But there’s also the plektoi at the end too. Having a plektoi in a rampant position facing the viewer, or perhaps facing a pair (one male, one female) of slaves (wearing broken chains) or perhaps the plektoi is facing one slave and one noble instead, would be a good visual to draw eyes and motivate sales. The harrower is an interesting idea and very apropos, but I agree with those who believe it would take more artistic skill to pull off. Images of monsters and human beings draw human eyes more readily than inanimate objects.
@Havenstone: Either way, given all of the time that has been invested into this magnum opus of yours, I seriously suggest finding someone other than CoG’s usual artist(s) to do the artwork. I don’t mean to be rude here, just honest. Higher quality cover art would easily more than pay for itself with respect to sales, especially for a game with this sort of depth.
I strongly disagree with this. Nationalism is not necessarily xenophobia. An MC who takes the reigns of a young nationalist movement should have a great deal of freedom to shape it, to sideline the extremists that inevitably pop up while maintaining the support of the masses, and to get to know potential allies who are non-Shayardenes. Valuing your nation’s cultural heritage and language does not have to mean supporting Brown Shirts. Shayard needs allies. Going it alone and not paying attention to its neighborhood is how Shayard lost the first time around. And even after Karagond is broken, there is still the Halassurq Empire as a threat to justify maintaining the union. If the wall turns out to be too much of an extravagance to maintain without harrowings, then it would be much better to have the depradations of war with Halassur occur in Errets which is more easily defensible, or even better yet, in Halassur, than in Shayard. It’s also better to fight Halassur with allies, than by ourselves.