Choice of Rebels: Stormwright (XoR2 WIP)

[Havenstone]

@Zoilus

I’m starting to think a possible path for a COM mc might be founding a gunpowder empire

It couldn’t literally be a gunpowder empire, and a “compressed-air empire” wouldn’t happen in this gameworld. Theurgy is the closest equivalent of gunpowder, and (as with our world’s gunpowder empires) the empires with a monopoly on Theurgy have already used it to consolidate huge stretches of territory. Ventisputori are one useful weapon in countering it, but they’re a tactical innovation–they don’t shift the whole strategic picture like cannon did.

@comradelenin

You also mentioned making them but not telling the Abhumans. How exactly would we keep that a secret?

If you keep learning Theurgy from the Abhumans, eventually you can start specializing in Plektosis. You couldn’t keep your Plektoi a secret forever, but because you’ll be some distance from Abhumans for most of the time, you could accomplish a fair amount before they found out.

@macbeast08

So if a single baby is literally worth ten human lives… I hate to say it but damn those numbers make too much sense. I think it would be a more difficult choice if it was 2 or 3 lives, no more than 5.

You’re right that there have always been people who felt that newborn lives were of little inherent value, and cultures that reinforced that in various ways. For people whose ethics tend that way, a trade-off with even 2-3 lives is a no-brainer. For ethical systems that really insist on the protection of innocent life, you’ve got to get significantly higher before it presents anything resembling a dilemma.

@macbeast08

Also, couldn’t they use magic or a drug to knock victims unconscious while harrowing them?

I wrote about this on the Game 1 thread:

@Havenstone

No known gameworld drugs could reliably knock someone unconscious without a meaningful risk of killing them pre-Harrowing (e.g. hemlock) and thus wasting their blood. Of course there are various drugs used by surgeons to sedate people, but not to a level of unconsciousness that would stop people screaming in agony through a Harrowing…so there’s not much humanitarian justification to waste them on the vast number of helots who are Harrowed every year.

Nor has any Theurge yet figured out pain well enough to stop it entirely, even using lots of blood (which would of course in any case be counter-productive for Harrowing). Theurgy is great for freezing muscles in place, so Theurgic surgery tends to involve getting someone really drunk/high and then immobilizing them while you do the cutting; that, combined with good post-surgery healing, produces good enough results that Theurges haven’t poured massive research into making the process genuinely painless.

All the real-world parallels for truly effective anaesthesia/hypnosis are 19th-century developments, so I think it’s reasonable not to write them into the gameworld.

@mshan95032, Cerlota will be able to get some digging done in Grand Shayard without the need to ally with any specific faction. And she’s going to drop the City Ward whether you like it or not–there’s no talking her out of the experiment.

@mshan95032

Speaking of elements, has a comprehensive periodic table been developed yet in the XoR-verse?

Absolutely: fire, earth, air, water, and aether, in various combinations.

I don’t think the game is ever going to focus all that much on the problematics of heir production, even for a Laconnier-allied MC, and the fact that neither Abelard nor Cerlota are interested in poly relationships would be a dealbreaker in any case.

@mshan95032

In your current opinion, what would make for a more useful plektoi, a horse or a reindeer?

Depends on where you wanted it to live, and what you wanted it to do…

@Starwish_Armedwithwi

will we ever get the chance to grab the magic sword we stashed in game 1?

If you gave it to the band leader or de Firiac, it’ll be relevant this game. If not, you’ll have a chance to get it in Game 3. You crossed over a long way from where you’ll cross back – there’s no chance to pick it up this game.

@Okay

will future chapters/books include “management” sections like Chapter 2 of Uprising?

As noted, I don’t have any planned.

@idonotlikeusernames

will the mc ever learn how to make the Xaos storms themselves?

If they stick with their Theurgic studies, yep.

@Inquisitor

why is the main character so horrified when he finds out harrowers primarily harvest brains and spine rather then blood?

It crosses a line into new territory–something that we all have an instinctive urge to protect, and something that, as @apple says, can’t be taken nonlethally.

@apple

there’s a little trail of stumps between the two.

Meant to be pasture, but that works.

@Okay

what was the population and population breakdown of Rim Square before the failed Harrowing?

I’d thought I’d just posted that somewhere, in the last few months, but now I can’t find it. I’ll have another look.

@Sowe

Aren’t abhumans reliant on Hegemony food? If so, why they are so keen to act against it? Wouldn’t they suffer greatly when Hegemony collapses?

Great questions, all.

@Bryce_Kaldwin

curious if you can be like Cao Cao from the Three Kingdoms period. Merely a “Prime Minister” of the Han over the new Thautmarch.

As a Nepal-raised kid, my model for this will always be the Rana oligarchy of hereditary prime ministers dominating the puppet kings in Kathmandu for a century. And yes, something like this should totally be a possible G5 outcome.

@Zincvit

I’m sort of stumped that there are no large bureaucratic and scribal class that we can woo

Nobles, Alastors, priests, and merchants all perform different functions that we would consider “bureaucratic” from our modern perspective. There’s no single class that does it all.