Let’s start with 12 and put last page to bed! Thanks for the suggestion of new missions, but they’re in general NTHs, and a couple of them strike me as not feasible. For example, forging coins requires precious metal – which you could more readily barter than stamp with some poor imitation of the Thaumatarch’s head. (No one in a remote town like Rim Square would be likely to have the skills to forge a good die-stamp – there’s not nearly enough demand for those skills). And having a silver mine/buried treasure in the Whendward would be too convenient.
I do agree that cattle thievery deserves a short option. There aren’t big herds in the Rim, so as with robbing yeoman barns, stealing cattle would be an painfully drawn-out, high-risk, low-reward way to feed the band. Sheep are the real money-earner for the big families like the Keriatou – but the flocks are transhumant, and during the winter, they’re all pastured down in the Southriding. It’s the wrong season to get by on mutton.
And while I can understand the appeal of a Xaos-lands expedition, it would be perceived as simply crazy by your band. They’ll see any raid, anywhere, as a better idea than the “certain death” of hiking into Xaos. Not to mention the possible damnation – Xaos is the Enemy of Xthonos, and as will become clear at the appropriate point in the narrative, it’s a rare Shayardene who doesn’t feel some frisson of fear for their soul at the thought of dying in a Xaos-storm.
Back now to 5e: state terror is a standard pillar of imperial and colonial rule and can last centuries – just ask the Irish, or Chechens. (Or if you could go back in time the Judeans or Gauls; Roman law was lovely if you were a citizen, but for non-citizens, the threat of mass crucifixions if you didn’t knuckle under and pay your taxes was rather more relevant). It’s rare for a country to expect colonial subjects to submit out of loyalty or any sense of legitimacy, so fear is a pervasive part of the system. That consistently manifests itself in torture and deterrence through brutal, disproportionate, and collective punishment. And no, having a very detailed religious code of laws is not the same thing as the rule of law, though it’s an important step on the path that got us there.
You talk about “the system’s credibility” – but the system of punishment in many imperial and colonial regimes is, “someone will suffer ASAP… and if afterward there’s reason to think we didn’t get the right person, someone else will suffer, and so on until things quieten down.” The system’s credibility is the ability to credibly deliver that kind of violence in situations where it’s challenged. It generally runs into problems not when it punishes the innocent, but when it punishes someone who has enough power to push back (in that delicate balance of power between imperial administrators and local elites that, with some variation, characterizes all empires). And the system can last, as I said, for centuries – even without the vast disparity of power (and ability to turn rebels into mage-fodder) that Theurgy has created in the gameworld.
So in this case, no one involved in the Architelone plot is powerful enough that the Keriatou would need to go to the trouble of the sort of show trial you’re suggesting. You’re right that in a game set in a more modern era, like Broadsides, the need to avoid an overt miscarriage of justice would be much more important. But that comes after some key watersheds, like people no longer believing that torture delivered reliable confessions (it was a staple of most premodern justice systems; indeed, for the Romans, it was a mandatory part of any slave trial, as it was believed that slaves would always lie without torture). This gameworld is still at the point where people half-believe it… where it’s widely recognized that torture always leads to a confession, but there’s still some sense that it’s a necessary part of the process. (Which corresponds to my understanding of attitudes in 16th century Europe).
- All the other missions pose much greater risk to your dad’s life. To me, that’s reason enough to limit the options to this one. To the understandable would-be parricides, I can only say NTH.
11a. No, not really – I was just imagining Lady P as a plummy English noblewoman there. Lord Keriatou’s name is actually Stilos. And while I can understand why you interpreted it that way, the Hegemony doesn’t forbid killing of helots. The Karagonds are in strong sympathy with the nobles’ argument that they could never keep order if the helots didn’t think they could be killed at any moment.
b. Breden’s preferred gender is determined when you choose whether you’re male or female.
