Hell, the first bit of proof is what's already standing atop Karag Nar: The Eye of Gazul uses three different winds alongside an undeniably divine rune.
My worry is not so much about finding interested runesmith, but about the cult of Thungni deciding that it seems too close to colleges getting interested in runesmithing and not wanting to get involved in it.
Well, there's windherding for spellcasting and there's windherding for enchantment. Both of them have huge depth. Then we add in things like AV, magic of unknown sources (and therefore where it's unknown what wind/divinity they're based in), some crazy future protagonist who's working on Theurgy in secret, etc.
The problem I have with the original charter is precisely what you seem to like about it, that it's an arbitrary collection of stuff that Mathilde or someone she's talked to recently happens to be interested in. I just don't see how that'll result in a successful branch college.
You sure? Because I very distinctly remember there being an entire issue with openly stating that we would work with them on research, and having to legal fiction our way through it. Like, it would be functionally the same as long as we didn't openly say we were asking them to help study magic, because priests aren't legally wizards and thus aren't allowed to study magic under an imperial aegis. What we could do was play "wink wink, nudge nudge" or have it be held under some other authority.
Note that the phrasing is collaboration with them, not educating them in magic or having them educate us in magic. It never acknowledges that they're using magic at all, so the standard "they're priests, not magic users" defence stays intact. Now it's possible that some folk in the college might choose to exchange magical secrets - but that's not part of either version of the charter.
"Natural Philosophy and Artifacts" is plenty of fig leaf. Just because we in the thread can refer to it as 'random stuff Mathilde or her friends liked' doesn't mean it can't be explained in a reasonable way IC.
For this to become an issue a Sigmarite would have to actually show up with the intention of collaborating with Dwarves, and so far I have seen no evidence that this could possibly be the case.
It should do - the seviroscope is likely to benefit significantly from mages of different colleges collaborating, and its ability to provide a common reference frame would make future collaborations easier.
If that was the charter, it'd be... still pretty broad, but at least a single thing. But it's not. The charter in the leading votes is:
...Okay then. I guess I'm just very paranoid then, because I would totally be giving a proposal like that all the side eyes if it was my job to approve it.
None of this really needs a divine spellcaster beyond hiring one for a turn or two.
Fair enough. Different contexts I suppose. Also probably personal knowledge that Mathilde has a very bad habit of skating past the Articles already, which others probably wouldn't suspect. So yeah, just me being paranoid.
