Meanwhile my Int 0, Com 3 MC, not understanding anything about the tax system:
Character explaining taxes: “So that’s why taxes…”
MC: “Whatever man, when do we get to kill somebody?!”
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Because I think the feedback will be most useful when readers can see where the Irduin plots are going to end. Releasing it before then is more likely to get feedback I can’t use.
It’s a fair question, and one I’ve asked myself, believe me.
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Why not wrap up the plot then and don’t worry about the pacing?
It’s like making a table for a carpentry contest. I work and tweak over and over but I’m not satisfied and something is imperfect. But if I just finish it, submit it, and get it judged, then I get feedback from a different view, and improve much more than if I had just continued to rework it.
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I am going to wrap up the plot before I try to fix the pacing. 
I do also think I know how to fix the pacing, so I’ll probably have a stab at that before I put the table out there for the judges. But I won’t try to make it perfect-- just as close as I can get it to what I’ve got in mind.
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@Havenstone is there a history of sortition somewhere in the gameworld, maybe in Nyryal or the karagon city-states? If so, could that be a potential model MC’s look to on a local level? It seems like it would be more resistant to being co-opted by local elites than an electoral system.
For one of my own play throughs, I’ve been imagining playing a pacifistic agitator focused on setting up local democratic self governance. I’d start by trying to chip away at the legitimacy of nobles and priests as figures of authority, and creating enough chaos to put them in a position where they either grant concessions or risk everything falling apart. I’d spread the truth about theurgy and harrowings to discredit Xthonic doctrine, and preach about kenon to further disrupt the influence of the ecclesiasts. I’d also indiscriminately teach theurgy and organize nonviolent resistance to empower the yeomen and helotry.
Hopefully, as the hegemony collapsed, the nobility would be willing to negotiate. Many of their privileges would be reafirmed and they could keep their land, while all helots would be freed and harrowing disbanded. Priests could continue preaching to their congregations and keep church property. A secular municipal govenment would be created, governed by citizens chosen by lottery. A lottery system would create an impartial, nonfactional governening body and maniplation of the lottery would create an observable imbalance in the composition of the officials.
Ultimately in this playthrough I would try to create enough anarchy to upend society with the least amount of violence, and make theurgy widespread enough to make physical coercion unprofitable, without causing a complete societal collapse that leads to a dark age or domination by the Halassurqs. I would hope a confederation of city states and autonomous communities could be formed for self defence, and share the cost of a blood tax to keep up a few wards and blunt the oncoming famine.
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Becoming a politician based on whether you win the lottery is stupid idea, but it would prevent a political power imbalance between social classes
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I agree it’s definitely not ideal, but it’s the only way I could think of to stop nobles from dominating elections in a scenario where they’re still the largest land owners.
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why would nobles being the largest land-owners help them win elections? helots are the majority of the population i doubt nobles would even make it to the ballots. The real thing you should care about is how to stop the helots from Dominating politics and enacting revenge laws.
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Early electoral systems typically had high property qualifications to be fully enfranchised.
Universal male and then universal adult suffrage are pretty late developments.
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Which season will Irduin take place in?
I hope it’s summer so that all the “June/Julduin is real” memes actually become canon.
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We can infer the Irduin chapter will span about a year, though it’s unclear when precisely we’d arrive there.
We leave Sojourn in the early spring, and after Irduin is “A Glorious Season”—implying the [Court] Season in Grand Shayard:
Ciels leans back with a grin. "I heard a tale once about the aristarch of the Norther Rim, who was so enjoying the Season in Grand Shayard that he stayed on a few weeks into the summer.
This suggests that the Season overlaps with spring, suggesting that Irduin would begin in spring and end by spring.
We know per excerpts that we’ll be in Irduin in autumn:
That just leaves the unanswered question of when exactly we arrive in Irduin, given the vast distance we’d need to traverse, along with the implied complications that make returning to the Outer Rim still unfeasible. But it probably won’t take the 5-6 months needed for us to not experience Shayard in the spring Irduin in the summer.
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indeed, but arent you the one deciding the political system? whats making you, use the same system has them?
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Without having their own land to farm like yeomen, rural helots would have to lease land as some form of tenant farmer or sharecroppper, or work directly for nobles as farmhands. Either way their whole livelihood would be dependent on the whims of their landlord. The nobility is also (obviously) much richer than the helotry and could use their wealth to buy votes.
Even for former helots who couldn’t be bribed or intimidated with the threat of starvation, the threat of violence could be used to coerce them to vote the way the nobility wanted
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um, secret voting like every democratic country? why would you make voting public? also distribute the lands of the nobles, they dont need that much land anyways. so the helots are freer now
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Fair response. I think the main block to creating a universal suffrage democracy in setting will be inadequate administrative capacity and communications technology. I think it was impossible to have a republic larger than a city state much before they actually started to appear in our world. Now, those city state republics could have large territories subject to them like Rome did, but the political process would be restricted mostly to the city. You need lots of literacy, state capacity and a mass press to have an extensive republic with genuine mass political participation across a large territory. I think that’s the biggest reason they didn’t appear until recently.
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That’s a fair point. If you could get secret voting to work then bribery and voter intimidation would be a lot more difficult. But 99.5% of helots are illiterate, so how would you hold a secret vote? And I think elites would push for voting to be public because it’s in their interest to be able to see who they need to put pressure on so the vote goes their way.
The nobility are not going to give up their land so you’ll have to take it from them with violence, or make a very credible threat to kill them if they refuse.
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we could still try to use, on the local part. why make a big republic? instead all communities in the hegemony, have self-rule, like feudalism but instead of a noble lord you have a council. Most communities will be between 50-100 people, so it shouldnt be to hard to implement. Next would be creating a core of independent scribes, or try to use thaumatargy, to increase the distribution of texts and knowledge.For bigger settlements, we divide them into districts, where every district elects a representative. This way we could create a feasible democratic system, with localised universal political representation.
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1.true, i proposed another version that could use public voting better without to much influence by the nobles.
2. The nobility has no choice if the mc won the war, and has the people with him, what is 1% of the population gonna do? They either die by the hands of their helots, or accept at becoming small landowners and share their lands.
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Couple of problems. How are you going to get the independent communities to fund the new Theurges’ corps, and how are you going to prevent the Theurges from taking control (since they control the arm of decision in any violent conflict)? And without such a corps, how are you going to preserve the communes against Halassurq invasion?
Anarchism isn’t great for competing against centralized military powers.
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Which is why land reform to take most or all of that land away from the current bunch of quislings who do not deserve it anyway and parcelling it out to actual farmers (yes, it will mostly benefit the yeomen but don’t discount knowledgeable and resourceful helots getting in on it too) is absolutely vital so that former “nobles” can no longer hold the nation or its food supply hostage and ensure that land is distributed to proven farmers willing and able to actually work the land instead of absentee landlords.
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