I meant by removing the contamination that makes it unfarmable. A lot of people have stated that the place is so polluted with various toxins created by the transmutation that it’s not particularly viable to farm on, so I was wondering if we could simply extract said elements (and maybe use them), leaving the soil uncontaminated. I don’t mean using Theurgy to continue to enhance the soil. There was a whole country there at one point, some of that land has to have been fertile. It doesn’t need to be super boosted, just regular fertile.
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They destroyed the hagemony.
Started an famine and then they died.
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Even with those toxics we could have a regular harvest there if storms are controlled. That’s what has proved by the first village and their farms. They have their own special grain good for those soil. Only storms and beasts are destroying those harvests and even with that they have half a harvest. So what if there weren’t more storms and beasts? They can plant more grain and have bigger, better harvest in a very big amount and fast. It looks to me that we only need to stop storms with ward or from its source and the rest is easy. We won’t need that much theurgy and blood to power up harvests there.
That is exept Havenstone wants us suffering purposefully😀
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look at time frame that is happening. you will be in civil war with famine against equality powerful enemy’s you wont have resources to send those expeditions colonizing that much territory when its wasteland takes a lot of resources and lot of time you don’t have and even then you need more theurgy to then transport those food. before you get your first harvest half of the population will already be dead.
i think what you want is generally possible BUT its not possible in present conditions or you know you can try and watch it as it fails.
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Why are you assuming it’s happening DURING the war? Plus, refugees are likely going to try settling the area in droves during the famine if they hear it’s possible to survive there, as their chances are far better than with the famine.
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if they will go to xaos land during famine i think they deserve to die. no one will be going there(or really small portion of people) until you erect wards and even then it will take a lot of time and resources resources you wont have to make it livable.
also don’t forget that your enemy factions may decide to be funny and decide to blow up wards that you made for fun.
every day conversation which happens with starving refugees:
- what should we do there is no food and we are starving. should we go to sharayd which is most fertile land and has best food production and is our best chance for surviving
- what of course not we should go to literal hell where there is poisoned land no infrastructure most likely no big sources of water no homes and even in best case scenario will all die before we see any harvest.
1 you know what that is great idea
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This is far from a simple task, even with modern technology and pollutants. Cleaning up contaminated ground is a massive undertaking that requires a lot of time and resources, even today.
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The magic we have is especially well suited to manipulating the specific material components of a given substance.
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You’re being needlessly rude about this.
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was trying to make joke. so sorry did not meant it like that
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I think it is true that sufficient aether could build wards and restore the Xaoslands to fertility, but the problem the Hegemony is facing isn’t insufficient arable land but rather insufficient aether to fertilize it. I expect the blood we would have to spend to restore the Xaoslands far outweighs the amount needed to just keep up production on the existing farmland, which there also isn’t enough of.
This plan sounds a bit like the canal project. An interesting idea for a more peaceful time.
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Well…destroying a lot of prime farmland that needed fairly minimal theurgic interference before they wrecked it isn’t helping the situation now. The current methods used are also deleterious to the land, which is why prince nippletwister is presumably wasting a lot of his time on crop research and new agricultural methods to go along with them…pity for him he doesn’t know his efforts will come too little far too late.
It reflects some of their more deviant proclivities, shall we say plus it is way less dignified than calling them by their proper name or title. 
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Funny you mentioned them. And I never got why you always call them nippletwister? . I wanted to know if there could be we making our empire and having (for me its her) as a romance partner?
I knew that much. I was actually asking if s/he will accept me as a sovereign of her birthright Empire? Or she would force her own claim and try to get us in her side, a completely reverse position from what I have planned? Because Help from her faction would be very constructive.
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It’s a running joke from an unwise post Havenstone made a while back, referencing her flirt scene. And yes, s/he will be a potential love interest.
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I feel like the fact that you NEED to fertilize it with magic is a part of the problem. Once purified, at least some of this land should be farmable the normal way.
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Yes, but you also need magic for new wards and to clear the surface pools of mercury. You also need magic just to sustain the insufficient harvest the Hegemony is bringing in now. Going after expanding into the Xaos lands makes the famine worse so by the time the new lands are arable so many people will likely have starved to make the additional farmland moot in the short run.
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Btw guys, the way the game presents the different factions, nobles, priests, merchants, yeomen, and helots, implies a large degree of class solidarity. I was wondering if this is the case in world or is it made that way for gameplay reasons.
I suppose mainly with helots, yeomen and merchants. The nobles we know are divided into 3 factions and the priesthood is presumably gonna be divided over heresies soon enough. Though that doesn’t mean the nobles wouldn’t unite if we start breaking up the grand estates for example. Nor do I think the priests would stay disunited in the face of a atheist MC.
Like would our followers, who are mainly helots and yeomen, protest if we start raiding into southriding territory and target the farms and villages there? Would Rim merchants care if we start expropriating the property of Grand Shayard merchants? Like how deep do the ties go for members of the same class?
Edit:
Also is this a result of the hegemony being highly hierarchical?
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Not at all – but the reward may look like small-to-medium-scale stability and first halting efforts toward democracy, not the more ambitious reforms you’re looking for.
I’d be open to an example of where e.g. a major Chinese dynasty collapsed but because its successor had maintained a broad coalition of support, it was able to rapidly stand up a new regime characterized by major governance, economic, and/or scientific advances. I’m just not aware of any cases like that. And I don’t think there’s a relevant parallel in examples like:
Wasn’t the Netherlands ruled by Napoleon for like four years? And India gained its independence in a modern context where (as we’ve previously discussed) it had lots of existing institutional models to refer to and adapt. It wasn’t innovating in a vacuum of liberal-democratic governance models – let alone liberal economic institutions.
This is true, as a number of people have pointed out. But contra @roodcross, I don’t think that I’ve written a world where a Hobbesian nightmare is inevitable and blood-extracting authoritarianism is the default state form. The ability of individuals to use their own blood for Theurgy, while not directly competitive with industrial blood harvesting, goes well beyond (say) my ability to extract my own oil or craft my own smokeless powder. If the blood magic economy empowers tyrants in ways unique to the gameworld, it also uniquely empowers individuals for resistance and assertion of their interests.
A stable order can’t exist without the tacit consent of the governed in either world. And in my opinion, the practices that establish or weaken that consent don’t differ substantially because of the magic system.
“Getting friendly with” Halassur is going to be a monumental challenge after 300 years of war – for a number of reasons, it won’t be as easy as saying “rebels in charge now, we’ll stop invading you.” But there’s good reason to believe that it’s the best approach to ending the institution of child sacrifice.
That’ll also be a hard one to justify, I think. The groups you’re trying to tax will push you to just Harrow a few more slaves to make up the difference instead; and the slaves will ask why, if other groups can be taxed, they can’t be Harrowed. You can only justify the tax on grounds of equity and mercy; but those go poorly with limiting lethal extraction to the traditional target caste.
I don’t think that will be the only possible outcome, but it’s certainly one that a lot of empire-builders will find easier than the alternatives.
I don’t think anyone’s going to be trading aether in the gameworld. Harvesting your own people (or kids) just to give their blood to a neighbor is a good way to spark endless rebellions, even if that neighbor wasn’t the three-century enemy. And no world power is going to be looking at an aether surplus.
Ah, got it – you’re talking about the Game 1 achievement, not just successfully inspiring people with the Inner Voice idea. That’s an error, thanks for letting me know. I’ll fix it at the next update so a CHA 2 character can also get the achievement.
Sure. But like I said in the original para you were responding to, that will be tougher because the people you’re trying to make into examples haven’t been much weakened by your revolt so far. Institutions you haven’t weakened will be harder to change to your new vision; institutions you have weakened will be less effective. That trade-off can be eased at the margins by lots of little things, but I doubt anything is going to make it disappear.
As for Warding Vigil, I’m not going to go into the detail now – we can save it until I reveal the mechanics of Ward creation – but I don’t think there’s an option that uses substantially less blood than just leaving up a couple of existing Wards. The Xaos-lands aren’t going to be an escape valve for resettling refugees or discovering enough new farmland to avoid famine.
And making adamantine stone is extraordinarily blood-intensive. Even the Hegemony (which is not particularly thrifty in its blood spend) uses it in just over a dozen small structures, barely adding up to the size of 2-3 of the Braurach towers. I don’t think any MC is going to build a city out of the stuff.
I’ll track a couple of things so we don’t have identical conversations later, but nothing in that section should be a massive revelation. The section is mostly for player knowledge and time with the gang.
As for your suggestion: I understand the curiosity, but I’m afraid I’m not going to give the option for the player to press her further about her conversation with M’kyar, because it would yield essentially no new information. I’ve got to find the right balance between letting people gently stonewall you (with whatever that tells you about their character) and keeping the story moving.
I guess I’m more Burkean, because I think the French Revolution’s short-run impact was pretty dreadful on the whole. It strikes me as a case study of how a revolution’s costs and harms tend mostly to be experienced by the revolutionary generation, while its benefits (for those revolutions that do yield net benefits, as this one certainly did) tend mostly to be experienced by their children or grandchildren, if not later descendants.
Politically, my perspective is with Ramidel: the French Revolution took a century to realize its promise, after its repeated lapses back into monarchy and empire.
Economically, the abolition of feudal privilege didn’t automatically or quickly lead to broad-based prosperity. There was massive disruption to the institutions (financial, educational, social protection) that had been centred on the church and noblesse. A relatively small class of mostly bourgeois nouveaux riches captured much of the benefit when things began to stabilise, leading to continued political crises throughout the 19th centuries as les miserables protested against the betrayal of the revolution’s promises.
Really, both economically and scientifically, I don’t see any real “revolution” in France in the late 1700s; the trends beforehand continued with the Revolution as more of a hiccup than a sea change. And if you’re imagining that like Napoleon you could found the Bank of Shayard to bring some stability into economic chaos…remember that he was learning from the earlier failed experiment of John Law’s central bank, and resting on other institutional experience that the gameworld lacks.
In our earlier discussions I’ve spelled out what degree of democracy I think might be feasible. Economic prosperity (for your wider population, I assume, not just you and a few cronies?) is a pretty heavy lift when the existing economic system of the continent will have just collapsed. And new scientific discoveries will be helpful but not a cure-all. The details will depend on how much state capacity you preserve/create, and what you choose to spend it on.
The areas that directly border Shayard weren’t particularly arable even before the Storms hit. To get to significant amounts of good potential farmland and protect them from Storms, you’d need to move the current Wards a long ways out. I don’t think that’s a project any post-Hegemonic successor state will be in the shape to undertake during the collapse years – not in time to make any meaningful difference to the famine.
And all of that isn’t even touching on the fact that you’d be trying to settle your farmers on land with an existing population of nomadic pastoralists, a process which pretty much never goes smoothly or bloodlessly.
That will be an interesting conversation.
Those are classes, not factions. The faction variables include, as you’ve noted, multiple factions from most or all of the classes. The Hegemony is a hierarchical, role-based, non-individualistic society; that doesn’t create uniformity across classes, but there’s plenty of solidarity.
The examples you give show a good understanding of the general dynamics. Some things you do will upset a faction without upsetting their wider class. Some things you do will upset the class, but a faction that cares about some other policy may decide to stick with you anyway. And some things you do to the class will be perceived as so threatening that it’ll alienate even a faction that might otherwise approve of you.
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Sure but that’s not the way obviously we are starting that from sojourn and have the next game in grand shayard too so I assume after that too there will be meetings with our new friends and at the last game a chance to build alliance on that front, or maybe that happens sooner.
The hard part is understandable but doesn’t means impossible I hope? Because More we talk more I feel there won’t be any other path exept keeping harrower tradition of Hegemony as it was. Surely we are not playing 6 books to just fail all our hopes and plans? I know you don’t want to make the end too much idealistic and utopian but surely we need to some degree reach a better situation than what we started to stand against? Ok I accept we should choose food or no harrowers but at least can we have a way like what I suggested? The hard part can’t be more mellow with veryy high CHA?
I don’t care about easy part as much as I care about possible part. If I want to be honest… the possible part is totally dependent on you as author to add text and high stat checks so these hard paths be possible but the hard/easy part can be pass more easily with just some try and error by many playtests. So I know that will make you more work but I really hope you make them possible and create the real legendary story in whole Choice of games history.(it is already there but no one disagree with more legendary state)
But by your answers I feel you will because you just say hard like you’re saying :" Institutions you haven’t weakened will be harder to change to your new vision; institutions you have weakened will be less effective. That trade-off can be eased at the margins by lots of little things, but I doubt anything is going to make it disappear."
So no hope in salvation with that way. Yet understandable as already empires have difficulty to get enough blood as we already know for Hegemony harvest. So no surplus. But for the way to trade that was easier as you build refined bloods here then with great care transport to other location. But we don’t have enough already so moving on.
Yes. Thanks to correct it. But I also didn’t felt my followers believed that with 2cha along achievement won’t working. Does the game only get that stat true if the achievement gets unlocked?
So we wait till it’s the time.
I’m not planning to use xaos as refuge or farmstead just adding as a province with its capital sojourn. I would allow nomads their way still just wanted to know if we could give them the safety from xaos too and make everyone happy. Plus I can’t imagine dwellers joining my new system if there is a Ward getting them outside of my realm.
Thanks for stone explanation.
So massive revelations will come in a complete consistent way in a planned scene like the one with Cerlota about aether? A scene every player and mc with any pervious conversation will see and salvage these conversations we are missing just for pacing of story?
About the talk details I can get by as I guess Cerlota will explain all when she’s going to do her vortex thing with city ward next game, hopefully?
Yesss, and one I hope we can win. Oh my queen 
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I mean the wards part depends on whether we can get rid of the vigil. I was considering testing how deep its effects on Theurgy run underground and then use the floating mountains creation process to lift the ground beneath it into the sky and then dump it into the sea, nullifying the storms which do not gel well with water.
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