and Peace: Efficient Solutions to Greenskin Magic, 2481. Subject: Uncommon, +0. Insight: Shattering, +3. Delivery: Compelling, +1. Thorough, +1. Tactically Groundbreaking, +3. Alien, +1. Total: +9.]
Well now.
Thats doubly Earthshattering. Minds are blown.
Jimmies rustled.
The Dwarves crawling through your living quarters are certainly deferential, but it's more than slightly irritating to have them tearing through your newly-acquired comforts, especially when they take your beloved bathroom out of operation for a week. You hold your complaints and are rewarded for doing so as you observe the new and improved boiler, which at the pull of a lever will close off the pipes to the baths and open them up towards almost-invisible nozzles scattered throughout the hallways approaching and throughout your domain, and a mere minute later a series of dormant Runes will have awoken and turned the comfortably warm water into highly-pressurized steam, ready to spray into whichever hallways the control console dictates, and the controls are keyed to your magical signature. Since you share that with Wolf, you ensure the activation glyphs are large and sensitive enough to be operated with paws.
They weaponized the bath.
And Wolf can direct them.
Fear the doggo
That represents the limitations of their creativity; Dwarves dedicated to fortifications tend to be distrustful of novelty and instead put their faith in good solid steel and stone. Tasteful wooden doors are replaced with solid and intimidating Dwarven steel, complete with hidden openings to allow for peeking out or harrying any besiegers with gun or spell. The main entrance's door is even more intimidating, and its keyhole has the sole purpose of magically alerting you to any attempt to pick it. Actual ingress is gained through Runes quite similar to the ones on the control console, and the Dwarves gravely applied the same process to a rather smaller door for Wolf to come and go freely through.
I really like the fake keyhole for a runic lock, great way to trick anyone who isn't equipped with great Windsight into wasting their time on the lock.
And the doggy door lets us send Wolf in to arm the defenses in a pinch.
A keen eye might be able to spot the ceiling recesses, but a portcullis needs no element of surprise, especially when enhanced by a few members of Thorek's ever-useful swarm of apprentices. These are not only restricted to the entrance of your Penthouse, but also to each and every window of the lovely 360-degree view your Penthouse boasts, complete with steel shutters behind them in case any exterior attackers have any cheeky ideas about guns or bows.
Thorek might be onto something with his swarm of apprentices. They're remarkably useful.
That should stop anything short of raw force of numbers or arms.
The spiral staircase leading up to the towers is made able to retract upwards, leaving any attacker with the problem of how to ascend a vertical shaft.
...scratch the numbers, think they're down to singular Hero/Lords/Monsters here brute forcing it
It's not perfect - to Dwarves, fortification is a process that continues over centuries - but it's far more secure than it was, and as long as you or Wolf are there to defend it, it could easily hold out long enough to deal with any distractions that might be keeping reinforcements from the rest of the Karak from reaching you. You've still yet to decide whether that's sufficient, or whether you should go further and aim for the ability to withstand a prolonged and determined siege. But you can certainly worry less about attempted infiltrations and opportunistic attacks.
...why settle for almost completely secure when you can have utterly secure?
Magic: 6+1+1=8 - You're reaching the limits of what is known to be possible with Ulgu and starting to venture into the unknown.
Ooo, Magic 8 is at the peak of what the Grey College can muster without tools?
Laconic: A great deal of effort has transformed your distaste for writing into a brutal efficiency in keeping your writing brief. +1 Diplomacy, +1 Stewardship, +1 Martial, +1 Intrigue.
Brief papers also tend to be pretty hard to digest for nonspecialists. Those new to the field would suffer as they deal with a paper that assumes you're familiar with the field and can use jargon freely for word efficiency.
On the other hand they're often well loved by professionals, who'd like to be able to learn this new technique without wading through a long winded story first. Especially military types.
Mantle of Mist: Visible vapours are drawn to you. Fog and mist makes it easier to hide; smoke and gases are rather less convenient. +1 Intrigue, potential trouble with any gas-based weapons.
Probably should get it under control ASAP, if we can make the mist pool at a chosen body part instead of generally clinging to us in general we could just wear thick boots/gloves and gather poison gases there.
Should get Johann to help us test the idea with his less dangerous stuff. We're in an area with active Skryre presence, we want it functional before we need it.
Waaagh energy and magic witnessed during the Expedition. (FADING)
The ability of Alkharad to assume a projected form of mist. (FADING)
Waagh energy paper is still fading. Lets finish that one too.
Military lexicon of written Queekish (TIMELESS)
Right after the Fading papers are done.
Long-term pending: Economic & Strategic Benefits of K8P, Mathilde's MAPP
Ooo, theres more pending for MMAPP!
I / Mathilde's Multidimensional Aethyric Projection: Allows the caster to project, edit and colour a fairly low-resolution 3D visualization.
- Very suitable for creating and editing dynamic maps. Related to Marsh Lights, due to its simplicity it is likely it could be translated to other Winds.
@BoneyM missed update here? Its already been translated after all.
M / Universal Confusion: Bewilder, but applies to a whole group at once, up to about a ten meter diameter. Short range.
Mastery - Cloud of Confusion: You can cast the spell as a billowing cloud of bewildering gas, which pours from you for several minutes, constantly effecting everyone nearby.
- Mathilde can cast both the normal spell and the Mastered version. Both are indiscriminate, but the normal version applies to anyone within that radius at the time of casting, whereas the Mastered version continues outputting the gas over minutes to effect everyone touched by it.
- The Mastered version does not need to be inhaled to take effect. Mathilde is immune to it, as is Wolf; everyone else will suffer from Bewilder unless they're strong-willed enough to shake it off.
So the normal form is best for sabotage, but if we're going into the thick of the combat we might as well use the Mastery and let the mist...render everyone dumb and critically vulnerable to our fighting style?
[X] Yes, have one social interaction be initiated by someone other than Mathilde.
[X] Max, during the few breaks in the silence as the two of you worked on Queekish in the Room of Serenity.
[X] Francesco Caravello, proud leader of the Undumgi and possible future Thane.
[X] Oswald Oswaldson, newly-minted Chief Bombardier of the Undumgi.
[X] Investigate the aftermath of the Empire's campaigns against the Skaven in Nuln and Ubersreik.
[X] Kragg, who's begun to be seen around the Karak once more, indicating he might be finishing his study of the rune-axe you and Johann found.
[X] Check in on your fief in Stirland.
Catch up in the morning. Its too late to keep going at 1 AM.
