Thoroughly enjoying the conversation, and will only pop in on a couple of points:
Well, once you’ve gone and built your capital on and around a floating mountain, it’s bloody difficult (and embarrassing) to let the thing drop.
While much of your analysis captures the mindset well, @P_Tigras, I don’t think this does justice to how a highly stratified caste society judges the people at the bottom. (Maybe because my writing so far hasn’t done justice to it either!) Most nobles would have the default assumption that even a thoroughly dumb or corrupt noble is still naturally superior – ethically and intellectually – to the helotry. (It helps that most of them meet very few helots, and almost always on terms that reinforce the prejudices.)
A fairly open-minded noble might get as far as to think that the smartest helot beats out the dumbest noble; you can be sure that Horion Leilatou believes that lots of his acquaintances are dumber than a smart helot. But to think that the average helot is smarter than a dumb noble is a pretty big shift from the conventional wisdom.
The standard answer on this (to anyone digging into that dangerous bit of history) would be that the Karagonds identified the lower-natured people and gave them work fitting their telos. Since the helots were by nature ill-equipped to learn to feed themselves, the Thaumatarch thereby saved the realm from the frequent famines that had been its lot before the helots were separated from the yeomanry.
And while we’re talking about avoiding famine, the people you’ll find you need most are the agricultural Theurges rather than the noble landowners of the big estates – the latter (and their stewards and yeoman reeves, who in most cases will be the ones who manage the agriculture) have been dependent on the former for some time now.
Ah, damn… now do I have to write a choice of species for the ROs too?
Too much fun not to write. Should be up there now.
I want to make sure there are some special options only available to helots and others to aristos. But, yep, it does.
It means you’ll neither alienate nor inspire the devout and the skeptical people out there in the world. And I think the religions of the gameworld were listed a thousand-odd posts ago.
It’s more an early introduction to some noble characters who you’ll meet in Grand Shayard in game 2.
But they’re not Hegemonic authorities. They’re part of the fabric of Shayardene society; attacking them may well be justified, but it’s a different kettle of fish than going after Telones and Alastors.
In answering the question, Linos is speaking for the elite priests of the noble families who travel with them to Shayard; his implication is that most other priests don’t encounter enough Theurges to form an opinion other than the one they’re given.
Oh boy, do they ever. If you spend more time with the de Tomans in Game 2, you can see them. 
This old man says you totally are, and I’ve been around long enough to know.
Now back to writing Yed Gaverne, the man who crashes into your camp having spent a year in the Xaos-lands…