The story reason is that the Architelone is carrying less tax than usual because of the chance of your raid - and the benefits of Bleys joining you and helping you sell your stuff to the right people are greater than I’ve currently put them.
The game reason is that surviving the winter is going to be tougher again and involve moral tradeoffs. See FG’s explanation above.
Lots of good points as usual, @Golgot - thanks!
I´m afraid that i never would reach a good ending playing this game.
Due my objective is destroy the helots leaders .
A more or less bloodless revolution with no raid nobility or merchants.
Until now, i only have a nun noble and 45 ugly helots with a bunch of horrific stupid helots official and a grumpy daddy. :((
There is no way Mara win the battles … My 3 charisma wouldn’t achieve nothing :((
@MaraJade
They’re “ugly” because they were slaves underneath a horribly corrupt, genocidal and selfish society.
@Samuel_H_Young My noble girl has the slavish problematic in her agenda below the Gnome gardening protocol. Of corse, she tries to fake some sympathy for them. But she sees them like smelly talking apes , and i hardly doubt they would be better beyond Mara´s rule , there would be no harrowings, but certainly would be slaves
Actually, would the Karagond actions be considered as genocidal? I mean, yes, they discourage the speaking of the native languages and customs and prefer their own, they crushed at least a few Shayardene nationalist uprisings over the years and probably many more at other times and places, and Karagonds appear to be treated better, but in that respect it really seems kinda par for the course as to how a great many countries have operated in the past and to these days without crossing the boundary into attempting to exterminate the populations. I’m not counting the harrowing since it appears that the system of helotry sacrificed for their blood appears to be originating from Karagond in the first place, and at any rate their blood collection doesn’t appear to be doing much more than denting the growth of the population. I think there’s even a point somewhere in the system that says that the old and infirm are disproportionately targeted in part because they aren’t able to bear children. Now that I think of it, it did say that birth control was explicitly banned for helot use, which certainly goes against the operating practice for many of the institutions that have historically sought to get rid of various groups.
Maybe I’m wrong and there was once some or many other knock-off nation(s) of some ethnic group or another that was/were ‘dissolved’ for being troublesome some time in the past that we haven’t heard about, but from what we have to go off of, I’m not seeing too much evidence for genocide in the fullest sense of the word thus far.
@Golgot
Maybe they aren’t trying to exterminate the helots, but the systematic, frequent and mass killings still occur.
I really like this game so far. I can’t wait to see more!
Hmm, I noticed that if I only use theurgy in front of my followers my secret is then widely known far and wide, shouldn’t I be able to tell my men not to tell people, and for that matter, even if I don’t, who are they going to tell?
Why are we using theurgy out in the open? From the description it doesn’t seem like it includes its own special effects, so why can’t we hide in a corner and make “fortunate accidents” go our way? The most effective advantage is the one that other people can’t prepare themselves to counter.
Probably because sometime in the future we’re going to have to use our Theurgy in a major way.
@stsword, that’s currently a glaring problem with the tax collector raid, right? I think every other opportunity to use Theurgy is written to be blatantly public. But you make a great point, and I’ll see about writing in a “secret Theurge” path where even in some of the other public contexts you try to keep it unnoticed.
Yes the tax collector raid, getting rid of the guards in such a way that the guards don’t know anything happened, that’s what I was talking about, and exactly how I’d want to use theurgy in this game.
Public use of theurgy ought to be a last resort.
A high intelligence score ought to be for out thinking, out witting, and flat out bamboozling people. 
Also caught another error, when choosing a scapegoat in the tax collector run I got the “no I’m not going to sacrifice that working relationship” about the merchant willing to smuggle with you even if you’ve made no such arrangement yet.
@stsword
I agree that it should be used subtley. However, it helped to scare away like a dozen guards by just mumbling and acting like you were gonna use theurgy against the guards in the noble’s estate (I forgot the name)
@stsword, I’ll tweak the game before release so you can pursue either strategy – try to keep Theurgy as your secret ace in the hole, or use it publicly to terrify your enemies and hearten your allies. Thanks, terrific feedback.
And while I’m at it, a public thanks to Adam Morse for his suggestion (well over a year ago now) that the game would be more fun if a high INT player could use Theurgy. Originally I was going to save that for INT 3 (i.e. next game). It would have been quite a different game.
Re: Alaine Leybridge, you have a “working relationship” with her regardless – even if you’ve not approached her about smuggling, she’s still your best fence. To get Bleys into your band, you need to sell out someone who’s of genuine use. (Ismene’s use will be more apparent next game).
Keeping theurgy secret sounds like a difficult path, unless the player character’s going to conceal it from even their own followers.
Your followers are going to want to boast about having a leader who’s a literal miracle worker, even if you tell them not to, because it’s something new, exciting and totally outside their experience. It’s difficult to imagine a group of 40 (much less 200) people keeping something like that secret for long. And unless they’re completely cut off from the outside world, word’s going to spread.
Something to remember, Protagonist, is that according to the church any non priest using theurgy is a babyeating demon worshipper, and there are religious folk in our rebellion, so reaction even among our own camp would be mixed at best.
And as for hiding it, considering we think there’s a traitor in our midst, quite possibly in our own inner circle, hiding it from one’s own would be part of the point.
Since theurgy just involves some cutting, some mumbling, and an altered state of awareness, as long as we hide in the shadows and avoid mimicking star wars, I figure it would work for quite a while.
It’s not like it includes fanfare of the earth trembling, a glowing aura, or a choir of angels singing backup behind you.
Unless it’s time to pull our ace out of our sleeves, in which case it’s time to go full on mook horror show, of course.
@stsword
The bandits and helots actually seemed to admire my theurgy.
They really don’t if you call it goety or do horrible things to the temple people with it.
Yeah I suppose it depends on what you do.
@Havenstone I´m officially Angry X( . Why my maximum charisma Mara couldn’t use force persuade “this aren’t the rebels are you looking for. Now you go your quarter and kill yourself and your partners with powder” I mean if inteligent people could use blood magic charisma could use force persuade if not this game is not fair [-( 
@Stsword Given the nature of the choices which you are presented with when using theurgy (such as causing your opponents’ weapons to fly out of their hands) it’s going to be evident to all but the most dim-witted of your followers that something out of the ordinary is going on. A character who intends to avoid doing anything which might tip off their followers to the fact they have powers is going to seriously handicap themselves in the process.
Bear in mind that your character is the leader of the rebellion, and that they are going to be attracting considerable attention at pivotal moments, with their followers awaiting orders. This should make slinking off into the shadows problematic at best.
