I’m back, and have read through all hundred of the posts since I last commented. Suffice to say, my thoughts got out of hand, so for ease of organization, I’ve divided them up into 5 distinct parts, which I’ve bookmarked here. (1/5) focuses on democracy and the post-Hegemonic world; (2/5) is a miscellaneous set with some gameplay/code-diving notes; (3/5) is all about religion with some aesthetic theorycrafting at the end; (4/5) is about the Seracca; and (5/5) closes things out with some discussion of the setting itself. Replies are not arranged in chronological order; and no pressure on anyone to reply in turn.
(1/5)
A future where people look back on the Thaumatarchy with fondness and nostalgia is possible, which is why it’s up to those who survive it to not forget the tragedies it created and to prove the wrongness of the Hegemony through the new world that emerges.
After all, even as — especially as — rebellions take power, there will be those who’d rather have the ‘simpler’ days where despite living under oppression, they didn’t have to worry so much about civil war and famine, and where not standing for anything was the status quo. And, of course, those who’d unironically suggest that the Thuamatarchy is worth preserving. Best that these people not be the ones who tell the stories for generations to come.
That said, the fall of the Western Roman Empire might not be the most accurate parallel for what’ll happen. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that many people here have drawn analogies to various periods of Chinese disunity, as recently as the Chinese Civil War (and subsequent failures of the Communist Party), probably in no small part because that’s a case where an imperial state and identity persisted despite collapsing many times over. And what’s noteworthy about those is that disunity could last for decades and even centuries. Our story is inherently limited to the single lifetime of our protagonist, and it’s difficult to say what their legacy will be.
For example, I’d hypothesise that should a state with imperial ambitions secure the bulk of Shayard, Erezza, and technological + administrative aspects of Karagon (that is to say, looting Aekos, or what’s left of it), that Great Power would be well-positioned to eventually become hegemon of the continent for a time, even if it doesn’t immediately ascend to that role amidst the anarchy. Ultimately, the only way to tell is to see things through to the end. Revolution is in practice far more than theory.
Erjan: whistles innocently
Time will tell if Tevqar’s got that Mehmed II in him…
So, moots. They’re a thing, and I think they’re ultimately ideal for the emancipated helotry, even more so than an apella. After the war is won, we can consider restricting participation, but 14 is the better number for this historical moment.
It all comes down to demographics: the helotry skews young. Out of the 292 helots in Rim Square, 178 (61%) are children, with our protagonist estimating the number below fourteen as “every second or third one you see”. These are the people who haven’t broken under the Hegemony’s whip; the people who are most open to accepting new ideas and shattering old ones. And they’re the ones who are going to inherit the mess we create.
They deserve a say in the decisions that will shape their lives and their future, and they’re the ones we should want speaking up and becoming politically conscious. And because so many helots are so young, for the generation that follows emancipation, the rate at which former helots enter the voting population is likely to be faster than that of any other demographic.
Besides, it is kind of silly that neither we nor Breden are old enough to participate in any apella before the end of Chapter 3 and have to do the song and dance of Zvad asking us to speak on his behalf. The same would be true for many of the young helots who were the catalyst for this rebellion, and they’re the kind of people we ought to empower across generations.
For me, at least, where the work ought to begin seems to be at the local level, building participatory institutions that interface directly with the people, in the process nurturing political consciousness that can grow into national institutions. And ideally, this proto-democracy would emerge from those already-existing cultural memories: for Shayard, the moot. For Wiendrj, the Oath-Holder. For Nyryal, perhaps the Nyrnakan Republic, or even hearkening back to their nomadic era. For Karagon or Erezza, it’s harder to say simply because we haven’t learned enough about them, but there very well could be a republican (albeit probably not democratic) tradition rooted in their city-states. I find this a lot more natural than trying to, say, impose an apella on all nations.
This is disunity, and probably a barrier to any imperial-scale solution more unitary than a continental NATO (an alliance of free peoples) would be, but I’d rather bet on homegrown democracy than one demanded by those who hold the monopoly on force. The shape of it would be different, but the ideals of freedom and emancipation the same.
Trouble is, protecting that vision probably demands a lot of power. But we’ll cross that broken bridge when we reach it.
(2/5)
You may have already caught this fun detail, but throat singing makes a cameo appearance through the Whiskered Hawk, likely inspired by Khöömei.
“Our ancestors sang so,” in Jyrrek’s words.
In short, I agree and I imagine the Xaos-lands must be beautiful when not ravaged by hellstorms.
“Literacy” is one of those weird variables that’s simultaneously concrete and made abstract as a concession to gameplay, and as a result, both interpretations are valid in the absence of authorial comment, but there’s an elegance to it only counting adults that I find appealing. My justification goes into the exact mechanics of how literacy is calculated by the game, and you might not want to have that elucidated, so I’ve left it under the spoiler tag.
For every rebel student in one week, you gain 1/10th of a literate rebel. You can interpret this as it taking on average 10 weeks of study for a rebel to gain basic literacy; or as 1 out of every 10 students having the aptitude to pick it up in a week. The ‘truth’ of the matter is somewhere in between.
For example, assigning the bare minimum of 2 per week leads to 18 worker × weeks, rounding up to 2 literate rebels. This intuitively makes sense. But if for just one week, you assigned 50 rebels, then it stands to reason that at least 3 of the 5 literate rebels gained learned enough in that one week. The ‘reality’ is based on the relative weights of these scenarios.
Children are a flat weekly bonus; for every child, you gain 1/100th of a literate rebel. In practice, that’s roughly the equivalent of 17.8 bonus rebels studying per week (Naomi and Jerome Merryweather don’t make a meaningful difference because they arrive too late).
The elegance emerges when we look at the lower bound. Assigning 2 rebels to study each week, including the bonus from children, makes the weekly gain of literate rebels 1/10 of 19.8: rounding up to 2 literate rebels per week of study. This means you can’t gain more literate rebels than total students, assuming each week was different students.
Importantly, the natural number breakpoint where this becomes the case for 178 children is 2 rebels per week. If you could only assign 1 rebel per week, then at most you’d have 9 rebels who studied at all, but you’d gain 17 literate rebels, disproving the hypothesis that it only counts literate adults. But the game is coded to prevent this contradiction from happening. This serves as a mechanical explanation for why you can’t assign fewer than 2 people weekly.
This interpretation has narrative weight too: eventually “Your more experienced students understand enough now to help others get started”, and since the children are studying this every week you assign the task, they build up experience that can help your rebels learn faster and also provide motivation. Here, it makes sense to have diminishing returns on effectiveness for larger study groups as well, since you’d be spreading their attention across more pupils (this is roughly the argument for a low student-faculty ratio). The idea of Pin Thatcher being head TA of the literacy class is also too spectacular an image to pass up on.
As a consequence, this does mean that maximum efficiency is achieved at 2 rebels per week assigned to alphabeta: diminishing returns start immediately. Some guides have noted this for years now. And these diminishing returns pose a major challenge to getting a high overall literacy rate for the band itself. To raise, that ratio, well, that’s when we get into the unorthodox techniques of a malformed objective function.
Since literacy rate is a ratio, increasing the number of literate rebels isn’t the only way to raise it: you can also reduce the total number of rebels. We can take this fact and align it with another: Korszata and Bjel’s Wiends, all 22 of them, are literate. So the smaller the Whendward Band is when they join, the larger the effect they’ll have on literacy rate. To avoid this, we’d need constraints (e.g. max literacy rate while having at least X rebels) or a different metric altogether, such as total literate rebels.
That said, there is actually an obscure bug that enables infinitely scaling literacy in Uprising. I consider it mostly harmless, though, considering how rare the circumstances are to have it happen.
A seemingly simple question that exposes some of the complexity behind how the Hector encounter is coded, because it’s seriously impressive how much is in there. The most nested segment, I think, is confronting Ganelon before he dies, with a whopping 25 tabs at its deepest point. But to answer your question:
I think there’s always the possibility that Ganelon survived on the healer route. Or in other words, there does not exist a possible healer world where Ganelon is guaranteed to die. While the code exists for a perfect victory (all veneurs dead with no casualties), it is barely not possible to have a strong enough ambush to achieve it on a healer path. Sharpening your outlaws’ spears (a prerequisite) prevents you from using other, more effective Theurgic techniques; and while de Firiac is usually better at the ambush than Kal because of their hunting experience, for the healer path specifically they get a penalty to make them equal to Kal when they delay the pursuit to take care of you.
That means the best outcome is that “Three of the veneurs crawled off wounded. All the rest are slain” — meaning Ganelon very well could’ve been one of the survivors.
At the end of the day, these are early capitalists, and we’ve seen in history how the old aristocracy can be overtaken by the new aristocrats.
Alaine does mention restraint in not attacking “merchants or our noble clientele” as a positive, and the merchants we’ve encountered so far dislike the more violent means of administering vigilante justice that rebels offer. And like the aristos, they love it when someone robs the taxmen and eye recruiting the taxman with suspicion. But that’s just a matter of first impressions, getting your foot in the door. At the end of the day, what merchants often care about is their business, and their alignment with the aristocracy seems less out of loyalty and more out of a fear that whatever happens to the aristos could very well happen to them. And fittingly, for all but the most silver of tongues, building inroads with the merchants is chiefly about proving yourself ‘useful’ (i.e. profitable) and ‘reasonable’ (i.e. listening to them).
Mechanically speaking, you can gain the support of all five of the major factions in Uprising (if you’re playing as an aristo), and aside from that it’s all too easy to pick a single scapegoat and unite the rest against them. Such a playstyle can still engage in violence and destruction, just all focused against a single target.
(3/5)
Linos is a fascinating mess, and his teachings about compassion are no different in my opinion. Tell him that your rebellion will succeed because “Others had some hesitation…some limit to what they would do to destroy their enemies. We won’t.” — he’s rendered speechless and visibly shaken, likely understanding that his and Horion’s lives are in real danger at that moment. As for the Doorways of Xaos, that’s something he’ll only discuss with an aristo, and it’s clear why:
“And yet…compassion also makes us flinch from the sacrifices that are necessary to preserve Order. Compassion lies behind every misguided attempt to free helots, to end Harrowing, to make peace with the Xaos-loving nations beyond the borders of Hegemony. The highest virtue, and the greatest danger.”
— Ecclesiast Linos
He doesn’t want this rebellion chasing that dream of freedom for all, or a world without Wards, or a world without Harrowing. He criticizes the ambition and scale of the empire as hubris, greed, and decadence built on a foundation of unjust violence; that could make him an ally, but only so far. Even if he’s a rebel, he’s still an Ecclesiast, and a confidant of the Archimandrite, high priest of Shayard. He’s a part of that entrenched power structure — and of noble descent as well. Ecclesiasts like Olynna have a sword hanging over their head with every compassionate act they take, and even she lived with a sad acceptance of Harrowing and the injustices of the world. This ‘kindness’ from above can only go so far.
Instead, we can look to the Diakon priests, who are closest to the helotry. They’re the ones who witness the aftermath of every Harrowing; they’re the ones who abandon their posts to lead helots to freedom in your (devout) rebellion, even if that rebellion is despised by the priesthood at large. They’re the ones willing to believe in religious reformation, and especially Inner Voices: “We’ve seen the least and the lowest respond to the Angels’ word, saying it’s what they’ve heard in dreams or the silence of their hearts. We’ve seen the leaders guided, and the sick comforted in their last hour.” When the Archon comes a’hunting, it’s the Ecclesiasts who rally a mob to kill us; it’s the Diakons who send us crucial intelligence about the Theurges.
For a helot rising, it seems we ought to focus on them instead. They’re distant enough from Hegemonic power; as a class, they have far more in common with the free peoples of the towns and cities than the Ecclesiasts playing the political game; and they’re more willing to flirt.
Flirt with religious reformation. Yeah, that’s where that sentence was going.
Yeah, to add onto this @mshan95032, we can look at some historical examples. The Investiture Controversy (a true understatement of a name) comes to mind, as a western European conflict between church (the Roman Catholic one, fresh off schism with the Eastern Orthodox) and monarchy (chiefly the Holy Roman Empire). Yep, there’s a theme that certainly never came up again in European history.
Long story short, the church wanted to be solely in charge of appointing bishops and abbots and future Popes, taking away that role from the monarchy. Subsequently, Emperor Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII both declare the other to be illegitimate, and the Pope outright excommunicated the Emperor (three times). Let’s have a look at what he wrote, translated:
in the name of Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, I withdraw, through thy power and authority, from Henry the king, son of Henry the emperor, who has risen against thy church with unheard of insolence, the rule over the whole kingdom of the Germans and over Italy. And I absolve all Christians from the bonds of the oath which they have made or shall make to him; and I forbid any one to serve him as king. For it is fitting that he who strives to lessen the honour of thy church should himself lose the honour which belongs to him.
Then some aristocrats rebelled against the Emperor, they were defeated after three years, the Emperor chose his own Pope, attacked Rome to depose the old one who excommunicated him, that guy died in exile, and it would be another 30 years (with all the original parties dead, and one First Crusade later) before a compromise was reached.
Now, there are noteworthy differences between the Holy Roman Empire and the Karagond Hegemony; for one, the Theurges already exercise immense control over the church: the state is, in theory, a theocracy, where the Thaumatarchs and the Ennearchs are Eclectoi, Chosen of the Angels. This creates a significant power disparity based on each side’s willingness to kiss the Thaumatarch’s boots. Stilos Keriatou can get Olynna killed for heresy. Ecclesiast Zebed can have Alastors kill a young noblewoman for heresy. It’s all the same Hegemonic game.
They’re both so entrenched in the system that it’d make sense for rebellions trying to tear down the whole wretched thing to face opposition from both. But a more sellout compromising approach might offer one or the other a better deal, and that’s when any such supposed ‘natural alliance’ could easily falter.
A potential hurdle with this religious faux-freedom right now is that the standards of “no slavery, no castes, gay tolerance” really only include one extant ‘religion’ in the gameworld, the Seracca’s faith. The Forgotten Gods might qualify on the basis of us knowing nothing about their prescriptive belief system, but they’re also, well, forgotten.
That is to say, this “more diverse and pluralistic religious market of lawful religions” seems overly dependent on these compliant religions not only coming into existence but also becoming a prominent enough force that the unrest that arises from outlawing non-compliant religions is manageable. Not an impossible bet, but one that seems more challenging unless the rebellion is actively supporting and engaging in this religious reformation. Making something more pluralistic than the Thaumatarchy is trivial; but how pluralistic would this future be? That’s a much trickier question.
It does, at least, address the feature of religious freedom that protects harmful doctrines and allows them to flourish.
This is a fascinating perspective for me because I’ve never once believed that some higher power in the narrative was responsible for the earthquake. But it’s not going to be proven either way; and in that void where only belief persists, what matters is how the belief shapes reality through action.
Of course, I’d argue there’s a difference in that someone could try to ascertain if the quake was manmade by studying the evidence. Theurgy is our only known mechanism for how it’d happen, and if so, it was likely done with aetherial blood. The viability (or lack thereof) of that mechanism can be empirically tested. And there could be records: the blood had to come from somewhere. There could be requisitions correlated to a time and place; there could be orders from upper management and witnesses at each step. The tragedy is that any such evidence might as well not exist. It’s in enemy hands, and by the time someone who cares could get their hands on it, it’d probably be lost already. It becomes just another tragedy without justice in some town whose name hasn’t even been remembered.
And yet that process and possibility can exist, and people can evaluate any such investigation with their own faculties. Arguing the will of ‘the Angels’ as rewarding this order, on the other hand, carries additional burdens rooted in tradition. There’s a circular nature to it: the earthquake could be interpreted as evidence supporting this paradigm, but that presupposes the paradigm’s existence in the first place. It comes from the mass belief and the seeming correlation with past events, more so than inherently arising from studying the event itself, foregoing other explanations. If the Order of the Hegemony should seem to reflect the Order of the Angels, maybe it’s because the Hegemony has the power to shape the world in its own image? Breaking that equivalency is a key source of rebellion depicted in the story so far: it’s how Linos balances his identity as both a champagne rebel and Ecclesiast; it’s at the root of both the Eclect and Inner Voices path. And one of the most promising reasons to spread the secret of Theurgy far and wide, consequences be damned, is to shatter the belief of Theurgy as being a divine blessing exclusive to the Thaumatarch and their servants.
I wonder if something like “the voice of a prophet” is an acceptable faith-neutral phrasing, particularly for those approaching it from other spiritualities (Halassurq, Seracca, Old Wiendish, etc.). “Prophet” can easily be used in a secular context too — not that kenosis is exactly irreligious to begin with. The word itself even has Greek roots. Though I’m personally fine with “speak with the Angels’ own voice”; even for a skeptic, it’s high praise.
I also feel like we haven’t seen the last of prophecy in this story, real or not, not just through Erjan and Dilek, but because that History article has had this “Oracle of Aekos” detail not mentioned anywhere else. Aekos-as-Delphi was already established through the omphalos, but there’s certainly room to toy with this aesthetic further: Delphi, on the slopes of Parnassus, sacred to Apollo and Dionysus (now there’s a surprise Nietzsche cameo, hello The Birth of Tragedy), an intertwined aesthetic that finds an easy home in a story about destruction and re-creation. Delphi, which some call the navel (omphalos) of Gaia (the Earth-Mother), while Xthonos too is an earth deity.
Delphi, where the sun slew a primordial serpent. A primordial serpent, which we might then associate with the Abrahamic tradition of the serpent of the Garden, later associated with Lucifer in Christian thought (of note, Hera’s daughter Eosphora being clearly adapted from εωσφόρος: Lucifer); or the even older serpent who took immortality from Gilgamesh at the end of his journey.
One of the posts I’ve long considered writing is a sequel (of sort) to my post about Vigil, but focusing this time on drawing connections between Cunning-Quick and Hera, particularly as thieves of fire and trickster deities. A dark spin on Prometheus, where blood magic is the ‘gift’ to humanity. It’s a fragile theory, barely held together. But I can see the aesthetic clicking into place. And that might blind me, of course, to the reality of the text; I certainly wasn’t able to write anything satisfactory to explain it.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. I say that as if discussing the wording of text that wouldn’t even be visible through ‘legitimate’ means until the fourth game wasn’t already far, far ahead of ourselves.