I’m excited to see what Yebben has been doing in the year or so that has passed. I hope the legend of the blind Theurge has been spreading, even if they’re not leading the band.
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I’m hoping that he hasn’t told everyone yet, my mc wants to slowly release info on theurgy just to make sure most won’t start going crazy with it right away
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@Havenstone Not sure if this is something you’ve given much thought to or matters all that much, but I had a few questions regarding Karagon before the time of Hera. It is mentioned in the index section that Hera ‘slew the Oracle of Aekos’ and established herself as ruler of the city. Meanwhile the Angelic revelations are perhaps… sixty years removed, or so?
I wonder if the city-states of Karagond had embraced the faith of Xthonos by the time Hera was an adult or if an indigenous belief system still lingered on. We don’t see ‘oracles’ in the modern-day Hegemony and Hera killing the one centered in Aekos makes me think that perhaps the city itself was a sort of Karagond Delphi. Did she decide to adopt a rapidly growing faith for her own needs or was she born in a household that believed in the Angels?
EDIT: Also, I wanted to say that Irduin on the Ulmey/Maurs path feels like the preamble to some grand religious revelation. I think that it should be possible, perhaps at the end of this arc, to come to the conclusion that Ulmeys (potential) revelation and Maurs’ Angelic words were actual messages from the Angels of Xthonos.
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Speaking of religion, this whole chapter is really convincing me that the Inner Voice can be bent to be structured akin to the Seracca faith, with the Angels taking the place of the Egye, and Xthonos still existing as a high creator spirit. It just feels like a very natural syncretism that can be used as an excellent vehicle to spread self-sacrifice Theurgy, familiar enough to be understood with very little new terminology, but different enough to feel distinct from the choking Hegemonic interpretation of the faith. I’m really hoping something like this can be put together.
This also gives Ecclesiasts a natural place in this order, as more laid back community leaders and spiritual guides who are trained to assist with their congregation’s individual relationship with the angels, probably moonlighting as Theurgy instructors (or egeite or whatever).
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Had a lightblub moment today, and I think I know why xaos-storms dissipate over water. You know how the storms don’t affect the towers of elemental earth? Well what else is an element in Aristotelian physics? I think water doesn’t have a Telos like earth, because it is a basic building block physics in this world.
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How salty would a body of water have to be to sustain a storm then, I wonder?
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Salt probably qualifies as close to earth in Aristotelean physics. Telos that seem to be especially susceptible to change are constructed things, which have been imparted with a telos by a maker of change (i.e. a human) or living things. The landscape itself seems to mostly be changed by the products of the storm like xaos creatures, high wind, and impacts from debris.
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Finished reading the new update and cant help to see Irde as the “Kind slave masters” tho maybe they are willing to go beyond the Master-Slave relationship into one of feudal lord and serf in the future after the revolution.
It also really dispelled any notion of harrowing infants after the revolution is complete as a compromise, its quite clear how universally despised the idea is among literally everyone with it being the main moral superiority claim against Halassur.
Really hyped to see the rebels reach Irduin and everyone realising that the MC was actually the rebel leader, how negotiations with Irduin will work etc.
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This is very big brain, but is countered by the fact that Xaos-Storms change regular stone, which would be analogous to seawater here. I do think you’re on to something however, and I think the secret might lie in the teloi water does have. Water wants to change, to flow and to fit. The chaos of the Xaos-Storm does little to its already fluid base state, and attempts to twist or unravel those teloi would only see something static made. I think this is what’s breaking the Xaos-Storms, rather than water being unchanging.
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@Havenstone do you have hard ages for the de Irde kids? In my head it’s this but idk if I’m correct:
Aguise - 18
Auche - 16
Alac - 13
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Actual game feedback, Jongler should be a cover you can feed the helot hunter. Right now you need to stonewall or intentionally choose a bad alibi to pose as one, which is just awkward routing (especially for the Charisma player who could maximize the profession, and who’d be most inclined to spin up some bullshit). Be easier to pick it outright.
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I’d personally say that Cerlota being somewhat lacking in personality right now is a good thing. She doesn’t know you personally, though she likes the cut of your jib, and she’s playing her cards pretty close to her chest until she opens up to you. That feels quite fitting. (And it sets the initial tone for your romance with her, should you take that path. Alya is chasing after her because she’s a first-class “Italian” MILF, but while what she’s seen of Cerlota’s personality is pretty similar to her own, she doesn’t know more about her story yet, and I will be most displeased if their relationship doesn’t hit some rocky parts in the transition from tryst to romance!)
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I can’t really find a place in the story where it does and people who live in the Xaoslands keep their permanent settlements underground to protect them from the storms. I think the storms may change microbial life on the surface to certain changes like the spores we see in the first chapter but stone itself is rarely changed. Cerlota says this about the towers when you speak with her about Vigil:
“I have read that there is a way of Theurgically purifying stone into near-elemental form, with a particular focus on enhancing its imperviousness until even further Theurgic Change is impossible. Adamantine stone, the books call it. It would be able to withstand all the things you have said of these towers.”
Theurgic change seems the depend on encouraging elements to do something it “wants” to do naturally (like fire rising to levitate), but you don’t change the element itself.
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What did Sharyardenes believe in before Xthonism?
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A thought: all romanced gamgees should introduce themselves as your spouse. It’s a natural cover, one that reduces the suspicion (also if possible I feel like ird_sus should be allowed to go negative so that early sus drops aren’t wasted as they are now) of traveling together and that allows you to be openly affectionate without flaunting Canon, something nice to have in a conservative town like Irduin. Also it’s cute and could lead to some fun bits with S especially. Also also, an ird_married variable could lead to some reactivity from other couples (or divorcees) in town, which would be neat if unnecessary.
On a similar note @Havenstone, how malleable do you see the gamgees being over the course of their G2 arcs? K especially could I think use some M’kyar/Maurs therapy, so much of their character is defined by unprocessed grief and pain and rage. I also think a lot of people would be interested in softening K/hardening S/defining and identifying Breden, which their Gamgee arc feels like a good place to do that. IDK about Ciels, they seem basically normal.
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Does anyone else has a XOR playlist that they listed to? Right now mine just has some Poor Man’s Poison songs and a few tracks from Squid Game
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If this is the case why do the wards exist? Instead of walls of Theurgic stone?
Anyhow, the real solution to the Xaos-Storms is to build giant lakes or a massive canal, fed from the sea, between the origin of the storms and the mainlands. Like the Panama Canal on steroids.
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I’ve heard talk of some sort of pagan-esq faith but I don’t think we’ve heard much about it.
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I think there are a couple reasons:
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The Hegemony has more in mind than just the Xaos storms in creating the wards. They are part of how the empire exerts control on the periphery and on the cities, because it allows traffic control, inspection, and taxation at the ward gates.
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Based on Cerlota’s reaction even one Adamantine tower like the one we see near Vigil would take “a slaughter” of blood to create. Somehow the wards are more blood economical than even Cerlota reckons should be possible. I expect the same was true for the tower’s creators, but the knowledge of that process is either lost or at least not readily available to a mad scientist of her rank and influence.
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And this is by Cerlota standards lol, though… if my crackpot theory is right the process of ward creation might not be all that different from the process of adamantine stone creation.
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Something that came up on the Discord, how blind is Yebben actually? Can he discern light levels? Make out shapes? What’s going on with his eyes?
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It also seems like that kind of stone is super rare in the Hegemony or one it does not choose to practice the art of making it at all. It seems to have been the pinnacle of the magic wielding civilization the ancient Brauracha conquered and likely absorbed, though.
Either the adamantine stone of old Brauracha and the civilisation that was likely there before them is one of the few things the Hegemony itself does not know how to make, like the Hallasurq’s never figured out wards on their own and is thus a “lost art” or it would somehow be even more expensive than the wards plus a wall would likely need to be impossibly deep and high to prevent the Xaos storms from just going around it. Adamantine, should we ever learn how to make it, seems like it would be more useful in the reconstruction of the hinterlands of Sojourn and maybe for fortified mage posts along that possible new border of swamps and wetlands that my mc would prefer to the Wards as a kind of emergency shelter.
The wards need to be constantly fed however, even if they are more economical than I or indeed my mc ever thought possible. On the other hand the towers near Vigil may have stood for hundreds or even possibly thousands of years now depending on how old they are and if they indeed precede even Braurach domination of the what is now the Xaos lands.
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So, there’s an option if you go through the asexual romance with Breden to give permission for them to explore their physical options. One of their known companions is Ciel - I’m curious, if you take them (Ciels) along with you into the Xaos’ land, are there any references to the strange relationship you three share with each other? E.g., guilt, shame, gratitude
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