Along with Fallen Hero and maybe Infinite Sea 
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Privately my mc is probably an outright atheist, publicly he’s more anti-Xhotonic than anything else, though per the conversation with Linos he is somewhat known as an unbeliever already.
My main mc is a pure INT build as he wants as much magical power and knowledge, since knowledge is power as possible. I do have a second mc and that is the mc who is pursuing more of a Koinon strategy, my main mc simply wants as big a state as he can get, but not a koinon although he’d certainly be doing some administrative redistricting if that can both help get groups like Cabel’s on his side and break the powerbases of the Hegemony and more established noble led groups, such as the Laconniers.
Definitely recruited Bleys.
Actually no, letting them live humiliated was far more fitting, but he did rob and destroy the estate and slaughtered the horses for meat.
Yes, used to do Simon builds but since a) gay people cannot get Simon without modding and b) high anarchy is more useful to my mc I gave that up. Also my mc is definitely not in love with Kalt, as really he isn’t over Gan enough to open up. Then there is also the possibility that my mc may ultimately come to love knowledge and power more than any single person.
Right now though he is probably still stuck on Gan, though he would never admit that at this point.
Didn’t kill them, no.
Yep.
No, that would be stupid, my mc actually went after their resources as that is the smarter course of action. Until Havenstone’s recent revisions of Ganelon’s fate my mc just assumed Hector had him murdered because he couldn’t get to my mc.
Yes.
No, although I am unsure of what I will do in my final headcanon run my mc currently either has Breden killed earlier or lets them live because having a known spy has value too.
Oakfell, still deciding on a properly meaningful first name, probably won’t really know that until the later games.
Like I discussed with Cascat Sojourn has the potential to become highly useful if properly managed, though I will admit my mc wasn’t exactly thrilled with its current ruler’s background but at least some time in the Xaos lands does seem to have taught the guy a lesson about treating people like disposable cattle.
As for its place in a post-Hegemony world order that would depend on a lot of factors but it could be useful as either a buffer city state with the abhumans or as an outright part of the new realm.
Ultimately it is probably most useful as a client city state or protectorate really. So definitely having some presence and power there in an ideal situation but less of it and a far lighter touch than most other areas.
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@Dreamer44, welcome and thanks for the incredibly kind words. (Likewise to Aletheia.) There are (very rare) times when I feel a little embarrassed that I’m writing my big lifetime novel as a CYOA. Feedback like you all give is what keeps those moments so rare, and helps me shrug them off easily when they hit. 
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As a non-interactive novel, it would be very good. But the interactivity is what makes it great. Aside from the occasional guilty-pleasure read, I’m drawn to books that make me think, but XoR forces me to think in a different way - there’s enough distance to allow for abstract reflection, but enough immediacy that I’m forced to consider what’s practical as well. It’s a humbling experience watching my idealism start to slip (for the very noblest of reasons!) when the rubber meets the road. Reading about someone else making hard decisions isn’t the same thing - and when a character in a traditional book makes a blunder, no matter how invested I am in the story, I don’t have to live with the knowledge that a more favorable outcome literally exists and I missed it. You’re telling a story that couldn’t possibly be told as well any other way.
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That it is a CYOA is part of its charm; it allows.for more content and flexibility, leaving to the player what kind of story they want to read, what kind of protagonist they see develop in front of their eyes.
Is this a story of revenge, of striking back against opression? Of an order so extreme, corrupt and tyrannical it ends up unleashing a chaos that consumes it?
Is this a story of a person that, against all odds and consequences, chooses compassion towards all? Of sacrifce in an effort to change the world for the better without succumbing to wrarh and vengeance?
Is this a story of a person that believes, in spite that their faith dictates they should suffer and die? Or the story of a person that the cruelty of the world has killed any spark of faith in higher, benevolent powers in their heart?
Is this the story of someone that loves their land, and want to see their people stand and be proud and free again? Or the story of a person whose heart is filled with wanderlust, who wants to meet and love the world, and won’t stand for their oppression?
This, and so much more, is possible because you chose to write it as a CYOA. In my opinion, it was a great choice.
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Sure. This is what I try to go for after many playthroughs.
Male Helot MC.
Compassionate, Skeptic, and Cosmopolitan.
Saved Olynna, in spite of their skepticism.
Female Breden when I want to romance them; Male Breden otherwise.
2 Intelligence, 1 Charisma.
Self Taught Wisard.
Stopped the Harrowing and had a trial before executing the Theurge, the priest and the Alastors.
Plundered the noble estates.
Named Zvad as the second in command.
Got grain from the tithe barns, hunting, asking the helot camps and buying it.
Asked for mules, and stole them from monasteries.
Sacked a temple for its riches.
Teached my outlaws to write and left traps around the camp.
Tried to keep anarchy low.
Ambushed Hector, but failed to kill him (and found out how to cure wounds).
Met Linos and Leilatou, treated them like guests, kept them with the band so they wouldn’t die.
Recruited De Firiac. Suzanne when I want to romance her, Simon otherwise. Let them keep their sword, and trusted them.
Donated most of my money to the helots and the yeomen (folk hero) before evading and outrunning the Army sent after my rebellion.
Left Zvad in charge before crossing to the Xaos lands with Yed and the love interest, if there is one.
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It may sound counterintuitive, but
[EDIT: I accidentally sent this post early, will revisit later]
[EDIT 2: Later: ]
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How dependent are the three other provinces, and Karagon, on Shayard’s agriculture?
Would it be possible for a nationalist MC, who freed Shayard, to create a dependency on importing food from Shayard to the other provinces? Would that be a viable move, or would it simply put a big target on Shayard, especially when the threat of famine really arrives?
Even so, I think they would still think twice before going to war with a Com 6 or Int 6 MC (or no, how many Napoleonic wars were there?).
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If it would help your MC boost his cred with his Skeptic supporter base (and finally marginalize and/or wipe out the Xthonic priesthood/followers), might MC consider discarding his “freedom of religion for everybody” vision to instead push for a Skepticism-dominated new world order?
Or is the “freedom of religion” tenet something that your MC considers a vital principle that should never be abandoned? (Along with pragmatically realizing that promoting freedom of religion will allow MC to have better relations with Xthonic-dominated Erezza)
Good luck with that goal!
However, perhaps a certain biblical quote will end up defining a tragedy/inevitability of your main MC’s journey:
“I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also was a chasing at the wind. For in much wisdom, is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow.” - The Bible, Ecclesiastes 1:17
Oh, that’s right! Now I remember that it was you who wanted to pursue a “Mao-esque vision”!
How much of historical Mao’s footsteps do you imagine your XoR Mao will be able to recreate?
(And which footsteps will be ignored?)
Do your MCs treat Bleys as a tool to be used and eventually discarded (after outliving said usefulness), or do your MCs instead sympathetically see Bleys as allies whose loyalty can/should be won over? (despite the rocky circumstances of MC’s recruitment of Bleys)
My current guess is the cynical interpretation (“Bleys is just a tool”), given how you similarly plan to treat the Leaguers as your pawns; plus, genuinely befriending Bleys would reduce the Ruthlessness score (thus hindering the Ch 3 75% ruthlessness army bonus).
Well, then here’s to hoping that Havie one day turns Gan into a proper, full-fledged RO during G3-G5! (thus allowing your helot MC to finally act upon (or fully reject) his previously unresolved childhood crush)
There were plenty of different rationales that an MC could pick for sparing the De Merres- I’d like to find out if you picked either “we should open ourselves to the idea of recruiting aristos to our cause” (which would fit your plan to coax the Leaguers into an alliance) or “we’ll spare you in order to later sentence you in a proper trial.” (which is consistent with your helot MC’s “true feelings” disdain towards the aristos as an overall class).
Because you welcomed them as your guests to begin with (and then kept your word), or because you released them (after initially taking them hostage for ransom)?
You’re referring to the “Zvad’s discreet assassination” subplot, correct?
I finally got around to seeing that for myself, and oh boy, are the consequences messy! 
Consequence 1- Elery’s smart enough to immediately figure out the true cause of Breden’s “accidental death”, and thus becomes permanently(?) distrustful towards both Zvad and the MC (but strangely, still decided to stick around as MC’s lieutenant).
Consequence 2- Breden’s absence from the Brecklanders mission means that 1 CHA MC was unable to peacefully ask the Brecklanders for their assistance (thus boiling the final decision to either abort the mission, or go ruthless/burn bridges with the Brecklanders).
If you’re interested/looking for other sources of inspiration, here are the names of my Game 1 Skeptic characters.
1- Atriox Oakfell (named after Atriox, leader of the atheistic “Banished” mercenary faction from the Halo games)
2- “Corvus Ataturk”: Ruthless/Skeptical/Homelander 2COM/1INT Helot
(named after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern/secular Turkey)
Will your character even remain consistently Skeptical/atheistic for the future games to come, or might he consider joining the religions of the Seracca (Nagyeh), Whends (Forgotten Gods), or Halassur (Mother Ummay, Consort Kormuz, and Evren the Firstborn)?
Wisard represents Shayardene nationalism (which is the polar opposite of your character’s overall Cosmo leanings); could you go into more detail about why your character chose to call himself a Wisard?
Once you get to Game 2, is Cerlota’s Xaos-storm nuke going to be a deal-breaker for your Compassionate MC, or is your MC instead confident that Cerlota can (and will) keep her promise about minimizing civilian casualties?
If you’re hoping to ally with Horion’s nephew/niece, Teren (and by extension, the Leaguers), then your plan should take into account the following quote from Havie "Teren is highly unlikely to buy “I imprisoned them to protect them.”
Have you considered pursuing the “Split Up and Melt into Helot Camps” option?
I think the following factors (per my current understanding of your playthrough) may be relevant here:
1- You seem to share Breden and de Firiac’s viewpoint that it’s too early to openly fight the Hegemony (thus inclined towards a non-confrontational option),
2- You have a mid-high amounts of literate rebels in your band,
3- You kept all (or most) of the “rescued from Chapter 1’s Harrowing” helot children alive throughout Ch 2’s winter,
4- And you have a vested interest in keeping high-charisma Breden alive (and loyal to you)
Yep, this one, in the run where my mc had Breden disposed of. Because, potentially if the Brecklanders are more like the helots and lower yeomen then their loyalty can likely be bought again later on, like how the mc can already do with any helots or yeomen they may have needed to raid during the winter, note my mc usually tries to avoid doing that but the random number gods can be really shitty on some playthroughs, by paying restitution later on during the spring. Also consider that no Breden makes it a lot easier to stand and fight the Hegemony when it becomes necessary in the end and that without them the whole poisoning plot doesn’t happen either.
Actually this one, (and because Horion at least is a good conversationalist). There are some traditions worth keeping, even to my mc, and the guest right is one of them. In addition being known for keeping that one may also make it easier to talk to certain people in later games.
This one because during that winter it is really too early for my mc to worry about some nobles he knows nothing about in the first place before he talked with Horion, which only comes after the winter. The second rationale could only have made the tiniest bit of sense to my mc if that conversation with Horion had happened much earlier. Also it humiliates them and my mc knows that for some of the honour obsessed nobility that may well be worse than death.
Indeed in that case my mc suspects that Elery may ultimately prefer power and security to friendship and besides she might also stick around if we can gain the loyalty of her brother and my mc promised her brother to train him if and when he returned and there is no good reason not to keep that promise.
I think by then my mc may be over Gan though, I think that process in fact has already started during his time in the Xaos lands, besides Kalt is not my mc’s type as my mc prefers a guy he can have a more intellectual conversation with.
Well this is about rebellion and war…did you think if was going the be a fresh and joyful uprising?
The consequences of nearly everything the mc does or sometimes does not do are messy.
The best solution for Breden is either to kill them while they are weak and mc is ascendant, which is the Zvad plot or keep them on and hope you can get some use out of having a known spy around and also hope you can contain their charisma. While in principle my mc recognizes that having known spies around can be of utility if properly managed, Breden’s charisma makes them too dangerous for that role.
So, yeah, I am leaning more and more towards the discrete assassination of Breden as canon for my mc.
Letting Radmar kill Breden later on is the worst of both worlds and will likely split the rebellion.
Neither, my mc has no particular sympathy nor antipathy towards Bleys and his family personally but he does see Bleys as a representative of an educated class of people he really needs to win over if he ever wants to administrate anything, plus any except the highest ranking Telones derive little enough wealth and power from the present Hegemony to be pardoned and brought into the fold, particularly if he can do the same for a potential protectorate city state led by an ex alastor.
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-I’ll experiment and explore as the series develops; I won’t have just one MC. The one I play the most is Skeptic, though.
-I mostly lean towards cosmopolitan, but I go with Wisard mostly due to a whim. I like the name, and I feel is yet another way to confront and resist the Hegemony: using neither of the terms they use for those that can see and manipulate telos.
-When we get to the Xaos-nuke moment, we’ll see. Probably not, but that’s what multiple playthroughs are for.
-Again, that’s what multiple playthroughs are for. I don’t always make the same choices.
-I mostly go with running from the army. What’s the advantage of splitting up and melting into the helot camps?
Yes to all four factors in the end.
About Breden, I’m only 50% they are a Kryptast; it’s simply too early to tell, and the truth may be more complex than that. So I’ll believe in them until I’m given a reason not to.
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Speaking for myself, I’ve done it on an aristo-friendly rebellion with the support of Mikal de Rose, but obviously we haven’t seen the consequences yet.
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Counterintuitively, I’d argue that being “in the blast radius”, so to speak, may be the best place to be for a rebel in Grand Shayard if they have foreknowledge of something happening and a willingness to gamble their own life. The fall of the Ward around Grand Shayard is more than a once-in-a-generation opportunity, or a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: it’s an opportunity that has (to the best of our knowledge) never arisen since the Karagond Conquest, and one whose jaws may close shut if the Thaumatarchy is able to muster its forces and salvage the Ward.
Basically, the decisive moment is inside Grand Shayard, and it’s all to play for. Whoever can best take advantage of the chaos and the newfound ability to move vast quantities of contraband into the city can secure a potentially decisive advantage – against the Hegemony, and against each other. Especially if you believe that you have privileged knowledge of what’s coming, from a certain notorious rebel leader who’s allegedly been in close contact with the mastermind behind the plot to bring down the Ward. Forfeiting a place there seems akin to forfeiting a place in that historical moment; which is to say, the play would seem to be keeping your allies nearby and tense, ready to spring into action when the time comes.
To wield the Storm when it comes.
I’ve got a few more aesthetic threads to pull, based off of that prediction.
As previously discussed upthread, the safest route to get a Xaos-storm in contact with the Ward is probably to launch it from underground, with minimal risk for civilian casualties. But aesthetically, there’s something dramatically compelling about a Xaos-storm that “goes wrong” and surrounds the entire Ward, blotting out the sky.
Lightning in every color you could imagine and some I didn’t have a name for. When it flashed, or when a big flame-gout broke the edge of the Storm, you could see the desert tossing like the sea, boulders flying through the air and twisting into new shapes. And all of it perfectly pent up behind an invisible wall in the sky, rising from that three-stone-high foundation.
Because that creates an aesthetic throughline back to another wall of chaos, a certain heart of the realm in the eye of a maelstrom:
Vigil.
Let Grand Shayard be the (symbolic) Storm-source for the chaos that’ll engulf Shayard, the heart of the realm attacked by Kargash the Unmaker. Let the story begin with us departing Shayard into the Xaos-lands, and end with Shayard on the precipice of becoming a new (metaphorical) Xaos-lands, posing us with the question of what we’re going to do about it. After all, we’re not the only rebellion in town.
I’ve long believed that Jac Cabel’s Rising in the Westriding will coincide with the Season that we’re in Grand Shayard (“Chapter 7: A Glorious Season”), just like the Rising began 45 years prior: a tactic to cut the high nobility of the Westriding and their guards off from their territorial power base, to gain a decisive advantage before the aristos can muster up a resistance. Now I suspect that Jac Cabel’s preparations will be happening in the background, and that the spark that sends his Rising into full revolt will be Cerlota’s Xaos-storm – which I’d think ought to coincide with the Court Season (which, for the record, seems to be spring) for maximum chaos.
Carrying another throughline to the climax, there’s one more event that might be a key piece of the puzzle, and that’s the Battle of Sojourn. This is a plot detail that we know has evolved in the writing, but I predict that in its current iteration, the most natural place to fit this battle is to have it coincide with Cerlota’s Xaos-storm – because any Theurge out carpet-bombing Sojourn isn’t in a position to rapidly respond to Xaos in Grand Shayard… or a Great Rising in the Westriding.
- (A bonus prediction about Vigil and Grand Shayard is that the Xaos-storm against the Ward might produce something like the shell of the boulder-egg, or the stone that makes up the Towers, by way of disrupting a protective telos. The egg being a symbol that could carry through to both Vigil and Shayard, of course, by way of Storm-source imagery.)
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Hi Joel! It’s my first ever question for you and ever since 2019 I’ve been playing choice of rebels almost every day trying everything I can to find my ideal run,
I’ve always wondered why Elery seems a lot more competent than Radmar, I know it’s ‘you’re a great bull radmar, but you’re easy to outfox’ but it seems like Elery benefits more from yours and Zvads Combat experience as a 2COM
Is this by design, and Radmar is just going to get better and better throughout the games?
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This is exactly what my mc hopes to persuade Cerlotta into doing, really amp up the fear factor and overt display of power…even if the tradeoff is some more lives lost. As it would really send the message that not even warded city centers of the Hegemony’s major cities are “safe” or beyond the reach of rebellion anymore thus further eroding the legitimacy of both the Hegemony and its provincial quislings.
Indeed, if he does see them as potentially useful idiots by then my mc will give Teren a heads up, if not then not obviously. Also it seems Teren also has a somewhat cruel and devious disposition so he would presumably indeed take advantage of such an opportunity if made aware of it.
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Bring Chaos to the lands of Shayard kinda reminds of Warhammer 40k chaos space marine.
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Great read thus far, i am so glad to achieve both my companion are safe and awake
My RO is Suzane and she is one of my companion to the Xaos Land, my feeling towards her so far is she is the perfect love interest in the sense that she is still dazzle by MC and just acknowledge whatever decision made by me and respond positively to all my care for her, ummm more like the "puppy love " sort of feeling , but i like it . Or maybe i choice of respond is to find alternative way instead of violence?
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Does anyone know about the combat build of the name
Atriox the Warlord rebel knows for his ruthless, skeptic, homelander from Halo?
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Because my MC doesn’t want it repurposed. He wants the Hegemony bleeding and broken and begging and anyone supporting a system based on the systematic harvesting of human to be made to reckon that this is what awaits them at the end of the line.
If the only legacy my MC keeps a century after his death is people being able to point at his rebellion as the answer to the acts of the Karagond elite and its collaborators, then that’ll be enough.
Keep playing AToH. 
There’s a character in there whose only question when proposed a plan to set a planet on fire is if it’ll catch the guilty in the flames.
And she’s not the bad guy.
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Radmar’s strength over Elery is that he always wants to Stand and Fight (unless you’ve deliberately ruined your rebellion on a colossal scale), and he can help win over the band to your side when the time comes.
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