we have been talking about stats, balancing fate of rebelion and hegemonys reaction whille not raising most important subjects. its time to ask trully important questions. what stat distribuation MC will calea like? im asking for a friend. personaly i dont think she will care about stats and probably will care more how succefull our rebelion has been. but still interesting thing to think about.
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@Havenstone Couple of suggestions.
Firstly, I know a lot of the religious stuff isn’t in yet, but we were discussing on the Discord what unique things might be available to a CHA 3 MC. One thing that came up, which we thought was fun because it’s a funny way of trolling Erjan and would bring up some drama, is if a high CHA religious MC could start trying to convert Dilek in the period they’re journeying to/in Irduin together. Not sure if that will make any sense for the character, but it would be a nice arc for the religious side, which at the moment is rather undeveloped in Irduin.
Secondly, the gamgee arcs. I’m not sure what your long term plan is with these, but at the moment they’re set up to take time from things that could otherwise be done in the Xaoslands. I wonder if they should be “free” in the same way that the discussions with S and K are in the sheep raids in book 1 (if they’re there the player gets the choice to engage with them or not with no opportunity cost). The player has already chosen to spend time with those characters by going into book 2 with them, and considering the situation there’s going to be plenty of time that they could find to have conversations together in between the main tasks. I’m not suggesting every player has to follow the gamgee arcs, rather that if they choose to, it doesn’t come at the cost of something else they could be doing.
I can’t see that in the code. Not for bringing him on the raid nor for talking with him.
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Well, S does have a small opportunity cost, 7 noble rep as as a felow noble, and 5 noble rep as a helot. Honest it’s probably not really a cost for helots since 5 nobles less won’t change much, but for the noble, 7 rep can be just what they need to get Mikal de Rose support and all its beautiful bonuses.
You only get the +7 rep if you shut down the conversation by saying we must restore the rights the karagonds took, not caring about poachers getting killed, but then you don’t get to talk in private and learn about Loane de Firiac.
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I do feel like its a bit too difficult to learn about s/k backstory. Like, a lot of the time I solve the veneurs without the sheep raid, and so never learn anything about why exactly they’re here
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What would be a good approximation of Samena’s stats at the peak of her skills? I imagine a big focus on Combat, but, I’m curious about how great of a general she truly was and how did her other skills fare in comparison.
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Not game breaking or anything, but you can choose this decision again and again without moving forward
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Cynneve Stallard has unexpectedly become one of my favorite characters in Irduin. Beneath the surface of a collaborator helot (which I admit made me immediately despise the Stallards for a long time) lies a very strong parallel to my MC and a deeply moving critique of Irduin’s system. Cynneve shines a ton on the priest focus + helot subfocus combination, which ties into a suggestion I’ll propose later on.
Cynneve is a (relatively) young helot about to be thrust into a massive leadership position in charge of life and death for hundreds, like my MC. Her father is about to be killed by the Hegemony , like my MC. She’s grown to love a heretic Ecclesiast in spite of the inherent contradiction between their acts of compassion and their sending of helots to the harrower, the way my MC came to love Olynna. And greatest of all, she has the intellect to understand and practice theurgy if exposed to the right philosophy, like my MC. The more I talk to Cynneve, the more I see an early version of the MC, and despite being on opposite sides regarding Irduin’s order she’s the second helot after Yebben my MC would have the greatest hopes for within his future theurgic corps. It’s a striking twist.
What also endears me to Cynneve is that, even if to protect it, she fundamentally understands so much of what makes Irduin unbearable to my MC.
Priest Focus + Helot Subfocus, talk to Cynneve
Cynneve gestures down toward the inn. “You’ve seen how it is at the Chesnery, kurios Lethyn. Most nights, my dama is the only elder there. The rest…even after ten, fifteen years they still only half-believe that lady Alasais welcomes us to carouse among the free folk. The closer they get to Harrowing-age, the more they want only to hide themselves away in the camp.” She shakes her head. “It’s too late to start now in befriending the free folk. And without that friendship, their fear will destroy everything we’ve built here.”
You raise an eyebrow. “The free folk’s fear? Even if the elders keep the camp in the same good order as ever?”
Cynneve’s smile holds a faintly bitter edge. "Kurios…even with my dama charming them week after week, they’re still afraid of us. They always will be, however calmly we go to the Harrower. Any trust between us needs constant proof and re-proof that we’re grateful to them, that we love them, that we rejoice in this…in this…" She falls silent and looks away. “That’s not something you build overnight.”
I really wish we could reveal our identity and have a candid conversation on the Rim Commotion with Cynneve. Regardless, one nice addition to the priest focus + helot subfocus would be the ability to tutor Cynneve in leadership and theurgy after talking to her in eccles_4. I think it’d be thematic for this combo because Cynneve expresses interest in learning to read in the discussion with Ulmey and Korren, she confides a lot in us about her insecurities and fears regarding leadership, and we can already assist her in getting recognized as an Elder. The MC offering to tutor Cynneve and help her prepare feels natural here, and a future helot theurge in Irduin would be a great asset.
Another character I’ve been thinking about quite a bit is Calea Keriatou. Like @Azthyme and so many others, the potential romance between the male ex-helot and his former mistress is just utterly insane to consider. How the hell are we supposed to go from seeing Dann and Tullmer getting harrowed early because of Calea to willingly entering a relationship with her in the seat of the Archon’s power? Calea is certainly no Auche or de Firiac, what would a male helot ever see in her to initiate this train wreck of a romance?
One possible explanation I’d be very interested in is the possibility of the male helot initiating the romance intending to “seduce” Calea to use her connections to benefit the rebellion. Especially if the MC won in Uprising and House Keriatou re-asserted itself in the Outer Rim, leveraging Calea to acquire intelligence on the Hegemony or strike some kind of agreement with House Keriatou would be very helpful. Even if Calea catches on to being manipulated by an MC faking attraction to use her, starting the romance this way would make it even more toxic and disastrous and make the inevitable train wreck more brutal, which is really everything one would want from male helot x Calea. Let me (try to) manipulate Calea!
Bug Reports
This option should probably say “Snip” instead of “Spin.”
Visible code if you react angrily to Tamran talking about your Father.
Other Suggestions
- I think there should be an option to support Odier and Valere’s plan to rebel against the de Irde while also trying to convince them a show trial sparing the de Irde would be better than killing them . Even if they refuse, I think it’s something the MC may want to propose.
- It’d be cool if choosing to memorize Alasais’s parable at the start of Irduin set a variable that could be referenced when the MC might want to bring it up to somebody else. For example, my MC is concerned that Kalt and Radmar, two people whose influence he built up significantly as a counterweight to Breden, may start radicalizing the band against the priests and merchants he worked so hard to win the support of throughout last year. Getting bandlead to start early on promoting cross-class cooperation within the band may be important in this regard.
Questions
- If it’s not inconvenient for future worldbuilding purposes, is there a population total for Wiendrj? We already have population numbers for the Hegemony (224m), Nyryal (25m), Erezza (60m), and through some math via previously given proportions we can determine Shayard (80m) and Karagond (53m). Is this somewhat accurate? I ask because 224-25-60-80-53= 6m which feels way too low for Wiendrj’s population.
- For players that chose to remain labeled “Theurge” in Game 1, will they be able to rebrand themselves Wisard in this game? A good place to prompt changing this might be after reaching Irduin (maybe if we send Cerlota back to the rebellion?), since this is where an MC may start being worried about their extremist image antagonizing merchants and urban poor. Similarly, could a Wisard rebrand themselves a Theurge?
- Will high levels of notoriety drive increased recruitment for the rebellion? Breden’s dialogue if you kill Horion and Linos in Uprising seems to suggest something along those lines.
- The remarks from the Irduine yeomen seem to suggest there’s state-subsidized grain in Grand Shayard, but is this an arrangement across all the major Shayardene cities like Corlune and Veldrin, or just the provincial capital?
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I’ve also come to really enjoy Cynneve as a character. She seems thoughtful and measured (especially compared to Narran & Co™) and I think she could be a good fit as an apprentice for a peaceful/conciliatory MC.
It seems like having Ulmey/Korren as our main focus might give us a chance to save elder Brasque and his daughters by bringing them to the Rim, so I was wondering if we might get a similar opportunity if we choose the helots as our main focus, potentially with Maurs/Tamran or Ulmey/Korren as the subfocus?
Unrelated, but do you have nonviolence or compassion in mind as possible new touchstones for the MC’s fledgling religion/cult this game? Given how much this game has focused on pacifism through Tamran, and that we already know it’s been on the pacifist MC’s mind, I could see a vow of nonviolence (perhaps something like the Jain mahavratas) making sense and helping ensure the rebel band stays on that path. Compassion would make sense too, it’s one of the highest angelic virtues and would either be a return to older Shayardene roots for an Inner Voice/Eclect MC, or as an overlap with the old faith for a Kenonist.
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Speaking of, for the imperially minded skeptics (or simply those who want a clean break from the Hegemony) are there any solid Koine terms for a grand ruler that doesn’t derive their powers from the Angels like the Thaumatarch? Something like Basileus or Autokrator comes to mind here.
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I have a suggestion for if we pick the
#”Swiving each other.”
option during the secret helot meeting that might be worth considering. If you’re in an asexual relationship with Breden, imagining their hurt face at your casual implication of having sex with them after all the emotional pain that very thing has caused is really funny
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Just asking if you guys are safe after the flood.
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Thanks. Yes, we are – although four months ago we were in one of the towns that just got flattened. We were just packing emergency hygiene kits at the boys’ school this afternoon; the Nepali charity that runs the place will be taking them up there now. A couple of my doctor friends headed up on two hours’ notice yesterday for medical response. It’s a sobering time.
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Take care @Havenstone!
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Oh best wishes to you and all in affected regions.
Just here to drop my fangirly comment that I always feel compelled to leave every few months when I remember this series. This time I wanted to let you know that I am adopting a dove next week and its gender is unknown, but if it’s female I’m naming her Cerlota. Undecided about male names but I’m replaying both installments for ideas because I love the “feel” of words in this series. We’ll see if it lays an egg.
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I’m currently reading through Avengers of the New World, a book by Laurent Dubois that recounts the history of Saint-Domingue and the subsequent Revolution, and one of the excerpts in it is particularly interesting to me. Another fan of the series prodded me to share it with @Havenstone, so here it is:
Slave rebels had a habit of declaring their leaders to be Kings or other monarchs on their own, which Dubois argues came from their association of monarchy (with the King of France, though also from the African monarchies they came from, most notably the Kongo) with the foremost power in the land that could enact change.
It wasn’t really just a fluke or a mass psychosis or anything like that either, they were working rebel bands capable of establishing working military settlements and dealing significant damages to the plantations around them:
Just thought this could be interesting to share. I’d think it pretty fun to see some rebel bands start declaring their leaders to be Aristarchs or (if braver) Archons. The MC themselves being declared such would also be really fun.
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All right, I’m basically done teaching again, so throwing myself back into XoR2 – starting with catching up on all your comments over the past month and a half. 
This will in fact be coming with the Breden sections when I write them.
I agree. I was thinking I’d have that in an on-the-road section that I’ve not written yet.
I was thinking I’d save some coding complexity for myself by people attributing the Goetic massacre to the MC and Cerlota, whether or not the MC is actually a Theurge.
Yep, one of the key functions I’ve had in mind for the gamgees is making certain outcomes more achievable for low-CHA MCs. (And for the different bandleads, @CottonWolf; there should be some indirect impacts on Irduin.)
Good call on Ciels being able to provide yeoman combat training, will add that on their path.
Yes!
I’ll look at it again when I’ve finished writing out the main priest path and see. My thought was that taking the innkeep subfocus will let you get a confession of heresy out of Ulmey even if he’d otherwise not confess to you out of distrust, but maybe it will need something more. Having an “in” with the heretics does have more of an impact from next game than this one.
Yeah, at present there are many more situations that reward the versatility of a 2-2 build than ones that punish you for having any 0 stat (or reward multiple 1 scores). I’ll have another look at that on the remaining passes.
I don’t know if that feels realistic to me. They’ve kidnapped the Telone to kill him, which is a Harrowable offense for them all if caught. The literal only thing that gives them pause is the deep-rooted trust they have in the Innkeeps. For you to say, “Yeah, you probably shouldn’t trust Tamran’s promise that he won’t rat you out to the authorities, but you can trust me to keep him in line,” seems to me like it pretty clearly wouldn’t fly… not even if you combined it with the startling but hardly trust-inducing revelation that you’re also a Rim rebel.
I hope so.
It’ll definitely let you do more notwithstanding Theurgic strain, yes – if you want to confront Seichareis or other Theurgically demanding endgame stuff after using Theurgy for other stuff in Irduin, INT 3 will help. And I feel like I’ve written a few moments where INT 3 has benefits other than the specializations, but maybe not enough. I’ll do a review when the endings have come together and see what I think.
A healing specialization helps if you’re a helot curing bat rabies, but that’s an easy scene to miss; it’ll also under some circumstances let you save Maurs’s life.
This is probably true.
It’s a good suggestion. I’m not going to commit to it, but I’m thinking about it. (And about maroder’s objections.)
You get the *label cashgrant scene for alerting the de Irde to the powder threat. The landgrant scene comes when you also rescue their kidnapped servant – someone Alasais and her family personally care about, and also an opportunity for them to demonstrate to the restive helotry that loyal house drudges will be treated as highly valued retainers (without breaking any Hegemonic law).
If you’ve saved Iddemer’s life, that’s great, but an extremely generous reward wouldn’t do anything to boost helot or yeoman loyalty, and the loyalty of the tradesfolk isn’t similarly in need of shoring up.
Maybe. An initial hookup at least?
I did, but I think that would ultimately feel too short, and I’d rather try to give Irduin/Rim Management some banger endings.
I was thinking I’d leave that implied rather than openly discussed, but I’ll give it another look.
Isn’t it? I really enjoyed writing that, because I’m secretly an awful, awful person.
Thanks for the bug catches and suggestions, I’ll look at all of those.
More to follow tomorrow!
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I really enjoyed reading that as an ending to Irduin’s story. I think it’s the sharpest depiction of the choice to destroy Irduin, a shadow cast by the untaken path that ends with the Telone at the edge of a bridge. In that other story, for the sake of preserving the Irduin That Was, they’ve come together to kill a man and tell a shared lie to hide it. A new pact to bind them all, in memory of the pacifist Maurs and his pact to Speak no lie. At the end of their road to preserve Irduin is the death of what it was – quietly with the morning sun, like a fading dream.
Here in this story, with the precise choices that lead to Korren and his Alastors and the Telone Baldassare dead on the floor, Maurs beaten to a pulp in the chaos, and us, alone – the rebel – accepting all the blame, that is nearly the same form, the same lie, from the same cause, the love of Maurs and fear of their world slipping away.
There’s this line from Korren on the bridge that really hits in the moment:
"The whole night already seems a bad dream. In the morning, perhaps none of us will truly believe that ${alias} the tinker / apothecary / sophist / sellsword / performer was ${lname} of the Commotion.
So too is the massacre on the Chesnery floor, when we take the blame and the witnesses – save for Tamran – accept it. Irduin, protected by violence in the name of Maurs Innkeep. Irduin, protected by a shared lie that allows life to go on. Unchanged, except for the gaping hole in its heart where the Chesnery once stood.
you can see relief growing on all their faces; they plainly want to believe that ridding themselves of the Telone and saving Maurs wasn’t an irreversible step into rebellion.
For those two dozen in the room, from all walks of Irduin, there is a vivid nightmare. It felt so real. Blood on their fists. A dead Telone, dead Alastors, a beaten and motionless Maurs. And now Maurs and Tamran are lost to them. The haunting thought, was this my doing? But it could only be a nightmare. After all,
That is truth, even more than the “truth” of another world that the Telone simply fell off a bridge on accident. But the old Irduin is gone regardless. And all that it took to destroy it was living in truth – well, in a certain cruel manner of speaking. Secrets revealed. The world without its masks, a twisted shadow cast from the bridge.
“Now the lies are frail and failing, to the point where for the first time you’re about to have to kill to preserve them. It’s time to let go. It’s time to start living in truth.”
–Tamran
The massacre doesn’t have to end this way. We can keep our identity secret to further manipulate the crowd. We can pivot into the as-yet unwritten Battle of Irduin, which reminds me a lot of the Fourth Harrowing. I just find accepting the role of scapegoat to be the most thematically poignant, and it offers an interesting perspective to how and when the order of Irduin dies. There’s no going back once those traitorous words come out of our mouth.
And maybe more than any other ending so far, this is the interlopers alone, rebellion vs. Hegemony, with Irduin caught in between. A question left unspoken, forced into an answer, are we all on the same side? Because Korren coming after us was his duty to Irduin and to Alasais. But he has always had a duty to the Hegemony, and that uncertainty leads to his death. To the end, he came after us; if he made a choice about Maurs, we couldn’t know and never will. I think he would’ve killed us and Baldassare both to protect Maurs. But it all happened too fast, and bloodily, and now the Telone’s killer in one world is killed alongside him in another.
These two endings heighten each other. I enjoy each so much more because the other exists, it can’t be seen with a single run – and neither one is an ending I’d pick for a ‘main’ playthrough either. Still so much to decide there.
Though what is decided for me is how hype the road to Grand Shayard is, the way you can feel destiny at play. Just as the Irduendings are a complex ball of feelings compared to the fairly simple ending for Uprising (where the drumbeat of doom, “Are you prepared for when the Hegemony comes for you?” is silenced in more ways than one), this epilogue feels much more driven, with more momentum.
There was a kind of completeness to crossing into Xaos. The very last page is the stats of our rebellion, the legacy we left behind. If we were eaten by an eldritch mouth in a rock[1] 23 seconds after stepping over the Ward, it wouldn’t really matter. Our rebellion, or what’s left of it, remains. But here, we have personal unfinished business, with Calea, with Chirex, with the City-Ward and the Archon within.
I don’t think this effect could be achieved with Irduin and Grand Shayard together in one book, especially there’s a lull in pacing to establish the new setting. Also there’s something fun about how the book begins with Calea and it ends with Calea.
And speaking of pacing, just want to note that Rampion is a weird distortion in the pacing if it ends, as it does in most cases, with us fleeing. It’s like a secret boss battle that cuts the story short, and the reward is a preview for some future intrigue.
Also, excellent solution to the problem of how someone with no combat proficiency, no magic, and no companions survives. We were wondering how that'd play out after the initial snippet dropped.
With your arm still weighed down, you can’t manage any but the clumsiest of attacks. But in the narrow confines of your bedspace, Rampion is close enough that your outflung arm hits the fork of his legs. You grapple for a hold, then close your fist with crushing force.
He Screams
You’ve shattered Rampion’s concentration thoroughly enough that Korren doesn’t quite pass out.
Though it’s not just Irduin’s story that gets distorted, I imagine our rebel protagonist could want to, in spite of the risk, get word to the Rim about what this Kryptast looked like and could do, and possibly to warn rebels to stay away from Irduin for their own safety.
Between this, Carles, and our own jongler disguise, if I was a paranoid warlord, I’d train my own corps of loyal wandering singer-spies to hunt down the other potential spies. To reduce friendly fire, we’d create and update a catalogue of “obscure” song names as code. Could call one of them ‘The Ill-Wrought Harp’. Or they’d just kill the singers. That could be a Bloodhand thought. Just a thought, though. Though Bladeshard seems to have been pushed so far as to forsake their noble name, one must wonder how far Bloodhand could go. It’s interesting times out there. Still feels too abstract without the Rim management; Irduin being “the route for rebellion to spread into the Southriding” will hopefully feel more tangible if our choices can bring the Commotion closer to our doorstep.
I’m very excited for the scheduled “Option to lead the young rebels who idolize you on a risky raid before bandlead arrives.” Sweet, dangerous nostalgia. The allure, the temptation to put the rebellion above all else. A taste of home that the Southriding just can’t provide. Remember who you are.
…I wonder how they’d react to the land grant. It is a nicer home than “in the woods, hunted by the law, life and death balanced on a knife’s edge.” It’s all really quite wholesome, and not a good look for a rebel leader. Maybe best to leave that out of the legends. Nothing that couldn’t be argued, of course: it was to protect the helotry from the Artemidoric Code, and Yare deserves to be saved (I didn’t bury my head in my hands out of sheer exasperation at Narran[2], Annick, and Heud, but my character would’ve, and then wondered if this is how the elders saw our Harrower-baiting back in the day, and then concluded that at least we never did anything this impulsi[3]– I mean, anything this cruel, 10/10 drama).
I’m also very supportive of this idea.
living crevices that crack open to swallow anything passing over them. “Bloody Xaos-maws again,” Yed growls almost cheerfully, when tossing a bone across one leads to the expected snap. ↩︎
what is he even good for, one might ask ↩︎
other than that fugitive-sheltering that nearly got everyone Harrowed. What a waste it’d be if we got that fugitive killed because we were “aura farming” and got a Plektos sent after us ↩︎
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It’s what he’d hate most. I also like the meta detail that you can only achieve this scene with balanced stats, that you need to reject Maurs’ message of unity through weakness, and as long as you keep Cerlotta around, any helot character can take this path to destroying Irduin, and I love it.
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Spoke too soon. 
The friend who was going to take over the job from me has had worsening symptoms from his disability, and has had to step back. And we just discovered that Mrs. Havenstone can no longer get dependent visas for me and the Pebbles as a PhD researcher, thanks to a recent policy change by the Nepal government. So I’ll be taking on some more teaching in the coming weeks, and probably going full-time in the spring (so that we can get a visa through the school, rather than having to move back to the UK, pulling the boys out partway through our older son’s GCSE cycle).
I have asked for a reduced class load for the next few weeks (to give me a little more writing time) and should have a few months free after that to focus on writing.
Catching up on the feedback you’ve all given:
No guarantee on this until I’m writing the Rim sections, but I don’t think I’m going to have too much hang on who you picked as deputy if you didn’t pick them as bandlead. There’s room for drama there – poor Zvad passed over again?! – but if I go for every option for drama, I’ll never finish.
Your choice of how democratically the band will be led, otoh, will definitely be a lingering feature – with the possibility of tension with the natural leadership style of the people you left in charge.
Yeah, that’s always been the challenge, because int 2 is such a step up. I’ll give it some thought.
I think this was always going to be Seichareis? Did I say something that sounded like I was promising another Theurge? There will be multiple Theurges chasing you across the Southriding after certain Irduin endings, but the name of the game then will be avoiding them, not confronting them…
I’d thought the fact that I’ve rolled stealth into COM would have made some difference here. There are a lot of conversations you can overhear more easily (i.e. with less consequences to suspicion or Theurgic strain) if you have a higher COM. Maybe those aren’t as narratively clear. When it comes to outright combat, there will definitely be some stuff in the Rim management sections that will only be open to COMmies.
I’ll look at this issue in later passes. In general, my approach is to write where the story takes me, with a general back-of-mind attention to keeping opportunities for different stat combos alive, then look for imbalances and see where I have good places to fix them.
Ditto for the order-suspicion balance. If it comes out too easy at the end of the first stretch of writing, I’ll tweak the numbers until it’s at a difficulty level I’m happy with.
I enjoyed the discussion around this, and think it’s an idea well worth proposing. It would of course have to be actually unavoidable for all high-power rebellions, not nigh-unavoidable, to fix the hyper-optimized save issue you mention… keep it at “nigh” and you’re just taking the optimization problem to a whole new level. Ditto for the variable and character bloat issues.
There are going to be very different strategies available to take your rebellion forward. Some, for example, will involve selling out the Rim rebellion to refocus on urban revolt or aristocratic/mercantile influence; some of them will involve trying to spread the rebellion into areas where having lots of people back in the Rim is basically irrelevant.
A player who comes out of G1 with only 10 survivors of their revolt may hitch their star to the other Rim rebel leaders, Bladeshard/Bloodhand (and, under some circumstances, Breden); or they may find it all the easier to sell them out. A player who comes out of G1 with 1,200 rebels has a strong base there which will come in handy, but will also be harder to sacrifice or move away from.
Killing off half the 1200-strong rebel force, while I’m on board with the horrible pathos of it, wouldn’t really bring gameplay parity with the 10-strong one. I’d still have to find ways to keep the latter player engaged with the game, without dropping all the challenge levels to the point where the former player breezes past them all. Having “big numbers in the Rim” be useful for some key challenges (and, indeed, a necessary condition for some wins) but not for others is I think the way I’ll have to handle this problem.
There are going to be massive Hegemonic crackdowns starting in Book 3, which should force the MC into costly choices if they’re going to save individuals they care about. Some of those crackdowns will involve cataclysmic uses of Theurgy – though not on the scale of “the whole Westriding.” There should be enough suffering and sacrifice to feel like we’re going through a crucible.
We already know the evil empire will fall. The whole point of the series is going to be questioning whether that in itself constitutes victory.
You’re right that the Hegemony hasn’t fully internalized how counterproductive the Scouring was; but they are feeling the constraints of their blood budget more now than they did the last time they “fired” it. In terms of final-act province-wide Theurgic devastation, you’re more likely to see it in e.g. a splinter Cabelite mage corps determined to inflict a revenge-Scouring across all Karagon fuelled by the blood of sacrificed Karagond kids. That would I think be sufficient to justify the Scouring in Chekovian terms.
…but not getting past him peacefully is way cooler? Both with him, and then in Mesniel?
I agree, I can do more there. Awesome suggestions.
(sorry alless)
That would just add a little more spark to it, surely. You’re right, @maroder123, that she won’t care about your COM/INT/CHA combo, but your body count is another matter. @Jaher’s adjectives – toxic, disastrous, manipulative – all fit the bill.
A highly religious MC will be able to start trying to convert Dilek regardless of CHA.
And I think it’s a good suggestion to let the gamgee time in Xaos be “free,” not an opportunity cost. I’ll make that change when I write the gamgee paths.
I’ve got a policy of not number-statting characters, but she would have had extraordinarily high COM – great tactical and operational leadership.
I’m so glad to hear you say this. That kind of complexity is what I was hoping would come out with the Stallards. Good suggestions on where things could go with Cynneve. Ditto for Cabelite show trials. And the parable memorization would be a fun callback.
With the eternal caveat of “your MC wouldn’t know this”: your math matches mine for everything except Karagon, whose population is around 38m, making room for the 21m population of Wiendrj. Let me know what I shared that pointed toward a 53m pop for Karagon, so I can correct that one way or another.
A chance to rebrand as “wisard” – maybe. Probably not a high priority change, but maybe?
Among certain groups – like, say, the Westriding yeomanry, or the Grand Shayard urban poor – yes.
Just about every really big city in the Hegemony lives on grain supplied by Theurgic barge convoys; and all of the Archons are concerned about the price of bread and try to keep it in a tolerable range.
Possibly!
When I write out the religious development, I’ll need to involve it, absolutely. A vow of nonviolence would fit well with what you’re potentially discussing with Tamran.
You could be a secular Hegemon, and I agree that Autocrat would also work. Basileus is authentic but I can’t help feeling that the English connotations of “Basil” (as name, and herb) would get in the way. Monarch is the Koine term the Shayardenes use to talk about their one-time queens and kings, and that would probably be what I’d run with.
@Jjcb, awesome historical ref, thanks for sharing. Rebel bands giving their leaders highfalutin titles must happen.
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Good luck! And well wishes to the friend, although I can’t phrase it in a way that doesn’t sound weird.
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