I can’t avoid all uses of “Storm[something]” that have resonances with other published fantasy…there’s just too much out there. But given his obvious influence and high profile, I do think I need to avoid any formulation that George Martin used first. 
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What about just “Oak and Blackbird”? It matches the first chapter title structurally Chaos and Telos (though shouldn’t it be Xaos?)
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Hmm. I’m attached to my definite articles–it still pains me that my publisher decided “The Opium Season” had to be “Opium Season.” But many friends have told me the publisher was right, so I’ll.give it some thought in this case too
And for the Ch 5 title, I’d like to be clear that I’m referring to Chaos the concept rather than Xaos the devil-equivalent of the Xthonic mythos.
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I hate to say it but the publisher was right lol. Opium Season is much snappier. I actually do like The Oak and The Blackbird though, it reminds me of a fable or some other story like that, which feels intentional. Thinking on it… you could just title Chapter 6 “Sojourn”. It’s short, to the point, what the chapter’s about while also relating to the MC’s own Sojourn.
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But The Opium Season was more accurate and grounded. And also didn’t conjure a mental image of the Taliban and governor yelling back and forth at each other: "Opium season! Wheat season! Opium season! Wheat season! Wheat season! I say opium season, and I say fire!"
…that one’s just me? OK.
And “Sojourn” is probably the right name for the chapter. Thanks.
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Even considering the less prominent role of horses and cavalry at large in XoR world… will we have some considerably “epic” scenes featuring fight on horse or else?
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Re: the mechanics of Irduin
It’s a neat detail that these five branches each reference a minor but potential significant figure in our protagonist’s early life. The jongler is the most obvious, of course, with Carles. The Keriatou oratory tutor and fighting master each get a moment paragraph in the limelight during Chapter 1 of Uprising, delivering a lesson important enough to be included in our legend. And the Keriatou fighting master can be the first to call you “Captain”; it’s adorable.
You tried to hide your pleasure at the affectionate title.
Apothecaries have always been significant for helot MCs, and there is immense narrative power in coming full circle to becoming one.
”Don’t bring Mother into this. There was an apothecary in town when she fell ill. His tinctures could have cured her, if you’d brought him.
”So did she die because helots can’t afford an apothecary, or because you were too afraid to ask the aristarchs for one? Either way, it’s a damn shame.
Lastly, I enjoy tinker because it’s comparatively obscure: Addrecks the roving tinker, with his big box full of secret compartments, the favorite childhood source of stories from the outside world for our 2 INT helots.
I adore Stormhaven, though there’s admittedly an irony to it. If the chapter divide sits where chaos transitions into chaos2 today, then the STORMHAVEN headline would come immediately after discovering it’s not a haven from aerial firebombing, and that their “savior” (Soter) intends to lead them back into the Storms. Awkward,
That said, I find “Sojourn” a bit on-the-nose drole. It is funny that we’re sojourning in Sojourn. And regardless of its name, it’d be shorthanded to “the Sojourn chapter” anyway. But as a result it doesn’t particularly excite me.
This is so true, and I lack enough foundation in prosody to properly explain why, but for me it’s definitely the rhythm. “Oak” and “Black” are, I think, the stressed syllables, such that “The Oak” and “Blackbird” reverse each other, resolving the rhythm. “Oak and Blackbird” on its own, comparatively, is not a wholly boring rhythm, but it seamlessly loops without ever resolving.
So I think the Fourth Harrowing “treachery” is effectively unsolveable, short of an outright confession by the culprit. Breden is by far the most suspicious there: anybody who actually gets Harrowed can be presumed innocent (though it’s not absolutely impossible they were betrayed in turn), and I’m willing to rule out Radmar solely on the basis of refusing to doubt his love for Alless. But the game makes it clear that mechanisms exist for anybody to be responsible, by way of leaking information to the authorities, who would then surveil Breden and/or the meeting place. That’s why there’s a traitor hunt in the first place, based on the not-necessarily-correct assumption that a traitor would act again.
This makes the poisoning before the battle a much more appealing wedge to impale traitors, because we can create real counterfactuals to prove that certain characters are not necessary conditions for the poisoning (no comment on sufficiency). Breden is the one necessary and sufficient condition: though whether out of treachery or incompetence is debatable.
That’s where the Old Joana hypothesis falters. Because she can be skipped by not stopping the Fourth Harrowing, there exists a poisoning where Old Joana is not known to be present. This applies to nearly every character in the story, except for the ones who cannot by then die or not be part of the rebellion: the other cooks (including Young Earnn), Alira, and Father.
Of these, Father is by far the most interesting candidate.
First, addressing your two objections, which are the most common and reasonable:
The motive ascribed for the poisoning is spite. Once the rebellion begins, Father already behaves like a dead man walking, a man who has lost everything. His entire life’s work bending to the Thaumatarchy’s rules has been annihilated.
As for Rim Square: the detail that keeps the Father hypothesis alive is that our name is never called for the Fourth Harrowing, because Breden cries out for us to save them. Let’s review Chirex’s response to that…
Over a chorus of murmurs and gasps, you can hear your father’s ragged intake of breath with awful clarity. Breden stops, hovering mere yards from the manacled heart of the Harrower. “What is this?” Theurge Chirex purrs. To your horror, a fleeting glance reveals that she is staring straight at you. Before you can do anything, you feel yourself lurch upward, tumbling in dizzy spirals until you too are floating higher than the house-eaves.
“Your gracious Ecclesiast knew there was treachery and rebellion in this town,” Chirex declares. The wizened Zebed nods solemnly at her side. “The Angels have shown us that it is not yet fully rooted out!”
The key question: how much does Chirex know in this moment? Remember that Chirex already announced the “Foreknown”: seven more people to be the usual sacrifice for the Harrower, Breden and their friends. But not us. Are we to expect Chirex has known about us all along, and was just giong to announce a second batch of Foreknown (likely unprecedented) including us right after Harrowing Breden, instead of just including us in the first batch?
Well, yes, if we’re an aristo. Have to lay the groundwork for such a monumental announcement and all that: a little theatre is appropriate. And she immediately finds us: she knows who we are. But it plays out the same for a helot. There’s no inherent reason for Chirex to leave out this one helot when she’s Harrowing seven others.
Unless she genuinely wasn’t going to kill us before Breden dragged in our name.
As for how she finds us: well, maybe it’s not about us, but instead about the person right beside us. And there’s the conspiracy: Father buys protection for himself and his family by ratting out these rebels. The exact crime helot Father is accused of at the end of Chapter 3, regarding Aryn Weller.
But how would aristo Father know? Definitely the strongest thorn, and not one that can be dislodged. But I find it telling that the same climactic confrontation with Father at the end of Chapter 3, for an aristo physically romancing Breden, starts with him spying on us in the woods with enough stealth (admittedly, we were distracted at the time) that he’s only caught by his involuntary choke of propriety at seeing us about to have sex.
He offers no reason for why he’d be in the underbrush next to the spot where we and Breden happened to end up and after a denial goes straight to verbal abuse. So we have a case of aristo Father stalking us in the woods. It is then not as great of a leap to suggest he could’ve done the same in Rim Square, enough to learn about Breden’s existence — and from there, he’d need no further involvement.
Back to the poisoning: a notable point of suspicion towards Father is that we’re told by Old Joana that he’s refusing to eat that night. This is interpreted as a tantrum of sorts at first: but evaluated against the knowledge that the food was probably poisoned, it makes one wonder. Not to mention that he has a strong motive for framing Breden specifically.
Which brings us back to Breden, and some closing comments on why they might not currently be a traitor (note that this does not demonstrate innocence for any prior suspicious events).
The most compelling piece of evidence to me that none of the “Gamgees” — companions we bring into Xaos — are presently traitors is the fact that none of them, well, betray us in the Xaos-lands. They could kill us, cross back into the Hegemony, chill for a bit, then return to the rebellion with a sob story of our tragic death sacrificing ourselves to save them. This escalates incredibly quickly when we meet Cerlota, since stopping the spread of the secret of aether is allegedly a Kryptast’s prime directive, and the need for a Hegemonic spy to kill us all in our sleep is rapidly rising.
Furthermore, Breden sharing the Kryptast accounting code is, if used, directly responsible for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory for the Hegemony (or rather, an incomplete victory from the jaws of total victory) — and we have no evidence of Breden using the code themselves even though we know it works. All it proves is that Breden’s source (likely their old masters) was reliable.
The text also paints Breden as extremely suspicious and essentially the prime suspect for treason — prime red herring material — while Father is never even considered a suspect in-game.
In the end, though, I just think the Father-as-Traitor idea enriches the story. It lets us read new textures into his actions, and closes the “traitor hunt” story in Uprising, just in time for more spies to arrive.
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If it weren’t right, they’d have called opium season on the publisher.
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Cheers to the Father Theory! I’ve also had my doubts about Breden being the traitor (some of which you’ve touched on) but I hadn’t been able to come up with a compelling alternative suspect. This was phenomenal. Time to do a replay with an even more suspicious eye on Father.
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Father theory kinda blows my mind, nice job!
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…you do realize we’re still months away from the ADAT for the pun rebellion, right?
Speaking of ADATs, I didn’t commemorate @Wonderboy’s first post last year because it looked like the account had gone dormant…but after seeing a couple of recent posts on other threads, I’d like to note his thoughtful engagement a decade ago. Lots of great contributions to lots of gameworld discussions.
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I am sure you’re looking forward to that one.
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I’m not going to like your post, lest people take that as endorsement of the Father Theory – but thank you for putting it together so concisely and winsomely.
Or maybe just a sign of my repetitiveness.
The name is a very veiled shout-out to my old friend Pete, who played Darren Addrecks, the tinker, rogue, dwarrow-friend, and eventual dragon airship captain in the college D&D campaign that provided some of the thematic material for XoR.
As for the new and improved one-word version of the Ch 6 title…I’ve never done a poll before. Shall we do a poll?
- Sojourn
- Stormhaven
0
voters
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Just to toss a spanner … I vote for: Riders of the Storm for chapter six’s new none-one-word title.
. 
Exactly – Has the vibes and energy too, huh?
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That’s a good chapter name. Very good.
As for ch6, normally I would not presume to suggest, but since you’ve already given dispensation to some folks above in the thread, how about “a place for storms”.
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#I’d thought I was coming home…but this loathsome place is no home to me.
As much as you’ve tried to adapt, there’s one thing above all others that you find unbearable:
*goto unbearable [subchoice block just below]
This description is too negative.
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Doesn’t yet have that super-charismatic leader, mind you. 
Looking forward to this forum’s aspiring imperialist MCs occupying that vacant seat!
I, on the other hand, look forward to submitting my resume to Princess Phaedra! 
(depending on which MC(s) we’re talking about)
And I shall dub it NATO!
(New Age Theurgic Order)
or
(No Aekos? Totally Outstanding!)
or
(Next Autocrat’s Tyrannical Order)
And/or potential source of Quislings to help speed along the nascent koinon’s Theurgic R&D program (since we still need to deal with Halassur after the Hegemony is dealt with).
Just keep up a Lincoln-like image/PR campaign of “preserving the union” without too much nastiness/controversy, and you should be good to go, I think… (along with inspiring a “secession is bad” cultural norm for the generations to come)
or pull a Natasi Daala by gassing most/all of your prospective rival warlords (barring the lucky minority that sold out to your MC beforehand) in one decisive fell swoop, once they gather in the room for “the usual council meeting.”
Not if @roodcross and I have anything to say about it! 
Erezza-Shayard Holy League (or Shayard-run crusader gang), assemble! 
“There’s a party here in A̶g̶r̶a̶b̶a̶h̶ Irduin!”
But yeah, words/lyrics alone cannot describe the joy I felt from reading that quote! 
To quote Plankton (SpongeBob), “ravioli ravioli, give us the formuoli”, Havie!
Havie, could religion be a good way of popularizing intermittent fasting?
You could supply a castle (through a Berlin Airlift-inspired system of flying Theurges), though all that flying with cargo would go beyond what self-sacrifice Theurgy could easily support. Not a big city, though, let alone a nation. Grain is bulky, and people need a lot of it; if you can’t transport it by boat there’s really no good alternative for long-distance supply of large populations.
Remind me again if Theurgy allows for teleportation? I’d like to make the “done nothing but teleport bread for three days” meme a reality, if possible.
Or is this another “takes Ward-scale logistics and preparation” higher-level “wishful thinking” plan completely outside of INT MC’s ability to mass produce/wield in practical/scalable ability?
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Right, taking a quick break from the 20-and-counting option *choice block I’m working on to respond to the last four weeks’ feedback.
Yes – a good map is always useful to the state – but I suspect that post-collapse, most successor states will have a lot of things much higher on their priority list than an accurate cadastral map. If you’ve kept things stable enough that land tenure bears a close resemblance to the pre-collapse regime, and your tax system is in strong enough shape that you get a meaningful boost from using highly accurate maps rather than good-enough informal ones…then as we’ve said above, you’re probably running a micro-state, and you’ll probably have acquired the maps pre-downfall.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say “the best option we’ve got” – America could readily improve its hegemony in too many ways for me to use the word “best.” But there are certainly a lot of much, much worse alternatives, both theoretically and on the current global stage.
Sorry, Vrangel – maybe one day when it’s all done. But I’m not going back to make large-scale changes to G1 now. When I do my next update pass through G1 (I’m overdue to fix a couple of things) I’ll keep an eye out for good places in the main plotlines where I can remind the reader of the Elery-Yebben relationship. It does show up a few more places than you seem to have found it, but you’re right that it’s easy to forget after Ch 1.
No, there won’t be a chance for that. That would be against the spirit of the nomad story.
I don’t want to pile on you for a math error, which any of us could have made…but whenever I find myself articulating something that seems prima facie absurd as an implication of my argument, I try to let that be the alarm bell that sends me back to double-check my process. You’re easily well-read enough to have had the sense that 300 years is not in fact a particularly long timescale when it comes to devastating outlier shocks.
I want people to experience different things on different readthroughs, and I’m OK with people finding new bits of the story opening up to them on a subsequent read. As long as any single readthrough overall has enough interesting content to keep people coming back, I’m happy with it. I respect your taste being different.
The choice to kill H&L immediately, in particular, is not going anywhere. And the choice to bring them into the camp is abducting them against their will.
Have you read the extensive conversation upthread about nonviolent revolution? If it’s possible for a revolution to be successful without violence, as I think is well-supported by the evidence, it’s a fortiori possible for it to be successful without atrocities.
A nonviolent and/or compassionate MC will be coexisting with other violent, ruthless rebel leaders, who (if you win) will claim the credit and mock you for thinking that your tactics made any difference or would have been sufficient without them over here slaughtering people. If you agree with that critique, and don’t want your MC to be vulnerable to that kind of mockery, you’re free to pursue violence and atrocities in order to be on the side that makes a “real” difference. But that’s a choice of rebels – not the only way to run a rebellion.
I’d be interested to know: do you feel like the current game actually punishes ruthlessness, or do you just wish that it punished compassion more?
I take the criticism on board, but note that it’s a reputation stat, not a morality stat; and that a rebel doesn’t need to be a pacifist to have a reputation as compassionate. A few conspicuous instances of mercy can be much more memorable than a bunch of run-of-the-mill combat casualties.
The actual pacifist path is, as you note, a pretty brutal one; a good case could be made that it should be a high ruthlessness rather than a high compassion path.
Some new recruits will be possible – though some contenders could end up in Vrangel’s preferred category of “Nice people you have to kill to protect your secret identity.”
Not this game, I don’t think. Probablty in future ones.
There’s quite a lengthy section for helot apothecaries where I’ve tried to capitalize on this narrative power. While also threatening the MC with the risk of bat rabies.
Fair comment – but readers who think that have the option to pick “#It dizzies me, but I’m slowly getting used to it.”
Maybe you’ve never been to a place that gave you a strong reaction of “This is intolerable, I hate it.” If so, that speaks well for your own tolerance and adaptability. But I assure you, it’s a real reaction – and one I think is a particularly plausible option for someone raised in a near-wilderness suddenly dropped into a densely populated, intensively developed area with a much less temperate climate.
It could be a good way of popularizing many of the adjustments that could save lives during the famine.
Nope. No portals or extra-dimensional travel in the XoRverse.
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