Choice of Rebels: Stormwright (XoR2 WIP)

[Havenstone]

@Okay

even if theurgy can’t do that, blood and bone are both useful fertilisers and I’d assume the Hegemony has both in abundance.

Blood in abundance–sure, but not for fertilizer! And the helots get back their sacrificed dead to honor the bodies. If the Hegemony (or any of its would-be successors) start trying systematically to use Harrowed corpses for bonemeal, they’ll learn that hard way that even a totalitarian state needs the passive consent of the governed.

The main discussion of this on the old thread started here, and I’d draw attention to this:

@Havenstone

It’s possible to do Theurgic farming more sustainably than at present–but the science of it is poorly understood, because for so long the Hegemony has been enjoying a blood surplus that meant it could ignore the limitations of their current agriculture model with e.g. just a bit of crop rotation.

It will take either a whole lot more blood or many years of soil repair to fix the problem–and the solution needs to be done at a large scale to avoid starvation. You’ll also need a lot of landowners to convert from commercial cash cropping back to food.

@apple

Remember what happened last time you did this? Nippletwister remembers.

Yeah, there’s another incentive.

@apple

do you ever plan to introduce … a way for us to sway significant portions of the Hegemonic soldiery to our cause

Definitely, though Bryce is right that (on my current thinking) it’s going to be more of a “win over this faction” dynamic rather than a “class-based” stat like the general cred ones.

@comradelenin

Horion mentioned specifically that they tried extending the wards to reclaim Xaos land, so I imagine someone’s got to have done something with it.

To quote Horion: “The Theurges were very keen about one particular hillock where everything had transformed into something unpleasantly alchemical-smelling, and it wasn’t hard to see that this was why they were going to all the trouble of moving the Ward.”

@Kuria_Aliki

I would appreciate it if anyone could answer my previous questions about XoR cuisine

There will definitely be fine dining in the coming chapters–but I’m going to hold off for now on committing to the details. That’s affected by the final world-building model I’m trying to hammer into shape right now… with my latitudes and geographic area updated with my last map, I’m making sure all my ideas roughly hold together on climate, agriculture, demographics, blood, and economics. The first two in particular will affect the diet of the provinces.

@comradelenin

I feel like tossing babies into a woodchipper is just… not something you can top with quantity alone.

My own moral intuitions are with you on that point. At the same time, I don’t think only a “Chaotic Evil Race” (to use one of my least favorite D&D tropes) could end up baby-farming, and I’m glad that I haven’t yet completely shattered your suspension of disbelief in how I’ve written the Halassurqs.

@AletheiaKnights

I completed my first playthrough just now and it came out to about 5-6 hours

I guess I was familiar with quite a bit of it.

@Kuria_Aliki

may I ask @Havenstone that, comes the inevitable famine, would the mc has an option to voluntarily sacrifice themself in a Harrower

I’m not sure that “urging people toward self-sacrifice” would show enough early promise as an anti-famine measure for even a high-CHA MC to conclude that all it lacks to be successful is their personal example. I can’t think of a real-world case where a genuine mass social movement (i.e. above “cult” scale) used the promise of heaven to persuade its members to proactively lay down their lives other than in war (and scaled-up war will be one famine-management option in the gameworld too). A compassionate and devout MC would I think be more likely in the end to be work determinedly toward finding non-Harrowing ways of mitigating the damage, rather than just volunteering to be first in the self-sacrifice queue.

@AletheiaKnights

Are there circumstances in which the Angels have actual spoken dialogue that the PC experiences as a literal auditory phenomenon?

Not a literal auditory phenomenon, no. The closest the game ever comes is this, in Ch 4:

[i]Sacrifice.[/i] Words you've heard dozens of times at Harrowings suddenly leap to mind, as vivid and strong as if they'd just been spoken into your ear. [i]Only through sacrifice can the world be preserved.[/i]

@apple

For example I’ve gotten to over -200 cred_a, for a character like that is there any point in interacting with/infiltrating the aristos or is it a waste of time?

Not necessarily a waste, given than (a) the factions you’re interacting with may not know who you really are and (b) you can choose to interact with them to weaken and betray them, not just to bring them into your rebellion as an ally.

@Jjcb

will a ‘decolonization of Shayard’ be possible in the future games, or are the identities/cultures of these absorbed territories too far gone?

A bit of both? Yes, breaking up Shayard on national-cultural lines is possible; and that would involve making up a lot of identity/culture that has been destroyed over the past several centuries.

@Starwish_Armedwithwi

so if you train with Sereccans, down the road you can have better plektoi and be a furry, what do we get as a book nerd on the other side of the coin, better harrowing?

A blood economy, yep. Plus some tactics and techniques that are only feasible if you’re using refined blood. Becoming a furry will also have diplomatic consequences that won’t fit everyone’s playstyle.