Choice of Rebels: Stormwright (XoR2 WIP)

Choice of Games games CoG Works In Progress
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Right – I’ve just updated the Moody site with a revised version of the first chapter of Stormwright. The changelog I’m about to share with my editor has 69 non-typo edits noted, some of them reasonably substantial. The latter include:

  • The option to promote your religion in Sojourn, in direct competition with Erjan (or to start seriously learning more about his)
  • Revisions to the trauma dynamic, linking it more clearly to the events of Game 1 as well as to your abusive dad, and having it affect you more in the waking world
  • The option to undercut Herne’s leadership by revealing his plan to lead the Sojourners back into Storm-affected territory

plus a whole lot of tweaks to dialogue and descriptions, typo fixes, and clarifications, most inspired by your (and my editors’) feedback. The versions I just posted are roughly 30,000 words longer in total than the original draft. If you gave some feedback that hasn’t been taken into account, it might be because I had to limit my revisions at some point, but don’t completely despair of seeing it – I plan to hit some suggestions in later chapters, and/or in the “hanging out with my companions/romance interests” bits of Ch 1 that I have yet to flesh out.

With that out there, I’ll be throwing myself unreservedly into Ch 2. :slight_smile:

And to catch up on questions asked in the thread:

Yes. The “no more empires” MC will have to deal with the increasingly inescapable reality that Shayard in its current borders is itself an empire. And it’s unlikely that Shayard’s partners in a koinon would agree to let Shayard be the sole military authority, or to pay Shayard a special tax for maintaining their privileges. Those are imperial terms, not koinonia.

Either “6” is powerful beyond the capacity of language to convey, or the author failed to remember that he needed to write a total of seven states (including “0”), not just six. I’m going to go with the former.

Me too! Back in 2009, I wrote this about them in a meme about “15 books that will always stick with you”:

“As a kid, I tended to avoid science fiction unless it included princesses and lightsabers (i.e. fantasy with lasers). It took many insistent recommendations from a respected adult before I cracked open this impossibly dry-looking book about psychohistory and the Encyclopedia Foundation of Terminus. (I mean, come on). But as soon as I did, I was hooked. It was the first time I’d read a novel driven by ideas rather than plot, where the stories were resolved by the heroes harnessing vast social and historical changes and not by (say) an ill-timed stumble at the edge of a volcanic crater. It’s easy to see now that Asimov’s ideas about historical determinism are just another kind of fantasy, but I still enjoy them.”

Since I’m now writing my own series that will be resolved by the heroes harnessing vast social and historical changes, I’d definitely count the Foundation books as a formative influence. :slight_smile:

Afraid not. Maritime empires on that model only really work if you benefit from a military tech gap (e.g. in our world: mastery of gunpowder and the forts/ships that make best use of it) that allows you to hold your little fortified entrepots without being uprooted by the armies of the land you’ve invaded. For the MC to conquer and hold all the Erezzan and Halassurq ports in G5 would be less like the Portuguese taking Goa, Colombo, and Macao and more like if they’d tried to take over Venice, Bristol, and Cadiz.

Good question! When the de Syrnons were crushed 300 years ago, the quisling noble house who would become the first Hegemonic archons of Shayard successfully argued to Hera that they would be better able to control a unified Shayard than a Shayard split into two or three parts. As you know, they didn’t get to keep it all, but Karagon just peeled away at the borders rather than splitting the core province.

The “Loyalist” (to Karagon) noble networks thereafter successfully managed the integrated province to the Thaumatarchs’ satisfaction. The archonty’s scale kept uprisings in one part (e.g. the Cabel Rising) from ever spreading to affect the majority of its territory. Since then, the Laconniers have never been so much of a threat that the Hegemony would have seriously considered breaking up Shayard just for the purposes of dealing with them.

Much as I’m a fan of both, I think the connection between religion and cheese is a historically contingent one, and will not make the leap between worlds. :slight_smile: Government “cheese,” similarly, will not be among the Xaos-spawned horrors I write into XoR.

You’ve given fantastic feedback from the start, with verve and honesty. :slight_smile: I hope I’m not the only person who would have responded with gratitude to that.

Players who keep using their once-per-game stat boost to increase their Theurgic capacity will by next game be able to master the basics across all the “Sojourn specializations” and be advancing in higher-level skills, some of which will be in new focus areas. I expect that dynamic to continue, until an INT 6 character in the final game is focusing on skills that are nowhere on your radar at the moment.

Both your power and your capacity to do it without badly damaging yourself/others.

No, I don’t think that scaring Erezziano kids is ever going to be your top priority. :wink:

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You are a Saint Havie. Still being as awesome as when you started. Except for Breden, boo to Breden Satanas of Vatican-Switzerland :rofl:

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“The borders of purified Xthondom must ever expand. It was for this purpose I was Called and Chosen by the Angels. Their true reign on earth must be restored” - Caroline, whom I must stress, most certainly has no fanatical tendencies whatsoever.

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Me doing a Jeremiah II and condemning the Karagonds, Halassur and basically everyone else every couple of years (Jeremiah of Constantinople anathematised the whole of the Latin church over the Gregorian calendar alone a whooping three times between 1583 and 1594!)

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Does this mean that even if players decline to learn Serraca style Theurgy they can still pick it up later (and I suppose vice versa)?

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Hmmm. Does look like Cerlota is an Erezziano nationalist after all (I suspected as much). I am not surprised that she does not mind what must often look like the ramblings of a Shayardene nationalist MC. In a lot of ways they are driven by the same desire for their respective homes.

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Yeah, she’s really chill with “wizardry” for instance and just goes “let’s call it Magia since that’s what we’d say in my country” and then mentions “our powers of magia” etc

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Yep, I suspect my own mc who wants to ultimately keep together as much of the present Hegemony as he can geographically (albeit with a lot of administrative redistricting to reduce the current monster-sized provinces and give Karagon the kind of treatment Hungary got at Trainon) will ultimately be tougher for her to deal with.

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Sorry if this has already been answered, but what would a 6 COM MC have the ability to do?

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@Havenstone looking through the new set up for the gender variables, its a very welcome improvement! The “dys” variable being able to float alongside the different directions is especially good. My one question is, what do you envision the difference between genderopt 12 and 13 being? Both seem to reflect an agender identity, with 12 wanting physical nullification, while 13 is only social. Under the old system that makes sense, but under the new system it seems like it should be the same variable with desire for physical change toggled by “dys”?

As an additional question, seeing that convert_a and convert_h can be held at the same time, how much syncretism do you see being possible? Could you take a piece from every religion and make some universalist soup?

Also also, do you plan to add our relationship with other factions to the stat screen? It’d only be Sojourn for now, but could be handy.

Also also also, it seems as though you can’t bring up healxaos with Cerlota or in Sojourn. Intentional omission or simply something you didn’t get around to?

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Also also also also, the same goes for Vigil, which nobody ever mentions again after it happens. Maybe it’s Havenstone just subconsciously writing that anyone foolish enough to get close loses their memory as well as good hydration. Now that I think about it, the Wiends tradition of telling everyone “memory find you”, most notably said by Sybla in the first game seems a little suspicious now…

@Havenstone would you be able to confirm or deny whether Sybla is the “world’s most powerful ancient Goete” in the Vigil lair? :stuck_out_tongue:

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Would make for an interesting character arc for sure; although Ramidel would probably tell you she’s more likely a Hegemonic spy. It would at least explain why Zvad leaving gives the Archon’s army more intelligence.

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Yes, I think you’ll be able to get training in later games from Laj-jas and/or M’kyar if you choose. You won’t be able to master the “Sojourn specializations” of scent or fast movement without that training, and there will continue to be distinct Seracca and udud Theurgy at higher levels.

Run rings around the generals of the Hegemony. Deploy Theurges in a way that wins battles and campaigns, even though the MC isn’t themself a Theurge. Train deputies like Elery, Kalt, Radmar, or Pin to also be historically great generals.

First, I’m glad the new section reads as a move in the right direction, and as always I greatly appreciate your careful reading and feedback. As for your question, this is where the caveat I put in the *comment at the head of the section comes in. :slight_smile: I never intended this moment to read as the MC’s definitive choice of gender identity from a set and discrete menu of possibilities (though the impulse to read it that way is more than understandable).

The MC is too early on their journey for that, and gender identity too diverse and nuanced. If I tried to pack in all the possibilities in an up-front, locked-in choice that would tell you with precision where in the range of possible bigender/ genderfluid/ demigender/ androgyne/ agender identities the MC falls, it would read to me as unwieldy and implausible, the Gender Wiki sprung full-formed from the head of Zeus.

Rather, this is a set of starting points that felt plausible to me as ways a gender-nonconforming MC who’s never previously had a community of discourse around this might articulate their experience – hitting some major points of distinction to start the discovery off in (hopefully) the right general direction. These starting points will shape the conversations that a gender-questioning MC will continue to have with others, especially Jev, Laj-jas, and M’kyar. The MC’s sense of their identity can shift and change and become more focused in the course of those discussions. Some gender identities will ultimately be represented across a range of genderopt numbers, with the numbers representing secondary or minor variations on the same fundamental identity.

To conserve variables, rather than creating a separate “dys”, in my first version of the redraft I’d structured genderopt to use the 20s for dysphoria, so e.g. both 14 and 24 could be binary trans, and genderopt > 20 would be the check for dysphoria. But after a chat with Laguz, I came away convinced that the risk was too high-stakes (given the history of the fight over transmedicalism) of code readers thinking I was implying dysphoria itself created a distinct set of gender identities.

So: I didn’t write 12 and 13 with the intent of them being distinct gender identities. If they resonate at that level with anyone, I’m not going to argue; but my intent was just that they track two different plausible metaphors for a life beyond gender that might resonate with an MC in the gameworld. They may well end in a fundamentally similar agender place, with the primary difference being the language the MC uses to talk/think about it. I don’t want to lock them in as the dysphoric and non-dysphoric options; I’d like to leave open the possibility that in future conversations, a dysphoric MC might go “actually I want to be more like the Angels,” or a non-dysphoric one be like “ooh dragons.” But the choice banks felt like they were full enough for now.

Being a syncretist has to be possible. Universalist soup is too well-established as a tasty real-world option.

I have a mild allergy to relationship bars, whether with individuals or groups; more than most stats, it feels to me like they lend an immersion-breaking artificiality and precision, pulling back the veil that makes it feel like I’m engaging with a “real” character. Stat bars will also at times reveal shifts that read better as surprises (though I can’t keep people from spoiling themselves by reading the code, of course). I much prefer in-text clues when it comes to gauging the state of relationships.

By Game 5 faction bars will probably be inevitable, and maybe before then, but I don’t think I’ll roll them out this game.

There is now a bit of healxaos dialogue possible with Cerlota – see chaos.txt 16956ff. It’s a nuance on the conversation you could already have about the xaostwist. I considered adding the healing of Xaos in Sojourn but decided that (a) healxaos had been developed enough for a minor path that most readers won’t ever take, and (b) diegetically, it was plausible that the near-disaster with Veorn would put off the MC from trying it again.

Not any more! Search the text for *set cervigil true. :slight_smile:

frantic shushing sounds

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Please note, demisexual is not a gender identity. It’s a subset of asexuality.

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Whoops, sorry, fixed it. :slight_smile:

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I for one still think it’s an amazing achievement that even the most persistent of code diggers have yet to come to an undeniable conclusion of who the Rim Square traitor is, and have no doubt it will continue to stay that way as you bless us with more games :slightly_smiling_face: (Also, I know Breden survived xhis little drowning excursion. I can’t be fooled that easily!)

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I can’t imagine he would put the answers to all our burning questions in the code XD
We’ll probably have to wait a bit to find it though.

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Oh I didn’t mean bars per se, more just listing out like who you are allied with, whose your enemy, that sorta thing. Just so you can get a status report at a glance, no numbers.

It definitely is written as a more definitive choice, but its hard to judge without more content than the like three lines you can get after that choice. Will have to reappraise after Irduin I suppose. On another note, have you considered linking gender struggles into the MC’s other mental health struggles? I think there could be some potent synergy there, if you wanted to go that route.

Ah! Very sneaky, slipped past my quick scan. Valid to not develop it, though I do hope the tale can spread back across the Ward, especially for Eclect Theurges. Definitely a propaganda coup if you want it to be, doing miracles and all.

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Might (unemployed) Phaedra be repurposed to become your ‘Gorbachev’? (making ends meet by selling herself out to extoll the virtues of Shayardene cuisine/capitalism, aka ̶P̶i̶z̶z̶a̶ Shayard Hut)

No competition with M’kyar yet? Why isn’t she taking the opportunity to (more publicly) promote the virtues/tenets of the Nagyeh? (beyond the private healing session that she had MC undergo)

Is the impact purely limited to flavor text, or will MC start experiencing gameplay mechanic downsides, too? (e.g. skill check penalties)

Does Shayard have its own “indigenous population”? (similar to how the US has Native Americans, Australia has Aboriginals, and Japan has the Ainu)
I was trying to imagine “which Shayardene citizens/regions would be most inclined to push for independence, aside from the obvious Cabelite/Earlund answer from earlier discussions”, and the ‘hypothetical indigenous Shayardene’ was my next best answer.

Perhaps something less obvious/forceful will be more helpful (in place of vocally pushing for a ‘Shayard should be the koinon’s sole military authority’ policy).

E.g. Grand Shayard, under de Syrnon MC’s watchful eye, will host its own version of America’s West Point, gaining a reputation as the most prestigious military/Theurgic academy of the koinon. (and then broker close relationships between the Shayardene professors/wisards/generals/veterans and “new generation” foreign graduates, so that we gradually create a tradition of “generals from allied nations (typically) deferring to Shayard’s military expertise/advice”)

(And bonus trivia/historical connection FYI :slight_smile: : “Up to 60 international cadets may study at West Point at any given time. Eligible countries are selected on an annual basis by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Defense. The American embassies notify invited nations to nominate up to six candidates per country to compete for admission to West Point.”)

Is this ‘quisling noble house’ still alive/around to interact with in Grand Shayard? (or are they in hiding/dead, ever since they got replaced by the Leilatous)

But. but… imagine your joy at seeing our MCs having to deal with the consequences of a gameworld/population coping with lactose intolerance! Isn’t that horrific enough for your standards? :sweat_smile: :smiling_imp:

“How Kleitos holds the life of the Ennearchs in his hands,”

Assuming that the “life holding” factor is Theurgical in nature, might this method be a teachable technique for max INT MCs?

All hail Breden, Herald of the Eclect! :partying_face: (and an adorable “totally not a traitor (anymore)” cinnamon roll who should be protected at all costs)

@roodcross: Wait a minute, what about your plans for a decentralized koinon? This speech sounds more like “submit to my theocracy” demand than a “join my alliance” pep talk.

Doesn’t your plan/intended endgame for a defensive alliance rely on… I don’t know, (at least bare minimum) good relations with ‘everyone else’? (minus Erezza, which going to be thrown under the bus of your agenda)

Yay for Team (Soft) Nationalism!

“Bonasera… Bonasera… Cerlota, what have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully? Had you come to me in friendship, then this scum that ruined your daughter would be suffering this very day. And that by chance if an honest (woman) such as yourself should make enemies, then they would become my enemies. And then they would fear you.”

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Not all religions are proselytising.

Search chaos.txt for “set flashback 1” to find out.

As with real-life England and France, there have been so many waves of settlement and conquest going back into tenuously-recorded history that it’s hard to give a clear answer. It certainly has plenty of people all over who think they’ve lived in their villages since time out of mind…but those people speak many dozens of local dialects of Shayarin, and have wildly varying cultures.

I don’t think that happens because of a military academy. The deference and massive imbalance of military capacity we see between major states within the NATO koinon is I suspect only really possible within the strategic incentive structure of the nuclear age; and I don’t think the gameworld is going to see an equivalent. The post-Hegemonic world may have some small factions that are happy to accept your dominant role, but the big ones are likely to be more suspicious and assertive.

Yep. More detail in Ch3.

We’ll see. Kleitos might take that one to his grave.

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