Despite chat gpt’s insistence, American Empire is not any more moral than any other form of empire. Ask Iran, Chile, or Nicaragua, or countless other examples. And those are just examples of subversive influence, excluding countries that America deliberately invaded, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq.
There is no way, in the real world, to be an empire that preserves its influence and global status while also being the good guy, sorry.
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I’m with you on ChatGPT being a terrible source (as Mike knows, hence the lack of attribution in a couple places in his last post 
) but “not any more moral” seems like the wrong phrasing to me.
Sure, American empire isn’t “the good guy,” it’s routinely immoral in awful ways, and it’s anything but the perfect regime for humanity to live under…but I’d still rather live under it than the many, many empires that didn’t pay more than lip service (if that) to individual rights. Even when we look at its sins and crimes, the American occupation of Afghanistan (for example) wasn’t nearly as murderous as its Russian predecessor.
If “moral” is a binary – you’re either morally righteous or some shade of immoral – then America’s plainly the latter. But if we want to talk about who’s “more moral,” I’d judge America to be more moral than most other forms of empire – as we can judge some warlords, bandits, or extortionists to be more or less moral than others. The difference between the experiences of US clients and Soviet clients in Europe – between “empire by consent” and the tanks rolling into Budapest – was one of the decisive factors in the Cold War’s outcome.
Are there more moral ways to structure the international order, or for the US to behave? Absolutely yes! Are there much, much worse possibilities for both? Yep, that too.
Some knowledge can’t be uprooted; if you’re using your magi to conquer a continent, you’re not realistically going to be able to get people to forget that magic exists. But excision of knowledge isn’t the only tactic available to totalitarians. You can mystify the sources of power, as the Hegemony has successfully done. When your largely illiterate population comes to believe that Theurgy is a gift of the Angels, that Goety is only possible through consorting with demons, and that fuelling Theurgy requires big machines whose design is impossible for most people to replicate…then you have a system that can keep the secret for a few centuries.
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This is a fair criticism, thanks for calling me out on it. you’re right that it was not a very well phrased argument, I had no intention of arguing that America is as bad as historical empires.
It just irks me to no end when Westerners go on about America’s morality as an empire while a significant percentage of the world‘s population lives in autocracies propped up by America’s geostrategic interest.
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I disagree because USA doesn’t exist in a vacuum. From my and my country perspective its a worthy ally when surrounded by other arguably more autocratic and hostile entities.
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But are they devout in the correct way (Shayardene Codex) or merely headstrong in their heretical reading of the Canon?
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And if they wanted to mystify it, why would they show the moment they performed the theurgy to the public? It would be more prestigious to keep it hidden, and hopefully they would be able to better protect the secret of the theurgy. It might even make it seem like a literal divine power.
And, in passing, the use of alchemical blood and the general identity of the person who knows the refining process is information that doesn’t need to be given to the general public. Arguably it increases the public’s chances of getting close to the secret, which the players did by raiding Harrower.
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If the Catholic church wanted to mystify Saints why did it base them on historical people, and why are their bones objects of veneration? It opens them up to the possibility to be DNA tested or otherwise be scientifically determined they are not empowered.
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I think your analogy is valid to a certain extent. However, it must have been obvious that the secrets of alchemy would be bad if they were revealed, even at the level of technology used at the time they invented it. They conveniently managed to mystify ether and make it appear that sacrificial rituals were the source of its power. If I were them, I would go a step further and try to hide the fact that blood was the source of its power.
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Are you thinking here specifically of the Harrowing ritual, or of the regular performace of Theurgic acts like grain harvesting, barge driving, setting people on fire, etc.? Keeping the latter out of the public eye would have required a completely different governance style and economy.
Making the blood harvesting a secret ritual in which e.g. millions of people simply disappear and their families never get their bodies back (so they can’t observe that they’ve been drained of all blood)…while that would decrease the chances of people figuring out the secret, it would also massively reduce the social tolerability of the institution, compared to having it be done in a public rite of sacrifice.
I don’t think it’s implausible for Thaumatarch Hera to have opted for the latter approach – and once she’d been doing that throughout her empire, there’d be little scope for later generations to think better of her strategy.
I’m just not sure that would have been possible while still getting blood on the scale needed for a world conquest – which was, remember, the context of the Hegemony’s creation. It was used by Hera for empire building, not by a ruling elite taking over an existing empire.
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That this is precisely not possible is one of the many examples of the shortcomings of Theurgic technology and Imperial government I wish to point out. In my opinion, basing all state power on a single, hard-to-guard secret will weaken the state and its order, not strengthen it.
So is that a bad thing for magicians? Responsibility for behind closed doors massacres has been skillfully denied by many totalitarian regimes, and there is no reason why the Empire should be an exception. Of course it is a grossly immoral act, but if you are going to gain power through evil deeds anyway, isn’t it better to cover them up?
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Sure that is part of why the Hegemony is now falling apart, but of course the system needed to fail to bring in a sufficient blood harvest first before the cracks even allowed the MC’s rebellion to survive. Otherwise the MC and other initial rebels being processed into aether during the 4th Harrowing in the opening of game 1 would have been everything more or less going to plan.
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So there’s a lot to unpack here and we should start by returning to the story being told. First, my opinion: yes, the secrets of Theurgy are a vulnerability in the Thaumatarchy that we can and should exploit. The Hegemony sustaining itself on a web of lies and misdirection has doomed it for when that web unravels. But we don’t judge state power on the basis of maintaining an eternal realm. Nor is the Hegemonic state strong directly because of one secret; rather, the state behaves the way it does in order to keep its many secrets. It has honed its tools of oppression, both physical and ideological, to keep these secrets from falling into others’ hands and to mitigate the damage when it does.
Which is to say, don’t think all knowledge about Theurgy is equal. The text shows the Hegemony has been deadly serious about protecting the ones crucial for maintaining its control while using the surface-level knowledge of Theurgy as a tool for legitimising their rule and discouraging the population from investigating further. Their capacity for violence is already clear, so let’s examine their ideological means of repression.
What is Theurgy to the Hegemonic people? Consulting the game’s text:
Theurgy is a mystery. According to the Ecclesiasts, it is a gift of power from the Blessed Angels to especially worthy individuals who can be trusted to defend Xthonos’s sacred Order. For anyone not chosen by the Angels, attempting Theurgy is a grave sin. There’s an old-fashioned word, “goete,” for a black magician who consorts with Xaos-demons to duplicate the results of Theurgy; “the Abomination of Goety” is one of the worst crimes listed in the Karagond Canon.
The one thing everyone knows about Theurgy is that it requires blood. Harrowers yield rarefied “aetherial” blood, which is particularly potent. The reasons for its potency are rumored to be both sacrificial (drawing power from the anguish of the victims) and alchemical (involving a closely guarded refinement process).
It’s inaccurate to describe Theurgy as “a single, hard-to-guard secret”: it’s many layered secrets underpinning Hegemonic power, and just from this short excerpt we see how its “rules that went unspoken and unquestioned” (to quote the prologue of Uprising) guard these secrets—exist for the purpose of guarding these secrets.
Knowledge of Theurgy is just the surface layer. There are two deeper secrets that are key to maintaining order:
- The production process for aetherial blood. This is what gives Theurges their monopoly on force—what turns one from a car bomber to a fighter jet, and gives institutional Theurges a decisive edge over a hedge wisard.
- That Theurgy can be taught and learned. The Thaumatarchy claims divine right and points to Theurgy—the literal work of the divine—as proof. Exposing that lie (whether it be because blood magic is mundane or because the divine bless far more) undercuts its foundational myth.
The Thaumatarchy has three basic tasks to guard these secrets:
First, give those who know good reason to not share it. Consequently, Theurges are the highest echelon of society, afforded all the privilege being the elite of a continental empire allows. Sharing the secret means throwing all that away—along with your life, probably, because of the alleged magical panopticon whose prime directive is keeping this secret.
And for those not already among the elite?
“Scouring the realm for any sign that the secret is spreading is at the heart of the Kryptasts’ task. Especially those who are themselves Theurges, Thaïs’s disciples, and can hear what is whispered behind the thickest of walls.” Cerlota taps her ear. “Sometimes their work uncovers a new talent to be recruited into the Lykeion. More often, it leads to the slaughter of everyone involved.”
Second, cultivate misinformation among the public. Go back to that public description of Theurgy and contrast it with how we actually learn Theurgy: meditation and philosophy. No direct revelation from the Angels; no temptation from Xaos-demons. Just a seemingly frivolous mental exercise. Blood is just the catalyst: we could cut our hand a thousand times and it’d never trigger Theurgy without that missing link.
And speaking of blood, the focus on blood is itself misdirection from the underlying truth of aether, and subsequently the harvesting of the brain and eyes to produce aetherial “blood”.
Lastly, weave beliefs such that even if the secret got out, people would be hesitant to take action. That’s the role of Goety. These people only have this power because they sold their soul to ontologically evil demons: you can’t trust them. They’ll destroy your eternal reward in Elysia. Their endgame involves you and everyone you love obliterated by monsters, zombies, child-killers, and Xaos itself.
Remember what Harrowing is in the Hegemonic myth:
“Only through sacrifice,” she proclaims over the crowd, “can the world be preserved.” She closes her fist around the blood capsule—and six paces away, the Harrower whirs to life. The well-oiled gears begin to turn; the manacles snap closed and open again, the keen blades arrayed in the heart of the machine do a flickering, sickening dance like the legs of a suspended centipede. You can’t suppress a shiver at this display of Theurgical power.
“Those who surrender their lives for our salvation from Xaos are blessed by the Angels of Xthonos,” Chirex intones. "Their reward in Elysia shall be great beyond anything they dreamed in their earthly station.
This isn’t really a lie for the helotry—though I’m sure there are many complacent helots who cling onto the Elysian reward at the end of their long burden as hope—but rather a lie for everybody else to feel better about partaking in such a fundamentally unjust society, and to make it absolutely clear that they are exempt from this particular evil and actively benefit from it.
It’s teaching everybody from the moment they’re born not that the massacres aren’t real, but that the massacres are good and necessary. It’s pervasive ideology, as natural as the air.
For comparison, we actually do have a Hegemonic institution well-known for making people disappear: the Kryptasts, that aforementioned alleged panopticon. They’re universally feared and probably hated. There’s no confirmation that the missing people are dead: in fact, I believe they probably aren’t. That plausible deniability doesn’t keep people from despising the Kryptasts anyway. And if the Hegemony doesn’t take credit for these disappearances: well, then we’ve got a state failing at that basic purpose of a state, protection of its people. Covering up their involvement just means weakening a different pillar of state.
This is all without mentioning other layers of the Theurgic onion that the Hegemony keeps secret. Wardwork being the most notable, guaranteeing territorial integrity while granting the Hegemony a powerful tool for keeping its most important cities in line.
Point being: Hegemonic institutions, both repressive and ideological, have been designed around keeping the many deeper secrets of Theurgy to maintain their monopoly on force while using the surface level of blood magic as divine legitimacy. It’s not a big deal that people know blood and sacrifice are involved.
Unfortunately for the Hegemony, the foundation for these crumbling institutions is starting to collapse. Just needs a little push from us…
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You have a point. However, the secrets of theurgy and the vulnerability of the empire are probably more than you think. Because theurgy is used in almost every sector of the empire. For example, let’s say that all the nuclear weapons secrets in the United States were leaked. This would be a big deal, but not all the secrets have been exposed to the light of day yet. However, theurgy is used in the state’s apparatus of violence and the maintenance of legitimacy, medicine, transportation, communication, food production, cryptography, and industry. This means that there are many points where information can leak, and the damage when it does leak can be devastating. This is inevitable, as discussed above, since knowledge is a technology that cannot be completely divided, and its products are used in rural squares, docks, and fields.
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In future games (in which the Hegemony collapses/has collapsed), will these cadastral maps (both present and future hypothetical) hold value as bargaining tools for any Karagond Theurges who decide to sell out to factions not affiliated with Karagon after the Hegemony’s downfall? (in additional to the already proven magical prowess for enforcing imperial repression)
Hopefully, Chara and her close advisors can effectively maintain control over the definition and narrative of a ‘tyrant’ to prevent their post-Hegemony rivals from using the terminology to unjustly portray them (as potential tyrants who should be eliminated, along with the already despised and actively hunted Hegemony remnants).
Is it Theurgically viable for the evidence to be tampered with to make this kind of murder look like a mass choking hazard accident? (in which the decadent, dead aristos foolishly overindulged in certain exotic foods/spices to their own peril)
First question/followup reply: Please kindly explain in more detail your belief that village and city democracies are incompatible (rather than naturally complementary) in the post-Hegemonic koinon scramble for reorganization.
Second, assuming that I follow your tip (“koinon focused around city councils and syntechnia”), here is my current imagined example membership demographic for MC’s koinon:
a. Shayardene oligarch/apella representatives: merchants, priests, and nobles (Leaguer-dominated/curated, naturally) from Grand Shayard and Corlune (while the Rim and Westriding get some measure of middle class quality of life upgrades (and probable exemption from helotry), but are still deliberately kept weak enough to be forced to play second fiddle to the coastal elites).
b. Whendish oligarch/apella representatives: dominated by the merchants, priests, and nobles of the lowland cities Stezyc, Alsztyn, and Jacyn (while both the highlanders and ‘true highlanders’ are brought to heel by the koinon’s theurgic corp and then accordingly denied representation, assuming they refuse to comply; however, hypocritical special treatment may be shown to the small communities of the renegade highlander/“true highlander” Phalangites who’ve proven themselves loyal enough to MC in Game 1 and beyond).
c. Erezzan oligarch/apella representatives: dominated by the merchants, priests, and nobles of the “based in Soretto”/Erezza unity faction (but if Cerlota dies as a casualty of Erezza’s infamous political intrigue, MC’s fondness towards Erezza will accordingly vanish (remember, he only helped out Erezza because Cerlota personally asked), and then MC will ruthlessly retaliate by turning Erezza into a Shayardene puppet state, moving the capital from Soretto to Aveche, while the regions of the conspirators who got Cerlota killed will become the next convenient targets for Harrowing)
d. Nereish oligarch/apella representatives: merchants and nobles of the restored Nyrnakan Republic. (though I’m not sure if the original Nyrnakan Republic was an urban or village institution when it was first conceptualized/formed; please help me out here, Havie?) Alternatively, MC is also considering the possibility of bastardizing the Nyrnakan Republic into a Nereish Archimandrite-controlled Banana Republic theocracy (propped up by Shayard’s geostrategic interest), while the repressed atheistic majority of Nyryal become Harrowing fodder.
Thanks for the thoughtful responses, everyone. As an American citizen, I’ve certainly benefited from living under what many call America’s “empire of consent,” which has contributed to my somewhat optimistic view of America’s image. I understand Rettahdamm and Rashad’s America-skeptic perspectives, and while they are quite different from mine, I’m fine with agreeing to disagree.
Havie, I really appreciate your nuanced take. Your point that “America isn’t perfect but perhaps the best option we’ve got” felt validating and is probably a more mature version of what I intended to express. Your example comparing the American and Russian occupations of Afghanistan was particularly insightful, as it highlights the relative morality rather than an absolute binary.
However, I was a bit taken aback by your comment about ChatGPT being a terrible source and the implication that I lack proper attribution. As someone who is neurodivergent and relies heavily on AI for communication, I have been striving to use it more responsibly. I’m getting the impression that you think my AI usage is still a work in progress. If there are specific issues with my attributions, I would appreciate detailed feedback in a timely manner from you (or anybody else similarly attentive and tactful as you).
Looking forward to (even more) discussion on this complex topic!
Interesting point! However, my MC isn’t as focused on the specific reading of the Canon but rather on uniting all the (plausibly faithful enough, cherry picking aside) pan-Xthonic peoples of the to-be-dissolved-within-our-lifetimes Hegemony.
For me, it’s about honoring the Whendish rebels and warriors who had my back in the early days (Game 1), and the beautiful, intelligent Erezzan mage who went out of her way to save my life in Game 2’s Xaosland section. These personal bonds are crucial, and that’s reason enough for Wiendrj and Erezza (my foreign allies’ homelands) to be considered deserving of their share of grain.
Moreover, my strategy involves using religious compromises to manage a united theocratic empire (organically building off of past discussions in this thread about “imperial repertoires of diversity”. By making Wiendrj and Erezza happy, productive vassal states, we can ensure stability and prosperity for Shayard and its allies. It’s about mutual respect and shared core principles, not just hoarding resources for Shayard.
What do you think? Can we find common ground in our devotion to Xthonos, even if our readings of the Canon differ?
Not that I necessarily expect any spoilery responses from you at this point, Havie, but I’d like to leave behind a “time capsule theory” for future consideration/comparison:
Cerlota is perhaps telling half-truths about her backstory, omitting the part where she was a former student of Vigil (not just a battery, but an amalgamation of XoR history’s most accomplished, deceased anti-Hegemony Theurges, perhaps those originating from Brauracha), up until Cerlota perceived that Vigil probably didn’t have Erezza’s best interests in mind (causing Cerlota to promptly leave and seek new allies elsewhere, leading her to MC’s path).
And Vigil will hypothetically at some point (in future games), inspire the creation of a cult (of both genuine zealots and sinister opportunists alike) around its power/legend/rumors, manifest a humanoid body for an avatar, and will then accordingly become the figurehead of one of the Big Three post-Hegemonic factions competing for continental influence.
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Because you’re putting too many volatile elements into the mix. Self-managing communes and cities having separate methods of representation, without the cities having authority over the villages, will create significant power struggles as the city-based syntechnia and the villagers fight over trade authority.
And I see you’re planning a (coastal) Homelander version of the koinon led by Shayard with the others as puppets of that (and Karagon as a source of blood and nothing more).
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That’s a gracious response to my snarky one, Mike – thank you.
AI coughs out bullet lists and capsule summaries that are often deeply misleading and tendentious. It tucks away major weaknesses in its case behind clauses like “while there are issues…”. It will throw in barely-relevant stuff to the historical example lists you often ask it for. If you asked it for cases that support absurd and unlikely theses, it would serve you a list with equal confidence, rather than suggesting that you’re barking up the wrong tree.
It thinks and writes less well than you can. If you rely on it for an argument, your case will be weaker than if you’d taken the time to read or watch something created by a human with genuine interest in the question.
I would urge anyone engaging in world design or discussions about it to keep practicing their search engine research skills, rather than outsourcing that to ChatGPT. Wikipedia is superior to AI, because lots of humans produce more relevant results than a LLM. (At least until people start throwing in stuff written by AI…sigh.)
And Google will point you to resources even more reliable (though sometimes less convenient) than Wikipedia. If you really want to wrap your head around an issue, there’s no substitute for reading what other humans have said about it.
Browse r/askhistorians on reddit…it can be great for honing your understanding of often misunderstood historical dynamics and periods.
You’re a welcome member here no matter what you do, Mike. Let me know how that advice sounds; I don’t know the specifics of what you’re working with, and maybe some or all of what I’ve just suggested is infeasible for you.
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It honestly makes me so sad that for a decent chunk of the population generative AI has just become a search engine, when that’s quite possibly its worst use case. It tells you what you tell it to give you, even if you ask a nonsense question, which means not only is everyone getting scuffed misinformation, they’re getting bespoke misinformation. I’ve read anecdotes about teachers having to teach students who plug some question into ChatGPT (often because they were told to look something up on the internet by a teacher), only to get the strange illogical phantoms it produces. It’s what educators feared Wikipedia was for years.
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I personally didn’t notice any specific issues but my biggest gripe with chatGPT is that it’ll make false seem very convincingly true. Recently I was doing some research on medieval warfare and (I admit) out of pure laziness I’ve utilized the AI, it correctly gave me a range of a longbow and an average speed of an arrow but when asked to calculate the time of the arrow’s flight it very adeptly and convincingly calculated it… Using the range. Now l*v would be a correct way to calculate the time of the arrow’s flight but the range is not the l in this case, because projectiles fly at an arc.
Naturally, an American citizen is likely to have a better view of their country than an outside observer. While I wouldn’t call my perspectives America-sceptic (since the discussion was originally in regards to imperial morality and America was merely a prop in the discussion) I can understand how that might be an inconvenient subject.
I don’t think they are. Even using your nuclear secrets example - there’s virtually no chance that a rebel faction in the US would be able to replicate the nuclear technology. Some secrets (wardwork, harrowing, probably plektosis) can only be utilized by state actors.
It’s possible, I’d say probable that many secrets of theurgy have been leaked in the past and none of these leaks had a lasting effect on the empire (with an exception or two… Sarcifer? EDIT: no that’s dum, I conflated theurgy secrets and theurge rebels for a second).
USA and USSR had both lost not just nuclear secrets but actual nuclear warheads in the past and their empires still stood. One has kinda fallen after half a century, one still going.
The knowledge of theurgy is kind of equivalent to the knowledge of ballistics with the exception that the first time you learn of it you get a free Glock with a slowly replenishing supply of ammunition.
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I have been pretty happy with Perplexity as search alternative. (https://www.perplexity.ai/). It gives you it’s sources which you still need to double check, but it cuts through a bunch of the ads and other garbage on google and you can ask it more analytical questions that google can’t really answer.
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AI, AI, on my screen who is the hottest guy there is to be seen? 
True, we could potentially share the secrets of the wards with Halassur as part of some sort of deal especially if we build our new state more westward and don’t border them anyway.
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