Lord Magister Luuk is a squat and muscled man, hairless except for bushy eyebrows and exuding an aura of Ghur that puts your teeth on edge. He is a man of few words, and when you explain to him the specifics of what you want, he furrows his brow and says a single word: "Why?"
"To fight other dragons," is your wonderfully succinct answer.
"What sort?"
"Our main concern is ice."
He wrinkles his nose, and then nods. "Come back at midwinter."
You're quite pleased at how simple that was to commission, but you can't help but go over the final words he said as he walked out: "It'll be uglier than you think it'll be."
So I'm guessing some kind of bloodied stone and wood tribal altar and some body horror transformation of bulging out and exploding into dragon and gore.
I hope to be more appalled than I expect it to be.
Staff turning, you quickly discover, is all the most boring parts of enchantment made even more boring.
Everything needs to be perfect, because it is to have every ounce of power a wizard wields run through it, as well as helping absorb ambient energies to cast those spells in the first place. There's no creativity, no cleverness, no puzzles. You make it as conductive to the Wind in question as you possibly can, and the only variation in results is in imperfections. There can be more to staffs than this - the Bright Order in particular delights in ones able to amplify specific spells - but that's not covered by the class.
Day by tedious day, you rote memorize the various ways to attune materials to a Wind. If you hadn't already spread word of the bounty on dragonbone, you might be tempted to drop the idea altogether and be satisfied with your sword and guns. But at long, long last, the day finally comes that there's nothing more for them to torment you with, and you flee before they change their mind.
[Skill added: Turning]
@BoneyM
Huh, is the bolded under the general enchanting skill or is it more like Advanced Staff Turning?
We've seen Adela with whats presumably one of those, so probably not TOO hard
The Ratling Gun paper is simple enough, as you have to rewrite a set of your notes for Johann anyway in inks visible to his Windsight; you simply leave off some of the more exact details of the firing mechanism, leaving it explained as a Warpstone-induced explosion instead of explaining precisely the flash-decay that the Warpstone firing crystal induces. The rest requires no more than an Apprentice-level understanding of magic's nature, as the attraction between Dhar and other magics is warned against early and often.
Funny enough, its really just putting together two fundamental Warpstone behaviours:
-"Warpstone go Bang when banged"
-"Dhar attracts Dhar"
=> "Exploding Dhar can make other Dhar explode"
He gets as far as Fault of Form and speculates on whether Law of Gold would be applicable, and runs out of steam.
Johann, mah bro, you don't just look at your standard issue spells and call it a day!
You take a break from your own papers to sketch out a few ideas, then a few more, and next thing you know the sun's gone down and you're looking at half a manuscript that spells out exactly how anyone with a modicum of magical talent can turn a firing Ratling Gun into a rapidly expanding cloud of shrapnel.
The things are prone to becoming expanding clouds of sharpnel on their own already, you just need to apply the right kind of dispel to it.
I'm guessing the trick should be that...the ammunition explosively sublimates when it contacts the concentrated Dhar of a Warpstone crystal...however, that basically means anyone with enough magical ability to focus it into a point could destabilize it the same way. Dhar attracts all Winds of magic, so just feed one bullet in the bag and the whole thing will just go critical.
[Ratling Gun paper: Learning, 11+16+10(Breach the Unknown)+15(mostly thorough notes)=52.]
[Ratling Gun countermeasures: Learning, 6+16+9(Library: Warpstone)=26.]
[Mathilde interrupt: Learning, 100+27+5(Tactics: Skaven)+9(Library: Warpstone)-20(multitasking)=121.]
[Internal Mechanisms of the Ratling Gun, and How to Foil Them, 2483. Subject: Rare, +1. Insight: Revolutionary, +2. Delivery: Dull, -1. Precious, +1. Thorough, +1. Tactically Significant: +2. Classified, -2. Total: +4.]
The best part of this is how Mathilde wasn't even paying her full attention to it.
(You're distracted from your task by a while by an unexpected pang of regret that you levelled Castle Drakenhof. How much could you have learned from but a single book written by him?)
Well, I suppose books are prone to surviving collapsing buildings if packed together, not exposed to fire in the process.
The final paper is more of a report than a full essay as you distil your lingering memories of the Eshin Sorcerer, and the notes you took at the time, into as much raw data as possible. Grey Seers are notorious and feared, as are the Warlock-Engineers of Clan Skryre, but the existence of an Eshin-specific brand of warp magic was known only by a few dubious accounts and mostly thought to be fictional. You saw proof to the contrary, and saw one wield magic that seems to be to Ulgu what necromancy is to Shyish, and thus is completely distinct to the magic of the Grey Seers, and disproving theories that the possibility of such a hybrid with Dhar was unique to Shyish. So even with its brevity, and even with the necessity of secrecy, you've no doubt that even this short a paper will turn some heads.
[Eshin Sorcerer paper: Learning, 37+27+10(Windsage)+4(Library: Skaven Warp Magic)=78.]
[An Eyewitness Account of a Distinct Variety of Skaven Sorcery, 2483. Subject: Rare, +1. Insight: Shattering, +3. Delivery: Competent, +0. Exotic, +1. Precious, +1. Classified, -2. Total: +4.]
Ulgu version of Necromancy
[Concerned Algard Noises]
I'm leaning the Spymaster. Just curious.
