Well see, if they pick the other sides, they die.
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it vastly depends when it happens and how your rebellion got to that point. if most of helotry is already in violent rebellion then i don’t really think there can be any compromise with nobility. but most of them wont be most likely only small part when these will be decided. then you can make that proposal which will give helots much much better right’s WITHOUT being forced to fight or participate in rebellion which in my opinion will be quite good deal for most of them. also i think that deal with nobility will be in game 3 in grand sharayd and at that time mobilization of helotry for rebellion wont be too advanced
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Considering the current power base and general appeal of the revolt my MC is running I’m honestly not sure I have much of an opportunity to pivot. Maybe for my Jailbreak route MC…
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i think chance to pivot will still be there. our revolt even in best case is still very small. you get what 600 man in best case and i dont think it could grown truly that big in our absence and hegemony’s population is insanely big. if we could played few years as rebellion leader then maybe but we are not even close to point of no return.
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The goal is to create is to eradicate aristocracy an replace it with an even more nightmarish bourgeoise. And say its the will of the people till the end of time. It would be fun to larp mao and speedrun the destruction of illiteracy
The point idk…
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Thing is, our rebellion affects more people than just the ones who join. Even if you’re running a small-scale rebellion, helots are still going to hear that it is possible to escape the Harrowing, run into the woods and survive there, and even give fight to Karagond… As a helot. The existence of helotry rests on the fact that they don’t believe in their own natural capabilities for violence and overestimate the aristocracy - look at the Hector mule bait fight where everyone is scared to meet him and his friends but someone like Kalt ruins his day anyway.
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yes but its not first uprising. other uprising already happened and got crushed by hegemony. people generally don’t like joining rebelion if situation is not truly desperate and any marginal increase in helots quality of life and then BANNING harrowing will make them your allies.
also they don’t overestimate hegemony if theurges and nobility and other classes wont betray hegemony its basically impossible to fight against it. i dont think rebelion that only rest on helots support and alienates every other class will have good time.
even in best case they make up half of hegemony’s population and 0 of its military might.
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That can change.
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I do have to say, people realize helotry is bad because it’s slavery right? Like harrowing sucks and is awful, but even if it was abolished overnight helotry would still be an utterly abhorrent institution, akin to the worst excesses of chattel slavery in our own world. Once the ball of revolution is rolling, maintaining that peculiar institution is going to require active efforts on the part of the slave-owning class, not the other way around.
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Pretty much
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I think in the gameworld’s internal logic harrowing is the root cause of slavery because theurgy does everything else. Slavery isn’t necessary in the Hegemony because of high labor costs, labor unavailability, overseas resource extraction, or high workplace mortality. It is necessary because you need an enslaved people to harvest aether from. Farming is just something productive for them to do until they are harvested, but they are the real crop not the wheat.
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you would be absolutely right if helots where guaranteed victory but historically slave rebellion’s have very bad track record and almost always there failure leads to harsher punishment’s for slaves not opposite. now because these is game we can reasonably deduce that it will most likely have chance of success but in real life there is no such certainty and no starting over. you may push for your maximalist goal but it will also proportionally decrease chance of successful rebellion’s and will most likely get all your followers killed. and while hegemony and harwoing are awful it can get much much worse and unsuccessful rebellion may lead to it.
history is full of brave and courageous dead people .and nations and i dont think high chance of joining there ranks is good idea.
i will generally say that most people prefer chance of gradual small improvements rather fighting bloody civil war with no guarantees of success for true equality.
now about ball of revolution of rolling. that is not necessary happening or if its happening it is happening in such small part that it can be negligible. only people who could really start mass slave rebellion’s are most bloodthirsty rebels or most charismatic ones and even then i dont think it will become big before 4 game. and before that there will be ample time for nobles and for other classes to give helots some good benefits for not rebelling like abolishing harowing and making them somthing like serfs.
in that case most helots who at that point would not have joined rebelion will have choce like these.
- join rebelion for true freedom against noblese and hegemony and most likely die and your whole movement dies with you
- still fight against hegemony and noble’s and still most likely you will die and there is veryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy small chance that your rebellion’s succeeds and then even smaller chance that it leads to better world
- you can just not join rebelion and get new right’s without big personal risk to yourself .
and i dont know about you guys but i think i know which won will be most preferable for most helots.
true equality is good idea but i don’t think we even have that in real world after century’s of gradual improvements. and it most likely not after such destructive rebelion which will be necessary to simultaneously defeat and hegemony and nobles together
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I don’t think quite a few players care even if they think it is going by what players said before 
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I don’t think anyone here actually thinks Helotry is good, but roleplaying people who want to maintain their own positions of power while dismantling institutions that are bad for them personally is a popular rp option in most games like this. For everyone who wants to enact as close to their own politics as the game allows, there’s gonna be people who want to play a tyrant for fun. Not really my cup of tea but common, nonetheless.
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I know that’s true for most people I occasionally like to play the tyrant myself too however I never stop feeling uncomfortable when it came to the subject of slavery among other things and some times I see people enjoy it a bit too much like they don’t see it as a terrible thing then surprised it turns out they are a nazi or Neo-Confederate. I know it’s not everyone but it still makes me a bit uneasy when people start role-playing it out on the forum. Sorry it’s just something I started thinking about thanks to recent experiences
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I’m more of a “close to my morality” type myself. Sometimes I like to go for the evil routes but yeah, not for slavery. Or genocide.
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Yes, which makes leaning in Kalt’s direction here more and more attractive, yes that will mean embracing the massive famine but the only way out is through after that the population will have fallen to sustainable levels without needing to perpetuate the horror that is the Hegemonic system.
Prince nippletwister is right about one thing though the path forward for magical agriculture is crop research instead of the direct boosting that the Hegemony currently uses, unfortunately for the Hegemony and fortunately for my mc that particular insight comes too little too late but it will be useful if pursued for all it is worth post-famine to enable a steady, sustainable growth again.
The Hegemony pretty much already is the darkest shade of black and the thing of pure horror, even Halassur is actually a much lighter shade of black or even gray (they do not currently practice chattel slavery) in comparison.
For all its cruelty the Hegemony is not even particularly efficient with resources, human or otherwise.
Neither famine nor Halassur are anywhere near as bad as the current Aekos imposed order of the “merciful” angels.
Ironically the Hegemony’s very system makes it more likely than any historical example because every helot slave who does not die of harrowing weakens the Hegemony.
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It can field million-strong armies, sustain huge population and build&maintain structures like magical wall on their whole border - and all of it is insanely impressive for pre-modern state. Hegemony is strong, there is a reason no one was able to topple it for centuries. Only the most recent crisis gives us, and the others, a shot at fighting it.
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“Hallasur is worse because its tribalism is wicked thats it”. Other than that I’d consider the rule of karagonds more favourable than hellasur, mostly because Karagon is just better well…if you live in the cities atleast everywhere else is shit. Speaking of cities it would be nice to have city-city rivalry going on idk it just make things a little intresting. Back on topic…hellasur is an massive Tribal empire whose emperor drinks the blood innocent babies…and claims its moral bruh reminds me of all that Cothaginian sacrificing kids in trophets shit. But anyway I really don’t care about the karagond kenon its an rotten faith Controlled by a few select group of theurges, who probably don’t even understand the text they Change. Also their are probably some helots who think their death is for the angels, but thats just speculation on my part.
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Hallassur doesn’t seem to be that far behind on most of those fronts except for the secret of the wards. And, yes, Halassur is also inefficient in how it uses its human resources due to their strict biological sex based segregation of their society but they do not practice chattel slavery nor do they harrow 5% of their population per year, which is a horrific way to die that for helots comes after a life of mostly suffering and misery. Halassur does it to a far lesser number of infants, which is also horrific but does cause far less widespread suffering and misery in the aggregate.
I mean if I were to make a paradox games mod for this world the Hegemony would be represented by the darkest shade of black that still works on the map while Halassur would either be represented a lighter shade of black or even just dark grey.
@antwaun_henry I guess your mc fully buys into the propaganda of the thaumaturchy, eh? 
As far as my mc can currently glean from his limited interactions with their one representative we know they do some things worse, my mc does not like the sex based segregation for sure, but they also have no ultra rigid caste system or chattel slavery nor very much harrowing. For my mc that puts them morally ahead of the Hegemony he knows.
In terms of Havie’s cultural inspirations the ancient Spartans were a particularly vile culture even when viewed in their own times and we can count ourselves very fortunate that in our world Athens largely won the battles in their times and they, not Sparta, came to define a lot of Greek culture…misplaced early modern and modern nostalgia and appropriation for and of a mythical Sparta that never actually was notwithstanding.
Both myself and my mc will reserve judgement on that until we have actually met the kid. He might even compare favourably to prince nippletwister…who is as mild and “reformist” as the Hegemony is possibly willing to go. Anyway I think it was mentioned somewhere he, prince nippletwister and the mc are all roughly the same generation.
But even if he does turn out to be an MBS type of reformist, aka personally vile, doing business with him would be just one of many compromises we have to stomach on certain playthroughs.
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