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WAIT! Waitwaitwaitwaitwait!

So the Transcendent boon means that we can ask for anything, and Belegar will get it for us, right?

[X] [BOON] I know just what to spend it on...
GIVE ME ABELHELM VAN HAL BACK!
 
Huh, I'd think a skaven war veteran espionagemage would be ble to access Skaven writing on the basis of her just wanting to. Or do we need to be a Lady Magister in order to pull rank and do that?

It's not a matter of trust, it's a matter of keeping the eggs safely distributed in a number of different baskets. Making sure that if Mathilde gets yoinked by an Eshin assassin tomorrow, it doesn't completely hit the reset button on the entirety of the Empire's efforts on the matter.

This would be interesting to know so @BoneyM

Can Mathilde dictate Max the Khazalid and/or Reikspiel Queekish Lexicon?

Yes, but just to reiterate, she'd actually have to spend an action dictating, instead of using the Tower's free paper on it.

If we learn spoken Queekish in the same turn that we start the Queekish Lexicon, would the book also include the spoken Queekish guide?

Yes, but you'd be relying on friendly dice to make the turn work the way you hope it to.

Now it might be that BoneyM might rule that we have to choose one of these four aspects to prioritize, or that this boon is too broad and needs to be split up into four constituent parts.

I won't outright veto the idea, but I feel the need to point out what should be obvious: using the Boon on something with four separate prongs means it will be at best* a quarter of a Boon's worth applied to each. You don't get free stuff by piling more provisos on, you water down your Boon.

*Dwarves thrive when told "GO MAKE THE BEST X THAT EVER WAS", less so when given a more balanced objective.
 
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I won't outright veto the idea, but I feel the need to point out what should be obvious: using the Boon on something with four separate prongs means it will be at best* a quarter of a Boon's worth applied to each. You don't get free stuff by piling more provisos on, you water down your Boon.

*Dwarves thrive when told "GO MAKE THE BEST X THAT EVER WAS", less so when given a more balanced objective.

That's reasonable, and I think there's are possible way to make that happen mechanically speaking:

Most boons, even a one-off item such as a Dreadnought have only so many "action points" that can be sunk into it per turn to make it into reality, and where applicable, has a "build time" (baring something permanent and ever-growing, such as an institution). So a broad boon like a Center of Learning gets water-down, by the number of things competing for only so many action points - it opens another virtual AP Hell.

Furthermore, and you'd never make as good a Library as straight out choosing Great Library, as great a Research Institute as a straight out Royal Society Boon and so on, both due to differences in depth in options to actualize the Boon, quite literal AP hell, and the Boon Favor/GC budget being stretched to chase after multiple objectives.
 
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Good, I see the appeal of a research center with an utilitarian library with more books requested as needed (so, like our own, but for more projects).

No half-library half-3-other-things abomination, this world could really use a knowledge sharing policy, too much is lost because of guild secrets.

I will vote for that once that Karak is stable.
 
As our fate seems to be increasingly sealed, I prefer a pure BOOKS vote.

I don't see setting up a research center as terribly IC, while having ALL THE BOOKS at least has that going for it.

Besides which, something like that sounds like a job for the Loremaster of K8P, while making a library should be accomplishable by almost anyone with money and connections.
 
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As our fate seems to be increasingly sealed, I prefer a pure BOOKS vote.

I don't see setting up a research center as terribly IC, while having ALL THE BOOKS at least has that going for it.

Besides which, something like that sounds like a job for the Loremaster of K8P, while making a library should be accomplishable by almost anyone with money and connections.
if limited, Grand library e.g Mathilde 's Karak Kron (unending knowledge?) is the best version when it comes to what Mathy IC wants.
 
Come people, the Karak just got reconquered. Any effort spent now is like selling your seed corn when you've just bought new land to seed. Let them settle in, get started, start selling the silk and get the weavers running and then we can try stuff. Belegar does not need another debt marker to be called in right now.

He's busy enough dealing with his High King and trying to actually rebuild Eight Mountains Worth of Infrastructure. We only had 2-3 of those to work on. Now he has another five to clear, repair and maintain. At least wait for the Karak to actually get established first.
 
Come people, the Karak just got reconquered. Any effort spent now is like selling your seed corn when you've just bought new land to seed. Let them settle in, get started, start selling the silk and get the weavers running and then we can try stuff. Belegar does not need another debt marker to be called in right now.

He's busy enough dealing with his High King and trying to actually rebuild Eight Mountains Worth of Infrastructure. We only had 2-3 of those to work on. Now he has another five to clear, repair and maintain. At least wait for the Karak to actually get established first.
Rebuilding and re establishing the Karak is a work of centuries.
Unless we go utterly insane, any boon we ask that Belegar is capable of doing is not going to be more than a drop in the bucket.
And i have no idea what your seed corn metaphor is even supposed to be about, we're not at planting stage (assuming library) were at the "let's decide where to put the field so nobody builds a carpark on it" stage.
 
Come people, the Karak just got reconquered. Any effort spent now is like selling your seed corn when you've just bought new land to seed. Let them settle in, get started, start selling the silk and get the weavers running and then we can try stuff. Belegar does not need another debt marker to be called in right now.

Founding something like a royal society for the advancement of knowledge isn't spending the seed corn, it's planting it.
 
I won't outright veto the idea, but I feel the need to point out what should be obvious: using the Boon on something with four separate prongs means it will be at best* a quarter of a Boon's worth applied to each. You don't get free stuff by piling more provisos on, you water down your Boon.

*Dwarves thrive when told "GO MAKE THE BEST X THAT EVER WAS", less so when given a more balanced objective.

I know this will put too much pressure to Belegar, but I figured that since trancedental is "I owe you everything, as long as you do not disgrace my honour", one fourth of infinite is, well, infinite.

Well, if nothing else, if dwarves put the foundations for those several things, we may as well be responsible for the growth.

That said, that detail also may convince me to vote for going for the boon when the fort is wealthier. If Dwarves have no stop button, then asking for something that will grow and improve slowly over time may actually backfire when they try to uild the most awesome library/institute right away.
 
All book is good for the boon.

We dont need to set up a university ot anything like that for our boon, we can work that on our own (if we actually care).

I also like the...

For me personally. I want the library both as a landmark. (A Dawi Library. Of all things!) And to get somewhere to share information out and about.
 
I know this will put too much pressure to Belegar, but I figured that since trancedental is "I owe you everything, as long as you do not disgrace my honour", one fourth of infinite is, well, infinite.

Well, if nothing else, if dwarves put the foundations for those several things, we may as well be responsible for the growth.

That said, that detail also may convince me to vote for going for the boon when the fort is wealthier. If Dwarves have no stop button, then asking for something that will grow and improve slowly over time may actually backfire when they try to uild the most awesome library/institute right away.
I'm still strongly in the "worlds biggest library evah" corner.
As a loremaster (and, eventually, lord magister) we probably could make our own darpa analog to serve us.
Recruit enough magisters who bring journeymen, hire some dwarf scholars/engineers, and then set them working on projects.
Put some EIC money into it, see if we can get a budget from K8P/Colleges for specific projects (like waystones), like, we are part of the council, and a magister in good standing, we should try to leverage those more.
 
If we were to focus on part of the learning centre boon, I would prefer the research institute with royal patronage than big honking library tbh. We already have a big library, and just making a bigger one is more of the same. With all the money we've spent on books, how do people envision our current library looking like? Cos while it's not huge, it's not exactly negligible for something owned by a single person.
 
Infinite capacity, maybe, but finite output. It's the difference between a pressure washer and a showerhead.

Wouldn't really matter if the dwarves could keep the output on for centuries, which was my original reason for wanting to ask for the boon at the earlier convenience (even though C O N T I G E N C Y won out in my mind originally, darn rpg insticts).

But if the dwarfs have no "slow and steady but evergrowing" button, not even for a transcentental boon... that changes my reasoning significantly, and will convince me to go over to the "when its wealthier" side. I am just awaiting for QM confirmation. That characteristic of theirs keeps slipping from my mind when strategizing, cuz it is so different from my normal tactics of encroachment.
 
Also, I believe that the big difference between Royal Institute and a branch college, as has been argued before, is that there will be no limitations to just doing Magic. Runecraft, Engineering, Magic, Sociology, Arts. We do know that there are loads of radical Engineers out there who need a place to develop their craft.
 
Founding something like a royal society for the advancement of knowledge isn't spending the seed corn, it's planting it.
No it's not. Corn births the same year/next year for winter corn. That monster you're trying is more like planting some kind of magical plant that only blooms once a century. Because only if and when the Empire and the actual centers of learning in it burn to the ground along with all the books in them, will it matter if such a center exists here.

Frankly, the Undumgi dont have the numbers to need a University level school, and the dwarves already have the needed teaching systems for their kind. So unless you are building it for repopulating the Empire if Aldorf burns, I don't know what you expect to get from such a thing in any kind of mid-short term.

In the Long term, you'll get some nobility from the Border princes to send their children there, if they don't send them to the Empire, or Tilea. But it's not going to be some revolutionary thing. The dwarves are dwarves and will keep their secrets and traditions, so you have halflings and humans for actual users of the institution. And they just don't have the numbers for a university and a transcendental favor is wasted on a High School.

EDIT: Like really, why do people arguing for this thing we can get other dwarves to participate and share their secrets with Umgi and Halflings? Not to individuals, but to entire classes? Like, look at how much Dwarf Favor Mat has. That's the only reason Runelords will listen to her and work with her. Everyone else? They're Umgi. Mud.
 
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What makes the Great Library unaffordable now as opposed to later? Right now Karaz-a-Karak is working at their own expense for the benefit of Eight Peaks, so it can't be construction costs that make it unaffordable. Workers to staff the various functions of the library? I don't think the payroll will be that great of a cost. Acquiring books? We could lend ours to the library to be copied.
 
I'll be honest, the only reasons I support spending it now is because I don't think anyone will come up with anything better to spend it on (no offense intended), I buy the argument that the center of learning and all off it's individual components aren't bank-breaking, and I'd prefer the arguments over this be dealt with in one go, since said arguments feel rather repetitive. Which is to say, I don't actually think the Center of Learning is a very good idea, but it's better than the alternatives, and better than arguing some more.
 
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Mathilde current task/project is to translate queekish, whilst the spoken language is not 100% needed to achieve this it's absolutely part of the current project she's working on it's just not needed to reach 'good enough' also that's a shit reason not to do something when we're explicitly the only person going to get the chance to pull it off and already have 90% of the work done.

Not doing it now would be foolish given all the ground work we've done.

First off, the written language is the more valuable one. All the Skaven's secrets in all their books, letters, etc. can now be stolen from them and used against them. Secondly, acquiring their spoken language will much, much easier for some other Grey Magister or whomever to do after we give them the written dictionary. Thirdly, the reason Belegar's assigned the project to us was mainly for the intelligence on the local Skaven population... which isn't here anymore. The dictionary will still benefit the dwarves as a whole, since they are frequent enemies, but considring how much harder it is for dwarves to sneak in and listen to spoken Queekish vs. capturing books the benefit of translating spoken Queekish is much lower than it used to be.
*Dwarves thrive when told "GO MAKE THE BEST X THAT EVER WAS", less so when given a more balanced objective.

TIL Ash Ketchum is part-dwarf. :p
Come people, the Karak just got reconquered. Any effort spent now is like selling your seed corn when you've just bought new land to seed. Let them settle in, get started, start selling the silk and get the weavers running and then we can try stuff. Belegar does not need another debt marker to be called in right now.

We're not asking Belegar to drop everything and work on our boon. At this point, asking to build an X isn't going to result in diverting tons of gold and dwarf-hours away from the Karak-rebuilding that's going on currently. Instead what can be started now is making plans, marking off the area that's going to be built on, and figuring out how it's going to be funded. Most of our Boon ideas right now are actually projects that would benefit the Karak, so it's les "pay me in boats" and more "I think you should work towards doing megaproject x."
 
No it's not. Corn births the same year/next year for winter corn. That monster you're trying is more like planting some kind of magical plant that only blooms once a century. Because only if and when the Empire and the actual centers of learning in it burn to the ground along with all the books in them, will it matter if such a center exists here.

Frankly, the Undumgi dont have the numbers to need a University level school, and the dwarves already have the needed teaching systems for their kind. So unless you are building it for repopulating the Empire if Aldorf burns, I don't know what you expect to get from such a thing in any kind of mid-short term.

In the Long term, you'll get some nobility from the Border princes to send their children there, if they don't send them to the Empire, or Tilea. But it's not going to be some revolutionary thing. The dwarves are dwarves and will keep their secrets and traditions, so you have halflings and humans for actual users of the institution. And they just don't have the numbers for a university and a transcendental favor is wasted on a High School.

EDIT: Like really, why do people arguing for this thing we can get other dwarves to participate and share their secrets with Umgi and Halflings? Not to individuals, but to entire classes? Like, look at how much Dwarf Favor Mat has. That's the only reason Runelords will listen to her and work with her. Everyone else? They're Umgi. Mud.

I would expect that a Royal Academy style idea with reasonably generous funding would start producing returns within single digit years, as we start attracting and funding, for example engineers from the Empire with an interest in labour saving devices that the College of Engineering currently suppresses. That alone, having a place where engineering for human civilian purposes isn't banned would make a huge difference.

The royal society isn't there to be a backup to existing institutions. It's there to be a revolutionary change in the way that innovation and invention is supported and so happens. Royal patronage and funding on this scale is something that doesn't exist anywhere outside Hoeth. The shallow imitations that are the Empire's institutions are much more limited.
 
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