Several nobles are mentioned as having ancestral family swords so maybe it’s a sign of nobility.
The noble MC can get a sword if events play out correctly … if I remember there are a couple of opportunities with the noble MC…
Both the noble MC and his father have swords (though the MC may leave his behind) and de Fririac (Compassion MC follower) also has a sword.
My guess is because
a) We’re young and, even if we play a noble, not all that well developed, as in traveled and educated.
b) We can evolve more skill, or essentially multi-class beginning with the next game, I believe, but that will also prevent us from ending up like Merlin, Genghis or Ghandi/Buddha and doing so means we risk becoming a jack of all trades, but master of none. So I guess this can be summed up as game balance.
c) Having less personal skills, or power forces us to face the more difficult aspects of reality and its uncomfortable “truths” sooner. Of course with the new chapter 2 we already have to do that, but this is still our small and relatively friendly band of outlaws, just wait till we meet the true Talleyrands. 
Kind of reminds me of that old “Hidden Agenda” game, where reality also always seems to fall (way) short of our vision.
Feh, who needs a sword, it’s a hallmark of either backwards Shayardene nationalism, or like my our character can already say to Simon, mystical Karagond superstition hiding as “tradition”.
Aside from magic/theurgy I guess the weapon my character really wants to get his hand on is a gun or rifle. A new and more technological, kind of weapon for the new age my character envisions.
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Wait a minute, let me get my archer face on…
Better.
In a magical dark/low fantasy-esque world as this one is the only guns you’re likely to find are flintlocks. That said, a well-trained archer can fire faster, more accurately, and, as a side-effect, can hurt the enemy more, because not only can their arrowheads be laced with poison, your own feces, or serrated, firing a flintlock from horseback is bullshit.
An arrow wound to the lung, explains Bill, is much more dangerous than a gunshot wound for three reasons: amount of blood loss, infection, and emphysema.
For example, arrow wounds cause more bleeding than gunshot wounds because an arrow “makes clean slits and punctures” while a “ball tears and bruises.”
Bill also explains arrows tend to lodge themselves in the lung “whilst a ball generally passes” causing empysema, an infection in the body cavity.
As noted here, an arrow is more likely to cut, lacerate organs, get stuck in places and be a pain to get out, even fatal. A gun might sound cool and revolutionary, but it’s more likely to blow up in your face, is a pain to reload, and doesn’t quite have the staying power.
Modern guns, yes, they trump archery in every way. But you’d be shooting yourself in the foot to pick up a gun in this world.
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The guns in this setting are all of the air rifle type, as the theurges could blow up the black powder way too easily.
Besides, the gun would be as much a symbol as it is a weapon to my mc, it is another statement towards his embrace of (technological) progress and a rejection of Karagond (martial) culture.
“cool” and “revolutionary” is half the point, but like I said there are some highly developed air rifles that are very lethal, particularly against theurges, in the right (trained) hands.
Besides the gun my character would be more likely to embrace the crossbow, rather than the traditional longbow, as it is a more “equal” weapon in that it can still be used quite effectively with far less training.
Everyone’s talking bout Theurges as if there are millions of them, stalking the wilds, hoping to waste all their priestly time on your rabble of a band.
They’re not. They’re a minority. A minority who probably are not going to march up on you en masse just yet because guess what! You are not high priority right now. You live in the woods and starve.
Black powder rifles are still slower than trained archers with bows. I mean, the source I had up there was from the American Revolution. (Plus, fire rate was abt rate 8-11 arrows a minute on average in the medieval ages, around 16 if you’re a “Saracen”). You’ll be seeing other cultures and other countries, and, as you know, nearly every country has had archers.
A crossbow, like a gun, can be put into the hands of a relatively inexperienced soldier. But it trades power and speed for fire rate and accuracy. Depending on the situation, it can be a useless weapon.
Also can’t be used in close combat like a bow can, just saying.
They also seem to have better seek and destroy capabilities then anything we see in our modern world… one fly-over will be enough to pinpoint every rebel and their latrine slit too.
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The rifles won’t be black powder, all the gun R&D in this world has likely been on further perfecting the Girandoni’s.
And every country eventually replaced them with troops equipped with guns and to a lesser extend crossbows.
I won’t argue that qualitatively a trained longbowman was better for a long time, but that kind of training takes time and money and all the well-trained ones will primarily be fighting on the side of the enemy anyway. And after the revolution, presuming my character wins money will be in short supply, so weapons that require very little training will always suit my mc’s purposes far better.
That’s exactly the point, my rebellion’s advantages in combat will need to come from two things, guerrilla tactics and sheer numbers, the enemy will always have the advantage in training and quality, right up until the very end.
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Hmm I have no idea about weapons really…I am a pacifist, i have bows two swords and more helots weapons than Helots 100 weaoons 43 rebels…
The rather significant benefit of even a primitive gun over archery isn’t for the well-trained soldiers, but specifically for the fact that anyone can pick up a gun and be half-decent at shooting it with a few hours’ practice, whereas archers take months or years to get good. It democratizes war, so to speak.
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Despite the fact that these things, you know, can load improperly by untrained or shaky soldiers and end up exploding…
Also. War is not a democracy. It is, strong people over the weak. Just the weapons get bigger and the stakes get higher. No one is ever equal in war no matter what weapons they got. Someone always has an edge up on them.
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Yes, exactly, also unless we play a high combat character we’ll never have the well-trained soldiers on our side, at least not until they’re no longer bloody useful for anything, or at least not enough of them to overcome our enemy’s advantage in those areas anyway.
Air rifles don’t explode, that’s why this world bleeding edge gun tech focuses on them, instead of gunpowder weapons.
And guns, or crossbows, make the weak strong, at least when they come in numbers. Numbers are something I think my rebellion will have, the support of the well-trained soldiers, who are in the hands and service to either the local nobility or the Hegemony, not so much.
While the longbow is a terrific and indeed terrifying enough weapon in the right hands, those hands will in likelihood be scarce among the members of our rebellion and not even all that plentiful among our opponents either: " However, the proper use of the longbow required a lifetime of training, making it impossible to amass very large forces of archers."
No there aren’t but much the same as with the highly trained soldiers I rather figure that the theurge numbers will never be on the side of my rebellion, so if the air rifles provide a relatively simple way for ordinary men to go up against trained theurges that’s an advantage I’ll welcome (even though, yes, as a mage they do represent a danger to my character too, I’m well aware of that).
Besides it’s not like the Girandoni rifles were useless against more conventional enemies either, in fact what killed them was ultimately more to do with economic, rather than purely military considerations.
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Eh? There are air rifles in this world? Did I miss something?
The rebels are armed with Nerf guns.
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There’s an upthread conversation about compressed air guns which I’ll link to when I have the time.
Anyone who wants to play through the Ch 2 numbers game as an everyone-raider or Hegemony-raider and post your final score here (ie the blurb with numbers for morale, notoriety, cred, etc) – it’ll help me calibrate the numbers for the deputy-led story modes for those paths.
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@Bagelthief
Do I see someone talking shit about guns?! 
In a magical dark/low fantasy-esque world as this one is the only guns you’re likely to find are flintlocks.
I personally think matchlocks are more likely to appear considering the technology levels.
That said, a well-trained archer can 1) fire faster, 2) more accurately, and, as a side-effect, 3) can hurt the enemy more, because not only can their arrowheads be laced with poison, your own feces, or serrated
- No question about that.
- Same as above. However, the majority of casualties inflicted by archery are from massed archer fire into large formations. Individual accuracy does not matter much. Massed musketry does pretty much the same thing albeit at reduced effective range and slower rates of fire. If the enemy is close enough to hack musketeer formations to pieces then the rest of army isn’t doing it’s job.
- Only if the enemy is lightly armoured.
firing a flintlock from horseback is bullshit.
I take it that you’ve never heard of pistol-armed cavalry. Hussars also sometimes used flintlock carbines which they fired and reloaded from horseback.
As noted here, an arrow is more likely to cut, lacerate organs, get stuck in places and be a pain to get out, even fatal.
Calibres from flintlock muskets and earlier are typically over 0.5 inches (over 0.6 inches is the figure I keep seeing). The wound caused by that should be sufficient to kill people. From the sheer velocity the bullet has when fired, guns have better stopping power than bows. Getting hit by a bullet of such calibres at centres of mass will incapacitate people if they are not killed by it and are effectively out of the fight.
Black powder weapons also got more effective against armour as black powder solutions were refined and corned which increased the muzzle velocity of the bullet. And this was already being done before flintlocks entered massed usage.
but it’s more likely to blow up in your face
A common misconception of the word ‘misfire’ is that the gun blows up on you. The correct definition is that it simply fails to fire from whatever reason. Most likely due to issues from igniting the powder or detonating the primer. All you have to do is try again (modern firearms have extra steps).
If a gun does blow up it is likely from 3 things:
- You overcharged the gun too much. This does not happen often and if it does, it is usually with the artillery, because only they have the capacities to overcharge a gun to the point of explosion. This gets fixed with pre-measured gunpowder in cartridges which existed when matchlocks were used en mass.
- You used a too explosive propellant. There is a reason why we do not use nitroglycerin as a propellant.
- Your gun is very, very shoddily made. Like worse than crap. And early firearms were kinda crap.
is a pain to reload
It’s not really that hard, just slow.
doesn’t quite have the staying power
Soldiers could fire at each other for hours. I am not sure what exactly you are saying here.
But you’d be shooting yourself in the foot to pick up a gun in this world.
I like puns.
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Oh, the things I endure for this game. We meet again, mules, my nemesis(s)!
I’ve done one run as a my standard Give Me Ideals Or Death leader and one as You Win Or You Die leader, to mix up the variables a bit. I think it has been firmly established at this point that I’m a poor gamer who can’t git guid, so these scores should probably be viewed as the low end of the average run.
GMIOD - As per usual, around week 6 I was thriving and able to feed everyone a healthy diet, and 2 weeks later the band fell apart because I didn’t have enough healthy people ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Poor Zvad kept getting upstaged, Radmar resents his bro being deputy-zoned, keeps stirring up shit despite needing a natural 20 to succeed against my CHA score.
You’re an aristo who chose to steal from the Hegemony.
Your morale is 13.
Your notoriety is 86.
Your anarchy is 9.
You have 54 followers, 1569 drachems, and 18 arms.
Your credibility with aristos is 195, helots 205, merchants 210, priests 130, and yeomen 205.
Your followers’ leadership is: Breden 7, Zvad 2, Elery 1, Radmar 8
YWOYD - They were spoiled for choice, so naturally they fared better with the foodstuff, although the mules stealing was still an uphill battle. Raiding the noble stores alone sufficied, until the option was no longer available. Lotsa sick people died, not sure if a bug or a feature, still stuck with too many kids.
You’re a helot who chose to steal from anyone.
Your morale is 66.
Your notoriety is 55.
Your anarchy is 31.
You have 42 followers, 33 drachems, and 29 arms.
Your credibility with aristos is 10, helots 230, merchants 135, priests 180, and yeomen 200.
Your followers’ leadership is: Breden 8, Zvad 5, Elery 1, Radmar 0
A note for both - I sorta forgot about allocating mules for the sick, and after they died I figured it was too late anyway. So that tiny little detail about dead children might account for the consistently low morale even when everyone is fed. That said, even on a healthy died it takes so long to stop the sickness death that even my kleptomic leader ended up with less than 200~ people, with more than 80% being unavailable for use.
EDIT: Why is the notoriety of the hegmony-stealing leader higher…? Dammit Breden, what did you do?!
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There was an error when I selected tk choose who to buy as informants in chapter four. I had svad giving advice. Also, the specific error was bad label intelch I believe so maybe you just haven’t finished that part yet lol, but things are looking great so far. I loved that Radmar had a wedding im chapter two, thats a new addition isn’t it? It seemed realy weird being a stuck up aristo and just tolerating everyone calling me brother. I would think they’d still call me Milord or Kurious. Everything else was looking good so far, I like it 
I was calling them soldiers btw