Just played the game for the first time last night, and I loved it! The world-building is great, and my character was such a little badass 
Ugh, second moral debate in a day.
Moral debates on a fantasy CoG forum.
That mix doesn’t bode well.
@Drazen I’m somewhere between you and @Havenstone on the subject of social norms of considerateness and honesty/accuracy. I do believe a certain amount of courtesy is beneficial to civilized discourse all around, and that courtesy is understandably based to a not insignificant degree on social norms, BUT, some people who are way too easily offended can take things too far and start demanding censorship of everything they don’t like. And censorship is something I oppose. I’m thus generally willing to treat people in the way they wish to be treated, even if I myself prefer to be treated differently, as long as it isn’t a significant imposition on me. The trigger warning doesn’t bother me, what would bother me is if @Havenstone had actually removed the rape scene in the page he warned about for fear of offending someone. Although I admit that I found his falling all over himself to apologize for writing it somewhat concerning.
Interestingly enough, social norms change slowly over time, and as social norms change, so do expected courtesies. The lack of a unified societal norm, as one set of norms hasn’t fully fallen, and a replacement hasn’t been fully been accepted, creates quite a lot of misunderstandings.
@P_Tigras My position is basically yours with the addition that exposure to a certain amount of bluntness is ultimately in the interest of the parties in question, which is to say, it is good that people learn to overcome their sensitivity, - and consequently, any well-meaning but misguided attempt to accommodate is overall detrimental.
But still, the topic!
Yes! The topic! Is there way to use magic without using blood? Not that we would know of it this early on, but still, it would an amazing thing to discover, as one of a few amazing things the MC could do
It’s bad form to say “these are my opinions” and then “the topic”. That is an attempt to silence anyone who wishes to answer your comments by making out that if they do so they’ll be off topic.
Havenstone’s already asked that people get back to the topic, so can we please stop making posts regarding trigger warnings.
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@FairyGodfeather No it wasn’t, don’t be so cynical. It was simply my inability to allow a new addition to the conversation go unanswered, follow by a more jocular exclamation, which recognised that I was contradicting my previous stated desire to cut short the tangent.
"And as for supporting the rebellion, are you kidding? Replacing regimes with ones friendly to you is a long standing tradition. "
A tradition just as old and time honoured is waiting for your enemies fight amongst themselves and then taking out the weakened victor.
If there is any meaningful civilization left in the Xaos lands the past 300 years passing without much incident from that direction most likely means one of two things, they’re either ignoring us, in which case they also likely wouldn’t care much about the rebellion and may offer some token support at best, or they are very patiently waiting and watching every move along the border, which usually doesn’t mean anything good. As according to the map the Xaos lands also border the areas most likely to be the first to come under rebel control the empire might not be the only ones fighting a war on two fronts in that case.
I’m going to use thread-author prerogative to make one quick response to @P_Tigras, and then, The Topic Please.
Assuming you followed the link, my falling-over-myself apologizing wasn’t for writing it, but for making a friend role-play it… which is a very different thing, I think.
Now, I do think I owe an apology for writing it, but on the grounds @Drazen has already agreed with… it was a hackneyed, hamfisted bit of plotting, and unnecessary to establish the brutality of the slave system. I did consider leaving it out when I wrote up the campaign on grounds of bad taste; but I left it in because it was part of the story, it obviously had an impact on the direction of the character, and I own it, like it or not.
So PM me with any follow-on comments. Moral debates are well and good when they directly bear on the themes of the game (it’s meant to explore some moral questions), but this topic is incidental.
Thanks, @Dolphinzgirl! Keep up the badassery.
@God_of_Demonz, you’ll find out more about Theurgy in Ch 1 of Game 2, which may point you toward an answer to your question…
A couple things to note about Xaos Lands and the Wards. The Wards keep out weapons and magic (including the chaos-storms of wild magic that reportedly wrack the X-Lands). That’s all; they don’t keep people from crossing. You don’t know anyone personally who’s crossed to the Xaos side, but you’ve heard hunters and miners talk about getting close enough to the Ward to see a Xaos-Storm breaking against it, and it sounds terrifying. (More detail to follow in Ch 3). You’ve also heard about people in the Southriding fleeing across the Ward if they think they’re about to be accused of a capital crime; they don’t have a convenient wilderness nearby like you do, so the only place they can be sure the Alastors won’t follow is the Xaos lands.
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@Havestone that’s sounds to me 1984 propaganda , someone know someone that probably known someone who saw something. Propaganda. my girl don’t believe that lies
quick question do we free shayaard in the first game?
I don’t think so, in the first game we’re lucky if we can survive the first onslaught of the empire without too many losses.
I think we free our hometown/district at best.
Intelligence is hopefully more than just Theurgy it should ideally also allow us to use our superior knowledge to come up with cunning plans every now and then and improvise more readily when something doesn’t go entirely as planned.
Personally, I hope that high Intelligence will allow us to devise a more cunning and elaborate plan for dealing with the tax collector in comparison to the other two character archetypes.
In my opinion the main drawback of the budding theurgist at the moment is keeping your outlaw band’s morale up since that takes a big hit from going directly against the corrupt religion.
@idnlun is right- the first game (and the second, for that matter) will not see a free Shayard. That’s one of the end of series goals, really, and making serious progress toward it will take several major victories over the Empire.
ah ha, that just gave me an idea.
Magical Chaos storms? Why now I want to build the magical equivalent of lightning rods and then lower the ward, no more blood sacrifices to keep that thing up, and a non blood source of magic for my character’s apotheosis.
Just kidding, but that definitely sounds like non blood magic should be a possibility.
@Havestone then when the babies will come? when my girl have 80 years? The main objective of the last noble of a bloodline is have babies, i dont have to be queen to have babies maybe in second when they have at least a city with a male noble not nun. so dont make me wait 6 games for babies !!
On the topic of magic, @Havenstone, do you have a fuzzy-wuzzy metaphysical notion of how magic operates in your world, - since blood is only accidentally connected to its function? (With the implicit ‘And can you tell us?’)