Of course, dice rolls can be off-chance. I’ve done calculations on real-world events, and some of them are significant outliers.
For example, the probability of not having an all-out nuclear war for 70 years is pretty close to zero, yet we’re still alive. (Of course, a desirable outlier for humanity!)
In the end, this may just be a flaw in my rough theory, and the Empire may have survived as a result of such outliers.
I think this approach presumes probability is roughly average every year, but anyone who lived through the collapse of the Soviet union knows thats not the case. I’d say in general the probability of war described as a random chance to occur between two states is not an effective way to understand it. Human will is (so far) an unaccountable variable. We aren’t talking about the chance that an electron will be in a certain position. The probability that Russia would invade Ukraine reached near 100% when Putin decided he would for example.
@comradelenin I have been using “succession war” a little more broadly lately as an effective tie between historical conflicts and modern context. There is a surprising parallels between wars of dynastic succession in early modern Europe and the collection of conflicts in former Soviet counties that “Wars of Soviet Succession” I think applies to. First heard of the term from Mike Kofman, and I think it makes a lot of sense.
What calculations are those? To me it occurs that probability of that occuring in 300 years is 0.03% you can’t use the birthday paradox on a single variable. On a single variable it’s just iterative draw.
Excuse me. What formula did you use? Maybe it’s just a simple input mistake on my scientific calculator.
I was actually a bit skeptical about my results.
Iterative draw. I don’t use a scientific calculator. I’m using python or PHP (python in this case).
If we’re using the birthday paradox it’d be any 2 random vars out of the same set. “A leak occurring” is a single variable. So it’s just repeating the draw X number of times for X number of years.
Edit: checked in a probability calculator and it seems to confirm.
Edit 2: Even if we were using birthday paradox and drawing from a set of 100 000 it’d only make it likely to happen in 300 years for two events co-occuring, if it were 3 or more events we’re back to entirely unlikely.
The probability of the leak not happening in any given year is 0.99999 (I’m American so using period for the decimal)
The probability of the fatal leak not happening at some point in the next 25 years is then 0.99999^25 right? Which is still over a 99% chance of not happening.
Ah, I get it. It was a misconfiguration in the power calculation. It was accidentally sending 0.99998 to the next step instead of 0.99999. This was causing the final probability to be ridiculously low.
I’m truly sorry for confusing everyone with my misguided assumptions.
Here’s the real question, if your character is going to conceal the secrets of theurgy, are they also willing to take the subversive actions that will be required to keep it a secret? We know that there will be 20 or so other rebel groups, ours won’t be the only one with The information.
Personally I can’t really see a pathway where you keep the secret and don’t end up building a possible hegemony successor state, even if you personally have good intentions I think that the long-term consequences of theurgic secrecy is a system where the theurges dominate.
I could see a possible state when theurgy is outlawed and practicing theurges are hunted down. It would probably not be a very nice place to live, but so long as aetherial blood is hard to come by it might be possible for such a state to exist.
The question is, how do you beat theurges without theurgy? Even a single dabbling palmcutter can be a game-winner against theurgeless opposition, as we see in Book 1.
“We were closing in on him and then next thing we knew none of us could see”
Sure I guess but it’d have to be a real backwater to avoid being conquered by its neighbors, no? Even putting aside resources I would assume any theurgic successor states would want to destroy it to make sure that the inquisition doesn’t spread into their own realms.
Also I think the best way to set up this kind of state is to reveal at least some of the horrors of theurgy, the use of the human brain if nothing else.
Yeah, but primitivism never lasts long anyway.
Winning would require the development of a tactical system specialized to defeat theurgy. Some ideas that have been floated that seem promising to me are mass production of compressed air firearms, mass mobilization, aether strikes, and national liberation style guerrilla warfare. I think the truly hypocritical Galactic Empire…erm I mean Empire of Man…uh not-Hegemony would have a specialist class of theurges that focus on suppression of a change.
I think keeping it down would require many of the tools the Hegemony uses to suppress goety (social/religious taboo and secret police). In the “sanctioned theruge” case I suppose the taboo could be making a change rather than theurgy necessarily.
As for what to do about the neighbors, uh yeah be Napoleon I guess, and also better than him and not ultimately lose.
I mean, if you’re going to have sanctioned theurges, I figure you’re probably going to want sanctioned theurges - banning Harrowing might be a better way to keep the madness under control.
Or they only harrow “witches” the circular logic of a total theurgic ban has to close like a circuit afterall!
I’m too lazy to try out the demo of the sequel right now so ima straight up ask this:
When do you meet abhumans? Can you turn into an abhuman?
When you try out the demo of the sequel. XD
I’m too lazy rn though…
After arriving at Sojourn, which is the back half of the current demo. You cannot become an abhuman yet, though the possibility is raised for Theurge MCs who talk with the abhumans.