Surely that’s counting nested choices too… right?
How do Shayardenes stay cool? The culture is Anglo-French, but I have to imagine their architecture is taking different cues in order to circulate air rather than trapping heat. Do important buildings have Theurgic air conditioning?
No. 
But people will probably only see 4-6 of the choices in any one playthrough. Lots of *if-gated options.
Absolutely. The most desirable parts of the lower Southriding are the ones where you can catch a breeze, and the buildings are designed for max air circulation. Theurges visiting from less torrid parts of the Hegemony will often cool themselves magically, but that’s most easily done through increasing their body’s tendency to spend its heat, not by cooling air in a way that others can feel.
I think that it should punish compassion more . I think that ruthlessness is moderately more powerful than compassion (I underestimated the power of ruthlessness when I wrote that).
Thanks. I hear you, but I also think the balance is set about where I want it set.
Ruthlessness is not a superpower. Both it and compassion should have their pitfalls, as well as situations where it’s the most effective way to solve a problem.
I am suprised that nobody ever made this comparison, but i think sharyardenes as essentially just persia vs hera’s macedon.
Like think about it, shayard was a massive empire which spanned the south of the continent, which has influence everywhere.While hera’s Thaumatarchy is macedon after king philp and alexander pacified greece.
Also i’ve a theory that the reason hera got assasinated was because she wanted to counter known world, similar to how alexander wanted to push his empire as eastwards as possible. Her commaders probably just got sick of nonstop wars of conquests and plus, beaten shayardenes, whends, nyrish, The ancient grudge if their was one… is settled we don’t have too keep going the empire is big enough. So to stop the constant eternal war the ennearchs plotted an assasination, and they succeeded, with the deed done they focused consolidating their rule and elevating one of their own to thaumatarch, and when that same thaumatarch they elected gets a little bit ambitious they kill them too, honestly kleitos would be thaumararch alot longer since he seems like the kind of person to keep shit stable and be smart enough to cheat the most boot licking aristo to high places to make shit stable. So to me kleitos really is the most sensible thaumatrach, he is the ultimate centrist to me (Wait what im i even ramblimg about 
)
Does the empire of Halassur happen to draw any inspiration from Alethkar by chance? The separation of masculine war arts and feminine reading and the like is making me think XD
Are Cerlota’s “broad lips” tall or long or all of the above?
A middle ground option should exist that is between geting used to Irduin and hating it
Not consciously-- I had to Google “Alethkar” just now. 
I read the first Stormlight book a decade or more ago and remember it only vaguely. For the rest, I’m waiting til he’s done writing the series.
It’s certainly possible that it was unconsciously one of the influences on my imagination, though.
Havie, how plot armored are the Big Three? (in terms of making it to the “post-Hegemonic scramble for power” endgame)
I vaguely remembered from past forum posts that certain factions could be preemptively wiped out (before the endgame) by MC, right?
Might there be some sort of awkward dilemma/tradeoff involved in the Siege of Aekos that lets the MC determine which antagonist(s) gets to become (one of) the Big Three in the first place?
Building off our earlier discussion about the Leaguers’ approach resembling the Delian League’s “empire under the guise of an alliance” path, how closely do you think the Leaguers’ vision for Shayardene dominance and continental leadership aligns with the historical American model of state governance? From what I currently understand, the founding fathers era American model is reformative and progressive enough to resist absolute monarchies, but is hindered by its intrinsic pro-aristocrat and pro-privileged landowner biases (and the Leaguers might make the exact same mistake on not taking a stronger stance against slavery, thus “kicking the can down the road” until tensions inevitably boil into yet another civil war).
To quote a post-character development Amanda Waller, “Maybe the angels need a sharp sword too.”
Or my hardcore Homelander MC’s preferred category of “certain people who probably might need to be killed/suppressed to prevent the conspiracy to reinstate/carve Earlund away from Shayard”
Looking at you, Cabelites!
Bats? So it was Irduin, rather than Wuhan, that served as Ground Zero of the COVID-19 pandemic? 
I jest, of course, but it’d be interesting if one of the learnable Theurgic specializations involved chemical warfare/AOE spamming.
And ooh, what about an endgame achievement titled, “Horseman of Pestilence”?
I expect the solution would be to change their anatomy to include a herbivorous cecum so they can digest cellulose.
Continuing where @cascat07 left off about his brilliant cecum suggestion (on the older Uprising thread), are the following Abhuman adaptations plausible for adapting to the inevitable post-Hegemonic famine:
1- Lowering one’s own metabolic rate (like a hibernating bear or a brumation/torpor-wielding reptile)
2- Storing fat in a camel hump-like or whale blubber-like fashion (though admittedly, the social tradeoffs of deliberately getting fat might be awkward to navigate when selling this technique to MC’s followers)
So much for my bizarre last minute plan to suggest we have Rick Sanchez or the Doctor (Doctor Who) make a cameo! 
@Havenstone, correct me if I’m wrong, but it was Eosphora (Hera’s daughter) who succeeded Hera after the assassination, correct?
Did Eosphora occupy a slot amongst the Ennearchs prior to ascending as the Hegemony’s second Thaumatarch?
US is more of a Federation/Republic than an alliance, unless this alliance became a full-blown country.
Speaking of morality, I really like that the MC we play as isn’t exactly a blank slate, but a person with a pre-determined personality and principles, that us players can’t affect much during character creation.
Is this going to continue? Or are you going to give players more freedom in influencing their MC’s more set-in-stone beliefs? (For example, in my opinion, one of the MC’s core principles is that they love 
their late mother, not much we can do about that in Uprising. Will you ever allow a player to shift the MC’s perspective about that? This example is pretty bad tough, what kind of monster would want to do that? 
)
If we want the MC to commit atrocities in future installments, I think the players will have to make the MC deviate a bit from their current personality. Going from “sometimes killing innocents is justifiable for the good of the rebellion” to “let the blood flow! 
(for no particular reason)”.
Also, since you mentioned it, will there be morality stats? 
Really hoping that we won’t be locked out of Grand Shayard faction associations via our Homelander/Cosmopolitan stat.
Namely I’d enjoy the option to romance Teren as a staunch Shayardene nationalist or Abelard as a Cosmopolitan, though that might be basically the same as wishing Simon/Suzanne wouldn’t take the callous murder of innocents too personally to find us quite as dreamy as s/he imagined.
The ideal would obviously be a happy middle ground to be negotiated between the dissident factions so their strength could be combined and turned against their shared enemy-
Yeah, yeah, massive boon to the rebellion, a major step to victory and all that, but mainly I’d get an RO that isn’t Breden for a Straight Male/Aristo/Homelander MC
We won’t. It will just affect your standing with them.
Long would I think be most naturally described in English as a “wide mouth,” while “broad lips” are broad along the nostrils-to-chin dimension. (Though in most cases, including Cerlota’s, stopping short of touching either nostrils or chin. )
The Big Three are all going to be endgame actors no matter what you do. You are not going to be powerful enough by the end of Wardfall to prevent those three from being active. A number of the other factions are also definitely going to be there in the endgame; but yes, there will be some you can preemptively gut, including (on my current plan) most or all of the ones you’ll be interacting with in Grand Shayard.
No one’s envisioning a federal state. The koinon would be a lot looser than that. More Holy Roman Empire than Articles of Confederation. Going for a slaveowner-friendly regime and thereby setting the stage for the next rebellion will definitely be on the cards, though.
I think I’ve said above that while I love the cecum idea (as well as your two Abhuman transformations here) I don’t see any of them moving the needle when it comes to famine prevention. You’re not going to be able to convince enough people to trust you and your Abhuman friends to radically remake their bodies into part-animal form. Once they’re actually starving, more would be ready to consent, but by then they won’t have the strength to survive the process.
The Thaumatarchs’ heirs don’t serve as Ennearchs. Kleitos didn’t, and nor does Phaedrx. They need to be ready to take over as and when the current Thaumatarch dies – not die with them.
I’m glad! Like I said almost 11 years ago:
I’m going to continue that to some extent. For example, I’m not ever giving you the choice of how you feel about your mother, or to be totally unaffected by your father’s death. But in terms of what’s unthinkable, a character racking up ever-higher ruthlessness is going to get more and worse atrocity options as the game progresses. (And that will be based on the hidden stat ruthreal, rather than the reputation stat ruth; from Stormwright onward, those will have more and more chances to diverge.)
There won’t ever be a morality stat, but there will be more stats that track what you really care about and are willing to consider, rather than just your reputation.
Don’t worry, I like the idea of a cross-faction romance too much to lock you out on the basis of a Homelander/Cosmo strategy. Especally since you can start the romance with Teren or Abelard before they ever find out who you really are.
How taboo is it for a noble to have a serious romance with a (well-off) commoner? Curious if you can approach either as a helot and get them enthralled before dropping the bombshell.
You’ve kind of made it so that the MC can be more like the father in some ways. The aristo MC can be closer to him in how they view helots for example. The existence of the arrogant aristo in general offers pretty good flexibility.
There’s a range of different motives that can be driving the MC and you can end up with someone whose worldview is a lot closer to that of Kleitos than Kal for example.
Speaking of Grand Shayard will you have the chance to bring factions you do not actively conspire with on board after your scheme in the city?
If so maybe working with factions that you have less in common with (for example engaging heavily with the laconniers as a cosmo) might be more benefitcal in the long run as factions that align with you more steadily have a higher chance of doing so without extra convincing.
For anyone from a major family – pretty damn taboo. Marriage is a key moment when the House’s status and wealth can be either compounded or put at risk; allying yourself with a commoner is admission of failure in the status game. A bit over a decade ago, I wrote:
As you’ll see in Irduin, a noble-merchant alliance isn’t totally unthinkable when the House is extremely small and not especially bothered about its relations and reputation beyond the local level. But even there, it’s not easily thinkable, either.
So for Abelard or Teren to have a romance with helot MC will be a big deal.
Yes – but you’re right that the intensive time you get with 1-2 in Metropolis will be a good chance to win over ones that might otherwise be put off by your public reputation.
I’m more interested in how much havoc we can sow tbqh. If I’m gonna force myself to spend time among the nobility I’d like to set them at each other and generally cause chaos.
Sounds good! I guess trying to soften up the Laconniers will be an interesting challange then. Few questions regarding that:
Will you have a chance to make someone else (especially Abelard) the claimant?
And how flexible are the Laconniers regarding domestic reforms. Would they have any chance of supporting solutions that go beyond making the helots serf, if said solutions do not include breaking up the great estates? In the same vein how would they view the estabilishment of some kind of (probably still elite dominated) parlaiment as long as there is still a monarch? (Hearing how you see other noble factions approaching this problem would also be interesting)