I won’t sell my mules I don’t want money. GANDHI WASN’T Want MONEY IN HIS REVOLUTION MARA HAS TO DO SAME.
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Fair enough, considering this is what my mc plans on basically doing to a whole lot of former “noble” families too, should they be found to be traitors (the outcome of those “trials” being very much not in doubt). Heck he may even do it to the entire royal line(s) of pre-Hegemony Shayard, should he be victorious, as “history” is written by the victors indeed. 
Then again the so-called “nobles” of Shayard aren’t proving to be very deserving of the very word used to name them, since as a class they are anything but, to my mc Ganelon’s betrayal pretty much confirmed that. Since there is to my mc nothing in the very concept of aristocracy that deserves preservation or emulation it is quite clear that it should be done away with entirely and replaced with an entirely new (social) order.
There’s also the fact that leaving the caste system intact would mean not even masterminding the successful overthrow of the Thaumatarchy itself would qualify my mc for social advancement, except perhaps to nominal yeoman or freedman status, much less put him in a position to openly rule anything or even continue to be a mage.
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violent frothing at the mouth
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Fear not, godless revolutionaries such as him will never succeed! The Gryphon will rise again!!!
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My godless heathen MC plots with his wisardry in the background
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How do you start a revolution? recruit a wizard to the cause.
How to you win a revolution? Recruit 3 wizards
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Confusion levels exceeding thresholdshutdownimina- rebooting to Drakeye xp edition
Just gimme a nudge when we get to the part with the sexy wolf people
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So very eager to subordinate yourselves to a dynasty that has not accomplished anything for centuries now, are you?
Very masochistic of you and also very provincial (and possibly self-defeating) if you plan on cutting the other provinces loose.
No, my mc certainly plans to rule himself and do so openly (and possibly marry a guy and do that openly too) in addition to pursuing his fascination which magic. All of these things require that the existing social system be broken down and rebuilt from the ground up in order to make himself eligible for any of them, let alone all of them, since the things my mc wants are all things that are all explicitly forbidden to helots.
To my mc this is not a classical fantasy story the Laconnier King/Queen would be no more “rightful” than the Thaumatarch and he certainly isn’t intending on facilitating their return.
In meta terms my mc will not at any point desire the “Return” part of the classical “Hero’s Journey”. since that would mean becoming nothing more than a sharecropper at best, which would make fighting the rebellion pretty much pointless to begin with and a pyrrhic victory the best possible outcome if there is no chance of any appreciable “reward”.
Of course, but getting to that (marginally) better regime (while at the same time making oneself eligible for high executive office) requires breaking a few eggs in order to make that omelet. 
By the way in this game only blood-spillage is actually likely to decrease under the new regime in that stopping the practice of Harrowing altogether (and replacing it with a more egalitarian blood tax) is an important goal of the revolution.
That is true but in this game they would all depend on placing my mc’s hopes in others while he becomes a slave, servant or other kind of menial labourer again and, well he’d rather have “liberty (and power) or death” than submit to that under that nightmare religion that tells him he’s no better than a farm animal.
All of those happen to be inspirations for my mc, Mao in particular of course.
Yes, but at least the new symbols will be a lot nicer and the new wardrobe much less expensive and decadent. Also abolishing that caste system will be a monumentally huge change here. 
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TOUCH THE UNTOUCHABLE
BREAK THE UNBREAKABLE
ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWER
Out of curiosity, what’s your MC like?
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You know that before Ganelon turned out to be just as bad as the rest of them my mc probably believed that the aristocracy as a concept might be able to work and that some of the current ones might be reformed to better fit that vision, or at least entertained the possibility. But that was then, this is now. 
[/quote]
Ganelon is a bit more open-minded than most, but he’s still a product of his upbringing. He loves books and doesn’t see the harm in sharing them with helots despite the fact that it’s technically illegal. Nevertheless he doesn’t have any first hand experience with theurgy to moderate all of the poison he’s been fed about the evils of black magician goetes who consort with Xaos demons. Maybe if we had a few months to slowly reason him away from his prejudices before he discovered the MC could work theurgy, perhaps then things could have ended better, but we aren’t given that. 
[quote]In any case considering how highly stratified the system is I don’t think it would have worked out that well for my mc. As a (former) helot he would have ended up as a nominally “free” sharecropper at best in that case. (I’ve had quite the discussion with @P_Tigras on this and the one point we did sort of agree on is that it would be next to impossible for the helot mc to bump themselves up to the pinnacle of the upper class while keeping the system anywhere near intact).
Of course being a “free” yeoman sharecropper would still mean no knowledge, no magic and no power for my mc, which is not a future worth fighting for to him. He fights to escape his farm animal status not to be able to return to it under just slightly different conditions. [/quote]
Karagond has ruthlessly forced on the rest of the hegemony over the past four centuries a self-serving caste system, perverting both the social and religious structures that previously existed in support of that caste system. This caste system essentially dehumanizes and treats as cattle its lowest caste and allows for no social mobility. @Havenstone has impressed upon us that It has become deeply rooted within the minds of the people in the four centuries since, and as a result I don’t see how it could be uprooted in a single non-theurgically extended lifetime without devastating violence. Changing the hearts and minds of an entire nation takes decades, possibly even centuries in some cases. As a result I can empathize with the desire of a helot MC to simply smash the entire corrupt system, despite the great cost in human life and suffering that would result.
As a noble MC I’d much prefer to work from within, seizing control of the structures that exist, both secular and religious, and repurpose them towards creating a more just society while keeping the cost in lives and suffering to a minimum. As a helot MC that’s not so easy to do without meta-gaming and some extremely good fortune. I can thus empathize with the desire to smash the entire corrupt system because that’s exactly what I’d want to do if I were an oppressed helot who has repeatedly been forced to watch in horror as loved one after loved one has been bloodily dismembered in public spectacles.
[quote][quote=“P_Tigras, post:3135, topic:1601”]
While @idonotlikeusernames’s politics gives me visions of Robespierre’s Reign of Terror and Stalin’s forced collectivization, induced famines, pogroms and purges, he’s absolutely right that the nobles will turn on a helot MC once the Hegemony is defeated
[/quote]
Better not give them a chance to do so if at all possible and avoid needing a potential “October Revolution” (and another civil war) after the first one in light of that anarchy cliff.[/quote]
Again, the problem is Karagond’s deeply entrenched caste system. I suppose documentation could always be “found” that proves the MC was unjustly demoted to helot status, and his or her nobility could thus be “restored”. That does nothing for the rest of the helotry however. A ruling from the highest authority in the church that sometimes people are born into the wrong caste just as they are sometimes born into the wrong body coupled with some laws establishing a pathway for advancement would do wonders for social mobility. Follow that up with a secular ruling that countless yeomen were unjustly turned into helots, effectiveley doing away with the helotry and replacing it with “free” peasant “sharecroppers” who now have a pathway to yeoman status. You can even wrap the Griffin banner around yourself to pull in additional popular support if you choose since old Shayard had no helots. To pull off these legal changes without metagaming would likely require some advisors and strong allies among the nobility and clergy however.
[quote][quote=“Havenstone, post:3147, topic:1601”]
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.
[/quote]
This also illustrates why letting the nobles retain power would mean they’d be disinclined to let my mc rule anything or have any real power. At best we get to be a nominally free yeoman, but in any case we wouldn’t retain any power or get to be a mage any longer. (unless we go on the run in the wilds again like, Scarcifier, but I don’t think my mc would want to do that a second time either).[/quote]
I don’t think it would be beyond the pale for the MC to join the nobility without too much opposition. Doing away with the entire caste system would be a different matter entirely. It might be possible to poke some holes in it to enable a certain degree of social advancement however. This would be difficult to maintain and expand unless the MC or someone else equally committed stays on top of the pecking order however, and unless the MC is lucky enough to find a high ranking noble willing to commit to such an unheard of thing, there would no doubt be fierce resistance to someone of a lower caste being at the top, most especially a helot…
This seems easy enough to fix if you take on the mantle of Eclectoi or get some church officials in your pocket as this teaching isn’t based on Canon. It’s a self-serving extrapolation the Thaumaturchy ordered its pet ecclesiasts to make. And as such, it would be pretty easy to do away with in a reformation of the church.
[quote][quote=“Herrington, post:32279, topic:2656”]
but she hopes that her goals and SCIENCE!! will raise everyone’s standard of living.
[/quote]
On that we agree, but to for science to really prosper there must be better education overall the Hegemony by poorly educating the yeomen and not education the Helots at all is leaving a lot of talent and potential behind.
[/quote]
@Havenstone, what social class(es) do the hegemony’s scientists arise from?
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This is true, but they are/were also (seen as) the least reliable groups, the groups the new leaders (including my mc) would most fear turning on them, if given the opportunity. Getting to them first is then a logical solution to prevent them from getting such opportunities.
My mc is, yes, but he only has first hand experience with the Keriatou’s who seem to be sadists pur sang (Hector in particular). Don’t forget the degrading punishments with disturbing sexual overtones too, as Kalt can describe, though I’m sure most Keriatou helots have suffered such things as well. (Which is incidentally why if we can capture Hector alive later on in these games my mc would be serious about making him his father’s _maid_servant).
There is still the fact through that in order to “resist” the mc or perhaps to redeem himself in the eyes of the “merciful” angels, Ganelon turns into the same kind of sadistic torturer and bully Hector is.
Sure, Ganelon not wanting to join up from the start or even Ganelon writing disparaging texts, articles and pamphlets about the rebellion is something my mc could have understood, be dissappointed in, but understood. Him turning into one of Hector’s sadistic little torturers with apparent glee…well that just confirms to my mc that he was oh, so very wrong not only about Ganelon, but about the possibility of redemption for the aristocracy as a class too.
This is really the first and foremost of my mc’s problems since it’s what everything else ultimately keeps coming back to and since he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life as a farm-animal ever again and certainly not in order to watch tiny improvements that he would scarcely benefit from happen around him going radical is the only solution, if a very risky and objectively speaking (though my mc is certainly not an objective actor here) unnecessarily costly and inefficient one (though it helps that the Hegemony is currently so corrupt and inefficient that this might scarcely be noticed at all).
If I ever can work up the enthusiasm to go for a noble mc here I’m sure he’d agree, In fact “Lord Flash” ( I mean his slogan could be “make the nobility noble again”) would certainly agree that this is the way to go however, from the bottom, where my current helot mc stands, the view is quite a bit different.
I don’t think that would work very well, not for my mc on a personal level, nor objectively. There is a reason this practice sharply diminished among common-born (European) warlords from the Renaissance onwards, as progressively less and less people were willing to buy into that sort of convenient lie.
For my mc on a personal level it would either be a lie that has the potential to alienate more of his support-base than it pleases or gains him or else a devastating blow, if it turns out he actually did have real demoted “noble” ancestors. In the second case he’d probably try to have them written out of history, rather than (re)claiming their name for himself and any mention of the mere fact would probably be labelled counterrevolutionary treason of the highest order.
My mc would no more like to be labelled “noble” than he would like being labelled (effectively) “female” just on account of being a gay helot.
It would probably still stop short of making former slaves eligible for high (or even low) executive office or being mages though and therefore wouldn’t really get my mc what he wants.
Considering how my mc and the established clergy in particular mutually loathe each other that would be extremely unlikely and the same pronouncements from the new heads of imported or resurrected religions simply won’t have the same effect. Not to mention the fact that my mc is either agnostic or an atheist himself.
Of course he could “join” the “nobility” without much initial opposition because it would be an extremely stupid move to make that would alienate him from just about his whole base and make it much easier for the nobles to turn on him, despite the fact that they’d technically be turning on one of their own then.
the problem here is that my mc is not likely to be satisfied by “degrees” particularly not after he defeats the Thaumatarch, becoming a nominally “free” sharecropper with a royal pardon for heresies committed or the “lord” two modern football fields of useless rocks out in the middle of nowhere would hardly satisfy my mc, not after everything he would have done to get there.
Just smashing the whole system and finding a way to deal with the costs of that would still be the much preferred course of action, particularly if the alternative is effectively becoming the royal concubine and still remaining a slave or servant, or a noble with a rank so low it might as well be worthless. Better to reign in hell than serve in hell after all.
The only “reformation” of the Church my mc could live with is if it fragments to the point that there are now at least 1234 churches mostly led by former Diakons and all with their own interpretation of “canon” and the Shayardene Codex (the Karagond one would be outlawed in any case). Besides he’d want to make sure the faith loses all its temporal power anyway, so such statements would then be meaningless to him as a non-believer in Xthonos or his merry band of murderers merciful angels.
He could then treat religious policy akin to modern anti-trust law and smash any that appear to be getting to powerful for being fully unreconstituted adherents of the forbidden Karagond Codex.
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“Disturbing sexual overtones”… “overtones”… man, don’t sugarcoat it. Kalt’s mom and him were both raped.
Shush, be quiet…we’ve got to preserve what’s left of @Jjcb’s innocence, after all. 
But yeah, they were, our mc’s may again have been too, Dann almost certainly was…repeatedly. I’m also sure you can make a pretty decent guess as to what is going to be involved in possibly turning Hector into a _maid_servant.
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I don’t know why you keep italicizing that part of the word, because you can have male maids, and it seems you think making him do stereotypically feminine work, which does not guarantee sexual harassment, is a punishment? The fact that you’re even thinking of subjecting him to the same horrors your MC went through is also questionable as a form of vengeance…
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@Bagelthief I think the emphasis implies the removal of a certain non-vital body part, but I might be reading too much into it. 
Oo-er. If so than that’s transphobic. 