Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
No we needed AP to get the Lore of Thungni piety skill at the same time. One of them would be "you learn exactly what caused the rift" the other would be "You learn what caused the rift AND why it was significant."
In universe, I suspect it's the difference between just being handed the information in a report and having someone sit down with you to explain the situation fully, let you ask questions, etc.
 
we would have it for other stuff if people would stop backpedalling on ap research every time we start making progress :(
I mean, we've spent 5 AP on it. One preliminary, two safety, one dwarf rune research, and one "give it to a runelord." The safety and rune research AP didn't directly contribute to our understanding of applications, but it did mean that Thorek was willing to listen and try it, which meant we saw results immediately from the "give it to a runelord" action instead of having to roll to convince him and wait for him to do all the safety study himself even if we succeeded. Then, on the very next turn after we got Thorek to use it, we got assigned to Karag Dum and have taken only one research action since then, the Coin study, which has unlocked an AV action which I think everyone wants to take when we get back.*

Like, the AV tech tree is large. We've spent more actions on it since we got to K8P than on any other single thing. I expect we'll get more applications than the one big one that we hypothesized and were aiming for after we took the initial investigation action, but those applications will require a lot of time to reach, so I'm not worried that we'll run into the problem of low stocks any time soon.

*I've spoken a bit in the past about my sketch for a "Plan Wizzard" where, once we come back to K8P, assuming Belegar gives us something light like he did when we were finishing up Queekish, we jam three research actions: divine-AV interaction, tongs with coin, and either something else AV or something new like "study vampire skulls." Just do a ton of blue-sky research in the hopes that one of them a productive research path for us to follow up on.
 
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What do we expect it to be useful for? How would it be used? What makes it different than, say, some wyrmblood we happen across?

I could see it:

supercharging the Coin
Being used to pay Ranald to do things
Being able to be moulded into either a divine servant or other spirit, either by Ranald or by using the Protector Coin face to make a Dammerlichter shaped mould we can pour it into.
Being used as a ritual magic ingredient
Being used as an enchanting ingredient
Being used to make spiritual prosthetics
Being used to strengthen a soul

loads of things.
 
So... can I convince anyone else to do vote for the group painting of the founding members of the duckling club.

Considering that a lot of them might not make it back.
 
I could see it:

supercharging the Coin
Being used to pay Ranald to do things
Being able to be moulded into either a divine servant or other spirit, either by Ranald or by using the Protector Coin face to make a Dammerlichter shaped mould we can pour it into.
Being used as a ritual magic ingredient
Being used as an enchanting ingredient
Being used to make spiritual prosthetics
Being used to strengthen a soul

loads of things.

The thing is it could be used for many things, but none of those besides selling to dwarfs is available right now. If it were a finite quantity keeping more of it back would make sense, but it's not. AV is a self replenishing resource and seeing as we are going off to rescue people from the Wastes, knowing what kind of transgressive magics they were practicing is important, hell it's important even if they are dead since there might be traps or escaped experiments around
 
Being used as a ritual magic ingredient
This has already been shot down:
Mathilde's research strongly suggests that the Vitae would be useless as an ingredient or ritual component. The way it would react to being in a potion or a ritual is by detonating.
Our first test of AV strongly suggested a specific application. We realized that one. Currently we're in the "casting about for a similarly promising lead" stage: there's a lot of cool stuff it might do, but nothing we're pretty sure it will do, so we are probably multiple research actions from further applications.
So... can I convince anyone else to do vote for the group painting of the founding members of the duckling club.

Considering that a lot of them might not make it back.
I've changed my vote from No Purchase to the portrait. I think it's a lovely idea, and encourage other people to do likewise.
 
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A Crate of Repeaters
@BoneyM : a little treat for you :)

Nah clearly its a crate full of crates of repeaters.
A Crate of Repeaters

"A crate full of Repeaters?" the sailor asked. Though they only sailed rivers, no one had dared called them otherwise. "I haven't seen one myself yet! A whole crate of 'em! Let's take a look!"

Though less enthusiastic, the navigator (yes, navigators were needed even when just sailing down a river, and explaining why every time he was asked what he did for a living was torture) had to admit that his friend's enthusiasm was rather contagious. "Sure, I guess. Why not?"

With a slight heave, the top of the crate was lifted off. And before them was...well, a memorable sight, no doubt.

"Ah! Too much light-light! Crate not meant to be opened yet, no-no!" exclaimed one.

"Man-things too hasty; the light burns-burns!" shouted another, seemingly in pain.

"Stupid man-things, you supposed to open crate-crate only when bandit-thieves attack! Close the crate-crate back up, yes-yes!"

...

The sailor gently closed the crate back up. He looked at the navigator. The navigator looked at him.

"A whole crate of 'em," the sailor said, now with considerably less enthusiasm.

"Not what I expected, either," the navigator responded, conciliatory. "But if we get waylaid by any bandits, I suppose they'll come in handy."

"Yeah, I suppose," the sailor agreed with a sigh.
 
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So... can I convince anyone else to do vote for the group painting of the founding members of the duckling club.

Considering that a lot of them might not make it back.

Sure, sounds nice.

[X] [LIBRARY] Dark Lands: Extensive + Esoteric Imperial (200gc), Marauder Tribes: Extensive Imperial + Extensive Dwarven (200gc), Karaz Ankor: Esoteric Dwarven (150gc, 4DF), Enchanting: Esoteric Imperial (50gc, 2CF)
[X] [DWARF] Runesmith briefing on Karag Dum (2 gallons AV)
[X] [COLLEGE] Aqshy item emulating Dragon Breath (20 Favor).
[X] [PURCHASE] Commission a painting of the duckling club together from an artist.
 
[X] [LIBRARY] Dark Lands: Extensive + Esoteric Imperial (200gc), Marauder Tribes: Extensive Imperial + Extensive Dwarven (200gc), Karaz Ankor: Esoteric Dwarven (150gc, 4DF), Enchanting: Esoteric Imperial (50gc, 2CF)
[X] [DWARF] Runesmith briefing on Karag Dum (2 gallons AV)
[X] [COLLEGE] Aqshy item emulating Dragon Breath (20 Favor).
[X] [PURCHASE] Commission a painting of the duckling club together from an artist.

The painting is nice, too bad the ambers can't be there for it. It'd have been cool for every wizard of the reconquest to be in it.
 
Potentials are interesting... Let's see:

supercharging the Coin
Being used to pay Ranald to do things
Being able to be moulded into either a divine servant or other spirit, either by Ranald or by using the Protector Coin face to make a Dammerlichter shaped mould we can pour it into.
Being used as a ritual magic ingredient
Being used as an enchanting ingredient
Being used to make spiritual prosthetics
Being used to strengthen a soul

Supercharging the coin- I could see this, but I don't expect it to absorb into the coin or to change into 'divine' energy directly... More like I'd expect Ranald to utilize the decomposition to create a number of spells from the remnant winds. Given the scale of power stolen from mork vs the scale of power held in AV, I wouldn't expect more than a 1/10 effectiveness activation? Not sure how to test this, since however Ranald uses it is likely to be concealed from us- he likes to play slight of hand games, I bet.

Paying Ranald to do things- I believe this will backfire. Not the right sort of relationship. Testing is potentially dangerous...

Moulding it into a divine servant- practically, how would this be done? Easy to say conceptually, but doing this without touching it with magic is... Like, maybe make a physical mould and pour AV into it while praying? Summon and capture a wisp of a dammerlichter apparition and drown it in AV hoping nothing explodes? I'll vote for this if you can lay out a plausible path, but most of the needed tools are disallowed by AV's reaction to magic.

Ritual Magic ingredient- covered above, WoQM.

Enchanting Ingredient- back to my original question: How, physically, would this be incorporated into an enchanted object without exploding? Maybe mix it into a dye, or soak an object in it and hope that it will be absorbed enough to change state in a way that doesn't decompose? I suppose you could use the decomposition to force a material into a mold and have it carry some resonance from that... Or maybe run it into waaaghsoak mushrooms and use them as a stabilizing agent, to allow an AV-soaked core to an object? Still not sure how to get around the explosion problem.

Spiritual proethetics- filling an empty shell of an arm with AV and hoping? This seems more dangerous than most options, given that emotions decompose AV faster than magic.

Strengthening a soul- How? We know that drinking AV only causes you to be gassy, tattoos seem explosive, and we can't exactly reach sideways to play with our soul in a direct physical manner. We know soul can absorb winds, so the most straightforward way to do this would be to decompose AV into a soul-absorbable form, but then we end up with just a wind-saturated environment which we've already got data on.

Like, there are a bunch of blue-sky possibilites, but most of them are missing tools or principals that would make them practical. We can look at strengthening souls after we figure out the tools and techniques needed to write runes on them, I'm betting that will give us an practical path?
 
You do, however, have the pleasure of reading that attempts at banditry on the Moot's portion of the Aver had a swift and brutal response, including a written apology to the town of Scheibbs for the Halflings not being able to fish all the corpses out of the river before they bobbed downstream.
I'm like 99% sure that this is a power move against Scheibbs. Make sure that they remember to keep their anti-halfling thoughts out of the Moot, since both Averland and Stirland would quite like to conquer it.
 
So, what's the rationale for the Dragon Breath bit on the college vote?
I'm not veekie (and I have yet to cast any vote on the College item), but here's his posts on the subject:
I'm thinking strongly of adjusting the Explosion item, in that after thinking about it, what we actually want out of its functionality is a Dragon's Breath item, rather than explosion.

We want an item which would blast open an escape route in a cone so we can summon Shadowsteed, mount up and ride off into the horizon through the hole, not destroy all our equipment before we try to replicate Regimand's feat of chain casting Smoke and Mirrors to get out of the rest of the army.

Wand of Fuck Everything In That Direction essentially.
As per previous discussion, I've realized that we're much better served with a cone of fire, not a spherical explosion. Why?
-A sphere is almost always wasting some of its kill unless the target area is literally surrounded by enemies. Which would be a bad position to be in.
-A cone achieves most of the breakout and anti-enemy effects of the sphere, but more easily avoids catching allies in the line of fire.
-A cone, being directional, is a far more desired weapon inside a cave complex of some form, unlike an explosion, which is likely to result in a fatal loss of structural integrity.
-A cone is the ideal shape for establishing a getaway against pursuing enemies, which would naturally assume a line or arrowhead formation and be readily hit by the whole thing.
-A cone is an effective shape for penetrating through enemy lines of absurd(e.g. fanatics) or unbreakable(e.g. unnatural abominations) morale, as it'd be able to punch a gap clean through all but the thickest of lines.
-A cone is much easier to target for an item that cannot interface with your mind. A sphere must be either centered on the caster, or launched and exploding upon a struck surface. This is important in a fast paced fight.

And of course, the most likely encounters out there are not daemons, but hostile nomads. This is why an Aqshy item is better than a Hysh item, we're far more likely to find the former more useful.
 
A guy in the story (long before the actual book happened) got god-like powers for a short time and tried to work with them.
He moved the planet too close to the star it orbited and since he noticed that too late to put it back in a better orbit and fix the issue he originally wanted to solve with that act, he instead quickly created a heavy and constant cloud-cover to keep the increased effects of the sunlight at bay.
It kinda worked in that the planet remained inhabitable, but eliminated sunny days forever.

At least that's what I remember from the top of my head.
Yeah, well the Old Ones and the first-generation slann did that shit without fucking it up, presumably by doing the math first. So there. :p
 
Well, sure, but Dragon's Breath is an FC spell. @edit: It's just named "Breath Fire", and IIRC was incredibly intense. Like, S8 intense, at the cost of having to emanate from the caster. A good choice, yeah.

@BoneyM I suppose there's an implied (Super) when we attach that favor cost to our order? @edit: That question made more sense when I thought the FC spell was named that. So, what's being ordered is a severely scaled up Breath Fire spell, correct?
 
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So, reading through my old books again, @BoneyM?

Can you add a Research action, before or after BOOKBOON, to try and get into contact with Lord Magister Heinz Meissner and his Library and Repository of Wisdom and Magic (The official, well known, open to any magister, part at least)The same way we have an action to talk and set up a book exchange with the cult of Verena.

if its the new lore Meissner, it would be a very interesting contact for research into... well, spoilers for people who like finding things out in-story.

if its old lore.... well, that's interesting in a different sense, but still delicious, delicious plot...
 
[X] [DWARF] Runesmith briefing on Karag Dum (2 gallons AV)
[X] [COLLEGE] Aqshy item emulating Dragon Breath (20 Favor).
[X] [PURCHASE] Commission a painting of the duckling club together from an artist.
 
*checks favour totals*

[X] [COLLEGE] Aqshy item emulating Dragon Breath (20 Favor).

I'm indifferent to everything else, but this is something we can afford (we'll have 11 favour left after this) and that should hopefully work well as a general 'fuck you and everything in your general direction' weapon of last resort. There's a not inconsiderable chance we won't use it on the expedition, but this is one of those things where if you need it you really need it.
 
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