Choice of Rebels: Stormwright (XoR2 WIP)

Well, I feel bad drawing attention to it. :slight_smile: I’ve always hoped that people wouldn’t notice, and am glad you didn’t. The mnemonic was always intended to be subconscious. Ssssh, now everyone stop talking about it…

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I think the Chesnery scene about the Rim Commotion being radicals could benefit from a few natlreal and skepreal checks. Especially the #I don't care. It's what I believe. option, it doesn’t make sense for MC’s that are lying about their motivations

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Ahahahaha, that’s such a funny revelation! :rofl::rofl::rofl:

But seriously tough, I’d totally support a Laconnier Kings mod for CK3, somebody get on it!

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They seem to be the main sponsor of the Laconniers but the piece about mutually assured defence makes me think my mc could potentially eventually offer them something the Laconniers can’t or won’t, that being the ward tech, for the low, low price of a normalisation of relations, mutual recognition and diplomatic exchange. And them dropping all support for the Laconniers. So, yes, in essence detente to normal, neutral relations. Depending on factors the relationship from there can range from cold to friendly. My mc, unlike the Hegemony, has no designs on their territory or keeping up the Hegemony’s current pointless resource wasting, meatgrinder of a conflict with them.

The Abhumans, the trans Halassur states and Halassur itself for starters, I mean they even trade with the Hegemony in times of peace so it shouldn’t be that difficult to get them to trade again. The oceans also afford the opportunity for further exploration and future trade and relations with the other continents. Plus of course any non slave states that might spring up in Erezza and what was formerly Karagon. So who would we trade with? Hopefully a lot of people and polities.

The setting is more early modern than feudal, so I would like the EU mod instead. :grin:

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Since XoR takes so much from Classical Antiquity, the game that could do the setting justice might even be Imperator: Rome

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I think Victoria 3 would also be an interesting medium for XOR. It’s got good modelling of class conflict, famine, political upheaval and revolution. The goal for both is to create a prosperous and stable nation, having to choose between maintaining traditional systems or pushing for modernization and reform.They’re also both very heavy on resource managment.

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It hasn’t? Literally what has the setting taken from antiquity besides “has a Greek empire”?

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The Karagonds take linguistic and cultural inspiration from Greece, there is a system of helotry, Rim Square has an agora, the Phalangites always struck as, well, heavy infantry with phalanxes. Even the magic system takes cues from Aristotle’s Four Causes. I guess that’s more of a reader’s interpretation of it, but I felt like the game world leans into Antiquity just as much, if not more than it does from the Middle Ages?

(I wanted to apologize if my post came off as ride or condescending. That was definitely not my intention!)

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The setting isn’t actually either, it’s an early modern one in the throes of industrialization, except the helots are the coal. TBH I’d say the Aristotelianism and the word ‘helot’ are about the only things that it really draws from Antiquity, but the Hegemony is much more of an industrial Byzantium.

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Haha, I think a state like the Hegemony would do horrible in Victoria 3. Starting out with straight up some of the worst laws, many radicals and unrealized taxation, probably also a huge bureaucracy deficit.

Which Interest Group would even be in charge? I’m thinking like Intelligentsia and the Church of Xtonos, but they have the traits of the Landowners. You’d have to rely on the Industralists and PB to slightly reform…

Sounds like it would make for an interesting and difficult playtrough tough. :rofl:

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The groups don’t map well onto the defaults of Vicky, so you’d have to remake them from scratch. You’d have the telones as a nascent bureaucracy but they are still too small to be in effective control, then you have the provincial collaborator “nobles” as landowners but also collaborators with limited sovereignty. Then you have the Karagond nobility, presumably, the true landowners and the source of most of the high ranking theurges and generals. Then you have the theurges themselves and then you have the priests of the state religion, the merchants and the yeomen and finally the helot slaves and fodder. All of those probably have at least one or two subcastes as well. The provinces start out as puppets with the loyalist quisling nobles in nominal control, then Karagond with the Karagond nobility in control and then the overall Hegemony as a (con)federation on top of it with the Theurges in control. And that would be the very rough division of power in the Hegemony at the game start state.

And of course a lot of bad laws and an unsustainable economic situation plus a slow meatgrinder conflict with Halassur thrown into that mix too in order to reflect that at game start the Hegemony is heading down an unsustainable path and teetering on the brink waiting for a spark to disrupt the increasingly fragile balance and ignite the proverbial tinderbox. In the game that is our mc’s backwards, backwoods rebellion but in a redesigned Vicky mod it wouldn’t be that difficult to add other possible triggering events to start off the Hegemony content too.

That mod would, on reflection, be more suited to the pre-Hegemony times of the Shayardene conquests, through the time of the Shayardene empire and probably has its endgame with Hera’s conquest, the fall of Brauracha and the start of the Xaos storms.

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The division between the Karagonds and everybody else could just be modeled by discriminatory laws.
There would need to be a dread mechanic to explain why every interest group has not revolted yet.
I don’t think that the “loyal” nobles count as real loyalists, any more than the Syrian Christians of Ba’athist Syria counted as loyalists. They are people that consider the government to be the most beneficial side in a country where nearly everybody hates it

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As long as it strikes some fear into his enemies mine pretends to be a warlock, aka a “goete”, instead. But, yeah, ultimately there is just one source…that we know of to magic in this setting.

They have more power than the Syrian Christians however. Anyway them being in nominal control of the “puppet” governments of the provinces does very much not imply true, everlasting, loyalty. It is merely to reflect that the Hegemony is not yet a proper federal government and still has some feudal vestiges. They are building up to severely curtailing the provincial nobles with the telones in the future…fortunately for our rebellion they run out of time before they can complete those reforms.

Yes, my mc most assuredly does, however the telones would have, once they were up to strength have turned the Hegemony into a true federation. Right now the provincial nobles still have powers of their own and that adds inefficiency and waste that my mc can exploit.
The Hegemony is frightening enough as it is but and Hegemony with an effective and efficient bureaucracy and even greater control of its population and resources would be that much harder to defeat.

Of course, on principle, the telones and their nascent bureaucracy are a good idea for reform that my mc hopes to expand upon, but we can be very glad it is still in its relative infancy in the Hegemony right now.

Yep, very much so. Not only are they bad at dealing with rebellion a good number are rebellious themselves, rebels my mc will also oppose, but divide and conquer.

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Why is it good that the telones have not yet replaced the provincial nobility? Don’t you hate the nobles and are trying to build a state without the elite classes?
Edit: I just realized that you meant that it is good because the provincial nobles are bad at dealing with rebellion

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Can I just say that I find it absolutely hilarious that the MC has been through so much shit and is so messed up that even the game is like, “damm bitch, you want some therapy?”

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I wonder if it’s possible to just matinee 3 wards and choosing the best part of country and closing yourself off for a couple hundred years.

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Oh, and this is just the start. Any mc will have to endure lots more. Really at the end of the game no modern therapist would probably even know where to begin with almost any mc and run screaming for the hills.

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Mommy daddy and cousin issues yeesh.:person_shrugging:t2: that just the surface issue for mine rn.

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Hey @Havenstone, thank you very much for the warm welcome. I kinda tuned out for a while, meant to play for the demo before coming back but haven’t gotten around to it yet. But thank you very much for the comprehensive response.

The Mordor-to-Bree transition was just a quip, I thought it was somewhat fitting after the Vigil storyline :grin:. But it’s also because I encountered an error and skipped to Chapter 2 right after. I know a fix has been pointed out now - perhaps it should be pinned to the opening post?

As for Wolfsbait, I understand that making that storyline difficult to access is a design choice. I wish that weren’t the case but I respect that and understand it comes from a tabletop/DnD type storytelling background. My personal preference would be to have as much content accessible as possible in a single playthrough but I guess this rewards trying out different starting options and fits this type of game very well. Just a bummer for me I guess, I don’t think the choices necessarily fit well with a character I’d like to play (ie telling the Helot to go away).

I actually used to be the type of player who would explore every single option many years back with games like KOTOR I & II but over time I came to prefer more in-depth and consistent playthrough with a character I thought would fit the story the best. But just my personal preference, I understand its somewhat counterintuitive to have to many choices but to stick with a few but that’s what I find really rewarding - to have the potential to be so many different things but choosing to be a certain way, choosing good over evil for example. It gives it meaning and I enjoy that.

Okay, sorry to babble on about that, like I said, I understand the reasoning now.

That’s fair, I didn’t get very far in Part II and as others pointed out, a CHA character with Breden is not a good combo stat wise. It also felt that way in Part I, I never really needed Breden for anything. Maybe an INT character would work better for me story-wise if I’m choosing to stick with Breden.

Yea, I assumed it was going to be added in the future, I just pointed it out anyway in case it was overlooked. But thanks for clarifying anyway, even for such a minor detail.

Yea, I do get it. I mean I’m still fascinated by stuff I find in the garden and I still find new things about places I’ve visited many times before. So it’s understandable, it’s just the contrast stood out a bit but again, I did skip to Part II while missing a chunk of the transition.

Yea, I think realized this and might have touched on it in a previous post. It does make sense that they’d be searching for you in the Rim.

Well it’s just the way I felt after that interaction. When interacting with Linos, the PC seems to reflect on their personal faith more and can choose how the new information makes them feel about their faith - in which direction they can take it. And they seem very eloquent and sure of their faith but in Xaos lands the options seem to reflect despair or apathy - maybe there could be other options if your PC thinks they’re the chosen one (or Ecclect, you know what I mean). It doesn’t have to a religious fanatic level of zeal, just someone who really does think they’re being protected by the Angels and so on. Like that the story with Jesus asking Peter to come to him on the water - something to reflect that faith more, that you fully trust and believe.

btw I’m not familiar with Biblical stories, sorry if I have a wrong interpretation of that, I just recently came across it after listening to a song (by Lifehouse - Storm).

It makes sense but since this is a fantasy world, I thought there might be more there. Plenty of prophets/religious leaders in our own world have claimed to have this sort of interaction with their deity/the supernatural but since we get to see the protagonist’s POV, we don’t actually get to see any of this.

The most in-depth exposition on this seems to be in the intro itself where you first hear about the Angels. Afterwards, the dialogue options seem to reflect a player character who’s all in and completely devout - but what about the exploration and reflection to get to that stage? I mean something along the lines of where you first experiment with Theurgy with an INT character - I think this would benefit the religious storyline. Rather than childhood straight to religious prophet. I just feel there could be something more here.

Of course, I was just thought the balance seemed to be shifting in a significant way but future parts could easily change that. I do think (reading some other posts in this thread) that INT should be mainly theurgy focused - otherwise if INT is almost as good as CHA in management and even better than STR in many combat situations and you get to investigate and experience the true nature of things like Harrowing, Xaos Storms, the wards, Theurgy, etc in ways that the two other types cannot, it makes it seem like the story is primary crafted around that playstyle and the rest are afterthoughts.

I guess another way to put is that both STR and INT seem to have a personal combat and general application component, a “hard” and “soft” skill if you will, whereas the CHA side is limited to the general application. For example, with STR you’re skilled both with weapons as well as military strategy. INT comes with wider benefits too, being skilled at reading and writing, able to devise clever strategies, dealing with merchants, and so on. CHA seems to be limited to urging on your followers. I know this is powerful but at the same, I didn’t feel it was more powerful than the other stats, even in Part I. With INT, you’re still able to do cooler stuff.

Potentially. Just how I feel from my experience with the demo so far.

Yes of course. I do think it’d be best to be cautious with opening up too many branching paths and introducing too many companions with them - it’ll add so much more work by later parts, it’ll be a real slog to flesh out everything equally.

On the same note, I think having separate branches for theurgy will create all sorts of headaches down the road. Maybe its doable but maybe its energy better spent on other parts of the story. But I’m not the one writing everything, if you can pull it off, then great!

[^sorry I had to remove the links, I’m not allowed to have multiple links in my post as a new user]

I’m very interested in Philosophy but actually not that knowledgeable. My own interest so far has been mostly with history and it’s only recently that I’ve come to explore philosophy more deeply, although I’ve always enjoyed philosophical games like Planescape: Torment and the aforementioned KOTOR II. I came across Neoplatonism in a sort of roundabout way - first by reading about Stoicism and (Zen) Buddhism, then about Taoism and then coming across Neoplatonism by trying to find a Western parallel. (I grew up religious but I’ve been atheist/agnostic most of my life, it’s only recently that I’ve found a renewed interest).

But it’s been very rewarding reading up philosophy and having these themes in the game has been very interesting. As for the Demiurge and so on, there seem to be quite a few traditions, each with their own variations - Stoicism too. But most of them seem to have accepted some sort of divinity, in the form of panentheism or pantheism, which is new information for me.

It’s awesome you’re teaching your kid philosophy though. I think learning about this stuff early on makes all the difference in life.

Team Olynna, let’s gooo :wink:

It makes sense but since this is a fantasy world, I thought there might be more there. Plenty of prophets/religious leaders in our own world have claimed to have this sort of interaction with their deity/the supernatural but since we actually get to see the protagonists POV, we don’t actually get to see any of this.

The most in-depth exposition on this seems to be in the intro itself where you first hear about the Angels. Afterwards, the dialogue options seem to reflect a player character who’s all in and completely devout - but what about the exploration and reflection to get to that stage? I mean something along the lines of where you first experiment with Theurgy with an INT character - I think this would benefit the religious storyline. Rather than childhood straight to religious prophet. I just feel there could be something more here.

Of course, I was just thought the balance seemed to be shifting in a significant way but future parts could easily change that. I do think (reading some other posts in this thread) that INT should be mainly theurgy focused - otherwise if INT is almost as good as CHA in management and even better than STR in many combat situations and you get to investigate and experience the true nature of things like Harrowing, Xaos Storms, the wards, Theurgy, etc. in ways that the two other types cannot, it makes it seem like the story is primarily crafted around that playstyle and the rest are afterthoughts.

Potentially. Just how I feel from my experience with the demo so far.

Yes of course. I do think it’d be best to be cautious with opening up too many branching paths and introducing too many companions with them - it’ll add so much more work by later parts, it’ll be a real slog to flesh out everything equally.

Maybe it could reappear in a different form later on, for all characters, as something you need to deal with as leader of a nation. Some elements could be carried over. It definitely feels epic on another scale.

Wow, that was a lot. Since you took the time to answer so comprehensively, I thought I’d take the time as well. Thanks again!

*edit dude I was trying to fix a quote and ended up deleting the whole post. Thank goodness there’s an undelete button lol :joy:

Yes, this is similar to what I was trying to express in my previous posts when it comes to exploring theurgy as an INT PC versus exploring your faith as a CHA PC. Well put!

This is a really interesting approach and works well with the story. This way your faith grows into something tangible as you learn more about the way things work, which works well with the PC’s horizons expanding as they travel further from home. I’ll try this for a future playthrough, might be the experience I was looking for.

On a completely different train of thought, is this really a pre-industrial society? Staves, swords, and bows are used for combat. Theurgy seems to have a lot of agricultural applications - it’s the kind of society you’d imagine the Roman Empire (with its heavy use of slaves for agriculture and grain shipments and so on) would be if they had access to theurgy. And when I think helots, I think Ancient Sparta. Seem to be plenty of parallels here. I guess it doesn’t really matter, could be interpreted in different ways. I just went with Medieval with Ancient flavour :grin:

Anyway, apologies for the edits. It’s easier to find mistakes when reading the post in the thread but when you click the edit button, it’s just a huge chunk of text without formatting :hushed:

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Look forward to catching up on the comments above when I’m a little less busy with homeschooling the boys. (Politics and AI comments take less time and effort than responding to thoughtful feedback about XoR.)

Meanwhile, ADAT I dropped the loredump on the historical relations between Halassurqs, Nyrs, and Brauracha which would eventually, many years later, make it into Jev’s conversation with the MC in Sojourn. :slight_smile:

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