Still though what is with his intense disdain for horses? Did a pompous horse kill his mother?
1 Like
My problem with your plan is that there might not be an omelet to make due to the fact you destroyed all the eggs and burned their yolks. The thing that concerns me with your character is that it seems that they aren’t doing this for the greater good of the helotry, but because they hurt and they want to make everyone else suffer like they suffered. It’s alright to take vengeance on people, but you have to make sure that at the end of the day you can have a society left standing. As many people pointed out, you will have a significant transitionary problem. Having to constantly put down rebellions caused by people starving, the normal counter-revolutionary plots, and religious uprisings will make any rule you’d like practically impossible. While the helots may outnumber the yeomen and nobles, at the end of the day they have to make a living as well and following you on a destructive rampage will run dry once they realise that they destroyed their own ability to live themselves.
Your character either needs strong lieutenants that can moderate and listen to them or eventually cool down because all he’ll do in his current state is create significant issues for the very people he wants to help.
Not to mention what comes after your character’s death. Will you adopt an heir? If you try to do that, the normal problems will come up. Or will you declare one of your lieutenants as your successor which has its own problems because then the normal power struggles will erupt allowing people discontented with your regime a chance to split off or at the very least work to topple you.
1 Like
I kinda got the same question for you @idonotlikeusernames that I had for @Eiwynn. How are you going to resolve the inherent inequity of some people being able to do blood magic?
1 Like
Gulag. Great Purges. The usual man.
It’s not something you can visably distinguish, it isn’t genetic and it confers upon the theruge some pretty incredible powers given the impact our MC can have on the revolt with his amateur skill. A perpetual revolt of theruges seems rather impossible to deal with.
Well considering his mother’s illness was apparently fairly easily treatable that would just be another “crime” that could be chalked up to the nobles and since horses seem to be one of the foremost status symbols of Shayard’s nobles well…
Lets just say he’s got an intense disdain for the sort of people who own and use the damned beasts. 
Did I not say that if his advisers handle it the right way he can be made to relent (a fair bit) on cavalry, the main things there being that they convince him that they can operate cavalry 1) without former nobles in key positions. 2) propose to use horse breeds that the nobles (and given his limited knowledge of the beasts this really means the Keriatou) did not favour (or indeed own) and have some use besides “prancing” 3) No fancy uniforms for cavalry(wo)men and their “officers” (an important psychological point in convincing my mc is that any cavalry we deploy at least looks nothing like the one the nobles field.) 4) place it on the bottom of the army org chart.
Same as almost any real leader my mc can be “finessed” by advisers he trusts and who know what they’re doing, particularly on subjects that don’t terribly interest him.
My mc? Likely by reforming the education system, which is really code for (trying to) setting one up. An education system is also great for inculcating certain cultural values into the population. If that can be done the percentage of mages is almost sure to increase, seeing as how the Hegemony leaves a lot of talent on the table there, mostly due to cultural reasons. Though you’re right that not everyone will be able to do it. Philosophically he will likely resolve that by doing a variation on the US meaning “All people are born free and equal”, the implicit consequence being that not everyone may turn out, or indeed grow up that way. Nonetheless the caste system would be outlawed and we’d need to constantly strive for equal opportunities for all and provide (theoretical) equality under the law (not that my mc being himself a flawed person won’t (subconsciously) discriminate against former nobles in practice, mind you) something you’ll note the Hegemony or even old Shayard was not the least bit concerned about.
In theory a successor will be elected by the people. Though enemies of the revolution will probably be excluded from voting.
I just can’t conceive of a situation where the theruges don’t end up back in control even if access to the education that makes theurgy possible is open to all.
Ah, my mc doesn’t really care if most of the people who end up in his government happen to be fellow mages, as long as they don’t share the beliefs of the Karagonds or the Laconniers and the caste system is shattered irrevocably.
Really shattering that caste system (and likely the Xthonic faith that maintains it with it) is my mc’s most important issue everything else is secondary to that.
So basically, “I’m going to shatter society, create massive famine, death, and destruction and quite possibly get Shayard invaded by all major powers in the world! But at least I tore down the caste-system!”
Except the informal one that will inevitably emerge between theruges and non-theruges…
Don’t worry that’s when he takes the offenders and sticks them into a re-education camp, or puts them against a wall and shoots them. Depends on his mood.
Well that’s already much more like the informal one between Ivy leaguers and the rest of society in the modern US, yes? Or between those who have college degrees and those who don’t in the rest of the world.
How to resolve that one does seem to be an issue he could possibly afford to place on the plate of his eventual successor.
If you’re a magic-using gay helot, the only way you’ll get anywhere at all is by first tearing down that abominable caste system, if you don’t all other possible outcomes lead to a Pyrrhic victory at best.
I’m giving you a reign of 4 years before someone slits your throat man. You’re going to piss off everyone by the time you’re done.
Except an Ivy League degree doesn’t confer the ability to kill someone with your brain…
More than that the entire economy revolves around therugic ability. All they have to do is to refuse to ripen your harvest and you starve. The Theruges’ guild will have nearly total control of society from what I can tell.
All the other options are either a variation on “happiness in subservience” (Yeah, I’ll bet all those people in the South were real happy with that, to the point where their distant descendants have no need for affirmative action or further compensation or anything anymore today) or having to give up magic-use and pretend to be pious and straight as an arrow to the point where it damn near makes no difference between “pretending” and actually being all that, meaning you’d need to become that “mask” and that is something my mc could never do.
But I guess that’s what you, or at least your character, would do right?
Well you could always study nuclear engineering, or any sort of engineering really, some of those people come damned close these days. 
Or as long as you still use the “death penalty” I guess law does the trick too. 
Why you have to be straight? I have made some lesbian characters and nobody put any fuss. Well except daddy but daddy search problems everywhere . You just search for a child with potential and orphan and then you already have an heir
1 Like
Even with the knowledge to build nuclear bombs the raw materials are hard to come by. A theruge as everything they need on/in their person.
1 Like
That’s for nobles, Noble telos allows them to have same-sex attractions, no problem, but it’s deemed to be against helot telos to be gay, mainly because they need to make lots and lots of babies. In order to change that you need to break the caste system. Same with magic-use, the “blessed angels and Xthonos” would never give that gift to someone born a helot, so a helot using magic would be deemed “evil” by default.
1 Like
Thats bullshit! Mara is against that! Helots would chose mate with mara regime as they see fit also no Harrowings and that. She believes they are inferior yes, but still believe as human form deserve a fair system. I will give them freedom in exchange some servitude medieval pesants style. That is a lot lot better than what they have now.
Well then you’re going to have serious issues with the current priesthood too. But if you want to preserve some form of the current system you’re going to need lots of babies to grow into disposable helots to feed into the harrowers to maintain Aekos as a “veritable garden of luxuries”.
Ah, yes, that’s the “happiness in subservience” I mentioned before. In all fairness that might work for Mara, but it won’t work for my mc as he’s done for good with all the “Yessa massa imma gunna be a gud helot massa”. and mindlessly kowtowing to the “higher” castes. Frankly even four years of true freedom is much better then a lifetime of that.