Not all slaves are meek, even those born into it can and do lead slave revolts as they have certainly done in our own history. Besides “keeping your head down” just leads to your eventual, gruesome death by Harrowing, even should he perish in the Rebellion my mc will relish the thought that he has been spared the Harrowing and thereby denied the Hegemony the use of his blood. As for leading the Rebellion at this point in time I see my mc as a man who has literally nothing to loose and possibly quite a lot to gain.
What being (former)Helot does however do is to get him to make sure this revolution will be a root and branch one, he’s after all only got to fear the old Hegemony’s institutions, particularly the caste system, to the extent that he leaves them unbroken and functioning. Which is why he’ll make sure to cause the demise of the caste system so it doesn’t have the power to enslave anyone ever again.
Well the mc’s got to have potential, they’re a potential Alexander no matter what their background is.
That would only be an option for the noble mc. Helot’s don’t have real houses they aren’t even allowed to have doors, so the concept of privacy is pretty much alien to them. In short avoiding human contact is not an option for the Helot mc.
Which isn’t to say that my character doesn’t have bookish hermit tendencies, just that he’s never been really able to act on them.
There’s an option not to trust Breden as soon as we meet her and we can act on that as soon as she gives us cause.
If you really don’t trust her then you can even drive her away.
Personally, no, my mc doesn’t trust her which makes turning her into an asset that will help him win the war all the sweeter and we’ve got to turn quite a few of our enemies assets against them if we are to have any hope of victory, Breden will hopefully turn out to be the first in a long line of them.
I was who almost obligated@Havenstone to including the I hate Breden options. YOu could hate her him since the beginning now. And kicked her him from the rebellion at the start . So nowadays Breden is not essential. Also many of you seem forget easily that our character DOESN’T HAVE TO stop the harrowing in the square that day. Ghandi never does that because she doesn’t care stupid commoners. You haven’t to be idealistic or hippie. So basically you could be whatever you want from Rasputin to Abraham Lincoln
I have my favorite MC attempt and then fail to stop the harrowing. She’s very intelligent, and rarely gets things wrong, so screwing up something so big has a huge impact on her. It also conveniently makes surviving the winter easier.
Joan of Arc was 17 when she rallied the French and lifted the siege of Orleans. Edward the Black Prince was 16 when he lead his father’s troops to victory in the Battle of Crecy. Alexander the Great was 22 when he successfully invaded the Persian Empire with an army of Greeks.
Others have already mentioned it, but in olden days young people weren’t cosseted and treated like children as they are today. They were given adult responsibilities and were expected to behave like adults. Some crashed and burned, but others flew like eagles. And nothing inspires real confidence like success in the face of adversity.
It has to be that way. The life expectancy was about 35 40. At twelve fifteen most girls were married and it had sense because most of them died before 35 giving birth or because illnesses. If our actual first world social ways were followed in all times human race would be extremely less abundant. Most women would die before having babies.
So game is well portrayed in the age of characters lol a older helot would have a legion of children if game character were older .
Mm. That’s a bit of a misconception. Life expectancy at birth was fairly low because of the number of people who died in childhood, but if you successfully survived to your 20s, you could expect to live to your 60s.
edit: Well. Assuming you’re not living a helot lifestyle, anyway.
It is not misconceptions there is part of old demographics lessons in the college. as a girl a noble only about 20 percent reached menopause. Men is about 40 45. Here there is magic so it could be augmented more true. But society and helotry is bast majority of social structure. The fact you see most of children working and marry at young age .Making society more acceptable to teens taking responsibilities
Hm. Well, it’s true that my data only looks at men; it might be different for women, based on the threat of death when birthing a child. But it certainly wasn’t 40-45 for members of the English aristocracy.
For every era but 1300-1400 (that exception being because of the black death), the expected total lifespan upon reaching age 21 was in the 60s or later. In fact, the numbers are remarkably consistent across the full 500 year span.
Yeah the biggest problem with these stats is that they are based on the ages of the aristocracy, which is a small percentage of the general public. The life expectancy of the peasantry is historically harder to define because of the lack of reliable data. It is understandable to assume a much lower life expectancy for people who work sun up to sun down every day of their lives until they are no longer able.
In my old demographics class the few times I ws not snoring about the material they scanned old data and taxes to more or less have a media in medieval church databases are gold when wasn’t destroyed. Women reached +50 after XVII was an anomaly enough to be recorded . The commoners media before industry revolution were more or least stable at 30-35 of live expectancy .
Well, I suppose I’d have to see your data for myself, Mara. All I can say without it is that those conclusions are not consistent with my own readings.
Well my class recording are a mess and are in Spanish. But the average until 1750 was about 49 less in women. Expectancy is a medium. In fact if a girl reached 15 their probabilities of reach 50 are higher. You have to understand that children’s deaths women giving birth deaths wars and illness. Drop the expectancy a lot. If you reaching x years is probably you live to ne old however the fact most people die sooner makes child grow faster and being considered adults faster. I like this article because explain that you don’t have to die at 30 lol is just a average estimation
That link says essentially the same thing as my point.
The 30-40 year life expectancy is factoring in the relatively high chance of dying in childhood. For those who manage to reach adulthood, they could expect to live substantially longer.
@Havenstone is building his world uniquely - bringing in our own pre-conceptions is a danger. Honestly, my MC doesn’t care what the average life expectancy is - all she knows is her life is most likely going to be short unless she gets very lucky and actually restores the Queenship.
And even then, she most likely will expect the worse.
Then we are saying exactly the same lol with different wording. If you reaching 30 it’s probably you reach 45 . However women tend to having mere mortality between 30 to 40 due birth giving. So until Victorian age men usually lives longer. But most of population never get old so life was faster
The game is now up to 445,000 words in total, and Ch 2 is I think approaching functionality again. Many of you will be happy to know that I’ve decided (per IIRC another of @WulfyK’s suggestions?) to offer a storymode option where you can let Zvad or Breden deal with the numbers and just handle the raids, according to the strategy you prefer.
I’m going to work a bit more on the fourth and final chapter before I post another draft for testing, to make it a bit clearer where all this is going. Thanks for your patience, folks… we’re into the home stretch now.
The advantage of having so few people and almost no children is that Mara will have a much easier time than most of us when managing those few followers and seeing them through the winter.
Personally I hope the mules are less annoying this time around, or I’m gonna go for storymode.
why you remove the only advantage i had in my few people rebelion… i hadn’t breden. Zvad is too stupid to do anything peacefully