Icing on the cake. Once the Afghan Communists alienated their religious compatriots, they were basically screwed.
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Not that there isn’t a superpower rival of the Hegemony just waiting to take advantage of the disruption your revolt would cause…
Indeed, you may already have received this world’s equivalent of Stingers.
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The Afghan Communists did outlast their superpower sponsor though and they might have fared a bit better if they could have sold those books as the “instruction manuals” for gruesome killing machines that prop up the whole corrupt, sorry shambles.
If we can fight the “sacred” Harrowers we can also fight the “sacred” books that say there must be Harrowers (and helots) in the first place.
They also didn’t have skepticism, an ideology that seems to have caught on fairly well in the Hegemony anywhere but the Xthonic heartlands of Shayard and Karagon itself.
Still it always keeps coming back to the central issue, which is that as long as the caste system and the religion underpinning it my mc would have no future worth considering, let alone fighting for.
They seem to at least prefer their own religion to the Hegemony’s Xthonic nonsense, though Halassur probably practices some form of slavery too, although from Carles’ tale it doesn’t seem to be the sort of theocratic nightmare the Hegemony is either. Maybe their version allows for at least theoretical ways out of it, much like our Roman one?
I thought the Laconniers were a homegrown, nativist Shayardene conspiracy of disgruntled minor nobles. In any case we’re on the opposite side of the Hegemony from Halassur so their capacity to aid the Laconniers is probably not anywhere near the US’ capacity to meddle in Afghanistan.
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We’re talking big picture, if you destroy the system and plunge the Hegemony into civil war and stop Harrowings keeping the wards up, what’s to prevent nasties from coming and reking you?
The fact that their threat level (aside from maybe Halassur) seems to be greatly overblown by the ecclesiasts.
There is far too much about the Xaos lands (or Brorachia) that we do not know, what we do know is that the version the Hegemony peddles is woefully inaccurate at best. In any case the real nasties are already inside the wards.
Since magic created the Xaos lands it likely also holds the solution to reversing that process, though doing so would not be in the best interest of the Hegemony since they have come to rely far too much on it in order to keep their own people cowed and subservient.
Damned if you do and certainly damned if you don’t since leaving the system intact means you can never free the helots, stop the Harrowings or build anything worthwhile.
Which can never entirely be separated from the smaller ones, particular my mc isn’t in this to get a slightly “better” deal concerning the exact conditions of his enslavement, he is in it to no longer be a slave and more than that to be a mage and possibly to love who he desires. All things the current system explicitly denies him, so in order to make himself eligible for any of them, let alone all of them the system needs to be smashed and that will cost what it will cost, since there is basically no other way to ensure any kind of future that is even remotely worth living.
A Helot mc has woefully limited options here, particularly if he’s also gay and loves magic.
Failing and dying is ultimately still a far better fate than being Harrowed.
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I had to
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If you’re gonna do it then do it properly, since I’m still part Swiss this applies:
Consider it a preview for parts of my mc’s new world order. 
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As a quarter German raised in the company of my full German grandmother, I can confirm this is false. The German should not only be sitting on money but piles and piles of meat.
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That is false, everyone knows Germoney is the breadwinner of Europe.
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Being the only one that isn’t in crippling debt doesn’t make you the breadwinner.
I will admit though, Germany has its act together. Every time I go to Germany. The streets are clean. The forests are thick. The food has less shit in it. Ah, das Vaterland…
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Are the public bathrooms clean?
To me that’s the number one indicator that a country has it’s shit together.
Clean bathrooms.
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Well I’ve not been to Germany for a couple of years now, despite it being right across the border, but whenever I visit my Swiss relatives, yes, everything is squeaky clean, of course we all know the deep, dark secrets behind it. 
Well that is really quite inevitable, pity is not a very desirable thing, there are many people who don’t like to feel pitied, my mc among them, nor do they like being that members of a distant elite “understand” their problems (they don’t) and have all the solutions to them (they, really don’t) it is incredibly patronizing and dismissive and ultimately Sozhenitsyn was right, certainly when it comes to things like slavery they cannot credibly address the problem because at best they have only the vaguest notion of what the problem even really is.
@P_Tigras the more I think about it the more I find myself curious how you think half of the nobles are easier to get behind my mc and willing to take orders from him (and openly let him claim some sort of emperor title and position), particularly since he does not play nice with the established clergy, and that it would work out more favourably than doing some sort of alliance deal with the yeoman and merchants would?
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Rural smallholders (yeomen) tend to be among the most religious members of society. The church, its rituals, and social events tend to the focal point of small town life. While we have seen a fairly hard edge representation of the Hegemony’s clergy, don’t forget there are also the Olynna’s out there that are well loved by the common people and helots.
Merchants are generally the already prosperous people. I have a hard time seeing how your “burn them all and the room” rebellion will ultimately be good for business.
The Kalt’s of the world will be overjoyed with you (until you have to execute some for a lack of restraint).
I really think you are trying to destroy too many things at once.
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Yet at the moment my rebellion seems to have an easier time getting yeoman recruits than we do even more helots, particularly on some of my non-Simon runs, where I destroy or sabotage the “sacred” Harrowers.
Similar story with the merchants, while they do not (yet) join my rebellion in droves they do seem to like me more then they like Hector, considering they’re engaging in some sabotage on the rebellion’s behalf.
I’m really curious why @P_Tigras seems to think that, provided my mc would be willing to “(re)discover” his “lost nobility”, getting half the nobles to buy into that fable would be any easier than any other sort of alliance, particularly since my mc has been targeting their fellow nobles (and the clergy) in particular from the very beginning.
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Discover and old nobility has been really common in medieval Spain. Half our nobility houses come from X peasant is a beast fighting Muslims in the first reconquest days VIII IX. So the government decided Mhh you were noble beforehand it was that Muslims destroyed our or data when destroyed all the churches. So hmm now you have this land please defended us. So it could work for you too.
Maybe, but that ignores that my mc would hate the trappings of the “noble” lifestyle and that the only title he’d even consider for more than a second would be the top one, Emperor, since he really doesn’t want to be subordinated to some lordling ever again.
Take the crown from the gutter and like it @idonotlikeusernames. Few people ever have that opportunity 
I think you’re forgetting just how rigid and unyielding the Hegemony’s caste system really is, besides even if it were possible the “noble” lifestyle that would come along with it would inevitably be another form of prison and one only marginally less cruel than his former helot life at that. Perhaps even more so if a marriage is required, though I believe @Havenstone said gay marriage and adoption was accepted, among the nobles at least. 