On the Marienburg heist idea, I have a plan.
1. We get someone to learn how to hire a gyrocarrier, or preferably, hire someone who already knows, though I doubt anyone who can pilot a gyrocarrier wants to be part of a heist.
2. Buy a gyrocarrier with gold or favour.
3. We finally make use of that largely useless Windherder trait that I hate. With shadow magic, we enchant the gyrocarrier so it's completely silent, and with celestial magic, we also ensure that it doesn't create any kind of downdraft. We also paint the gyrocarrier dark colours so that it's harder to see at night.
4. We fly the gyrocarrier over to the Marienburgers' treasure vault and land it on the roof.
5. We surgically cut a hole into the roof with Branulhune.
6. The crew loads up all the gold and jewels and promissory notes and the like into the gyrocarrier.
7. Fly away with all our ill-gotten goods.
8. Repeat steps 3, 5, and 6 until the vault is empty.
9. Celebrate.
We can learn to fly a gyrocopter ourselves, or we could have one of our employees learn. I doubt Adela would object either, and we could probably get a Perpetual trained up if we really wanted to for some reason. I imagine we have options for pilots even without dipping into our limited supply of dwarfs (or our even more limited supply of radical dwarfs).
I like the idea of Mathilde having a Black Helicopter expy, and if it's capable of moving troops or supplies easily (so probably a gyrocarrier rather than a gyrocopter) it can probably have added utility ferrying rangers and their supplies on missions (they being the sort to be more accepting of nonstandard methods I think) when we don't need them for our own
Black Grey Ops.
What I'm thinking they'd benefit from, without trying to add all the bells and whistles;
-Illusion (primarily to cover the chopper sound, but if we can squeeze in 'change what it looks like' out of the same enchantment I won't complain). This feels like the sticking point to me, as if we can't pull off the Fiendishly Complex stuff we're likely to get spotted on close approach, which is where I'm primarily concerned about.
-Invisibility (probably for just a few minutes at most, but 'invisible gyrocopter' seems like it'd be darned handy for high-risk insertions). If that'd be too complicated, we could probably still get a lot of mileage out of Shadowcloak (which is 'relatively simple' instead of 'moderately complicated')
-some sort of Azyr enchantment to help it move around or mask the wind it'll kick up probably. Some variation of Wind Blast (moderately complicated) is my guess, but I honestly am not sure.
-Stoke the Forge effect to help keep the engine running longer/hotter? This seems like something that'd work as an add-on, but probably not strictly necessary. Intent is to drastically improve the range of gyrocopters so flight time is less constrained by fuel and more by 'limits of crew & (dwarfen) maintenance needs'
-Take no Heed (unless 'is a gyrocopter' is considered drawing attention to oneself?)
The final thing that I can think of to make this work but doesn't necessarily need to be something on the gyro itself is 'something to allow the pilot to see what they're doing in the dark of the night', and I see four possibilities, listed in decreasing order of possibility;
-goggles of Starshine (Azyr)
-goggles of Eyes of Truth (Hysh)
These two basically do the same thing (banish darkness, illusions, reveal secrets, etc) and are both Fiendishly Complicated. I'd recommend the Starshine option as we're already including Azyr in the mix and I don't know what Hysh/Ulgu interactions would be like but I doubt it would be something everyone's thrilled with, but we could probably pull those off with cashing in some favors (~5 favors I think), with the caveat that Eyes of Truth make your eyes shine and Starshine seems like it physically illuminates an area. These seem my surest answer, but not my preferred one, as....
-goggles with Good Dawi Runes On Them (I'm not sure if this is actually a thing, but it seems like a possibility and if we can't get something like that out of either Thorek or Kragg we might as well give up pursuing that angle. I dunno, 5 dwarf favor? Runesmith favor? Big old ??? here) I imagine this is the option any dwarf pilots we end up with would prefer.
-an entirely mundane engineering solution. I doubt the Dawi have straight up NVGs, but...?
The idea here is to make a strategically mobile gyro that excels at covert insertions and extractions. I see it as being useful for rangers, trusted witch hunters and grey wizard strike teams, and to be an example of the sort of thing that shows what can be made when the Empire and Karaz Ankor work together. (I'll probably give at least some thought to other 'types' of gyros, but I'm not sure what they'd be useful for)
Tangentially related, I want to go forward with the Steam Tank project.
@BoneyM Could we ask Algard what his feel for Lutipold's reaction to "grandmaster dwarf engineer willing to reverse engineer the steam tanks for our good Imperial allies" would be?
He was probably quite put out by that. Had a dramatic reveal ready and everything, and then Gazul pulled history's biggest kill-steal.
Heh. Any indication what he thought of the Eye of Gazul?
Wait, that was a vampire?!
Slander.
Abel had a middling piety even before it took several hits from the ineptitude of the (spiritual) leadership of the Empire, even as Mathilde's faith grew.
Hmm. Similar to Belegar.
Hmm.
So what you're saying is that she stole other peoples' piety?
...I suppose that's fairly Ranaldian.
Sneaking into an Azyr focused college is chancy even for a master of Ulgu.
Suspicious Student: "I don't know why your portents keep telling you I'm an infiltrator, I'm just an immigrant from Miragliano who wants to learn how to wizard and am certainly not some kind of Imperial spy. See? The talking coin even says so!"
Talking Coin: "She's cool. Go back to fondling your astrolabe or something."
I do not think committing to two-three actions (which is what it takes to learn a language without the Linguist or Polyglot trait) before socialing the dragon is at all a good idea. The only goal of ours Classical furthers is the Ice Dragon social link, and we don't even know if that's viable or not yet.
It also unlocks library sources. Classical is pretty common as an academic language.
Do we know how much longer Johann is supposed to wait before getting his eyes regrown?
