@Havenstone that means these later books are only 300 years old? And what does the codex say on the possibility of further revelation in present time, is this something possible in theory or heresy by default? And could an MC make up something and sell it as new revelation or, if s/he’s very religious, actualy get one (or at least believe thsi)?
if im just nit-picking let me know and i’ll drop the subject,but I’ve been curios for awhile,is there more to doing magic then just needing enough blood,i mean is there a tactic or a secret to there harrowing, if all that is required is a certain amount of blood couldn’t they just take a pint or a half pint or something from every helot instead of taking all of it from like 12 of them at a time if they are killing all the older helots to avoid waste,then out and out killing at random (including young helots) for no real reason seems strange,no-one needs to die and the aristo’s don’t lose any of their (ahem) property
and under the conditions that its just the blood and if we get whatever we need to purify blood to make the blood vials coudnt i ask for nonlethal donations from my following
WulfyK, the orthodox line is definitely that the Codex is closed and no further revelation will be forthcoming. But that didn’t stop Joseph Smith, and it need not stop you…
Matteller, great question – have a look at these two pages where it’s been talked about a bit before.
so blood has power on its own,but may or may not be AS powerful without the harrowing? and the Theurgist’s may or may not know this?and may or may not be lying to everybody?
on a side note.please tell me there are going to be some nobles at some point who are half-way decent people,i started off playing for a low anarchy score and giving mercy when i could,but the more different options i take the more i find out about the nobles and frankly the more violent i get,my first character was super charismatic so after stopping the harrowing i spared everybody.a later character was super intelligent and slightly charismatic so best i can do is give the trials after the harrowing where i find out almost every single person i had spared before were horrible rapists,later still i finally played a helot and found out that (i believe it was my cousin when i was a noble)was forcing herself on helots and then rigging it so they would be chosen for the harrowing after she got bored of them(what is wrong with these people)so far just about every noble i can think of deserves to die, the only possible exception that comes to mind so far is the noble that joined me in my camp but it sounds like he/she has only joined up because apparently they think im sexy,and in a cruel twist of fate, how their gender is decided usually means they are the same gender as me which means i’m not ever going to be attracted to them,and if they stick around its probably going to be because they have no choice,because they didnt really think this through and going home doesn’t really seem like a valid option anymore
@Matteller the trick to have nobles with the gender you want is choose Breden gender noble would have the opposite gender. Gender in breden question is just his gender not if you are homo bi bi or straight.
And about nobles being bad, helots are stupid sheep that only can do hand labor and have babies like mad hares. If we nobles don’t control them and guide them Shayard would be a wasteland . Sheep aren’t made to rule, they are to serve. And we honored always they remmember they place. 
@Matteller, the nobles probably see themselves as just exercising their “divine” rights, after all they have been given a convenient excuse by the dominant religion to view their slaves as sub-human therefore this kind of behaviour shouldn’t come as a surprise.
As to Calea and her brother, assuming they are even taken alive I think that even my character for all his usual principles would intervene in any sort of “justice” a lynch mob decides to dispense on them.
My characters orthodox interpretation is that the Karagond (and the Shayardene version as well, I guess) codex is fit only for kindling, serving as a support device for uneven legs of tables and chairs and basic sanitary needs. Or in other words a colossal waste of good paper & ink.
@WulfyK, the judge Dee series somewhat simplifies the whole bureaucratic structure so that it’s simpler than it’s real world counterpart and somewhat more useful for a fledgling nation to adopt. In addition to that the positions in it obviously related to the functioning of the imperial court, especially the eunuchs can be dispensed with entirely as they would need no equivalent in the state my character’s looking to build.
Matteller: Your own living blood has power – but also obvious limits. It’s not sufficient to do much without incapacitating or even killing yourself.
If you want to use other people’s blood, there’s a necessary refinement process which the Theurges keep secret. Blood plus… something(s). If the only input they were extracting from the Harrowed helots was blood, then a nonlethal blood tax would clearly be the most rational and economical way to harvest it.
As for nobles who are decent people: the more exploitative the social system, the more moral ugliness it produces. (At every level; the rapists on trial weren’t noble, just Alastors recruited from the middle classes). If you want to retain the illusion that we’re nice people, you’ve got to keep your distance from the exploited classes who bear the cost of the system.
But then, your real complaint seems not to be the absence of sympathetic nobles so much as the shortage of readily sexable ones. 
@Havenstone, I do wonder can we augment our theurgy by drawing blood from ourselves simultaneously with other willing persons in some sort of “blood brother” type ritual. Is that at all possible, I mean even before the rarefication process was invented mages might have wanted to bolster their magic occasionally so would something like standing in a circle and holding each-other’s bleeding hands do it?
@idnlun: worth a try. You’ve never heard of it working, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t.
Havenstone-my point with the follower wasn’t that i didn’t want to have the sex with him so much as its that he apparently just left home without even considering the thought that i wouldn’t be interested,which i felt was stupid on their part,he just leaves home (a potentially irreversible course of action) for a cause he doesnt seem to really care about under the assumption he can win me over,the fact that he was not my prefered gender just made it a bit more ridiculous to me,because it is actually not just unlikely but impossible for him to win me over.if im not saying it right then brenden say something like his love for the rebellion will probably end about a week after he figures out he cant win me over(this noble regardless of gender is just another doche like every other noble i have seen so far)and i have tried the scenes with the gender swapped it didnt change my mind about them even as a female i still thought they were stupid and i still wasnt interesed in them
as for the living blood thing i think i figured it out(as far as game mechanics go anyways) so far it seems to be a no other option, option for when i lack the stats to do anything else,it lets me pass a scene but also potentially lose control of what happens next,when i used it to defeat the guards when invading the nobles mansion i passed the combat scene with it but then i passed out from blood loss and my group of angry helots decided how to proceed without me being able to influence them which resulted in them burning the mansion down with the nobles still inside,im probably wrong about the long term mechanics but if thats how it works i find that kinda interesting
i would say slavery in the south of the united states would be a good example of people exploiting the crap out of their fellow man,some really really bad stuff happened, so yeah people with power can be complete dickheads, but the underground railroad is also a thing,so i wouldn’t exactly say everybody is going to be an evil dirt-bag if given the opportunity,granted i majority might,but i don’t think every single person with power is necessarily going to treat people wrong,at the very least shouldn’t there be people with more neutral views,that at bare minimum don’t go out of their way to abuse people
poison-mara i get that now but the first time i read it the wording confused me it says how attractive i find him/her granted i read it wrong but can you get where i thought what i thought?
@Matteller First time I read that scene I thought Breden was using Blood magic to rape me in the forest, due Breden description going against all I considered attractive. Worse is a helot I don’t care a thing. So your error is understandable compared the horrible, I had lol.
Matteller, don’t take Breden’s dismissal of Simon as accurate. She’s hardly a neutral observer.
The odds of you meeting someone involved in the Underground Railroad in the antebellum South were very, very low – much worse than your odds of meeting someone who was an evil dirtbag from their slaves’ perspective. Systems like that sustain themselves through the active and constant dehumanisation of the bottom caste, and it takes someone of well above average moral fiber to stand back from the scapegoating, let alone actively lean against it.
You’ve had the opportunity to meet a few not-particularly-abusive nobles in game one so far, and one who has a degree of moral heroism. And you have the chance to be a heroic noble yourself. That’s about as many as I think are plausible in the story so far.
as for the underground railroad i know it was a minority,i know in every similar situation it probably always will be a minority.
for the not particuarily abusive do you mean brendens owners because i dont remember meeting them and as for the heroic noble, are you refering to the person who frees me if i dont end the harrowing immediatly,cause if so,you dont meet him if you are acting particuarily heroic
and as for bredens dismissal of him,i dont remember reading anything that lead me to believe he cared about the cause, i get she’s supposed to be jealous,but that was the vibe i was getting on my own before i read what he/she said,though to be fair i had gotten the scene where i had gave a charming speech at the church and gotten his dialogue from that,i guess i jumped to weird infatuation
(im probably being dense,it wouldnt be the first time)
I had in mind Ismene de Galis (if you haven’t met her, try different tax collector options) and Platon Leilatou for not particularly abusive nobles.
And yes, there are all the ones you don’t actually meet. As recognized in the helot flashbacks: “Even after the bad death of Olen Stonehewer, many helots were hesitant to complain about their noble masters; some of the lesser Houses were kindly enough to the helotry, after all.” They’re not kindly enough by half to be significant to the story, but they’re mentioned as a reminder that many nobles are neither heroes nor monsters – especially the weak ones who live in closer proximity to a smaller number of helots. As they become stronger, like the Keriatou and Pelematou, they’re more likely to mistreat the faceless hordes of slaves who work their land.
As for who I’d consider the somewhat heroic noble… well, you’re certainly free to read these passages as window dressing on an infatuation, but others might consider it evidence that s/he actually cares about the cause.
“We’re here to join you. For years, I’ve dreamed in secret of chasing the thieving Karagonds from Shayard. My father beat me when I spoke of it, and my helot friends begged me to be cautious, lest we all be sent to the Harrower. But your rebellion has set tongues wagging and hearts afire from here to Shayard City – and not just among the helotry.”
“More importantly, ${milady}, I think you know we’ll never beat the Thaumatarch unless helots and aristocrats can come together, rather than waste our energies fighting each other! Yours is the first helot rebellion I’ve heard of that has not simply ravaged the local nobility or dissolved into anarchy. I’m wagering my life that you’ve made that choice deliberately – that you want to keep the door open for an uprising of all Shayardenes, even the nobles.”
i already said i might have been influenced from the scene at the church
but i get your point i’ll go through the story again
How big of a hit would Shayard’s agricultural output take without Theurgy to speed up crop growth? Would it be able to sustain itself?
Printing presses? That sounds delightful for my little rebel. (:< Am I correct in thinking helots are as often illiterate as literate? Can I sow chaos and destroy the powers-that-be in a flurry of reading lessons, seditious pamphlets, and dedicated scribes? I’m sure the children would happily help out with that. They could even add illustrations.
@Fiogan according to the game, only 1 in a 1000 is literate, but printing images/comics sounds like a good idea.
@Havenstone Would an INT 1 or 2 MC be able to figure out how to make a crude printing press or would s/he need to go to Karagon in order to steal or capture a proper one?