Albion
Truthsayers and Dark Emissaries started showing up in the wider world in 2517, Albion's mists disappeared from 2518-2521. In the current day, Albion is a farcical tall tale. A hidden island the size of a province just northwest of Lyonesse, smack bang in the middle of some of the most frequented waters in the world? Ridiculous.
Apprenticeship
Most would-be Wizards have their magical awakening at 15-20, and it's rare for it to happen outside 10-25. The first third of their approximately ten to twelve year Apprenticeship is the Junior Apprenticeship, spent developing control over the ability to touch the Winds. For some people this means learning how to reach out and touch it, for others it's learning how to stop. They cannot leave the mono-Wind environment of the Colleges without risking Dhar poisoning. They usually get a Master in the middle third of their Apprenticeship when they reach regular Apprentice, which is when they start learning how to actually do things with magic instead of learning how not to be killed by magic. Most spend this inside the College, though it can be spent at any College-controlled location, and they still rely on mono-Wind environments for practice and learning. In the final third of their Apprenticeship, Senior Apprentices have enough control and ability that they can be allowed to leave College property of their own accord. Practically every Senior Apprentice will have a Master, as it's the level when they can pull their weight and properly assist their Master. Some of them join their Master on their missions or get sent on simple assignments, some of them go adventuring on their own, most just use it to explore Altdorf.
Canonicity (for Quest purposes)
Tier 1: The Quest itself is primary canon.
Tier 2: WoQM applies unless it violates Quest canon (which I assume it has or will at some point).
Tier 3: Army Books (6th+), WHFRPG 2e - reasonably safe to assume that the fluff in these is canon unless the Quest or WoQM says otherwise. Game mechanics should not be taken as canon.
Tier 4: Black Library, White Dwarf articles - canonish, but the QM may not be familiar with them and the details are likely to end up varying if they are used.
Tier 5: Licensed video games, Warhammer Armies Project, WHFRPG 3e & 4e - mostly only used for things that aren't otherwise covered in higher tiers, and by default are not canon.
Tier 6: Army Books (pre-6th), WHFRPG (1e) - the Dwarf Priests Know Necromancy Zone. May be looted for ideas from time to time but is usually completely incompatible.
Character Death
If Mathilde dies, the thread will have the opportunity to retroactively write her will, deciding on the distribution of her relics, treasures, and outstanding favours.
College Relations
[Mathilde], and the Grey Order in general, prefer practicality over respectability, so they're not as dismissive of the Amber Wizards - running around in the wilderness is built into their magic so one must make allowances. And they see the Amethyst Order as being like them only more so, doing the unpleasant work that must be done for the good of the Empire.
Obviously the best: Shadow
Good people doing necessary work: Life/Death/Metal
Useful enough that one makes allowances for their funny little ways: Fire/Amber
Dreadful oiks full of high ideals with no practicality whatsoever: Light/Celestial
Dwarves and Magic
Dwarves are resistant to magic, and under normal circumstances are unable to wield it. If magic bypasses this resistance, such as by a Dwarf wielding magic anyway or by being under the influence of 'beneficial' magic, this results in the Dwarf gradually turning to stone. This is irreversible, but if exposure to magic is discontinued it will not worsen on its own. However, if the alternative would be death or permanent injury, some mild petrification could be considered preferable.
Elemental/Mystic/Cardinal
A commonly-used magical theory in the Colleges divides each Wind into three aspects: Elemental, Mystic, and Cardinal. Elemental refers to things that align literally with specific Winds: light for the Light Magic, fog for Grey Magic, fire for Fire Magic, and so on. Mystic refers to concepts that metaphorically align with a Wind, like enlightenment for Light Magic, confusion for Grey Magic, and anger for Fire Magic. Cardinal is when you don't look at the Winds individually, but as a whole, as Elven Mages do - for example, a Light Wizard, a Bright Wizard, and a Gold Wizard would all be able to use their magic to interact with a candleflame to some degree, and thus would consider it either Elementally or Mystically aligned with their Wind, but a High Wizard would use Bright Magic as it is the most appropriate Wind, and consider it to be Cardinally aligned with Bright Magic. It is rarely used by the Colleges, as each Order prefers to casts as wide a net as possible for their Wind.
Elven Religion
The Elven Gods are metaphors for the many facets of the Elven mind and soul.
The Elven Gods are shorthand for the ideals that Elves strive to reach, and the imperfections with which they must grapple.
The Elven Gods are a creation myth, providing a bevy of just-so stories to understand the many wonders of the natural world and the forces that gave rise to them.
The Elven Gods are mythologized taxonomy, the embodiment of the collective efforts of the Asur to impose order and understanding on an inherently chaotic world.
The Elven Gods are a magical force shaped and empowered by the collective psyche of their worshippers.
The Elven Gods are actual beings that once ran around the place, squabbled with each other, and hit Daemons with swords, and They like it when you do nice things for Them.
Elves believe all of the above to be simultaneously true.
Everchosen
Only three Everchosen are known for sure: Morkar, slain by Sigmar, Vangel, slain by the Dwarf King Gromrir Goldfist, and Asavar Kul, often said to have been slain by Magnus the Pious. It's also known that these are the first, second, and twelfth Everchosen, which raises an immediate question: what happened to the other nine? Bretonnia claims that one was slain by Repanse de Lyonesse, and scholars of Nekekhara say that buried somewhere in Settra's titles is a claim that he accounted for one. Some speculate that Losteriksson was an Everchosen that lead Norsca into an intermittent war with Lustria that continues to this day. Some possibly-heretic myths and legends give the names of Gharad the Ox, or Ragnar Painbringer, or Kastragar, or Zorastra, or Harald Hammerstorm. Hochland tries to convince anyone that will listen that their Elector Counts have killed two: one at Ostwald Moor but covered up by a jealous Emperor Jurgen, and one by their Crusader-Count upon his return from Araby, who died while doing so. Some scholars bicker about which of the above should be slotted into the list to give the proper number, but many turn their eyes east or west, arguing that it would be quite arrogant to claim that the Old World has absorbed the full attentions of Chaos for the past two and a half millennia. Who knows what Everchosen may have marched against Cathay or Naggaroth, or sailed against Nippon or Ulthuan?
Familiars
[The familiar bond] gets fuzzy and unreliable with extreme distances. Unless she properly meditates and focuses, it's limited to things like checking on his general mental state.
Familiar Powers
Aethyric Reservoir: The Familiar can absorb a spell targeted at itself or its master, holding it for up to several days and disgorging at will at a new target.
Link of Psyche: The Familiar and the Master have their minds linked, giving them the ability to communicate without words and increasing the cognitive ability and willpower of both as long as they are both conscious.
Lucky Charm: The Familiar and Master both tend to be more fortunate.
Magic Focus: Spells can be amplified through the Familiar, doubling one of its quantitative effects - range, duration, area of effect, and so on.
Magic Power: As long as the Familiar lives, the Master is more magically puissant.
Master's Touch: Spells can be cast through the Familiar - touch spells can target what the familiar is touching, the familiar's eyesight can be used to target spells, and so on.
Master's Voice: The Master can speak through the Familiar's mouth, both as a means of communicating and to cast spells if the Master is somehow prevented from speaking.
Voice of Reason: The Master becomes less prone to miscasting.
Grudges
Dwarven Grudges are serious business, but you're unlikely to stumble into one by accident. Unless a particularly heinous act is involved, the process of a Grudge begins by an Elder of the wronged Dwarf's Clan contacting the person who performed the wrong, informing them of the nature of the potential Grudge, and laying out how they can make amends; this can be negotiated to an extent. It is only if this fails that a formal Grudge is declared; if the matter involves important or powerful people, the Hold's King or his Council may get involved to seek a peaceful solution if the Elder fails. And while Grudges can be inherited, ones against manlings 'soften' when inherited. If your ancestor murdered a Dwarf, they will give you the courtesy of informing you of the Grudge and telling you how you can make amends before they jump straight to vengeance, where they would not have done so for the original perpetrator. None of this process applies to races like Orcs or Goblins or Skaven - those Grudges are recorded immediately, and no peaceful solution is pursued.
Halflings and Chaos
An oft-repeated piece of lore about Halflings is that they are resistant to Chaos. This tends to grow and grow in the retelling. What it actually amounts to is that they are immune to Chaos-induced mutation, and they are resistant to any other negative effects of Chaos corruption. It will not make it safe for them to be exposed to Chaos corruption, only less dangerous. A strong-willed human will still be better able to resist the lure of Chaos than a Halfling of average willpower. This resistance is not generally known, and the Halflings will resent and resist any attempts to weaponize it. They have no intention of being shock troopers or hazmat teams.
Languages
Mathilde can find tutors through the University of Altdorf for Sylvanian, Classical, Tilean, Estalian, Arabyan, Breton, Mootish, Kislevarin, Indie, Cathayan, Nipponese, Norse and Wastelander, which has an arrangement with the Colleges so you can spend College favour there. Tar-Eltharin, Fan-Eltharin, Druhir, Orcish, Grumbarth, Dark Tongue, and High Nehekharan can be learned through the Colleges directly. You might be able to find a Low Nehekharan tutor in Araby. Myrmidian Battle Tongue and Thieves Tongue through the right Priests.
Languages - Anoqeyån
With the possible exception of inside the White Tower of Hoeth, Anoqeyån isn't a living language and isn't taught as one. You might learn fragments from various esoteric topics that use it out of necessity or tradition, but you're very unlikely to ever be able to hold a conversation in it from teachings received in the Old World.
Languages - Arcane Dwarf / Runesmith Khazalid
It probably exists. You can probably learn it. It would count as Runesmith Secrets.
Lord Magister promotion
There is no hard list of requirements for a Wizard to be promoted to Lord Magister, but the criteria considered are loyalty, ability, reliability, and experience, and someone has to tick the box for all four before they'll be promoted. The Magister Patriarch or Matriarch of the College is the one who decides this, and though the promotion needs to be approved by the Supreme Patriarch or Matriarch and the Emperor, this is usually a formality.
Mass Pinging
Please do not mass ping people who have made a valid vote to try to get them to change it under any circumstances.
Mastery
Mastery happens, first and foremost, when I decide it does. That said, my internal process for deciding it is something like this:
a) when a crit happens;
b) when it is, in my opinion, narratively appropriate for a spell to be mastered; and
c) when there's no more pressing issue that the benefits of a crit would be better applied to.
No Trap Options
I do not do 'trap options', which is to say, I won't present voting options that will lead to disproportionate disaster for reasons that the players have no way of knowing. But there are limits to this policy. There are sub-optimal decisions, there are options with perceivable risks, there are potential research dead-ends, and there are times you have to make a decision based on incomplete information. To steal an example from the Wissenland Quest, if there's smoke coming from the mountains, the existence of a '[ ] investigate the mountains' option doesn't tell you that it's necessarily significant. It could be that it's just a charcoal burner or a wildfire or something. But it's not going to be the annual Bloodthirster Barbecue that you stumble into the middle of and instantly get a game-over from.
Norse Dwarf Navy
Norse Dwarves are said to be excellent sailors, and are also said to have been cut off from the rest of the world for millennia. The compromise I've put together to recocncile this is that they used rivers for internal travel and would dominate the Frozen Sea during a rare partial thaw, fending off Norscans and harvesting the sea life for themselves, and their westernmost holds had year-round access to the Kraken Sea that they mostly dominated, but the distance between them and the rest of the Old World and the fact that the entire length of it was along some of the most heavily populated parts of Norsca meant that no non-Norscans ever made the three thousand mile trip in either direction. Nobody had any reason to try - nobody outside the Karaz Ankor had ever heard of the Norse Dwarves, the Karaz Ankor thought they were extinct, and the Norse Dwarves never encountered any non-Norscan human so went pretty understandably isolationist. The Ungruvalk was canonically completed in 2292, and given the circumstances I imagine they took their time to carefully map the new waters and coastlines available to them. To the west was more Norsca, and to the south was small Ungol towns and villages (which would look like Kurgan to Norse Dwarves) until you got most of the way down Kislev's coast to Erengrad. Given time they might have made contact on their own, but the Great War kicked off eight years after the completion of the tunnel and brought about the meeting between the Karaz Ankor and the Norse Dwarves anyway.
Ocean travel
Despite their claims, Ulthuan's prominence does not quite reach all the seas. They have the home field advantage in the Great Ocean, but even there they can't quite suppress the Norscans, Sartosans, Corsairs, and Zombie Pirates. In the Dread Sea between the Southlands and Ind, the Chaos Dwarves are the most dominant presence and almost constantly on the search for slaves and wealth, with Ulthuan seemingly content to focus on containment, blocking their access to other seas with the Fortress of Dawn in the west and the Gates of Calith in the east - though this quarantine is largely symbolic ever since the tunnel to Uzkulak gave the Chaos Dwarves access to the the Great Ocean via the seas north of Norsca. The final ocean is the Far Sea, which is either that of the far east or the far west depending on your perspective, lying between the New World and Cathay. Though the fleets of Cathay and Nippon largely control their coasts, the majority of the waters are dominated by Naggarothi fleets who sail via an underground ocean beneath their continent and into the Far Sea. With Ulthuan's ships having to sail all the way around Lustria just to reach Naggaroth's backyard, the Dark Elves are largely free to reave as they wish. So though ocean voyages have a much larger payoff if they succeed, they also have a much greater initial cost and face just as much danger as the overland routes, if not more.
Printing Presses
The ones that currently exist use hand-carved wood or acid-etched metal plates. Movable type presses will not be invented until about 2510.
Railroads
[Dwarves] sure could [make a kickass railroad]. Each rail and sleeper and spike would be perfectly and lovingly crafted by a highly skilled artisan. But... that's the problem. You don't build a railroad that goes anywhere by having artisans spending a day apiece perfecting each sleeper, especially when those Dwarf-hours are so short in supply and badly needed elsewhere. Railroads require mass production to be viable, and the Dwarves refuse to be anything but artisans.
Ranald
Ranald the Gambler is the god of luck and irony. He is a god of the common people, and most people in the Empire will invoke him when they need luck on their side. If that was all there was to Ranald it wouldn't just be acceptable but expected for you to venerate him. But Ranald has other guises.
Ranald the Night Prowler is the god of thieves, patron of criminals, and veneration to him is tied into the very language of the thieves cant.
Ranald the Deceiver is the god of conmen, charlatans, spies, and sometimes Grey Wizards.
Ranald the Protector is the god of freedom from tyranny, and a patron to rabble-rousers in favour of changes in government in pursuit of said freedom. Every year tax collectors are murdered in His name, and many revolts against Imperial authority have been dedicated to Him.
Ranald is eternally on the knife edge between 'frowned upon' and 'actively suppressed'. Admitting that you worship him is not likely to make you friends.
Ranaldian Saints
Because of how unstructured the Cult of Ranald is, they tend to only be know to the local Ranaldian community. Mathilde only knows about Saint Grey, Saint Grey, and Saint Grey. Saint Grey fought in the Great War Against Chaos, and introduced the worship of Ranald to the nascent Grey Order. Saint Grey planted the idea in Grom the Paunch's mind that he'd find better fights outside the Empire. And Saint Grey rode nonstop across the Empire to bring warnings to Journeymen of Dieter IV's outlawing of the Colleges.
Runesmith Secrets
Anything you are taught of Runes and their nature would involve swearing an Oath to Thungni to only pass on the knowledge, and anything you discover using that knowledge, to Runesmiths and any Apprentices you might have.
Spell Creation - The Burrito Clause
A rule of thumb for any magic ideas: if you could use the exact same justification to create a delicious burrito, you're probably on the wrong track. This applies to spells that might confuse reality about whether or not you are holding a delicious burrito in your hand, to spells that blur the lines between an empty plate and a plate that holds a delicious burrito, and to spells that make reality forget that you have not visited a Mexican food truck recently.
Spell Creation - Traits
Creating a spell from scratch requires a relevant trait. Some traits explicitly allow spells to be created in a general sphere, and can be stretched fairly generously to cover various effects. Any other traits can be used to a much narrower extent, generally only to accomplish something directly relating to that trait. All created spells need to remain within the constraints and themes of Grey Magic, which means that some traits will be completely incompatible with spell creation.
S·T·T·L
Shorthand for 'sit tibi terra levis', meaning 'may the earth rest lightly on you'. Roughly analogous to RIP, and sometimes used in writing to denote that the person being referred to is dead.
Steam Tanks
If you do get an Engineer to reverse engineer them, this will not involve passing on the Dwarven understanding of steam engines to humans, and thus building more will require Dwarf-made parts. Runesmiths will not put Runes on Steam Tanks.
Time Travel
No.
Travel Ranges
Human: 3 MPH for 6 hours/day. 18 miles/day.
Dwarf: 3 MPH for 10 hours/day. 30 miles/day.
Heavy Cavalry: 4 MPH for 8 hours/day. 32 miles/day.
Light Cavalry: 5 MPH for 8 hours/day. 40 miles/day.
Steam-Wagon: 4MPH for 10 hours/day. 40 miles/day.
Steppe Horse: 6 MPH for 10 hours/day. 60 miles/day.
Steppe Horse w/ remounts: 8 MPH for 10 hours/day. 80 miles/day.
Bretonnian Horse: 8 MPH for 10 hours/day. 80 miles/day.
Demigryphs: 10 MPH for 8 hours/day. 80 miles/day.
Winter Wolves: 5 MPH for 16 hours/day. 80 miles/day.
Shadowsteed: 15 MPH for 6 hours/day. 90 miles/day.
Mammoth: 6 MPH for 20 hours/day. 120 miles/day.
Mathilde's Shadowsteed: 25 MPH for 10 hours/day. 250 miles/day.
True Dhar
The term 'True Dhar' has a habit of coming up frequently. According to canonical sources, 'True Dhar' is a label for stable environmental Dhar in contrast to Dhar created on the fly by crushing Winds together. However, it's also often interpreted as a dark mirror to High Magic that achieves much more potency out of Dark Magic than any other method can accomplish, meaning that the magic practiced mainly by Dark Elves is 'truer' (or at least more powerful) than Necromancy or Skaven magic or even Chaos Sorcery. Whether there is merit to these claims would require more familiarity with both Dhar and the nature of Chaos than the Colleges are willing to pursue, but a few alternative and possibly more convincing explanations do exist:
a) Elves are arrogant, and believe their own forms of magic are intrinsically superior to any others.
b) Dark Elves believe implicitly in 'might makes right', so think that bending Dhar to their will is 'truer' than following the actual nature of Dhar.
c) The term is more literal, and simply reflects that the spells of 'True Dhar' do not involve other Winds (as Necromancy does) or Gods (as Chaos Sorcery does).
Ward Saves
'Ward Saves' are a tabletop abstraction that cover any sort of protection that cannot be overcome with brute force, from force fields to divine intervention to just being really good at dodging. This quest does not use the same abstraction. You need to be specific if that's the sort of thing you want to talk about.
Write-Ins
Write-in votes will almost always be possible, even when a '[ ] Other (write in)' option or similar is not among the voting options. The options as presented represent what courses of action are immediately obvious and plausible to Mathilde, not necessarily the best possible solutions, not least of which because the best possible solution might not have occurred to me.
Wutroth
Dwarves have been trying and failing to restore their Wutroth groves for millennia. A Jade Wizard might have an advantage, but the trees grow extremely slow and part of their growth cycle is having their outer bark worn smooth by high-altitude winds, so it can't be accelerated. So it would take their entire life to try once.
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