Only Karagonds can be myriarchs for instance.
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Karagon is explicitly tied to “the world” in its own rhetoric. I’m on my phone right now but I can recall that the prayer at the beginning of the harrowing explicitly calls for the unification of the whole of the world under Karagond rule and in some of the cosmopolitan backgrounds there are mentions of the Hegemonic view that the “civilised world” is the Hegemony. It pretty much operates on the old Greek maxim that the world is divided between Greeks and barbarians.
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Again I dislike this idea that cosmopolitanism means Karagond fetishism. The MC isn’t using Koine and Koine terms becase they like those terms, its because its what’s understood. There are lots of historical examples of independence movements that nevertheless maintain the language of the conqueror, because it can inadvertently bring people together.
@Havenstone This (the Korszata convo on the merchant route) should have a check for if the MC went to Wiendrj at the end of Uprising, where they would have already gotten this lecture from the Eye Lesk.
Oh, also maybe a reference to the protection racket/smuggling on the merchant path as another reactivity thing? Farrec seems o have more connections than meet the eye when it comes to the Syntechnia, I can see him having heard of that.
This of course, assumes you actually want a territoriality vast empire. With more restrained ambitions, you won’t exactly have strong national liberation struggles against you.
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I kind of expect that even a hardcore cosmopolitan will need to rely on Nationalism to some degree, it will just be pragmatic in this case, while it will be ideological in the case of a Homelander. Sort of like S̶o̶v̶i̶e̶t̶ Shayardene Patriotism. I imagine it as your Movement trying to frame proto-Internationalism and continental interventionsim as Shayardene Virtues, probably by emphasizing the surrounding threats, for now Karagond, later probably Hegemony Rump States and Hallasur. In a sense your MC would have to make up and reconstruct their own culture, to fit their vision. But on the other hand, after centuries of foreign opression, every secessionist movement will have to do the same, and the idea of “true cultural heritage” is extremely blurry anyway.
Within this framing of “brotherly unity”, your movement could probably justify much, and win over a sizeable following among other cultures, without alienating the Shayardenes too much, as it’s easy to imagine a sense of National pride in this new identity forming - “We Shayardene’s are the noble protectors of our weak allies, who couldn’t endure without us!”. But I also don’t think you would be as convincing as pure nationalists in any of the breakaway states - so there would still need to be a lot of liberation movements you’d have to crush.
Sadly, true Internationalism is not really a unifying factor with large appeal in a pre-industrial society, and many won’t be happy with Autonomy in a new Federal State, but we should at least be able to build a framework for it to evolve later on. This is actually one of the things I look forward to most when we get to the State-building phase of the series - trying to strike the balance between idealism and pragmatism. A cosmopolitan would have to realize the limited support for their grand vision, and would have to make sacrifices to make their dream work without compromising their vision entirely. While a Homelander would have to grapple not only with there not being the “one true shayardene culture”, and the fact that Shayard was just another Empire as was already teased, but also with the fact that much of the structure they inherit will still rely on international cooperation and Trade within the Hegemonic framework to some degree (as from my understanding, the Karagonds intentionally developed each Region into Banana Republics to some degree, in order to make them reliant on the Hegemonic system.).
Agreed, I’m just partial to contradictions in a characters motivations, and actions needed to achieve what they imagine. I think it makes for interesting stories if there is a certain amount of disharmony in a characters rationalization, opposed to more optimal, “minmaxed” behavior, where everything is reasonable and somberly rational. I will say however, that even regionalist MCs will have to contend with national movements, in this case, having to convince people, that among the fifty Shayardene Liberation Movements, theirs is the most legitimate and desirable one. Of course there would be less need to fight it out, and more of a reason to cooperate, but even so, there would be a lot of chaos during the early days, where everyone competes for what a free Shayard is even supposed to look like.
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Is there an example you are modeling this idea on? India kind of comes to mind for me but Hindu Nationalism has always been a strain in the state that cause internal friction almost immediately after independence.
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I’m unsure of how well it counts, but French was and remained an extremely important part of the Haitian curriculum during education, even above the “native” Creole dialects used by the vast majority of the slaves, precisely because it was a more widely understood and easy to grasp language - plus its power as lingua franca when dealing with other countries.
To this day, French remains the language of the elite in Haiti, more than two hundred years after the colony’s independence.
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India is def an example, but Haiti also comes to mind. French (and the creole from there derived) united disparate slave groups from all different parts of Africa and is still spoken on the island to this day, but that doesn’t mean that they like the French.
Also, sidebar, I’m not sure that the MC using Koine in the Whendward band should be taken to assume that the MC will be using Koine as the administrative language of their state per se. There is a very real timeline where a radically Cosmopolitan MC say, ends up in control of a Shayard using Shayarin as its administrative language, all while maintaining the use of Koine as a diplomatic language to communicate with allies. The Whendward shouldn’t really be understood as a proto-state so much as as a (multi-national) psuedo-military formation, imho.
lmfao, jinx.
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I think if the clues and forum discussions are any indication, a large section of Shayardene nobility is willing to throw its weight behind a Laconnier claimant. Combining the authority of a restored de Syrnon dynasty with the charisma of an eclect!MC imo might be the most potent means of Shayardene unification.
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Haiti is an interesting example. I think it might map poorly to the situation in the Hegemony at large because it is a “settler state.” I realize the implication of term, but it maps to the idea that new world state formation is driven by quite different incentives than old world states.
Shayard as the primary language of the post-hegemony state seems reasonable if the state is largely confined to historical Shayard, but even going as far as Shayard and Wendry would probably require a bilingual confederation like Canada. For a state as large as the Hegemony itself like @comradelenin’s ideal I don’t see a way out of preserving the imperial language and most likely the imperial metropole as well.
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Hmm how old is America lol.
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The best revenge on Karagond there is having your state’s Koine become the largest strain, like how many vending machines and computers feature a button with the US, instead of British, flag to switch to English. Something like that would annoy the post-Hegemony remains of the Karagon to no end, I would imagine, and it would be exactly what they deserve.
That’s a nightmare, because Shayarin doesn’t seem to be unified and standardised, like Koine has. Better to stick with the language nearly everybody already knows anyway rather than waste admin capacity on a switch to a language of which we then have to decide which dialect and way of spelling is going to become the new “standard”.
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Karagond will be annexed.
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I mean…
It is a little different when most of the native population is wiped out and it’s people settling from mostly the same country.
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@Havenstone Parts of the discord (inculding me 
) want to know will there be a tailjob scene with M’kyar
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@Havenstone Question: Would it be possible for aristo MCs to do some Seracca changes to better embody their house sigil?
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I am one of the parts of discord, hi! Also I have been wondering, if the MC is trans, will Ciels be trans? What about Phaedrx?
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Can you dislike a post? Unrelated question.
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The continent?
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To slightly sidestep the issue of tails and pleasure, I’ve been thinking a bit more about Xthonic/Egye syncretism, and in particular its emphasis on shadow and light. When teaching the MC Egeity, she instructs them to “look through the shadow, and see fire”.
Now, while this is obviously an instruction in teloi from a Seracca perspective, it also make me think of the Xthonic emphasis on the cool dark earth. The Nagyeh are referred to as “The Gods Who Play, Many and One, in whose Song we all dance” and it really makes me think, what are the Blessed Angels if not Many and One, emanating from and uniting in Xthonos? To take it a step further, I think that you could call the Angels “The Gods Who Play In Shadow”. It syncretizes the Seracca emphasis on shadow-play (it comes up twice in M’kyar scenes, which is a lot given the limited screen time she has). The ideas seem to line up nicely enough that I honestly can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a missing link somewhere along the line, a base proto-faith that eventually split out into the Seracca faith and the old Shayardene folk religion, before that gave rise to Xthnoism as we know it. Looking into the Forgotten Gods would be helpful here I think. Anyways, the consonance here is most easily reinforced by Syneidesis, the idea of the Angels active movers cloaked in shadow an whispering in your ear (but in like, a good protective way, not a malevolent one), but I honestly think theres a synthesis to be had even with basic Xthonism, to a lesser extent. I do hope that non-Cha mains can mess around at least some with this stuff, even if it doesn’t become a continent spanning cult.
This actually makes me think of a side question: how do religiously-minded Therges reconcile the aparrent distance between the sphere of aether and, I assume, Xthonos’ resting place past the center of the sphere of earth? One would assume that the Unmoved Mover and the stuff wot makes magic go reside in the same place, no?
Another question, because the pile demands more: why’d you choose leopards for M’kyar? Like, out of world, what was the reasoning behind making our first met Abhuman a leopard?
inb4 its just a tabaxi reference
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I neither want nor think that Egyeism is related to Xthonism. Many religions are coincidentally similar, and making these religions, which are believed by very different cultures, related would make the world feel small. However, a limited syncretism should be possible
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