Yes, damned if you do and damned if you don’t, still anything is better than being re-enslaved by the so-called “nobility” and if they ever make the Grand Canal you can be sure of it that the only place in that project for people like my mc is as slave-labour.
Like I said before, my mc cannot be “bought off” with anything less than the complete and utter abolition of slavery and the caste system and the top job for himself, two conditions the nobles and the church will never agree to and that is what makes this conflict quite likely to be existential.
Again with the social pyramid, it’s not even that the “game” is absurdly rigged against him (as he’s got skills that should have allowed him to become at least a yeoman scribe or something if advancement, even rigged advancement was at all possible). It’s that their rules determine that he’s not even allowed to be a player in the first place.
Not exactly, once the Hegemony is defeated they can submit to re-education and we’ll find them a place, most of them probably won’t like that place, but that is a different matter entirely.
Don’t worry it will all be there in the manifesto eventually and it is at least less cruel than the brutal death, which I’ll note is the only, inevitable option helots have got right now.
It’s biased against them and extremely unfair but still less unfair than the present Hegemony is to the current helots.
No, that’s awful and you know it. There is no justifiable reason for reeducation. It’s a crock of shit and just highlights our grievances with your ideal.
I know it, my mc…that’s more debatable, since for all his book learning there are likely to be great gaps in his education and his experiences as a slave do not make him an impartial arbiter. Still it is less awful than the Hegemony, though you do not agree with that.
The pervasive indoctrination by the Church and its Ecclesiasts provides plenty of justifiable reason for re-education, how else will the former nobles ever be made to view anybody from the former lower castes as equal citizens?
Likewise compensation for unjust slavery and fair payment for said involuntarily rendered labour and services is plenty of justifiable reason for some radical redistribution of wealth and resources.
Let’s see slow-Harrowing to death, versus getting to live with a chance at redemption for many (though as Hector proves not all), that is not in the “afterlife”…hmm…, yes my mc’s system must be worse.
My mc’s ground is still higher than that of the Hegemony at the very least.
Reeducation is a fairly extreme way to go about it. Shouldn’t the purpose of education for your MC be a source of freedom for helots? Wouldn’t reeducation limit their worldview, much like the Hegemony already did?
It should but it also needs to be able to “redeem” a significant amount of former (political) adversaries and make them more amenable to our cause to the point where they can become useful, contributing members of society again.
Honestly in-game it could possibly get a bit muddled due to the new education ministry being both responsible for the normal education of all citizens and the re-education of all but the most serious convicts.
Ah Joseph Stalin you old dog! Good to see you back at it again.
And by submit do you mean being dragged out of their homes from their wives and children, or with them to be thrown into a camp where they’ll live in horrid conditions where they will be beaten, tortured, malnourished, exposed to diseases and die if they don’t turn into literal drones for your new empire?
All this because they were born into a caste that wasn’t yours? Yeah, your moral high ground is like Everest.
No, families should be separated in order to encourage the individuals to form new, positive bonds and re-socialise them. Other then that light encouragement may be used, but no more then our overseers would use on us, former helots, to make sure we did our work to their standards, but that is only when they are actually working, it is not part of the education as such.
Of course their mornings of useful labour for the community are intentionally so structured as to get them to look forward to their education in the afternoon and early evening.
But when my mc says re-education he means it, the primary tools that should be used are psychological and pedagogical ones. There would only not be enough food in case of an actual famine, which is admittedly fairly high post-rebellion, but starving is not a goal of re-education. Provided food should be adequately nutritious but, depending on what is available it may be intentionally bland, except on the new revolutionary holidays.
The only goals of re-education are to make them see the error of their former ways and if they were truly idle rich, with no appreciable skills, teach them a trade they can do.
Let’s say someone sent to re-education used to be an officer in the army of the Hegemony, then the goal of his re-education would probably be to rid him of his inborn superiority complex and turn him into a useful, enlisted soldier for the new army upon completion, nothing more complicated than that.
My mc really does aim for his new system to be more humane than the Hegemony, as you’ll note from the absence of slow harrowing anybody.
Welcome to the life of my mc (or really any other helot) under the Hegemony, remember any advancement across caste lines is absolutely banned,probably even thinking of such things is heretical and treasonous, as is being able to read or use magic, no matter what skills or talents somebody possesses.
Because of this the so-called nobles or priests will never be his allies as it is inevitable that they would turn on him and attempt to restore him to his “rightful” place by re-enslaving him and every other helot, as that if what their faith and education tell them to do.
Well, not like the Everest maybe but higher than the Hegemony, the Xthonic faith and the Shayardene nobility.
Yep I definitely can’t see these people that you’re putting into concentration camps turn out to hate you with the same fiery passion you hate them with. Certainly nothing like that will happen, certainly.
But the game makes it quite clear the priests and nobles already hate my mc with a fiery passion anyway for daring to be a former helot who openly uses magic, can read and is gay. that is apparently enough to make him the incarnation of Xaos and evil on the world to them.
Since the only other alternatives likely involve keeping the caste system and some kind of apartheid discriminatory of former helots, including my mc himself going strong, my mc has to try and make the best of a bad situation here. Considering the nobles and priests are virtually guaranteed to attempt to turn on the helot mc once the Thaumatarchy is defeated should we attempt to “ally” with them before then.
Again my mc fights to free the helots, abolish the caste system and to secure the top job and the ability to learn and practice magic openly for himself, not to maybe slightly alter the physical conditions of his slave or serfdom.
An “alliance” with the nobles and the priests is likely to achieve exactly none of these goals.
You know, there’s always the slight adjustment of making it so that helots can advance in society. Giving people something to work towards will definitely help stop the revolt risks. That might do more than you think.
All he knows is what his books told him and he’s too sociopathical at this point to even try to comprehend that perhaps that the people he hates don’t all hate him.
Perhaps so. Still, if there was a way to advance higher into society for helots I’d even be inclined not to revolt. Why risk your lives and the lives of those you love if you can simply buy their freedom as well as your own through hard work?
If a helot can work X amount of hours, gather X amount of resource Y then they should be able to do so. This will encourage those that are in the helot class to work harder. While those in the other castes who grow lazy and have not done anything productive within the last few years will be stripped of title and possessions and then moved into a helot caste. Thus the cycle repeats forever yet people will feel it’s justice.
Tends not to work that way, even if freedom and some advancement were possible for helots I think the helot mc here would still have revolted, because those things in large part depend on their “master’s” cooperation, or a least acquiescence and the Keriatou would have been very bad “masters” to have even if the slavery system here had looked more like the Roman one, they’d have never manumitted any of our helot mc’s.
On the flip-side above a certain threshold wealth and power tend to maintain themselves, so it would only be the most stupid, or unlucky who “fall from grace”, but without the Hegemony’s Xthonic caste system keeping everything stagnant that would still amount to a few people per generation. So there would be some room for some of the next highest elites to ascend, but from helot all the way to the top, even under say a Roman-esque system would be extremely unlikely.
See my thoughts on the Keriatou above, just because in some systems slaves can be manumitted and even advance further than mere “freedman”, sharecroppers afterwards doesn’t mean our helot mc’s would have been afforded the opportunity even so, no matter how skilled or talented we are.
Properly paranoid after Ganelon would be more what you’re looking for. For he now knows that behind every seemingly friendly smile coming from the cute face of a “nobleman” hides an unknowable and alien mind that has been indoctrinated from birth to keep people like him down by any means necessary. At best there may be some, like Horion and Simon, who view him as a curiosity, a freak to be displayed in a zoo, akin to a counting horse, but never an equal.
Again that is not enough for my mc.
Well he doesn’t want their pity either, that’s even worse than their hatred. Also that caste system is going to be very hard to dislodge without truly radical measures and with it in place there is no real advancement possible for my mc or any other helot.
Not really, he just doesn’t want to play by their rules. To have even a very slim chance of rising to the absolute top while being “allied” to the nobles, he’d basically have to perpetrate the “lost nobility” sham in order to make himself theoretically palatable to them. But that would be far from enough as he would not only need to be willing to play their decadent games, he’d need to master them better than most people who were born nobles. That means the horses, the (ugh) clothes and boots and well…everything. And he’d have to make time to “learn” all of that somehow while also running a successful rebellion and perfecting his magical skills. Though this would likely be the added difficulty for helot mc’s that @P_Tigras is on about.
Even then it would likely take purging about half of the existing “nobility” to get the other half to, grudgingly, barely accept him as the “new boss” anyway.
If the result of those efforts is anything less than that it would become this:
Emphasis mine.
Lastly the Karagond Codex would need to be abolished in any case, but the Shayardene one likely has at least one nasty surprise, should my helot mc even want to try to become “emperor” in alliance with the “nobles”.
If the Shayardene Codex only allows for bloodline succession it means the need for a biological heir, a de-facto prohibition on my mc expressing his homosexuality and likely the need for a proper “noble” empress, for which the only candidate so far would seem to be Calea and there is no way he’d agree to that as that would be sure to make his life a living hell, in addition to the rest of the decadent games.
I’m starting to get worried about your MC. That sounds very dystopic, at least
And how is your MC get the infrastructure such big camps? The people to build them, to supply them with food, and water, and schools (how are you gonna make teachers?)? Especially considering the post-war enviroment the Hegemony is gonna be in if your MC keeps that anarchy going, he’s probably gonna have to spend a part of the loot to make things settle down.
But, maybe your MC could use the old noble estates for schools. Kind of symbolic, really.
Indeed many noble estates in the countryside are already set up as basically camps and prisons for the current helots, so they could simply be re-purposed
Ideally their own efforts will sustain them.
True, reality will hit sooner or later and my mc is not likely to be able to put all of his ideals in place, even so he prefers the despicable Talleyrands he actually makes deals and compromises with to come from the merchant caste and maybe, just maybe, some of the lowest ranks of the non-Shayardene, non-Karagond “nobility”.
Also compared to the camps that already exist the new ones need not be as big, since if he can keep the coalition of helots and yeoman with support from the merchants that he has built together he will have the numbers.
The noble and priest castes are far smaller, so camps to re-educate them can be forged out of some of the smaller noble estates of today.
So, I have a question for you, Username. What precisely will be the station of a wealthy middle-class family when you take over? A family of four with a baby on the way. These people don’t own a massive estate like the nobles though they’ve begun construction of large home on a small chunk of farmland. Note that this money was made trading minerals, now that they’ve gained their fortune they’ve decided to settle down and farm. They also happen to be religious. They’ve heard of your rebellion and how you seek to free the helots. They are sympathetic for your cause as they feel sorry for the men and women in rags working for the noble estates. However your barbarous nature has made you out to be a monster in their eyes.
What will you do to these people who are simply happy with their lives as is?
