He says he has sex with his wife as a duty, and men for fun.
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Like lots of gay men have since time immemorial. By joining the army. He’s got another guy in a mask handling the reproductive part of the equation.
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Potentially out there idea: how would the romanced Gamgees feel about being married under false names by Ulmey? After going through literally hell and back again, I could see officializing it being high on some pairings’ minds. For a devout MC who would like an officiating ecclesiast, this might be the only chance they have to do it with a bit of preparations and no coercion… ever.
Also, variable that may warrant kludging, permanentizing caraprice from back in the winter (and Elery’s caravan raiding in general)? It’s possible that Elery has stacked up a heavy bounty (and quite a bit of veterancy) from her work in the Owlscap, a number I can imagine ballooning if she has the experience caravan raiding in the year we’ve been gone. Also probably matters when determining what happens to scattered LTs after High Crag, what sort of temperament/skills/inclinations she has (probably buff Breden/altreb if she has the skills and they’re running a group?) and where she might go. Also if we’re paying more attention to the economic impacts of the Rim Commotion then a finer tune on the pressure on the Owlscap (and potentially the other border passes in the Rim now?) probably can’t hurt.
Looking at this I think it can be managed using the protection variable, there are a lot of unused numbers on it that can be used to represent different permutations on caravan raiding beyond “protection racket” or “not”. I think a refactor of the variable so that 0X is no Alaine meeting, 1X is with a protecton racket, 2X is broken relationship with the Syntechnia (or some shuffling thereof) would work fine, with X representing permutations of Elery involvement (probably three variations for caravans with no Elery, Elery did some raids (celery/cara_el), Elery managed to get a bounty on her and your heads (caraprice)) would work alright.
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Yeah. All the late-comers I could see having an issue with earning the respect of the older members, especially if it’s a supposedly democratic setup. That said, there are very good reasons to pick people like, for instance, Korszata (absolute loyalty) or Etthena (if kenon is your main goal). I wonder if it will come up.
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For anyone annoyed by the ADATs, you’re about to get a few months’ break. A decade ago, I closed the WIP thread after the Pun Rebellion escalated to editing the title of the thread to “Choice of Revolting Pun.”
This also gave me some breathing space to focus on transforming Chapter 2. Tempted though I am, I won’t take the same step right now. 
An Ennearch will first show up in the endgame of Metropolis, and you’ll first meet (and, potentially, kill) some in Omphalos. But no, I’m not ready to say who’s who. I’m also still working on the detail of who ascended when, so won’t answer that question for now.
That’s kind of up to the couple. There is a literal mask which the “husband” is given; the custom is shame-covering, makes it feel a little less like adultery, and reduces the odds of an inconvenient emotional connection forming between the wife and the stand-in. But no one is watching, so if the couple end up going about their business with less risk of nose-bruising, who’s to complain? Regardless, the proxy husband wouldn’t wear the mask outside the wife’s home.
There shall be more trans characters.
Probably a bit of both, depending on the feedback item.
@apple answered this one correctly.
At least somewhat, though I don’t want to slaughter the chapter pacing by putting too much in there – getting Cerlota’s opinion on them already got me some editorial suggestions.
That could only be a late late game possibility, so I’m not going to either confirm it or take it off the table now.
Sooner or later, for sure. Not sure how much I’m going to get syncretism rolling this game, though.
The church in Karagon actually owns 11% of arable land, reflecting its ability to get Theurges to extend irrigation networks into previously arid land that it controls – but also reflecting the tighter control of the Karagond priesthood by the Ennearchs and Theurges. In the rest of the Hegemony, the Thaumatarchs strongly preferred the church not to get into the “big plantation” business that would have it directly owning huge helot populations, which would be undesirable for multiple reasons. The church gets enough land to sustain its monasteries and little more.
Shayard is still a tiny bit of a low-end outlier, due to having a longer-standing tradition of aristocracy and thus lots of homegrown aristoi with land claims the Thaumatarchy can easily defend. In the other provinces, the church has ended up controlling 2-3% of arable land.
The aristoi and Thaumatarchy are united in wanting to keep land/plantation ownership concentrated in as few hands as possible, and under a clear hierarchy. Neither want to see the financial power of the Syntechnia capture the primary means of production. While Farrec is right that lots of merchants find a way to control the benefits from land anyway, that carries a significant risk of confiscation which most prefer to avoid.
I don’t mean “Goety” to be a total trap/hardmode option, though it might be one whose upside takes a little longer to materialize.
We’ve talked upthread about how the biggest blood expenses go to keeping the system of agricultural trade intact, to the military, and to proto-industrial production (mostly of iron and steel). Those definitely couldn’t be covered by criminals alone.
Could the Wards? Well, crime in the endgame will be affected by your anarchy level, and as I wrote above:
The current Nine Border Wards require about 105,000 Harrowings per year. You can gauge from that how broadely you’d need to define “capital crimes” to keep up the ones of your choosing.
And speaking of “loitering with intent,” it’s maybe worth clarifying that vagrancy as such isn’t a capital crime…it just makes it super-easy for the local Alastors to accuse you of being a runaway helot, which most definitely carries the death penalty.
It won’t determine it, certainly – you (and/or the band leader you left in charge) are free to change tactics. Switching priorities mid-winter may affect how much anarchy and ill-will you’ve racked up, but ultimately people will remember you for the broadest targeting you did. As @apple noted, it will affect how people think of you in Irduin and elsewhere.
Probably!
The Laconniers rescuing you and arming your rebellion should not be taken to imply that they want you to be monarch. They absolutely want you to stir up trouble to break the evil regime that’s preventing the True Monarch from returning. But it’s not as if the Laconnier leadership are bereft of ideas about which bloodlines do run true from the de Syrnon. You’d need their claimants to be out of the running to try to put forward your own claim – and very, very few nobles will be open to the idea that the best bloodline has run through the helotry for several generations.
Bethune’s a seasoned rebel and link to the Cabelites. There’s every reason to hope she’ll succeed in leading a rebellion; and in any situation where you’ve led the band well enough to be picking a bandlead, your followers have fresh reason to trust your judgment in particular.
I think an independent Breden will always be steering a faction other than K/S’s, in part to keep variability from spinning further out of control.
Distance can help strained relationships at times. If you make the most of your brief times together, you might be able to move things back in a slightly more positive direction.
At some point, definitely. Some things I’ve been trying to leave to the reader – so at present you can be as consistently anti-Harrowing as you choose to be, without losing the ability to be pro-Harrowing on a given question in future. That does reduce the game’s feeling of responsiveness a bit…if you’ve already expressed utter horror at something, why get the choice again? Maybe the Cerlota convo is a good chance to lock that in; I’ll look at it in that light, thanks!
I’ll also think about caraprice.
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Along these lines, to what extent does Electhood require simple proclamation by a priest versus being evidenced by deeds that can be interpreted as being divinely inspired? Are there figures who were never acclaimed but have come to be understood to have been Elects retrospectively?
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when will we get a talisman 
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Excited to shit my pants. Theoretically, how fast could a trained Theurgic courier fly from Grand Shayard to Aekos if they decided to really book it and weren’t constrained by efficiency? I’m curious how fast news of the ward faltering and the consequences thereof will spread.
Speaking of, if a known Cabelite is in/leading the rebellion it should probably get a mention on the Yeomen path (especially when Irduin’s local Cabelites reach out), same as Korszata gets on the merchant path.
This is fair. One of Breden’s least endearing traits is how they’re the biggest striver of the band. They clearly desperately want to be in charge, makes sense they’d seize any opportunity they could.
Caraprice is an odd variable. As I was dissecting the permutations on caravan raiding I noticed it, strangely it’s not set when Elery/you first get a price on your heads for caravan raiding, but rather when that price increases, and then is never mentioned again regardless.
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Well, I was being carapricious when I included it.
(…I’ll see myself out.)
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Oh, that makes sense in hindsight. I should’ve noticed sooner; it’s probably set up in the first chapter already.
“So the Theurges know about the City.”
“Of course they do.” M’kyar’s golden eyes shine bright in the darkness. “This place has been here since Braurach of old, and has been a sanctuary from the Storms since they first began.”
“The Hegemony allows it to grow, time and again.” Herne looks out over the few and fragile lights of his following. “Then it sends an army of Theurges in to destroy it.”
You look sharply toward Cerlota, who shakes her head. “Such a secret would be known only to the senior Theurges closest to Ennearch Hypatia, who is responsible for the Ward along this border. Not to most—and not to me.”
The main alternative would be whoever’s in charge of the City Ward of Grand Shayard, forced to clean up after us.
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Speaking of merchants and Uprising actually, if you set up a smuggling arrangement in the late winter theres talks of it being a useful future source of income in the spring but that never actually comes to fruition. Maybe worth a look if you’re updating Uprising anyways, the extra cash would be handy. Totally understand not wanting to change anything that’d shift the balance of Uprising though.
(Also maybe continued income from a protection racket through the spring? Or the option to drop it now that the crisis is past? That’s definitely a bigger expansion though.)
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To be fair, things escalate rapidly after the winter. I suspect it makes more sense to continue the smuggling subplot in the Rim management part of book 2. By then things have shaken out and the Syntechnia know what kind of rebellion you’re running.
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So I was replaying Uprising and something clicked that I haven’t seen brought up before (or at least not often): If there is a kryptast embedded in your rebel band, wouldn’t your coming-out moment as a Theurge be the kind of massive red flag that definitely gets reported to the Hegemony?
Here’s what I’m thinking:
Early on, you can reveal your theurgy to the whole band—and word doesn’t seem to get out. You can stay a secret Theurge all the way until the final battle, and then just absolutely body 9 enemy theurges. That’s a catastrophic loss for the Hegemony.
But if there was a spy in the group the whole time… shouldn’t they have gotten that intel back to the Hegemony way before it came to that? A secret Theurge who’s aligned against the Hegemony is arguably a bigger threat than the rebellion itself, and definitely not the kind of thing they’d overlook or underplay.
So either:
- There’s no kryptast at all, and the whole idea is a long con to keep you paranoid and divided.
- The kryptast decided not to report it (sympathy? hesitation? long game?)
- Or the Hegemony already knew about your theurgy—and chose not to act on it. Which raises a whole other set of questions…
Anyway, curious what y’all think. Has anyone seen any in-game hints that would confirm or contradict this? I’m starting to lean toward “no kryptast in this particular run,” but I’m open to being wrong.
This is a really solid breakdown. And agreed re: Breden. If they are a Kryptast, it’d be a real twist given how messy and emotionally reactive they are.
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It is and always has been this one. The logistics of embedding a true Kryptast in the band just aren’t there (and if there is one it certainly isn’t the Rim Square traitor, assuming they even exist). The evidence doesn’t hold up. If there really was a Kryptast in the band, one with a direct line to the Hegemony, we would just be fucked. The Kryptasts, inasmuch as they exist as an agency, are a tool to police the upper classes of the Hegmony, while the rest live in paranoid fear and police themselves. As the road to Mesniel shows us, the true threat is and always will be lay informants, not theoretical super-spies.
I’m especially bearish on the idea of Breden being a Kryptast, it would require them to simultaneously be an amazing actor (the passion and weird helot hangups they have are hard to fake) while also being a shit spy and saboteur. If they truly were a Kryptast at cross purposes with the rebellion they could have done substantially more damage. It would also mean that the Hegemony sent a Kryptast to one of the furthest corners of the empire to incite a rebellion over a year in advance with no guaranee on return, and I frankly don’t think they have the budget for that. IMO the traitor plot and the idea of Kryptasts as a whole are an exercise in paranoia, not a true threat.
Watch me eat my words when we meet a Kryptast in Metropolis.
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From a meta perspective Brenden is definitely responsible for the poisoning before the final battle, because it doesn’t happen if they aren’t present. If it wasn’t sabotage you have to credit Brenden’s excuse, which is that it was an accident. You also have to accept their explanation for having a working Kryptast code, which is ::shrug:: “fell off a truck?”
Brenden admits being responsible and states flatly it is due to being an inexperienced cook.
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Breden probably isn’t a Kryptast, but they still are, I believe the technical term is, sus as hell.
The other option there being that someone else was trying to discredit/frame them. That does require a lot of moving pieces to fit nicely though. We know there’s at least one Hegemonic informant in the band by the time of the final battle, if that’s not Breden (and it’s at least not only Breden, as the Hegemony gets the information even if they weren’t there), it’s possible it’s one faction’s spy trying to take out anothers.
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Either way, once the food is poisoned, Breden gets it in the neck (realistically).
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Yep. A class she and possibly Sarcifer want to abolish again. My mc has some thoughts on their ideals but we’ll see if and when we get to discuss those with them. But let’s just say there is a reason my mc is sceptical about mages no longer being allowed to be the ones in charge:
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IDNOL, what will you do to convince who to join your specific rebel faction instead of the others?
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@Havenstone Will we be able to expose the truth about Horion’s demise when we’re in Grand Shayard (or somewhere else) or are we doomed to bear that huge aristocracy rep debuff if we let him go free in Game 1?
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