As is fighting a war without a regular army. Without peace the best my mc could do would be to pin them down in an endless guerilla quagmire in the mountains, which means fighting on our territory anyway, since he won’t have an army capable of sustaining any sort of large scale offensive into Hallasur and if Hallasur is a desensitized to human losses as the Hegemony on account of their slave based society a couple of special forces raids to cause a bit of mayhem won’t be enough to make them back off. Of course should my mc be able to learn how to control real Xaos-sorcery, that might give them pause.[/quote]
I get the feeling Halassur harrows fewer slaves than the Hegemony given that it seems to be less extravagant in its uses of blood (ie. no ward wall of its own), and instead of making plektoi and other theurgic monstrosities they seem to be concentrating on making weapons capable of killing them.
[quote=“idonotlikeusernames, post:7722, topic:1601, full:true”][quote=“cascat07, post:7721, topic:1601, full:true”]
I expect all the fortresses are close to the border. A minor border adjustment might make holding it at all in the future an impossibility.
[/quote]
True, on the other hand to defeat the Karagonds we’ll need some sort of peace with Hallasur, or we’d just be trading one oppressive overlord for another anyway. Without some sort of peace with Hallasur there very likely is no future to be worried about in any case.
[/quote]
I expect that Karagond will keep the ward wall up for as long as it possibly can. It’s not clear at this point if it will be Karagond or the ward wall that falls first. Nor is it clear how long it will take Hallasur to notice, mobilize, and decide to invade once the wall does fall. Regardless, it shouldn’t take much to keep Hallasur on their side of the mountains, but then again I’m not planning to wreck the lives of the officer corps in charge of the border forces the way you are.
All I recall is the single line in the game about them quenching their blades “in the hearts of enslaved Erezziano nobility”, and “routinely sacrificing their concubines in the forges”. So if this book the MC has read is to be believed, they do have slaves, particularly foreigners from countries with which they are at war (battle captives?). Of course it may well just be propaganda like many of the other publications in the Hegemony. The Hegemony likely prefers that its young nobles die in battle rather than surrender or otherwise be captured. So I can easily see them publishing books containing manufactured accounts with the intent to make potential soldiers fear capture more than they do death. I can also see the Hegemony demonizing Halassur simply because they’re the enemy.
Not explicitly but you did say they were blood dependent at some point. And how else would one get aetherial blood if not the slaughter of human slaves?
The Halassurq Empire did traditionally enslave captives in war – and still does, when it can get them. But three centuries of increasing military focus on a single front, where prisoners are scarce because of heavy reliance on Theurgy and Plektoi, have changed its society in lots of ways.
Some of the key ones I’ve hinted at already: Their curt speech carries faintly across the ravine. “Have a care to catch every child. Alive.” Is that a tremor in the Theurge’s voice? “They’re the most important ones to bring back for punishment.”
“Harrowing children, kurios?” The flatness of the Phalangite’s tone perfectly conveys his disgust. “Was that not why we fought the Halassurqs?”
“These are traitors and criminals, corrupted beyond repair by the devil ${lname}. Not true children. Find them all.”
And I’ve tweaked the intro to the Carles prologue so it will now read: “The Halassurq Empire had spent most of the past three centuries at war with the Hegemony. Though peace had prevailed for over a decade, they were still best known as child-killers whose religion was a blasphemy against Almighty Xthonos.”
I tried being Eclect and still didn’t manage, can’t get Breden to change stances. I’ll try being Eclect and having CHA 2, because that’s the path I only experienced once, I think.
I like the " blasphemy against Almighty Xthonos" part, but I don’t think my mc will like the enslavement of foreigners and child killing parts. Of course they have more refined culinary tastes then his fellow countrymen so they can’t be all bad, but for now they seem bad enough.
Yeah, sure, but somehow I don’t see that happening in the Hegemony, certainly not with the current crop of ecclesiasts who are mostly profiteering slavers themselves. Much like in the American South before the civil war, too many “devout” people profit of off slavery too handsomely to declare it anathema or even morally wrong. Again my mc does not fight this rebellion to end up a slightly better treated slave.
Since most of the Xthonic faithful are conditioned to never think for themselves on these matters, I’m afraid it would take more then an “implicit” incompatibility (which my mc is sure wouldn’t even exist in the Xthonic religion) to change things.
Helots comprise too large a portion of the population to the point where they likely outnumber anybody else, whereas that real-world example relies on the Russian poor and the peasantry for his own support. Indeed the regions most opposed to him are the urbanites of his own capital city and to a lesser extent those in Saint Petersburg and Vladivostok. The countryside and the minor cities are still largely behind him.
At the very least my mc can at least prevent the Lacconiers and their more narrow-minded Shayardene nationalism from prevailing. As it is likely that the very reason Hallasur supports the Laconniers is so they can peel off Erezza and have a powerless pastoral neighbour next door.
Sadly true, however that won’t prevent my mc from trying anyway.
Nyral does have a republican past though, besides neither Iraq nor Afghanistan in 2005 had someone as determined as my mc, or Lenin or Mao for that matter in charge of them.
Due to the caste system helots, even former ones leading anything is most likely not going to be accepted unless you’re basically willing to upend the whole social and religious structures like my mc is.
There were the Cabel, yeoman driven rebellions, sure, but I’m not sure what their overall goals were and if it even was Shayardene nationalism, like the Laconniers, or if they too tried to incite rebellion across and had designs on the entire Hegemony, much like my mc. So, yes, the yeomen might be an alternate source of “nationalist” leaders (for very different flavour of nationalism), though perhaps not of the “traditional” monarchical Shayardene nationalism of the past. Still it seems likely that even they would not have accepted (former) helots in positions of (high) leadership.
In the distant past maybe, now the economy has become so blood dependent that I don’t think the Laconniers are ever going to abolish slavery or even the current caste system of their own volition, the smallholder driven farming economy that drove Shayard three centuries ago and that made slavery a losing economic proposition doesn’t exist anymore and slavery is now very profitable and the backbone of the current system. Even if both of those things could exist without (mass) chattel slavery it doesn’t seem to me like they’re at all ready to try, unless someone makes them.
Sure, they could even have a slightly “better” system of slavery, like the Roman one (who were also very fond of enslaving their prisoners of war) that may even theoretically be escapable through “manumission” for some “lucky” slaves, instead of the Hegemony’s immutable caste system. Nevertheless it is still slavery and my mc’s tolerance for slavery is basically nil.
Unreliable mutinous “officers” (or even just soldiers) who won’t take orders from someone of a (former) lower caste are as good as worthless to my mc, though he’ll certainly try to replace them with some of his own former helot and yeoman veterans. Hopefully the Hallasur are just as unused to guerilla, asymmetrical warfare as the Hegemony is, if so we can possibly pin them down in the mountains of Erezza in bloody guerilla warfare until they leave.
This is an issue of threshold, not size. A smaller band which is above the threshold of visibility will have exactly the same problems (no more) as a bigger band trying to slip past the Hegemony. A band which is successful at dispersing should be small enough (43 or fewer is I think the current threshold) to escape the encirclement even without preparing for night movement.
I recognize that it may currently be too hard to disperse for everyone not starting from Mara’s strategy. I’ll run through that in my draft over the coming days and adjust the difficulty level as needed.
But the dispersal strategy is not just sending off the children – it’s sending off as many adults as possible. You’re all preparing and working for going undercover in the Rim, not night movement in the wild… or at any rate, not enough drills of the latter to get the hang of it properly.
Hmm. Adding literacy classes for the helots to the mix of options that appear once you’ve made your rations target for the week… I’m really tempted to add that and link it to success in dispersal around the Rim in Ch 4. Let’s see if it keeps growing on me.
Calea will be helot only. Abelard de Toman will be aristo only. Prince Nip will be open to all comers.
Try letting Radmar lead more things in the winter, and Breden fewer. Otherwise, as Radmar warns you mid-winter, “One day, you’ll make a decision ${xhe} doesn’t like; and on that day, it won’t matter whether Zvad or Elery or any helot elder agrees with you or not. Because the one leader everyone will be looking to will be Breden Bloody Reaper.”
I think bandits.txt is finally banged into decent shape. Now trying to balance hounds before I post the last alpha update…
Which is why I try to keep both Breden and Radmar low profile, Breden gets around 6 with Radmar one or two, of course in my Games Zvad and Elery are the top leaders next to the mc.
I think I let Breden do mules twice and a bit of persuasion in the Brecks and that’s basically it really.
Can’t see why they’d be at all interested in a “sub-human” helot, unless we’re no more then a disposable sex-toy to them of course.
Interesting, are there any other Aristo-only romance options planned? As much as these Helots surprise me with their resourcefulness and resolve, they are simply not marriage material. They don’t even own any lands! Utter pishposh, I barely understand how they survive.
Is the Calea romance achievable in game 1?
Furthermore what led you to making her a Helot only option… I believe a romance between an Aristo MC and Calea could be quite compelling
You can’t romance Calea in game 1. I know she will be romanceable by a male helot, but I am unsure about a female one.
And Havenstone left some hints in the game that she seems to have something about taking helots to bed…though when she tires of them, sends them to the harrower.
I don’t know how extensively you’ve played Choice of Rebels, but if you are still relatively new to it…try playing it as a noble, and contact her (either with Int 2 or sending word to Hector)…if you try to force her to take a trip with you to the woods…well, Calea did earn some respect in ruthlessness.
Here are a few more cases where even a skeptical MC still swears by Xthonos instead of Rhupos.
When practicing wisardry in secret:
Seized by a sudden terror of discovery, your eyes dart upward – but even had a Theurge been flying just overhead, you don’t think you could have made them out against the roiling vapor exhalations, the great moist anathumes of which you once read in the Meteora of Phoibe. Xthonos… I can see the wind. You sit there transfixed, all danger forgotten, until your vision fades and the sky returns to a featureless gray.
If a helot MC kisses Breden when they first meet:
“Xthonos, neither am I!” An embarrassed heat prickled across your cheeks and ears. “Who said anything about a child? I reckon I’ve a few years left before the Theurges Harrow me for not breeding.”
The first time the MC kills someone:
It’s an enemy – the Xthonos-damned enemy that I’ve feared my whole life. I can barely keep from howling with elation.
If the MC is romancing Breden after dancing at the end of winter:
Ah, Xthonos – it’s never been harder to part for the night.
The start of the final argument with the noble MC’s father:
“Douse that fire,” I order the nearest spectators. “And next time he tries any such nonsense, for Xthonos’ sake stop him.”
The end of the final argument with the noble MC’s father:
“Stop speaking!” you yell. “Stop. You think anything you’ve done in your whole bitter, hateful life made us stronger as a family? Xthonos… you think anything I took from you deserves the name hope? Just bloody stop, Father.”
