Are we not discussing overall plans for governance? That is why you needed K eliminated.
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@Havenstone in our first meeting with her, Cerlota describes humanity as unique in “sublunary creation”. Do astrographically-minded Theurges consider the moon as the demarcating line between the spheres of fire and aether, or at least the point of reference that stands in for such?
Edit: Also, is cerlvamp having no actual impact on blood supply intended or just an oversight?
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Definitely, K’s a bull in a china shop.
Ending harrowing for helots and breaking Karagond to piece together an independent state thereafter is going to be hard enough without burning down half the realm and having to worry about getting knifed in the back by my lieutenant because I didn’t settle their blood-grievances with an entire class of people.
And same goes if they’re just running a parallel revolt, as I said. Any compromise with the old regime means you lose K, and my MC can fight his own battles well enough without needing an unstable alliance with someone who’s governing ethos is “blood and death to my enemies”
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@Havenstone small oversight I’ve noticed in the code that may end up coming back to bite in the future if not addressed: if you learn how to refine aetherial blood from Cerlota (cerblood 4) and then later start pulling back on your contributions to her refinement, cerblood is set to 2 with no tracker for the knowledge you’ve previously gained. Could result in edge cases where the MC “forgets” how to do it in the future.
Also missing a check for cerblood 4 here.
Also also, it might be good to allow the MC to stop her when she moves to incinerate the sapsuckers if you have a blood surplus? The two of you are stockpiling for a reason, and its not a necessary demonstration. Might even be a good moment of getting her to consider more what can be done in a world where aetherial blood is much more precious if that’s the direction the MC is aiming.
Also also also, where is Viore, the town? My gut says its likely in western Erezza near Lacevra, but thats a fairly large guess. Found the answer to this one in the text, nvm (the far east near the border, for those curious).
Also also also (redux) some data that might surprise you is that water easily takes first place as the most popular irddrink in the little poll we ran:
Other fun findings include that a vast majority of players keep their hair cropped short, and most support the order of Irduin over opposing it at a 2:1 ratio (unsurprising, given the preponderance of aristo players imo). One of these days I should really compile the data from every moot, maybe as a release day present once Stormwright is ready.
Also also also also, it’s commented a few times in Uprising and Stormwright that a Helot Theurge MC might be or is probably the first self-taught helot in Hegemonic history, is that actually true?
Also also also also also, this dialogue is triggered off of the ‘harrower’ variable, which can actually be set without helot reprisals if you go to investigate a harrower without sabotaging, which could result in a minor continuity error.
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An interesting topic from the discord. Someone mentioned wishing that, after Tamran says she’d rather her own blood be spilt than anyone else’s, an mc who stopped the harrowing in Rim Square could retort by talking about how several rebels were condemned to death for sheltering the kid daughter of a slave a noble murdered in cold blood, including said daughter and the kids who hung out with her. And that violence was literally the only option we had at that point.
Because it seems like the logical counter. It’s not just YOUR blood that gets shed if you refuse to fight while rebelling.
Like, I don’t expect her to change her mind because of this example but I feel it’s an unbalanced conversation because she can preach at you using the Hegemony as an example of how violence hasn’t created a more just system but you can’t cite any examples of what can actually happen if you refuse to fight. She can make you confront that violence created the current social order but YOU can’t make her confront what refusing to fight for any reason even if people die because of it actually looks like. It feels like there should be an option for an mc who had to fight to stop the harrowing OR one who failed because they didn’t fight and is heavily traumatized to point out that these are REAL PEOPLE on the line, children included, and her ideology requires you to allow their grisly demise without any real gain beyond abstract moral victory. If she still sticks by her ideology I still want to see her counter to the argument since right now everything she says seems hollow and disconnected from any real violence that is happening. Talk is really cheap if she doesn’t show understanding of what exactly she’s asking of people.
If we still need to not blow our covers, we could say it was a crooked official doing the harrowing to meet quotas and the authorities using violence to stop them.
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Of course, the counter to that, which is an argument no-one can really make because they don’t have access to parallel timelines, but we the players know is true, is that you can actually save everyone at the Harrowing completely non-violently.
Hell, a competent pacifist playthrough has minimal casualties, probably fewer than a competent violent one.
But her point would be that the violence of that initial uprising was both unnecessary and wrong. The wrongness is a point up for debate, but we know for a strict “stop the Harrowing” objective it was unnecessary.
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This would be why I specified a violent initial Rim Uprising.
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Hey all,
Just wanted to pop up a note to confirm that I’m alive, though I’ve had a two-week break from the laptop for the first time in a loooong time. The Havenpebbles and I trekked up to 4130m altitude:
and then met up with some friends for a gentler week of hiking. Up there, phone recharges and WiFi are scarce and costly, so I’ve barely been on the forums at all. Catching up now – and resuming writing!
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Hi @Havenstone sorry to post about this just after you returned from your break but after playing irduin and discussing it with others on discord I personally feel that content shouldn’t be reduced when you choose a subfocus. Since the game is going to end in irduin let players interact with their chosen groups’ plots fully since certain subfocuses feel underwhelming mechanically and you only get some interesting convos from them and not a lot to engage with that feels impactful to irduin’s order or our rebellion. Don’t be afraid to overwhelm players with text. They need to learn and know more about the setting and the world just like the MC. I also think it would be better to interact with Maurs and Tamran always and not have them be a group you can choose or not to interact with. They’re important characters that challenge all Mc’s views and it would be better narratively to experience them as @Azthyme said in the discord. I hope my post doesn’t sound too rude or demanding and thank you for your time.
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Welcome back and congrats! Nepal is lovely country, glad you got to enjoy it without more pressing concerns weighing on you.
With the help of the Discord, I’ve gone through and dug up actual info to back up a vibe I’ve felt, which is that the subfocuses 1, 2, and 5 (de Irde, the Naos Xthonos, and the helotry, respectively) are rather undertuned comparatively to the other options. Yeoman and Merchant subfocuses both get lots of opportunity to mess with sus and unity (and the merchant path gets access to the powder plot even on subfocus) and interface well with other paths (especially each other), while the Innkeeps are an obvious stand out of bespoke, mechanically and flavorfully impactful subfocus content.
The three I’ve mentioned meanwhile get… nothing. The Helotry are the best of the lot, allowing a little bit of sus and unity manipulation, but nothing especially unique or of great intest. The de Irde subfocus is absolutely robbed of everything interesting on the proper de Irde route, hardly getting to know any of the characters and interfacing with their plots not at all, and without even a good way to interact with the main vairables of Irduin for their trouble. In fact, as is, a helot focus MC might have more interaction with Auche than a de Irde subfocus player gets. The Naos is even worse, with the player constantly shut out by the main three actors of that plot, given not even the minor sus decreases a de Irde variable could potentially get. The only variable of interest on a Naos subfocus is tellulm, which isn’t relevant at all until the end game. Otherwise you simply get rejected by Ulmey, Korren, and Cyneve whenever anything of interest comes up, relegated to a few lore dumps that have no plot or mechanical impacts.
I’m not precisely sure what the exact solution here to bring these subfocuses up to the standards of the others is, whether its writing more or just shuffling around what exactly is and is not locked by subfocus vs focus, but I think if you pick one of these “dud” subfocuses its a fair drag on the experience (as nice as the non-mechanical lore and character interactions you get can be) and a fairly high opportunity cost relative to the “good” ones. Some folks have suggested just turning subfocus into focus2, or getting rid of subfocuses entirely and shunting the player mandatorily into the Innkeep path, but I don’t know if either of those are proper solutions. Either way, hopefully these weaker plots can be beefed up a little bit, for a better rounded experience.
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I’ll expound on this, because it’s too fun a topic to be left as an offhand comment. It’s really easy for us to build feelings of solidarity with ideologically-aligned rebellions, and likewise to see opposed rebellions as enemies to be crushed along with the Hegemony. The Laconniers are the clearest case so far of this divide among readers. Bladeshard or Bloodhand’s other rebellion in our home territory is another one. But in her conversations, Tamran is different.
To me, Tamran seems designed to have friction with every possible Rebels protagonist. Even the true pacifists who believe wholeheartedly in the same ideal as her. A pacifist protagonist has been through literal hell, scarred as a mark of their convictions, with an abusive father who hated us and everything in the end. Tamran’s experienced nothing like that. Her rebellion is orthogonal to everything that our rebellion has faced. She’s the foil that makes the rebellion shine brighter.
I think every Rebels protagonist who sits down with Maurs and Tamran is all the richer for it. It might be from clashing beliefs, a thesis defense of our own rebel tactics. It might be from a changed mind. It might be from a metaphorical hug and a headpat in acknowledgement of the hard work and incredible suffering that it takes to reach Irduin with minimal violence. There is always some angle, some push-and-pull with Tamran and Maurs that tells an interesting story, no matter how alike or different we are. They are, for me, singularly more interesting in the narrative than any other choice of secondary faction in Irduin.
But of course, the choice not to seek them out matters just as much, that I can see. Many protagonists wouldn’t.
Addendum: I personally think the Innkeep subplot is significant enough that it’s worth considering separating it from the faction system, with a brief alternative choice of tweaking some mechanical levers (ird_sus, ird_unity, etc.) to represent productive things our characters could be doing in the time they spend with Tamran and Maurs. Forcing players to interact with it would be a bad idea. While there’s a massive gap in the amount of content between those two paths, that’s not new to the game: Uprising can skip the entire Horion and Linos conversation by just killing them, and both the Brecks raid and Hector veneur battle can be skipped for much shorter protective measures.
And one perk of Irduin being unfinished is that we get to marinate in the foreshadowing. There’s a whimsical “what if” where Tamran and Maurs are almost as if Father had died and Mother lived. She’s like our protagonist at the start of their journey:
“A darkness is coming to Irduin, Dama.” Her tears are audible in her voice. “Something deadly; something we can’t stop. And…I’m not ready for it. Not ready to…”
And while the story began long ago, there’s a chance that for Tamran things also “will inevitably begin years later, on the day” of an unexpected Harrowing.
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Yeah adding on to the talk about it in the discord I was quite literally cheering when you @Havenstone said you are thinking about doing something different for Grand Shayard (even if that just being able to interact with only one faction in a run I would think that’s better), I would be making lot more posts about my dislike of the faction focus system in Irduin if I didn’t think it’s too late to change it without a huge delay
Edit: Also since religion has also been the talk in the discord in recent times too, I’m curious how much it would be possible for a cha 1/2 Elecct to reform Xthonic without being see as a false Elecct by 90% of the priesthood (ie. sending priest creed straight to 0). My mc of course wants to nudge (maybe taking inspersion from Seracca faith though I doubt my mc will say that part out loud) them into seeing Theurges using their own blood as the virtuous thing to do rather then others “blood”
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@Havenstone this is something I hadn’t even considered until right now and I feel a little bad for dumping so much feedback into the forums lately, but how do you feel about an early opportunity to seed trans thoughts for the MC after Heled’s rant among the nomads? It’s just about the first case of gender discrimination in the games, and the blunt misandry might make the MC feel a certain kind of way. Be an opportunity to seed the variables before meeting Jev, for a bit of reactivity.
Speaking of the Whiskered Hawk btw, hawkquest should probably be moved to a persistent variable specifically so that when we meet up with Sojourners in Irduin their joining of Sojourn can be relayed. Either that or their joining the faction should be moved up with the expansion of Sojourn. Also maybe a slight buff for it? As cool as the nomad route is the xaosseed does just seem kinda better. (Also, between Healer of Xaos and the seed theres really no reason to go nomad over village if you intend to go for Vigil, mechanically speaking).
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@Havenstone For what is worth, I think yeomantry subfocus should at least be expanded enough to give MC an option to express his opinion on monarchy/the heir like in full path. The variable ticking if the player wants to utilise the legend to reinforce self-rule, believe in the secret heir, make a bid for the throne himself, or to just discard it is, in my opinion, important and broad enough to any kind of players rebellion as it clearly shapes its future goals.
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Separate from all of that, think I found another (mostly) good song for XOR
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@Havenstone Along the lines of both religion and Maur, will we be able to make absolute pacifism a tenet of our new faiths, whatever they are?
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Right, let’s catch up on the last hundred-odd posts…
It’s in the nature of empire that the “good imperialists” blend pretty quickly into “evil imperialists,” because good intentions don’t substantially change the brutal regimes of power that are needed to bind an empire together against its internal challengers – especially if you want a high-capacity state rather than a sort of loose suzerainty over local elites (how most premodern empires managed it).
That’s true to a degree of any state-building project, and the bigger the state, the more repression and brutality goes into the mix. Citing the USSR and China as your examples should bring plenty of examples to mind.
To the extent that a “good imperialist” can salve their conscience by imagining that the governed will one day learn to love their masters and/or pointing to worse alternatives on the horizon, that kind of ending should be possible. You can be the acronymic Hineisur (“Honestly, it’s not evil imperialism… shut up, rebel!”) to face off against Halassur. Maybe with human wave attacks to reinforce the non-evil nature of your imperialism. 
On the bigger question, I think I’ve said a few times that I’m not planning to hard-plot the final outcome, but to model the challenges involved in rebuilding an empire in the wreckage of the old one. I expect a continent-scale realm to be at the outer limits of the possible, though it’s likely to look and feel exceedingly fragile. Whether you’ll find that disappointing, we’ll have to see when we get there.
Let the venerable Amartya Sen lead the chorus: famine doesn’t result from too little food or too many people. Famine results from governance failures…like, say, the collapse of an existing continent-wide governance and trade regime.
My vision for Hegemon is that less conquest-oriented players will have more time/attention to throw at (and thus gameplay involving) consolidation of their new order. Regardless, you’ll almost certainly come up against one or two of the Big Three – they’re likely to have an interest in you, even if you don’t in them. Corlune is just about the most valuable real estate in Shayard, given its commanding position on the main trade artery to Karagon and Wiendrj.
Multiculturalism doesn’t kill empires! Nationalism kills empires.
I think something like that should be an option.
Thanks! I don’t want to kludge the cred variables until I’m ready to actually write them into the game, so for now everyone will continue to loathe you.
Thanks for the feedback! My main goal in the Xaos-lands was to give enough mini-branches that replayers can get through at least four or five different-feeling readthroughs. I recognize that Cerlota’s revelations are a bottleneck, but skimming through it after your first or second play will go rather quicker if you just click the last dialogue option rather than exploring the dialogue tree each time.
I’m going to hold all Irduin feedback somewhat lightly until I’ve actually finished all its pathways, because
but it’s good to hear how it’s feeling to you so far. We’ll see whether the various bloodbaths that are possible there ultimately feel like you’re choosing on the basis of something other than unengaging risk assessments.
And it definitely needs that.
I’m so glad to hear someone say this. K is one of my faves to write.
You’re absolutely right. I’ve been for the most part writing the spine of the story that all MCs will see, before going back and inflecting that based on things that vary by MC – with religion/skepticism being one of the biggest points of variability. I hope what I end up with will be satisfying on that front, and I’m glad you enjoyed the rest of what I’ve got so far.
We can. From my time in Afghanistan, I’ll go to bat for it being a plausible portrayal of how extreme hardship exposes some people’s extraordinary strengths. When lives are at stake and horrible things are going down all around you… I’ve seen people get forged, rather than broken, by that. Not without plenty of brokenness, to be sure, but not to the point where they can’t go on.
My admiration for the people I know like that is one reason for my fury (well-documented on the Politics threads) at the USA for betraying them.
That’s correct, yes.
Neither…just something I hadn’t worked on yet, until I write the “fight Seichareis” scene and make sure the blood supply challenge throughout Irduin is working as intended.
Thanks so much – will fix that! And the also also also also also one, too.
Good call, I’ll write that.
I am surprised! I thought either jerkum or canewine would win.
Probably not.
I agree, and said something similar in our discussions upthread:
I’m sure there’ll be a point where you can have that conversation with Tamran… but I’m not sure I want to pack it into what’s already a pretty full menu of stuff on violence/nonviolence, at a point when you can’t yet openly admit to her that you’re a rebel. You may feel it’s an unbalanced conversation, but by my reckoning there’s considerably more “preaching” from you in that section than there is from Tamran:
Obviously there’s more you both could say, but there’ll be more scenes (and games) to say it in.
I hear you, but I’m not sure I’ll change that now. I want to see how the subfocuses look when, again, I’ve actually written all of them out to the end. I’m inclined (as @apple suggested) to beef up where necessary rather than tossing out the whole subfocus system.
I’ll chew on that. I’m not sure everyone is going to love them as much as @Azthyme does, and I’m sure there are plenty of MCs who’d rather spend time with cred-winnable factions and have the freedom to ignore the pacifist Underground Railroad. I’ll also consider @Azthyme’s suggestion of having them be part of a separate menu of what you can be doing, though I’m a little hesitant.
Oh, I adore this.
My hope is still that, like the winter survival game in Uprising, this will be something most people disliked while it was incomplete but reluctantly came round to enjoying (or at least tolerating) when the final, more balanced version was done.
A low-CHA Eclect will probably be like one of the many self-proclaimed messiahs in medieval Europe – able to inspire a good-sized following with extra passion, but not a serious threat to the hegemony of the orthodox church.
Oh, please don’t. Good points on all fronts, and I’ll look at them when I’m next revising the Xaos chapters.
Hmm. I’ll look at that, thanks.
Maybe? You’ll certainly be able to push for it. I can’t promise that all the possible religious options will be consistent with a pacifist interpretation, but offhand I can’t think of any where it would be completely inconsistent.
Whew, caught up! (For another 5…4…3…)
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It’s honestly sad to me that low anarchy aristo seems to be the most popular way to play the game. I can’t say that it’s wrong or anything, but it, to me, is much less engaging. There’s so much good stuff on the helot route and with K, it’s a shame most players miss it. Whenever I bring up stuff about like “hey K isn’t actually a sociopath (violent as they may be)” there’s always someone who’s bewildered.
God I’m drooling over the opportunity to live up to our Theurge-Bane name and prove we can take on a proper Theurgic opponent on our own. I do hope beating him won’t be exclusive to Cerlota bailing us out, even if I doubt she could be prevented from helping if present.
Of course, as much fun as the 1v1 wizard duel is, it is equally fun to blindside Theurges and exploit their arrogance. Looking forwards to that almost as much.
How delightfully vague. I am curious if any have ever made it to the Lykeion one way or another though, I have to imagine that one is a definite no.
Sorry for apologizing 
. I have to say I really do adore the nomad section, I gave it another read through (which is where that feedback came from) and honestly its imo narratively much stronger than the village segment. You get something truly alien and wonderful and horrifying out on the plains, instead of the cringing scraps of ‘normalcy’ clung against the wards like barnacles. I do wonder if it’d be possible to see Sojourn move in a more neo-Braurach direction (especially if the player weights the population towards more nomads, another potential leader for Sojourn?), it’d be an interesting state(lette) to see arise.
Also Jyrrek is a hot asshole and I want to see more of him.
Oh! I just thought of something: an MC who’s been among the Braurach nomads should hear an echo of them in Agarie’s stories of the Qasqer Zhüj. Would be a fun moment of reactivity, Irduin as a whole could probably use a handful more drips and drabs of xaos-echoes for flavor. It should be a more present mark on the MC’s psyche than it presents as atm.
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Welcome back!
Sounds like you had a great time in nature. It’s a really great feeling to disconnect and enjoy the world around you for a little bit. 
4130m is very impressive! Most I ever got to reach, given the local geography was 1904m. Hope it wasn’t too tiring. 
I’m really glad you’re back in the writer’s seat! Can’t wait for future updates, and I’m sure the massive horde of feedback that accumulated will be most helpful.
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I don’t see how keeping an already existing nation together is imperialist. It wasn’t imperialism when the States didn’t let the South secede.
(Yes, America DID engage in imperialism but that wasn’t an example thereof.)
Was preferring a lose suzerainty over democratically-run city-states.
Admittedly I have reconsidered fighting Hallasur. Not strictly ruling it out but it’s secondary to other concerns.
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