Can someone remind me why we are bothering to bring human Mooks with us to the Chaos Wastes?
IIRC, the air is full of warpstone dust, that when breathed in for any extended period settles inside the body and begins mutating it.
You're thinking about somewhere a hell lot further north than we're going.(pun intended)
Where we're going, there are significant populations of human nomads living here and not being visibly mutated
while actively trying to mutate, living in the open with no permanent residences.
Where we're going, the actual danger is the random encounter table. It
can happen that the Winds of Magic might surge and we eat a localized Storm of Magic. It can happen that a band of Daemons are further south than they can be permanently sustained by the ambient magic. It can happen that the herd of goats we're buying for dinner are actually the same number of Bray Shamans.
But its not
likely.
In Exalted terms, we're looking at Bordermarches, which may be Middlemarches at times of poor weather.
But we're still incredibly far from where Grimnir fights at the Gates.
We know the Jades are basically a fertility cult that's okay with polyamory, I doubt they care much about titles when it comes to love. The Grey College is extremely strict on itself about impropriety and misconduct to earn the public's trust, they probably do care about unequal relationships but at Lord Magister level they trust you enough to have faith that you won't abuse your rank.
What we know about the Grey College's view of romance is mostly that those who shouldn't romance usually wind up doing romance and those who really should get some romance usually don't.
I'd guess the dedicated, dutiful types will put off romance until they have too many obligations to want to seek it, and the passionate types will soon show their indiscretions really quickly.
Just saw the preview, so I'm way behind the discussion, but: It's a sword.
The elven myth is that someone stole Ulgu's sword, yeah? Well the barrier between the Aether and the physical world is a metaphysical sword. Therefore the college is sitting on top of a titanic sword. Also, Gazul, who separated the Glittering Realm from the Aether, wields a sword. Not a coincidence. But that's just my late-night guess.
Extending from that. The boundary between the Aether and the physical world is Ulgu, the power of boundaries. What divides the realm of concepts from the realm of the physical is thought, which is of both.
Daemons held this Sword, representing control over the ability to manifest, representing daemonic cults allowing them to manifest freely.
Stealing the sword from the daemons meant taking thought out of their hands. Then various parties took this sword and carved out their bits of the boundary in their own ways, and this is simultaneously true because this power can be in many hands at once.
So that's how they got an actual mono-wind environment! I always figured that it was just almost entirely mono-wind achieved by ludicrous fung shui and careful construction, but no, it's there's literally only Ulgu here. Neat.
That does raise the likelihood that the other colleges also live in extradimensional spaces, though they don't have anything even sort of like the justification for it that the Grey College does.
...Huh. We built the Rooms of Calamity inside the borders of each College, right? I wonder if Thorek noticed what was going on while he was in there.
I think its the other way round - they achieved a stable pocket dimension by packing an absurd amount of Ulgu into every inch of the Colleges, down to the stone itself.
Its essentially the same phenomenon as Substance of Shadow, only packed densely enough that its not going to be disrupted by anything.
It does explain how the Grey Battle Wizards just 'borrowed' the room indefinitely though.
That's a fair point, and perhaps parenting isn't the proper term for what Mathilde can offer Eike. She can however, become a wise mentor and close confidant for Eike when she gets frustrated by Wilhelmina's controlling/dominating influence. It would provide a healthy outlet for Eike to honestly express herself without judgement for who she is or wants to be, without a burden on her shoulders to fill the shoes Wilhelmina wants her to. To be encouraged to grow into her own person.
And we have plenty of examples of Mathilde doing such with the Ducklings, prominently with Hubert:
Contrast may be a better term. She demonstrates an alternative between Wilhelmina's domineering control over everything and near neglect of anything else, the subservience of staff and tutors, or the self interest of her birth mother.
Mathilde just wanders through, causes a storm of changes, and wanders off. A fearsome, powerful and unpredictable figure, but evidently trusted and largely hands off except when she's hands on.
Huh. That kind of squashes the "dump vampire bones into the Pit to get rid of them" plan. Just creates litter on the Colleges front lawn.
I imagine that one of the Lord/Lady magisters have to go out occasionally and pick up any Vamp bones, unholy artifacts, or other assorted gribblies lies that survive being forcibly dropped into the realm.
As far as I can tell its not a realm. The Grey College is a realm, the Glittering Realm is a realm. Laurelorn may be a realm. The boundary which the Pit opens into is literally the border between Real and Not Real.
Without Ulgu or some other force employed, the natural state of anything 'dropped' into this state of Is and Is Not experiences similar results to being on the event horizon of a Black Hole.
Splat.
3. It's always one strand of magic that's been compressed into matter. Theoretically, the size isn't supposed to vary. That Teclis had really big ones has caused a lot of grumbling from the College's magical theorists.
Maybe some strands are 'longer'.
Or maybe Teclis just wants people to know he has big stones.
No, it's impossible to get a consensus behind a name for it because everyone disagrees on what it actually is.
Might be all the Ulgu in it. Resists getting pinned down to a specific name!
