And what about the people who’re aren’t so keen/enthusiastic about claiming the glory/spotlight so early at this stage of the rebellion?
And aside from being safe from the blast radius, the ability to act as a double agent (who possesses plausible deniability) should not be so casually dismissed.
A genuinely coincidence, or perhaps an indicator that Jac and Cerlota are already deliberately coordinating with each other (as secret allies of convenience) behind the scenes?
Hmm, if Simon is acting as the voice of the author, then I might have to stop doing Stand and Fight runs on Noble builds!
Speaking for myself…I thought winning Stand and Fight would make your rebellion MORE appealing to Nobles, because you’ve given a proof of concept that you can actually win battles (against Theurges too).
Think their big problem with it is that you did it with a mob of slaves and peasants that they don’t think you can control so they are worry that they will turn on them next which to be fair is the plan of some of the rebel leaders here (Including two of mine own)
I never did figure it out from looking into the code, so I’ll ask here, does the XoR code actually track if you recruited yeomen, helots or both for your rebellion, and does that get referenced anywhere so far in the first game, after surviving the winter chapter?
And if it does track, what are the exact variables for it, to see how many of your followers are ex-helots or yeomen?
Very cute that you are trying to find a loop hole but one I don’t think it makes that huge of a difference if it’s just a army of peasants to the Nobles and two the only thing that I saw in the code is that the game say a few things about you having more yeomen then helots if you did the prison route at the beginning
Even more so if the mc is himself just meant to be slave animal in their eyes, which means the rabble isn’t even being led by someone “bred for leadership” so they would be robbed of even that comforting delusion, that’ll really unnerve them, not that my mc minds that one bit.
Same, Hugh. The game 1 pointed out how they laugh of your weakness when you don’t raid them so I thought winning the battle with phalangites host is a way to put an end to that.
Oh it’s ends that you go from being seen as a joke to a threat and I’m going to guess unless you can talk them down in 2 a threat that both rebel noble factions might try to something about
It is wise to have a ally with the merchants as a slave mc in game 1 to game 2? I mean to they really support the anarchy around them and the slaughter of the noble of de merre is death?
And what can the mc slave or noble should ally in game 1 and game 2 with the Helots, Yeomens,Nobles, priests and merchants if maybe the abhuman halassur empire or Nyr?
Quick followup question: once he replaces the Hegemony with his new empire (or koinon, depending on the playthrough), what’s your MC’s envisioned tax policy?
So far, I vaguely remember that your “all religions can fairly compete with each other” policy involves stripping of the Xthonic priesthood of their tax-exempt status, but are there any other details you’d like to share?
Is it just the reputation for keeping guest right that concerns your MC, or does the reality of putting in the hard work (of consistently upholding guest right/hospitality) also matter as well?
E.g. Might your MC consider occasionally pursuing the ‘Tywin Lannister’ route of outsourcing a Red Wedding-style betrayal to a behind-the-scenes ally? (thus claiming plausible deniability in the process)
Do you think that you can present enough of a “we’re going to be the winning side” impression to win over (pragmatic) Teren in the long run?
(especially if you entertained the idea of your new world order preserving a comfortable balance of power between your meritocratic “new generation” elites and the few surviving “old guard” hereditary aristos who took a chance on allying with your MC)
When you phrase it like that, it gives me high hopes that Elery will support (or at least understand/tolerate) MC’s potential decision to ally with Phaedra in the later games (aka switching gears/goals from tearing down the Hegemony to reforming the Hegemony).
If not for the incompatible genders/orientations, I would have recommended pairing your MC together with Cerlota; these two characters are definitely peas in a pod! (given their shared ruthlessness and Cosmo leanings).
Anyways, what about Yebben? Is he smart/likable enough to be ideal boyfriend material for your MC?
Amplifying your rebellion’s networking/recruitment reach.
(to a significant extent that couldn’t be achieved by playing safe/merely hiding out in the woods)
If Cerlota tries to bring up the “break a lot of eggs to make an omelette” analogy (as her justification for unleashing a WMD), then my (more cynical and less trusting towards Theurges) MCs will brush her off as “a messy cook.”
Are you planning to drop all of the Hegemony’s existing Wards in favor of your “self-sacrifice Theurgy-powered canal” plan, or are there a few handful that you would like to keep preserved? (e.g. the ward protecting Erezza from Halassur)
Does your MC have any aspirations of making a new empire of his own, or is he happy enough to settle for being a kingmaker when all is said and done?
Your current phrasing seems to suggest the latter, in my opinion.
I tried googling this, and I still don’t understand what the acronym stands for. Could you please clarify?
This past quote from Havie may prove to be relevant: “But even if you fought off the army sent to destroy you in the wilderness, that still leaves you miles from the point where any noble in Grand Shayard would look at you and think “they’re going to beat the Thaumatarchy”. Even sympathizers would still see you as a helpful distraction off on the fringes, depleting a bit of the Hegemony’s strength, rather than the core rebellion. Change comes from power centers, not from the periphery, everyone knows that! (Or at any rate, just about every noble believes that.) And unsympathetic nobles like the de Firiacs wouldn’t even grant you that much respect.”
Eh, last I checked, Abelard didn’t mind. (During the Jailbreak route)
In fact, he goes out of his way to equip your guys with Theurgic spears!
I suspect that the merchants will have mixed feelings about a high-anarchy MC. On one hand, too much anarchy means that the atmosphere is too violent/unstable to safely conduct trade.
But on the other hand, since high anarchy dismantles/weakens the existing institutions of the Hegemony, maybe the merchants also see an opportunity to exploit the chaos to become more wealthy/powerful in their respective post-Hegemony nations.
(perhaps to the extent of supplanting the hereditary aristos to become the new elites of the post-Hegemony nations)
I’d like to see more details about your Game 1 build/decisions before I can advise you on which Game 2 factions would be most compatible with your MC’s vision.
Well I am savage wisard build and my allies are Helots, Yeomens and my enemies are noble, priest and Merchant also my reputation are high ruthless, skeptic and homelander,and last my anarchy is high like 51. And his goals are all Noble and the karagon empire destroyed and his people free from slavery.
I sadly think all mc’s will be forced to adopt some sort of regressive taxation as the system is too pre modern and primitive to really implement progressive taxation, which is why it is important to get enough of the telones and merchants on board. In general the more legible mc can make the population in the areas they control the better our options for the new tax system and bureaucracy will be. So it is far too early to speculate on that.
This is something I can say, my mc will definitely tax all religions equally and none will be tax exempt, while spiritually the population should be as free as reasonably possible within the ambit of lawful religions to choose the one they feel suits them best my mc will seek to tax religious organisations for the social clubs he sees them as and also to prevent them from amassing too much worldly power.
Both as my mc already has his helot origins working against him here, tempting as an outsourced red wedding type thing might be I don’t think he could get away with it and there are other, better ways to get your rivals dead anyway that don’t involve tampering with the guest right.
Depends on if my main mc is going to engage with the Leaguers in the first place in the Shayard bits. If he does I think the feat of bringing both the ward down and a Xaos storm to the heart of Shayard can be made to count for something.
They would still need to overcome the theurge versus slave animal barrier, but yes, more could possibly have been possible if she’d been gay and male.
We’ll just have to find out in the next couple of games, won’t we? I will say that right now there is no particular ro that immediately jumps out of the bunch for my primary mc. But then this is not a romance game and it can get lonely at the top anyway.
Game 2 Chapter 3 appears to be limiting our “time spent” to two primary Grand Shayard factions (assuming that the “game’s code” screenshot that I found on Discord is credible), and your first faction choice feels pretty obvious (in my opinion): “The drudges and day laborers who work the manufactories of the city, load/unload trade goods at the river and seafront, and engage in petty smuggling/crime to make ends meet.”
(And PS: if you slaughtered Horion and Linos, your MC will gain massive credibility/reputation boosts with the drudges/day laborers, since they absolutely despise the Leilatous.)
Anyways, with the first choice now (presumably) picked by you, that leaves the second allied faction choice up for debate.
Quick followup question: is your MC hostile towards all nobles, priests, and merchants (by principle/knee-jerk reaction), or might a handful of compromises/unexpected alliances be formed with certain subfactions (of those hated groups)?
The mainstream/law-abiding merchants’ guild probably hates your guts too much to (willingly) work with you, but perhaps the more unsavory merchants (who are deeply involved with organized crime) may see your MC as a potential partner (and source of opportunity/profit), especially IF your MC could plausibly help out those merchants replace the aristos as the new elites in the post-Hegemony chaos.
Alternatively, why not infiltrate Grand Shayard’s nobility as a freeborn tradeperson? (and then fraudulently position yourself as the “lost heir of the de Syrnons,” thus claiming both leadership of the Laconniers AND the Shayardene throne)
It’d be quite the delightful irony for blissfully ignorant Homelander aristos to bow down to your helot MC, right?
Perhaps the Laconniers will be more useful to you as mouthpieces (rather than becoming your next pile of aristo casualties/corpses)?
And if you want to treat the Laconniers as genuine allies (rather than mere pawns), maybe you guys could disregard each other’s aristo/helot upbringings to bond together over a shared “hard nationalism” worldview (being mutually “angry about the watering down of true Shayardene identity by the invaders’ culture”).
As for the Xthonic priesthood, the wiki mentions that they have a “secret branch of heretics.” If you didn’t ravage the priesthood too badly in Game 1 (merely inconveniencing them instead of antagonizing them into becoming “implacable enemies”), AND you were able to bribe priests during Game 1 Ch 4, perhaps you might be able to co-opt the Game 2 heretics to promote your Skepticism movement?
But perhaps the most useful “second faction choice” for you (in my opinion) are “the foreigners in the Merchants’ Pale.”
You’ll definitely want to deepen ties with Jevahir, the Nyrish warrior/spy/diplomat (since the atheistic Neres (as a whole) will most likely be very supportive of your Skepticism-driven movement).
Likewise, it would be very helpful to cultivate a relationship with the Abhumans (M’kyar, Laj-jas), so that your Wisard MC can learn plenty of useful self-sacrifice Theurgy techniques. (while also learning certain Abhuman techniques that will let you create better/more efficient Plektoi ).
You’ll also meet Halassurq agents in the Merchants’ Pale, and my opinion on how you should handle interactions with them is a bit mixed. You and Halassur share a common goal of ravaging/pillaging Karagon (and because the Laconniers are also allied with Halassur, you could further bond with the Laconniers over that common connection/benefactor), but at the same time, Halassur’s interest in dominating/invading Erezza makes it a horrible partner to ally with (in Cerlota’s eyes).
So anyways, to simplify/summarize things, you can ally with either Cerlota/Erezza or Erjan/Halassur, but not both (in the grander scheme of things).
Does this overlap with your earlier-mentioned “Sauron-like” ambitions of building a new empire, or will your MC instead be content to consolidate power in a freed/independent/united Shayard?
And how far does your MC’s definition of “his people” extend? Does it only refer to his fellow Shayardene helots/patriots, or might he later expand his vision towards freeing all of the Hegemony’s helots?
If he doesn’t give a damn about non-Shayardenes, then perhaps your MC now has convenient targets to Harrow (after the Hegemony has fallen, and the time has come for nation-building/tearing).
I don’t quite yet have a definitive picture/grasp on how a neutral Homelander/Cosmo reputation will impact your rebellion (by late Game 4/early Game 5), but I can at least inform you that the Leaguer aristo faction (in Game 2 and beyond) “will tend to like neutrals and Cosmo-light more than strongly Cosmo MCs.”
And this attitude extends to his own Skeptical/atheistic group of supporters, correct?
(Or might he instead play favorites here, in order to amass enough power to decisively secure the elective emperorship of his envisioned koinon, or alternatively become the “Mao-inspired” chairman of the new empire?)
Alternatively, do you have plans to initially rise on the back of the atheistic movement, and then later phase out its power? (in the name of your envisioned religious freedom policy)
E.g. appear the reasonable party by offering your opponent a bargain (that you covertly know/expect will be rejected), and then vanquish your “barbaric aggressor” opponent in honorable/direct combat afterwards? (while brushing off your detractors with “Eh, at least I tried talking before shooting!”)
Or did you have cleverer, alternative methods in mind? (That I haven’t yet considered)
(My imagined random, “small talk” post-Storm dialogue from Teren)
Teren: (looking at the carnage with binoculars) Welp, there goes my favorite bistro/hotel; I guess you owe me one (for looking the other way)! So anyways, let’s talk business!
Eh, tbd honestly. He doesn’t really have much planned atm on the matters of statecraft, he’s too small a fish to really be considering how to run a nation.
If you put a gun to his head and asked, he’d be fine with crowning someone else and being some sort of Prime Minister figure.
AToH is A Tale of Heroes. It is a wip. This is Havenstone’s thread so I’d rather not go into further detail about it here.
And what if the “done at gunpoint” request involved being granted temporary absolute power to solve a crisis, aka the Cincinnatus trope?
“A new power is rising! Its victory… IS AT HAND! This night, the land will be stained with the blood of ̶R̶o̶h̶a̶n̶ Karagon! March to ̶H̶e̶l̶m̶’̶s̶ ̶D̶e̶e̶p̶ Aekos! Leave none alive! TO WAR!”
For Game 1, specifically, our treatment of Bleys (and his family) shapes Bleys’ reactions/body language towards being complimented by MC (when Bleys addresses his plan on how to make more money from the “previously considered un-fenceable” Architelone raid’s loot).
Beyond Game 1, mistreated Bleys will probably become a scheming traitor during a later game, while well-treated Bleys (on the other hand) will probably stick around to support MC’s post-Hegemony new world order.
but one I don’t think it makes that huge of a difference if it’s just a army of peasants to the Nobles and two the only thing that I saw in the code is that the game say a few things about you having more yeomen then helots if you did the prison route at the beginning
