Battle magic isn't worth the AP even if it were safe.
May I ask why you're saying that? My understanding of the 40 Dwarf Favor 'rune the colleges' option was that it would, among other things, make learning battle magic safer even if casting it wasn't safe. I agree that it would be difficult to imagine a situation in Karak Eight Peaks where battle magic would be a superior option to the Eye of Gazul, but we won't always be in K8P and battle magic is implied to be quite effective, so I'd like to learn how to throw around high tier Ulgu even if we don't end up using it.
A miserable pile of secrets! But enough talk, have at you!
Oh, now *that* is a ritual worth learning. Can you imagine in a few years where a different dwarfhold is under assault, and Thorgrim sends us a pissy note telling K8P to assist- payback for the same 'impossible request' we made of him. Bring able to show up overnight with a throng and style all over him? I want that.
How many can the masses wizards of Eightpeaks transport?
864 * Panoramia * 8 (Mathilde)?
Thousands. Tens of thousands.
Where are you getting your numbers? Both the casting number and the soldiers, I mean.
It would be a shame if that were all the Colleges have. I would be surprised if it were, but it's possible. (Though actually, the Earthquake one could feasibly wreck a Skaven stronghold, so learning that one might be worth it.) Even so, I would like to learn ritual magic anyway, because I genuinely think if we ever want to achieve the top tier Cool StuffTM that gets mentioned in the thread as future achievements of Mathilde, they will necessarily require rituals.
And yes, I think the magic type with the strongest effects in the system would be cool to learn regardless.
Agreed concerning 'learn the cool magic stuff'. I'm sure that Boney'd come up with some interesting rituals if we wanted to go that way. Also, I vaguely recall being able to research your own rituals, is that right?
Also, it amuses me that given our current location we might have the most trouble getting the gong for the earthquake ritual.
It doesn't say what five/ten/fifteen favours actually accomplish, beyond "effort" presumably.
And as for Favour, we are seriously considering dropping 35/40 favours to give the Colleges Calamity/Null rooms because it keeps accruing, we can't think of much else to spend it on at this point, and we expect to get significantly more in the future. Which is a cool purchase sure, but I think does illustrate that we are hitting the "more than we know what to do with" stage.
Personally I'm hoping to wait until we get Runesmith Favor and seeing what the price for that would be so we could hold onto Dwarf Favor for non-runesmith things like the steam tank reverse engineering.
Well we could also acquire the services of grandmaster engineered to reverse engineer the steam tanks for further production, thought that probably runs into guild secrets. Not insurmountable, but it'd take some doing.
There was also talk about buying a gyrocarriage and enchanting/runing it for stealth, although maybe Gotri and Belegar would be interested in that as a project. Might be too radical even for Gotri.
Steam tank really seems like a good use of Dwarf Favor, and the brainstorming re: the gyro was back when we'd just be spending money on it. Certainly something we might mention as a project, but not something I'm ready to tackle ourselves quite yet.
In the abstract, a joint Dawi-Lybaras assault on Neferata's stronghold seems like a confluence of interests, but for the foreseeable future I don't think Karak Eight Peaks is going to be itching to go on any offensive campaigns if they can help it, and much of the Karaz Ankor is busy putting out fires like 'rats in the basement, fungus on the lawn' problems to get
too adventurous like that. Put a pin in that for later, maybe?
Did we ever actually get confirmation that they'd do that? It's the Empire's technology, but it rather strikes me as the sort of thing they'd refuse to do on the grounds that if Nuln can't manage it themselves, they aren't good enough for the knowledge, in that dwarfy way.
If we spend 10 Dwarf Favor the Grandmaster of the Engineering Guild himself will take a peek at it, and when I asked a few pages ago if Algard thinks the Emperor would approve the project from the Empire's side Boney said 'the horse's mouth goes entirely unexamined' which I take as a good sign, and in fact would petition to have us spend the 10 Dwarf Favor this turn when the option arises.
The gyrocarriage is admittedly another possible expenditure, but I'm pretty sure it's the only one being floated, aside from possibly books - but we don't buy those in big enough lumps for it to be a worry. It may also just flat out not be something the Runesmiths are willing/capable of runing.
And I'd prefer runed guns over the gyrocarriage. It might not be the largest bonus, but it might feasibly be the difference between us living and dying.
I'd hold off on the runed gun(s) for now, I want to see what the price would be for the 5/10/15 Dwarf Favor runed versions when paid for in Runesmith Favor.
I also don't expect there are runesmiths willing (or able) to tackle something as complicated as a gyrocopter, if you have to be pretty radical to rune personal firearms. I'm not saying there's nothing they could possibly contribute, but I'm...leery about making too many assumptions about what they can, or would, involve themselves with for that project.
If we do want a personal copter, I suggest saving up for a personal a gyrocarriage. I'm not sure if those can be armed or not, but if we want a stealth copter to get in and out of places, it would probably be to get people/material in and out of those places.
Having emergency air support if an op goes wrong is nice, but I think not as valuable as being able to bring a team with us or take mad loot out.
I want to go with a stealth gyrocarraige as well for things like the College of Necromancy op; we could get dwarfs in to secure loot and ferry more to a safe location, or we could have had a Grey Order strike team on site to help with the killing of everyone. We didn't need it in that instance, but that's the sort of operation I'm planning to use it for.
Runes or enchantments. We can't combine the two.
We can with the Eye of Gazul. Granted it's not exactly a
typical case, but I'm curious why you're saying we flat out can't combine the two. (Although as I understand it runesmiths are going to be reluctant to touch gyros with their craft any time soon)
Those things mulch greater daemons, if I understand their stats correctly (which I might not). Manufacturing more of them does sound like an absolute win.
Steam tanks are handy, but I wouldn't call them 'mulchers of greater daemons'.
That said, I'd love to set up production of steam tanks in Karak Eight Peaks. As I am imagining it, we could take advantage of Karak Azul's high quality steel, the more progressive local Engineering Guild's leadership and the preexisting Gunnery School branch campus to set up...I don't want to call it something as ambitious as an 'assembly line', but perhaps a manufactury for the machines? Basically, as I'm imagining it we'd have a system where the Engineering Guild assembles the various components to dwarf quality and (as I assume it would go against dwarf sensibilities to be
too involved) have some human engineers assembling them (perhaps with some dwarf engineers standing nearby and 'coincidentally' grumbling about how you need to tighten that valve better or it'll pop off under pressure, who knows?). The finished products I presume would be snapped up by Belegar (who has money but lacks military forces) and, after a while, be sold either to Imperial provinces or other dwarf holds willing to add steam tanks to their line of battle for one reason or another (a small but nonzero possibility I imagine)
To clarify, I'm not expecting this to happen overnight. I expect it'd be somewhat like getting the spider silk operation up and running; first we get the notion and do the groundwork (where we're at right now with the steam tank, where we were at the 'what is this silk good for anyway' stage with the We), we'll toss around the idea for Belegar who would be enthusiastic, we bounce the job around the council before it ends up as the wizard's job, we need to look at finding facilities for it, some of the stuffier dwarf guilds will impose a ruling to undermine us so we need to use non-dwarf labor...
I think we're probably good for space. One of the mountains was a forge district, right? We could probably set up there. We can probably get most of the tools required from the Toolmaker's Guild, if not all of them (that sounds like something we could ask Princess Edda to help us with, as it'd be interfacing with dwarfs not humans, right?) and Prince Kazrik could probably wrangle whatever legal permissions we'd need from the Empire. Prince Gotri is, I'm guessing, who would have the authority over domestic steam tank forces (given that both gyros and artillery are listed under his purview) and probably our best Engineering Guild person to talk to for that side of things.
So let's see...call it maybe six actions?
-get permission(s) to build construction
-set aside space, negotiate contracts, work out supply lines
-import the necessary human engineers to start building the tanks
-vet the engineers and make sure they know how to play nice with dwarfs (I'm assuming this is Mathilde's job)
-deal with a complication that came up I haven't thought of
-organize how they'd be incorporated into K8P's defenses
I presume that the steam tanks would find at least some utility helping to patrol portions of the Underway, given the size and dangers down there, but I don't want to assume that they'd be good for all of it. Still, making ~70% of it safer to patrol seems an attractive proposition to most dwarfs I imagine.
Huh...it occurs to me that just as Mathilde is invalubale to the Empire for her insight into the Karaz Ankor, she could also be invaluable to the Karaz Ankor for her insight into the Empire.
I believe her grasp of Imperial politics are somewhat shakier than her grasp of the politics of the Karaz Ankor.
So, for mapping out the K8P ... there's a simple answer.
This isn't as amazing as the self updating map that lets you know exactly how many of what type of enemies are where at all times, but this should be easy to do.
In the tunnel areas that we don't plan on using ... install a series of walls. Not to stop progress, but to slow progress down. Further, each wall is linked to a Magic Alarm spell, so when the wall is broken by invaders seeking to reuse the same old paths, we know exactly where they are, have a decent idea of which route their going to take, and we'll have plenty of time to redeploy our troops and artillery to meet the invaders. Ideally we've set traps down those paths we can activate remotely as well.
It's not the most amazing solution, the self updating "there's this many of this type of enemy here" map is definitley better .... but if we just want somethign we can throw together in a single action on the cheap, this ain't bad at all.
It's something I'd recommend including anyway. I'd also like to make it so that the MMAPP can take input from all eight forms of Magic Alarm (if that's a consideration) so that we can tap the other wizards to help with alarming all sorts of walls to help keep the hold safe, and that it's something that a visiting wizard can just spell up and attach to the system without having to tinker with much of anything.
Why don't we learn High Nehekharan first before we spend valuable favor on Rune Khazalid?
High Nehekharan seems to be exactly as close to Old One Tongue as Runesmith Khazalid, and it's colored white which I think means there are native speakers in the Empire.
I say this because if Native Speakers we can't convince to teach us would count as white, then Anoqueyan would be white, as I think there are native speakers in Ulthuan and we just can't get them to us it, meanwhile Anoqueyan is blue despite, presumably, still having native speakers just like High Nehekharan.
To me, this means that someone in the Empire translated High Nehekharan.
.....
Alternatively, I'm completely wrong. Definitley possible, I made a lot of assumptions here and it's not like I've read every post.
While I imagine there are persons in the Empire that speak High Nehekaran in the Empire, I don't think they're likely to be the sort eager to share that knowledge with a Grey Magister. In fact, the last likely candidate we encountered I seem to recall burning his school to the ground around him. If you want we could let Alkaline become a talking head once more, but that doesn't really incitivize him to tell us what we want to know, does it?
You know what might be interesting to do? I bet you it wouldn't be hard to start a war between the Dark Elves and the Skaven.
Explain the plan to the Dawi, they'll lend us some DE equipment I'm sure they've got locked away somewhere, and start roaming Skaven territory killing Breeders and/or doing damage while pretending to be a Dark Elf.
If we combo this with the Coin of Lies and shout "This is Malekith's Will" a bunch, that'll help to sell it a lot.
Hit enough Clans and I could easily see a war developing there.
Amusingly I seem to recall that the Skaven and the Dark Elves have one of the better alliances among the destructive factions because they see eye to eye on things like the value of cooperation, the trustworthiness of their trade partners and the worth of keeping your word.
.
