Oop. Hard to keep all the snippets straight lol, completely forgot about that one.
Yknow, there’s a lot of potential I think in speccing into bombings as a rebel group here. They’re a very dramatic tool, and one outside of the context of most citizens of the Hegemony. I imagine detonating some government building in Grand Shayard must seem like something akin to magic, and yet distinctly un-theurgical.
Mind you, this isn’t as useful for a victorious land-holding rebel group, since bombings are not a field combat tactic and black powder is utterly useless in a conflict with Theurges. It’s a trivial Change to make the stuff follow its telos.
You’re welcome. Sorry for not being more active; some of it is real life stuff (caregiving older relatives, day job)…and some of it is also trying to get back to some ideas working on and getting into shape some ideas I was going to work Eiwynn about. The latter was a bit tougher than expected.
Will there be any opportunities in book 2 to spread knowledge of theurgy, it would be interesting if Yebben were to do this on his own. I assume a high degree of literacy in your followers would help there
After reading through all the various discussions on state-building and blood economics and demography, I had a flash of inspiration for my main MC’s future country and how it would be governed. I’ve made a map representing my ideal maximalist vision for it in all of its arrogant ambition and naivety, I hope you enjoy! (The image quality got compressed, the link has a higher quality version).
I’ve been doing more research on the different political and philosophical schools of stateless peoples like the Kurds recently and it brought to mind some of the groups in XOR. How would something like Öcalan’s Democratic Confederalism go over with nomadic and stateless groups like the Brecklander’s, Xaos Nomads and the Qasqer Zhuj/Nyrish pastoralists?
Helots are arguably another example of a somewhat stateless group as they live in fear of any official attention and seem to for practical purposes be governed by elders
Wow, I remember playing Uprising when I was a tween. Every so often when I’d browse the CoG store I’d check back in to see if the next game was out, and I was vibrating with anticipation when I realized a demo of Stormwright out. The Xaos lands were really fun, and honestly lived up to what I had imagined all those years ago when the tantalizing hint of what lay beyond the wards was brought up in Uprising. I also wondered if we’d meet Sarcificer the Goete in the Xaos Lands, back when I had finished Uprising, and meeting Cerlotta now is really really cool.
Irduin is also fantastic, trying to stir up revolt among the yeomen and helots is awesome, and it’s filled with tense moments (esp if you’re bad at managing suspicion lol). It’s depressingly realistic to the real world where the folk at the utmost bottom, and those only one step above simultaneously have so much in common, and yet can be divided easily too. “the helot’s need to be put in their place, because if they’re not at the bottom then what does that make us?” and “the yeomen have is much easier than us, so why are they complaining about their oppression? they should try being us for a change!”, it’s so realistic to the way people irl act, and yhea my MC is kinda putting his hands on his head in frustration with them lol.
Really, Irduin presents a very interesting moral dilemma. Two things stood out to me, the healing of the helot mother with lyssa and the fact that de Irde is actively working to prevent helot deaths. It really makes you think that de Irde might be “one of the good ones”. We’ll see if she’s willing to throw her lot in with a rebellion that’s so far been about total equality.
The ability to trans your gender in the second instalment of a series is really unique, and allows for some very interesting explorations of trans-ness that other works can’t do. As a trans person myself, it’s really cool that my MC can literally evolve with me. My “female” helot from all those years ago can now realize she’s actually a he just like I did!
I literally only have one criticism, and thats that I feel like your Xaos companion feels like they don’t impact the story very much. It feels a bit unlikely that Breden (or any other person), person who helped start the Rim Uprising, and who had strong opinions on the direction of the rebellion, wouldn’t do more to effect Irduin. That being said, it both looks like there’s still some content to be added with respect to your companions, and also it would add to the scope bloat this series is already suffering under. You can bring way too many different people into the Xaos land’s to make writing totally unique stuff for each of them feasible, I’d imagine.
That being said, I really do hope we get to learn more about my beloved Breden (seriously, I replayed Uprising and found myself just as hopelessly in love with Breden as I was when I was a tween lol), and the mystery of the traitor. I’m almost certain now that Breden wasn’t the traitor, and certainly if they ever were they aren’t now (my pet theory is that they could have been blackmailed), but that means that I’m even more curious about their past.
All that to say… this is AWSOME!
As much as you’re willing to answer, which would do more to spread your claim/grow your legend as an Eclect? Going back to the camps (where there’s some ingame text that makes note of your beliefs spreading), or winning a battle against the hegemony to provide ‘proof’ of divine guidance?
Separately, will it be possible to transition into a non-violent movement from a previously violent rebellion? I noticed one of the takeaways you can have in game two regarding the events of the end of game one is that violence is not the proper ground to fight the hegemony on. How would a violent resistance be able to transition properly into a nonviolent one, since even a low anarchy run would be known to the public to have caused some measure of casualties? I feel like once you’ve crossed that bridge into an intentionally violent movement, its hard to walk it back
Hope everyone has had a wonderful April so far!
Interestingly enough, the helots’ reaction to your Eclecthood claim is described as being pretty polarized and lukewarm: some helots vehemently reject you because they perceive it as blasphemy, while the rest are still cautious even when they accept your rebels.
The first outlaws you send back to the Rim are some of your most passionate devotees, bringing not just the word of rebellion but a call to follow the rebel Eclect. The idea that the Angels have Chosen an earthly leader outside the priesthood is polarizing; some helots immediately throw out your followers, shouting that the last thing they need is blasphemers as well as rebels. But rather more are cautiously curious…and your small outlaw groups find a temporary home, and your legend grows.
This is entirely speculation on my end, but I suspect that infiltrating the camps will spread your claim as Eclect far more (you’re reaching thousands more helots in the camps), but also require you to work harder to see it accepted among the helots relative to if you had a battle victory to wave around as a sign of the Angels’ blessing. This is the part where the extraordinarily charismatic Breden would be really useful… except for the part where Breden doesn’t believe you’re really Eclect and thinks Linos proclaimed you Eclect just to save his own life. Really frustrating, because Breden is incredibly valuable for this strategy to the point where they match even a 2 CHA MC in convincing the helot camps to accept your coveys. So I anticipate there’s going to be some tension where Breden isn’t enthusiastic about supporting your Eclect claim in the helot camps, and you have to find some other way to get your credibility up without a dramatic battle victory.
