I never have, but that’s probably just because I wish to personally lead every single combat raid in the winter, because that’s what leaders do.
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Yeah, that’s what I’d thought. And it’s the source of enough bugginess that I’m considering ripping it out.
The one thing holding me back is that I think standing orders might be important in making the nonviolent path more tolerable – where you don’t have a lot of variety in your survival path, and might want to just commit a gang without the tedium of having to click through the process of e.g. sending 60 followers begging to helot camps every week.
In retrospect, for all the work that went into standing orders, I might as easily have written completely different text for each week of fundraising in helot camps or hunting rabbits. But that’s not work I’d particularly welcome at this point…
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Living off of crappy food under makeshift tents in the dead of winter with rarely any ability to make even a temporary fire for warmth or a proper meal for nearly three months, well, let’s just say I wouldn’t reccomend it for even a week. At least it doesn’t rain… Wait, nevermind.
They get more food than they got before (if you can properly feed the band), probably less heavy labour than before, and while I guess they had houses before (if they were lucky), it wasn’t as if those houses were great in any way. They weren’t allowed to have doors!
Not to mention freedom from arbitrary punishments, near-forced breeding, and Harrowing.
So, y’know, for the Helots it isn’t that bad. 
Not worse than they are used to, for sure.
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From the helot version of bandits.txt:
You try to remind yourself again of how many wintry hours you and your fellow helots have spent in no less sodden rags, rousted out before dawn to plough or weed or haul timber in the rain. There’s nothing new about what you’re feeling now.
*fake_choice
#But there was always a fire to come back to.
A grand bonfire, the one thing no aristo in the Rim would begrudge their helotry. With roasted gourds and yams, a scrap of pigeon, a cup of hot water… things to balance out the cold humors, get your thickened blood flowing properly again.
#And a roof over my head.
Growing up, you’d thought your crude shack gave barely any protection against the winter storms. Now you’d be grateful to the point of tears if you came across a shelter that kept out half as much.
#And enough food to keep us in good enough health.
With ablers standing by to cure those who fell ill nonetheless. The aristarchs didn’t want their helots dying of anything as pointless as a winter ague, and the overseers had a decent sense for when someone was genuinely too sick to work. The one time you had a high fever, you got goat’s milk and scraps of mutton for two days until you’d begun to recover.
Still, you force out the words, “We’ve lived through worse winters than this.”
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I think my mc’s personal “worst winters” are yet ahead of them and they would at least in part be caused by palace living conditions combined with his paranoid streak and loathing of the “high culture”. So, no, I don’t think that first winter has been my mc’s “worst” ever, at least for the first time in his life he was truly free and doing something he wanted to do.
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Hey, @Havenstone, cosidering the MC is teaching the helots to write, you might want to bring that into future sequels. If that’s the case, I think XoR could benefit from a look some research into critical pedagogy. They have a few researchers that tried to coin a new relationship between teacher and student arguing that traditional teaching methods failed due to distinct economical and social backdrops.
Is there any way to save Linos and Horion?
I think I figured out why Kalt/Kala was not recognizing how much the Helots love my MC 
. The problem is that two of the if statements have a gap between them that should not be there but is currently triggering the else clause of helots not loving the MC.
*elseif (cred_h > 299) and (cred_a < 100)
"They say that the helots love you and the nobles hate you."
"And that's why you're here?"
"Sounds to me like you're doing something right." ${kalt} grins and casts ${zhis} eyes around the other outlaws.
*goto kaltmurd
*elseif (cred_h > 299) and (cred_a > 150)
"They say that the helots love you… and the nobles don't hate you nearly as much as you'd expect."
"And that's why you're here?"
"I'm here because it's time the aristos got scared of you. I can help you with that." Before you have time to react, ${kalt} presses on.
*goto kaltmurd
*else
"They say that you're trying to fight the Thaumatarchy, but haven't yet got the helots to love you."
"So why are you here?"
"To teach you what we really want from your rebellion." Before you have time to react, ${kalt} presses on.
*goto kaltmurd
I think the issue is the gap between (cred_h > 299) and (cred_a < 100) and (cred_h > 299) and (cred_a > 150). I’ve been saving my playtest numbers from Chapter 2 and in a bunch of games my MC ended up with aristocracy credibility of 149 and helot credibility over 299 so that would have placed my MC in the gap between “if” statements each time.
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I was already planning to bring in the XoR-verse’s version of Paolo Freire. Any specific resources you’d recommend?
Oh, Freire’s the one I’m more acquainted with, but there are other main sources. I’ll do some research, ask some more experienced friends and PM you my findings, yeah?
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Well, the one about food is plain wrong for a well-managed, smaller, group. Although the big bands do have issues feeding themselves. The point about fire and roof over the head is correct, but then again: The Helots of our place had been unusually spoiled by the nice priestess (sorry, names and fancy Greek titles slip my mind at the moment) who was spending lots of money on providing adequate(ish) houses for them. Many, probably most, other Helots would be worse off in that department. Not saying that it is easy to live in the woods, but I consider it a clear improvement to what the poor sods had to deal with before.
Although, now that you mention it… How about building some semi-permanent houses for our rebels during the winter weeks? Cave dwellings or tree houses or something? Of course, you can’t build a small stationary village because of the Theurges, but something in that manner should be doable. Might provide some help during the battle, minimize the need for mules to carry the sick. Better conditions for the ill bandits. In case you are looking for more work. 
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Unless I need to clear my cache, I got this error:
bandits line 25496: Non-existent command ‘returnn’
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I just got that error too.
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Yeah, there’s a double n in the numbers to words code, if i’m not mistaken.
(Bandits, to be precise)
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The answer is no. Even if you keep them as prisoners…for their own good…they still bite it.
OH NO! I CANNOT “RETURNN” (sic)!!!
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I had one game where my helot MC had raided House de Merre causing Horion to not reveal anything worth befriending him over. So my MC held Horion hostage and sent Linos off to deliver the ransom. When it became clear that no ransom would be forthcoming, my MC chose the option to release Horion. I never heard the fate of either of them again that game. If they are supposed to die at that point, the text never showed up for that playthrough.
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Correct. I made the same observation as well when I held them prisoners, and suggested the author mention them dying from say the Plektoi.
As for them dying, I seem to dimly recall some general info Havenstone gave that they weren’t to make it…but I can’t seem to find it. And I admit, I could be misremembering it as well.
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The entire point of Horion’s character is that he has no self-preservation instincts at all, so he’s probably dead no matter what happens. Not sure if the same holds for Linos.
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