I may be wrong, but in the same vein, as I’m reading I realize that I’m envisioning a much higher proportion of the acreage around Irduin being improved as opposed to book 1 where for whatever reason I kept imagining most acreage as being uncultivated and unimproved wilder land still.
Speaking to the mental images I’m conjuring in each book so far without giving much thought to it just as I’m going through them.
I mean, the Keriatou wealth itself is said to rest primarily in sheep rather than in cultivation, so I think that contributes to the feeling of Rim Square being backward.
we dont really get to spend that much time in rim square, but like few things that you do is like visiting ministrel or religious conflict or harowing it dose look like bigger its just we dont get too see much of it.
also in irduin we already are active rebell and delibretly poke our nose in everything whille in rim we are just passing time for all of our boasting.
irduin is more of world building section then most of first game
I should add that while I don’t want to blow up anybody’s mental image of their MC, the story is written with the underlying vision that most of the folk of the continent are brown-skinned, dark-eyed, and black-haired, trending darker as you go further south (i.e. Shayard), with pale skin and variable hair/eye color being distinctively Nyrish traits (as well as your stereotypical Halassurq).
The artist for Uprising was to some extent running with that, though I wasn’t deeply involved in the art production, and thought we were having an abstract cover until pretty late in the day.
Sorry for the late followup, but TWO chapters in Irduin? So we don’t do any stormwrighting in Stormwright? And wouldn’t this deprive Book 2 of a climax?
You, personally, were never going to do any Theurgic stormwrighting in Stormwright. That’s not something Cerlota will teach you any time soon. A literal Xaos-storm will be one reasonably common outcome of the Irduin plot, and a metaphorical one will be almost inevitable.
And we’ll see how playtesters feel about the Irduin climax when I’ve finished writing it. If most folks hate it and find it anticlimactic, I guess I’ll just have to follow Kreg’s example with the latest Jolly Good instalment and write a 2m word game. But I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to put together something that feels satisfying.
Reflecting on this more but since those guys will make up the majority of the recruitment pool for my mc’s potential new administrators and my mc himself is likely well…….
Seems even if successful a government run by him with new administrators may inadvertently bring the mindset a lot closer to what we see in our own modern world, for both better and worse.
Shocker, nobody would expect the french speaking people to be brown.
Personally, I prefer this over them being stereotypically european-looking. However, I would kind of prefer it if Shayardenes had more unique eye colors, but then again, thats just my own asethetic preference.
For the Helassurqs I have always imagined them being very diverse in appearance ranging from Asiatic, Middle eastern, Central asian to Southern or Eastern European. Considering they rule over a large empire there may be peoples like those within Helassur.
one question i have is that we probably can turn some theurges on side of our rebelion. how will they react to us trying to spread secret of theurgy? i would think it would be deal break for most of them. what other actions/decision will make it so that they will refuse to work with us? also will cha or int character have better time convining them or will it depend on other factor?
I think high int is surly a high chance of convincing them to accept us as a leader. If you are a good leader and promise them higher positions they could get behind the idea somehow I think.
For me personally I don’t want to reveal the secret. But I want my own team of loyal theurges to use. And what I WILL change after Hegemony about theurges is that helots wouldn’t be exempt from a chance to be one. And they won’t be the highest echelons of society. They will be the highest in academic area and to make the ecclesiasts join me and to solve their problems with theurges as it is mentioned in stormwright all theurges will need to exel in religious studies to be officialy a theurge.
I always imagined Halassurqs as the like of Eastern European countries like poland. I mean white with blond hairs or light color hairs.Them and their cousins of Nyreal and the Errets in between. And the shayardins as like English people like more divers and more tan. And the Karagonds as like Middle Eastern. Like more dark in both hair and skin tone. The Wiendry as like Russian or Germans. Like Eastern European light skin but darker hairs.
Idk why this made me think of this, but with the breakdown of the thaumatarchy and it’s infrastructure (kryptasts) in place to keep the secret of theurgy hidden, how isn’t it likely that the secret gets out anyways regardless of what the MC chooses? They aren’t the only self taught theurge, and I’m sure others would be interested in democratizing magic.
Tangentially, is it possible to only spread the secret behind harrowing (that it’s not just blood, but everything from the brains and other organs) but not the starter techniques to learn theurgy? Or is it an all or nothing deal?
becouse only real people that know how theurgy works are theurges and even with hegemonic breakdwon they have massive cross national class intrest to keep it hidden. it will probably spread but also very likly it will be suppresed by almost every poste hegemonic goverment.
Some of that might depend on how much influence the Ecclesiasts have post-rebellion. There is still a huge taboo against both goety and heresy in the general population, and spreading the secrets of theurgy would fall squarely into both categories. Even most rebels are still hard-locked into those taboos. Uprising makes that pretty explicit, there’s the scene where you try to introduce the band to a new religious creed, and if you fail to convince them, they panic. People leave, morale tanks, and your position as band-leader is suddenly very much up in the air. That’s among people who have chosen to rebel. It’s even worse if you’re a theurge, people are convinced you’re a goete who gets their powers from Xaos, some even make signs against the evil eye, because any heresy tied to theurgy is treated as the worst possible kind.
If even rebel helots break into pandemonium the moment anything smells like heresy, it’s hard to imagine almost anyone wanting to hear heretical theurgic secrets. Convincing people to accept these secrets as facts, in place of the false narrative the Ecclesiasts have hammered into them for centuries, will be far harder than just spreading the knowledge around. You’ll have to tear down the entire system of belief that shapes these people’s lives, and there will be many, many people who’ll try to stop you, not just the Kryptasts.
do it i would be interested to hear your perspective.
one more insteresting subject in my opinion is how secret off theurgy will impact game world.
i would say there are 2 difrent levels of secret you can spread.
1 is one that cleotra tells us about aether, that harowing is not necesary and that everyone can become theurge i think these has been discused enough,and we even get option to keep these secret or not. these would be telling people everything option.
in second case im more intrested about if it will be posible to spread just part of these information, one of main justification of harowing is that killing people is strictly necesary for keeping wards up and to stop worlds ending, there is wholle priesthood dedicated to keeping these bellif up which probably dose heavy lifting in making sure that rebelions are not happening all the time. i think these can easly be used as justification for ending harowing and turning to blood tax system without destabilizing realm to much by spreading kwnoledge to far. i do think that in either case Pristhood are taking major reputational hit, they have been preaching that all these suffering has been mandatory and now it turns out that it is not? i dont think helotry will take well to it.
question about these second belive is that if it will always spread or will we be able to choose to do it or not becou i dont think that you can really continue harowing if these secret wounds religious justifcation of harowing
questions
