Teclis stripped out all the 'without being shaped by them parts' to speed up the learning process, grasping that many humans would think that gradually becoming a living avatar of a single Wind is rad as hell, rather than a tragic failure.
Wizards actually can use multiple Winds, and can even do so safely (or as safely as magic gets) as long as they don't have Arcane Marks and they're careful to 'detox' from one before using another. It's just rarely done because you're almost starting from scratch with each new Wind, and if you ever get an Arcane Mark that's it, you're locked in to whatever Wind gave it to you. It's not something that can really be researched, it's already a well-understood phenomenon.
In contrast, Elven magical techniques are based around using Winds without being shaped by them. This is a very long process and requires mastering one's emotions, which is why conventional Elven wisdom said it couldn't be taught to humanity. Teclis stripped out all the 'without being shaped by them parts' to speed up the learning process, grasping that many humans would think that gradually becoming a living avatar of a single Wind is rad as hell, rather than a tragic failure. The downside is that it makes any human High Magic virtually impossible, as they'd have to reach a mastery of all eight Winds separately and without ever acquiring an Arcane Mark just to get started, all within a standard human lifetime.
Of course, the flipside is, based on what he's telling us. "Pure mastery of any one of the Winds is no less potent than any other route of magic". I mean, nobody's going to tell me an Emperor Dragon is going to lose against an Archmage just worthy of the title in a spell duel just because the Emperor Dragon is only using one Wind.
High Magic's great strength seems to me that the harmonic resonance amplifies the effect, but most of the effects of High Magic feel really... Generic? It's about uplifting the forces around you for the most part, with tailored spells for other purposes based on what the particular Archmage has focused on. It's about making the world right as opposed to some other effect--potent and wide reaching, but what seems to make it seem like a 'Do Everything' button seems to be because 'By definition, if you can cast High Magic, you can cast every other Lore'.
Serial Casting (The constant theorized 'Ulgu Tongs' method) is an interesting possibility, but it seems more valuable as a kicker to your own thematics by boosting a given spell with a thematically relevant kicker from another Wind. It's just too hard to use to reach the effects of other Winds by doing the equivalent of ricochet shots in pool, and doesn't really give you greater effect in and of itself.
And I suppose that any High Magic technique for extending one's own lifespan is either too advanced to learn in time or inherently corrupting because that's how Warhammer rolls (or both!), yeah?
And I suppose that any High Magic technique for extending one's own lifespan is either too advanced to learn in time or inherently corrupting because that's how Warhammer rolls (or both!), yeah?
Well, it's that a Human either becomes something other or dies within eighty years or so.
Mathilde's well on her way to becoming some kind of avatar of Ulgu, which once complete would make her functionally ageless. That seems to me the final point of the quest though.
And I suppose that any High Magic technique for extending one's own lifespan is either too advanced to learn in time or inherently corrupting because that's how Warhammer rolls (or both!), yeah?
It's theoretically possible for a once-in-a-generation genius to speedrun all eight Colleges and then have enough lifespan left to somehow learn High Magic from someone, but that would mean that the once-in-a-generation genius is spending their entire life rolling the dice against the mathematical near-certainty of acquiring an Arcane Mark at some point during those eight educations, and if they don't get extremely lucky the entire time, they've wasted decades of their life for nothing.
You look at the Shaman, weighing him up. "My Clan," you eventually say, "will be travelling through here on a pilgrimage to the Blessed Lands, north of what you say is Yusak territory. We do not wish to expend our strength before we arrive. We would be willing to pay for safe passage through Dolgan land and for cattle to feed us on our journey, and then again as we return, in silver or gold or amber."
The Shaman nods. "It is wise to not seek conflict with the Kurgan on the steppe, just as we would not seek conflict with the Norscan on the waves. How many mouths have you to feed?"
"Eight hundred, some hungrier than others due to their form."
He looks curious. "You travel with your Blessed? That will be a sight to see. Remain here." The Shaman remounts his horse and rides back to the other Dolgans, hopefully only to confer on a reasonable price. You do your best to suppress any signs of nerves as he returns back. "Silver," he says as he dismounts once more. "It spends easiest." He names a price for passage that would be challenging for a Norscan clan but trivial for a Dwarven Karak, as well as a set of prices for livestock that seem, if your mental conversion is correct, no dearer than an Averland stockyard.
You nod thoughtfully. "I will take this price back to my Clan," you say. "We will arrive in the second half of the coming spring, carrying both steel and silver."
The Shaman nods, not at all taken aback by the warning. "May the Gods find your efforts entertaining."
---
The way Kragg told you of the Rune of the Unknown and the way you've been using it so far is that it means you don't need a scabbard, freeing up space on your back for your newly-turned staff. The only other utility it was designed for was that it would prevent you from being disarmed. However, there are many more possibilities to the Rune than that. A great deal of the sword training you have undertaken is focused on bypassing defences and recovering your guard after a swing, both of which are difficult when swinging what amounts to a large and heavy piece of metal around. Both of which could become much less so if you learn how to apply the Rune of the Unknown properly.
Your early experiments with the Rune proved that all momentum that Branulhune possesses is lost (or possibly harnessed) when the Rune is activated, even if it's just 'flickered' for an instant. This should allow for more rapid changes in direction, especially since Kragg's signature Rune ensures that the blade always hits with sufficient force, making preserving momentum less important.
[Developing the momentum dump: Martial, 17+23=40.]
It turns out to be significantly easier said than done. You've spent a not inconsiderable fraction of your life learning, honing, and retaining techniques built on certain assumptions about physics and biology. Being able to make most of the momentum of a swing vanish with your blade undermines every one of those assumptions and you're forced to start from the very basics, running yourself through the basic drills and forms and forcing yourself to pay attention to what had become second nature. Something as simple as a pattern of alternating cuts uses a figure-eight pattern to let the momentum from one swing carry over to the next, which is much more efficient than using muscle force to negate that momentum and then start it afresh from a new direction, but is less efficient than vanishing the blade at the most downward point and having it reappear in your hands when they're in position to begin the next swing. Complicating matters further is the jerk of summoning an unmoving sword into moving hands, which takes a lot of getting used to.
In the end it takes you an entire month of self-study and adaptation to rebuild your sword style to incorporate this new technique, leaving no time to even scratch the surface of the other possibilities.
It's been almost eight years since you constructed the enchantment in your robes, but even though said enchantment has prevented most of the wear and tear that clothing would typically see after that much daily use, it's still come time for you to replace it. Since the time you made it you've become a better Wizard, a better Enchanter, and your knowledge of the spell Aethyric Armour specifically has evolved into an effect that shields your muscles from fatigue even as it shields your skin from blades. Unfortunately the local spider-silk industry is still mired in technical difficulties, so with the Expedition rapidly approaching and filled with the perverse certainty that every one of those technical difficulties will evaporate as soon as you complete your new robes, you settle for wool. Though you are quite pleased that you managed to get your hands on a bolt of naturally silver-grey wool, a rarity in this modern age of animal husbandry that has lead to pure-white sheep becoming the norm.
You spend some time consider the Helldrake scales that have been gathering dust ever since you acquired them on impulse in Barak Varr. The only mention of them you can find in your library is in the books on dragons, and even there more ink is spent on speculation on the nature of their relation to 'true' dragons than on their properties or inclinations. Still, the few paragraphs reveal to you that they're known primarily for being bred by the Elves of Naggaroth for war, and for such unbridled ferocity that their handlers are often unable to prevent them from attacking each other in the heat of battle. That gives you something to work with. Scales are, of course, a good fit for a component in defensive enchantment, but a nature of unflagging aggression is something you might be able to tap into for tirelessness.
That's the theory, anyway. You've come a long way since your first clumsy attempts to bind magic into permanent enchantment, and part of that is a healthy respect for planning ahead. The health of that respect begins to suffer quite a bit as every thaumaturgic equation runs right into a brick wall, as you try to put your instincts into numbers and run into mathematical insistence that what you're trying to do is impossible. Days evaporate in a blur of numbers and symbols and stacks of reference materials until you finally reach your limit and shove the stacks over in frustration.
Gentle shoves, of course, and onto rugs. Even if they are being obstinate, those books are far from cheap.
It isn't necessarily hubristic to bypass the preparations, you tell yourself. Putting magic to paper is a much less developed art than putting magic into reality. Every Magister of the Colleges is capable of a number of things that have no theoretical underpinnings proving them possible. There comes a time when a Wizard simply must put aside the books, start throwing magic around, and see what happens.
[In the workshop: 74+28+20(Room of Dawn and Dusk)+10(Enchanter)+5(Library: Enchantment)=137.]
[Integrating power stone: 48+28+20(Room of Utter Neutrality)+10(Enchanter)+2(Library: Power Stones)=108.]
[Integrating scales: 10+28+20(Room of Utter Neutrality)+10(Enchanter)+4(Library: Dragons, halved)=72.]
Success, it is said, requires no explanation. It may not be required but an explanation would be nice, you think to yourself as you're torn between pride and frustration that you couldn't even begin to put to paper why those painstaking equations were proven so thoroughly wrong by the end results. Guided by instinct and Ulgu, you've managed to rather literally weave your unique form of Aethyric Armour into your robes, anchored by the Helldrake scales you've turned into pauldrons and powered by the pearl of Crystal Mist, taking the appearance of a jewelled brooch though it's quite firmly fastened in place.
Truth be told, you're not entirely happy with the individual elements; the Crystal Mist seems to be reasonably integrated as a power source but its full potential as a lodestone of altered reality has a lot more to offer, and the scales are about as well-utilized as an atlas being used to pin down one corner of a map. But the overall effect is much greater than the sum of its parts: any mundane blade would shatter long before it could mar the weave of the robe, and a tap of the brooch extends the effect around your full body while filling your muscles with vigour. The length it lasts is frustratingly inconsistent, seeming to vary based on time of day, the level of light around you, and another variable you suspect to be the phase of the moon, but even under the worst of conditions it lasts fifteen minutes - about five times the duration of the spell cast conventionally. And you're quite pleased with the imposing touch the scales add to your silhouette.
---
You return once more to your many chalkboards, and spend a day carefully copying everything down into notebooks before erasing the notes that lead to the eleven symbols you've reduced Skywalk to. You've got the most basic component of your 'Fog Path' spell completed, but there's more to a sword than just the blade. Even in this energy-efficient form it would take an unfeasible amount of power to create an entire surface for prolonged periods out of this spell, so you don't just need a mechanism to deploy it over and over, you need a way to identify where it must be deployed.
You spend a great deal of time wrestling with a single question: can Ulgu itself recognize the difference between surfaces? It could tell a well-illuminated surface from a dim one, sure, but determining material properties is much more in the realm of Chamon, and determining properties of soil specifically is Ghyran. Rock and soil have no inherent properties that would resonate with Ulgu enough to use the Wind itself as the means of identifying where the spell is needed.
And that's the result you're stuck on until you break the question down a step further. Inspired, perhaps, by Panoramia's chatter about the many different components you'd previously lumped under a collective label of 'dirt', you realize that Ulgu can't tell whether a surface is stable, but it can tell whether a surface is uniform. The caster will still need to determine whether the surface itself is suitable for passage, but if pointed at a suitable surface, it can identify what isn't entirely of that surface. And by that mechanism, it can identify the trouble spots. Mud? Soil interrupted by water. Pothole? Stone interrupted by gravel. Ditch? Grass interrupted by air. Even thin ice - though Gods forbid the Expedition ever has to travel over ice - could be identified by Ulgu recognizing that the ice is interrupted, just under the surface, by water or air. And once identified, the nature of those interruptions - being neither one thing nor the other - means they can also act as anchor points for the overarching spell, from which the individual iterations of Skywalk can sprout.
Days turn to weeks as you painstakingly construct this identification framework and make sure it stands up to any imaginable scenario. You visit Gotri and ask him and his Engineers of every obstacle they've ever encountered in getting a siege weapon from point A to point B. You visit Kragg and Thorek and ask if they've ever encountered any particularly difficult obstructions when it comes to getting their Anvils to commanding positions. Francesco contributes stories of wagon break-downs, Oswald his father's adventures with Steam Tanks, Soizic every hazard she has ever encountered or heard of that could lame a horse. At each stage you make tweaks to the design to cover more and more obscure edge cases.
Now all that stands before you and a finished spell is the final component: the way the spell travels from the Wizard to the anchor-points.
---
The final project for the year is the second half of paper-writing for the results of the Warp Lightning experiments you undertook with Adela. Unfortunately, it proves to be far from a culminating high note, as the two of you struggle to bring to bear any insight that hasn't already been documented in the scarce few books the Colleges have on the subject. It's a struggle to fill an entire paper, but in the end you think the result just manages to be worth the effort it takes. It might not bring anything new to the table, but it does present a thorough and detailed description of something usually only seen in flashes across a battlefield. And perhaps more importantly, Adela seems much more satisfied than you with the end result, and practically radiates satisfaction at having put her name out there as a budding scholar of esoteric sciences - especially one linked to an already-established figure of some prominence.
Mathilde has begun a romantic relationship with Panoramia of the Jade Order. What are her future intentions in this realm?
[ ] [ROMANCE] Continue a monogamous relationship with Panoramia.
[ ] [ROMANCE] Seek a romantic relationship with a second partner.
[ ] [ROMANCE] Break up with Panoramia in favour of seeking a relationship with a new partner.
[ ] [ROMANCE] Break up with Panoramia in favour of remaining single.
If Mathilde seeks a new partner, who is your preference for that partner?
[ ] [ROMANCE] Magister Johann
[ ] [ROMANCE] Elector Countess Roswita van Hal
[ ] [ROMANCE] Baron Anton Kiesinger II
[ ] [ROMANCE] The Ice Dragon of Karag Zilfin
[ ] [ROMANCE] Chief Bombardier Oswald Oswaldson
Thus concludes the work Mathilde performed these past months, but not every waking moment was filled with work. With whom did she spend her free time? The four with the most votes will be chosen, not counting those locked in.
[+] The Wizards of Karak Eight Peaks (locked in)
[+] Social interaction initiated by someone else (locked in)
[+] EIC Reports (does not cost a choice)
Fellow Wizards
[ ] Gretel, who's apparently spending her newly-earned wealth to make herself at home.
[ ] Hubert, as he settles in to his niche with Ulrikadrin.
Karak Eight Peaks Notables
[ ] Elder Hluodwica, High Priestess of Esmerelda and civilian leader of the Eight Peaks Halflings.
[ ] Francesco Caravello, proud Viceroy of the Undumgi.
[ ] Sir Ruprecht Wulfhart, leader of the frontier town of Ulrikadrin.
[ ] Cython, to discuss the Gods of Kislev and the Kurgan.
[ ] Qrech, to discuss his newly-acquired diploma from the University of Altdorf.
Foreign Relations
[ ] Stirland, to see for yourself how the war against Sylvania is progressing.
Friends Abroad
[ ] Julia, to see what she has gotten up to as Stirland's most experienced spy master.
[ ] Eike Hochschild, to get to know your future business partner.
[ ] The Dolgan, to get to know the people of the western Steppes who will hopefully be feeding the Expedition.
Following Up
[ ] The Amber College, to check in on the salamanders.
[ ] The Gold College, to see what's become of their research into Skaven technology.
[ ] Follow up on your donation of the Skaven organ-vat, and see what has been made of it.
[ ] Pay a visit to your fief, to see if anything has changed. It probably hasn't.
[ ] Other (write in)
- There will be a two hour moratorium.
- It would be possible to try the robes enchantment again, but trying to disentangle the scales and power stone risks destroying one or both of them.
- As always, new suggestions for social actions are welcome. They're most likely to be added if they're a shared activity that allows for interesting interaction or a specific topic to be discussed, rather than 'be social at [person]'.
- This is a bit more abrupt than I'd preferred the romance process to be, but it appears that on this matter a choice must be made between voter agency and thread civility.
- Speaking of civility: I do hope that drastic measures won't be needed to maintain it during the coming debate.
- If Mathilde seeks a polygamous relationship, it will be with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved.
- The romance vote assumes that a voter's preferred romance partners are the same whether they are pursued polygamously or monogamously. My apologies if this is not the case for you, but it is required to keep voting straightforward.
Eh... we couldn't have all good rolls all the time. About the robes I think we should use them as is for now and make new ones after the expedition from scratch, hand the inferior version in to the Colleges for favor (unlike a staff they don't need to be tuned to the wizard so we should get some return)
Of course, the flipside is, based on what he's telling us. "Pure mastery of any one of the Winds is no less potent than any other route of magic". I mean, nobody's going to tell me an Emperor Dragon is going to lose against an Archmage just worthy of the title in a spell duel just because the Emperor Dragon is only using one Wind.
We're now far enough along to have solid timelines on these efforts. Branalhune Style has 4 individual aspects and probably one or two actions to synthesize a style once the parts are worked out. Fog Path looks like it needs one more action. I think that's manageable.
[ ] [ROMANCE] Continue a monogamous relationship with Panoramia.
easy pick for me
well. i guess we have one more action to finish the spell. about what i expected, though worse than i hoped.
probably worth the second overwork action next turn to finish the spell, continue with our new sword style, and join the expedition early.
the sword style probably has 3 to 4 actions to upgrade it at this point. depends on if we roll well on integrating the aspects or continue with mediocrity.
Staying well away from the Romance vote but these are the social votes I would be interested in
[ ] Cython, to discuss the Gods of Kislev and the Kurgan.
For obvious reasons, it might help and can't hurt to throw a dragon at the kurgans
[ ] Eike Hochschild, to get to know your future business partner.
I've been voting for this for long, curious how the kid is doing and how Mathilde will speak to a non-boring youngster
[ ] The Dolgan, to get to know the people of the western Steppes who will hopefully be feeding the Expedition.
Because it's interesting worldbuilding and I would like to know just how the actual societies of Chaos worshipers work, maybe some hints as to how they see the Winds
[ ] Follow up on your donation of the Skaven organ-vat, and see what has been made of it.
It's been there for literal years, might as well have a look.
