Alright, so while I am reluctant to make assumptions on
@BoneyM 's quest, most other source material I've read has magic users in armies pitching their tents together (possibly metaphorically with Amber Wizards) somewhat apart from the common soldiery, both because they tend to give the muggles the heebie jeebies and because wizards tend to be a little more comfortable around people who can see the winds of magic. (I'm imagining a very 60s sitcom atmosphere actually. "Weather sure is Aqshy today, bring a fire extinguisher with you today.")
Anyway, I want to mention two things; as best I understand it, Substance of Shadow is both eligible for Matrix (I've been looking for an authoritative quote or description for its limits and haven't found much applicable to this) and remarkably useful for killing things dead. I imagine we could assemble a kill-team of people willing to take extra risks in exchange for extra pay (
Doppelsöldner are a thing, after all) so we stuff them full of a Matrix spell that lets them infiltrate into the enemy's back lines and kill high value targets like leadership and spellcasters; both attacking and spellcasting are cited as being explicitly permitted in Realms of Sorcery but I don't want to step on anyone's toes here by insisting that is also true in Divided Loyalties). Even if we'd probably prefer Stirland's woodsmen for most of this, we'd probably get some of our best pickings from either the knights or the Nordlanders.
Secondly, the Gold College traditionally recruits from metalworkers, herbalists and alchemists so there's a chance the Gold Journeyman knows his way around a flask of bubbling chemical mixtures. If the
Musk of Fear is a thing here, maybe they could brew up a 'fear musk bomb' to encourage chain routs for Skaven? It's not like they're noted as being particularly brave creatures in the first place, and the more pressure applied there the more likely it is that the Skaven chaff will break and run, meaning fewer meat shields between Dawi and manling steel and rat-ogre flesh.
On a tangentially related note I wonder if the Gold College would be interested in our niter crystals. They are supposed to be involved in the search for bigger and better gunpowders, and I imagine there's other alchemical uses for it they'd be interested in not needing to wade through lesser purities to get to.
@BoneyM Would it be overreaching to try and create a 'fight in the shade' spell that drastically increases the efficacy of spells like Burning Shadows, or would we be better served just investing in a hot air balloon and trying to get the ungainly thing to shade the portion of the battlefield we're interested in?
My man. Calm yo rib cage. We can Still, Potentially, get a gryphon. Just not a Familiar Gryphon.
Gonna need to do it the Old Fashioned Way.
Climb a mountain and steal an egg.
Man, if only she was any good at stealing things. Oh well. (Might be incentive for people to pick up some of those wilderness survival skills, either from huntsmen of Stirland or cash in Dwarf Favors)
[x] Accept as the most senior Wizard present (commanding two Amber Journeymen and one Gold Journeyman).
[x] Accept simply as yourself.
Preference voting.
[x] Deliver last-minute messages for Belegar, trying to scrape together any remaining support to be had before leaving.
- [x] To mercenaries.
- [x] To the Colleges of Magic.
- [x] To Dwarfholds of the Grey and Black Mountains.
Our current deficiencies are in lack of cannon and lack of spellcasters to dispell. Mercenaries are easily bought when you can offer the sums of cash a dwarf-lord can, and while quality varies among dogs of war, you can certainly hire artillery regiments from Tilea and I imagine Wissenland. There's a chance there's some mercenary Bright Wizard or the like out there as well, which would be helpful but I'm mostly fishing for artillery with the mercs. Colleges of magic I'm not expecting magisters, but even a handful more journeymen would be more magical weight to throw at problems, and I'm sort of hoping we pick up a Grey journeyman to dote on (which is to say, keep hiding poison tokens in their food along with cheery reminders to 'watch yourself' and other helpful training tips). The dwarf-holds should be pretty obvious, as they provide great artillery and some of them even have runesmiths.