They won’t view the nobles as responsible, they know it is theurgic doctrine and theurges are blessed by the angels. They are fighting a rear-guard action on this, without our and other rebellions upsetting the apple cart the doctrine Zebed is already preaching would have become the official line within a generation or two that helot love is fundamentally different from the love other castes know and exclusively hetrosexual and reproductive in nature.
The animal welfare faction is uniformly useless and incredibly patronizing. My mc has great contempt for them.
The church does not seem to tax directly in most cases, they just get a lot of the spoils of the current tax system. A fundamental principle for my mc is therefore the separate the state from organized religion and have it set up (and police) a more diverse and pluralistic religious market of lawful religions.
Yep, presumably unless you kill him in game 1, Havenstone changed his mind on the kid always dying off-screen.
Rehabilitation through labour and self-criticism, same as all criminals.
There will likely be plenty of lawful religions though since the only qualifications are that they cannot preach slavery or caste systems and must at least be tolerant of gay people…and the third and unmentioned one is that no single one may get too powerful or aspire to too much worldly power. The policy will even tolerate reformed branches of Xthonicism as long as they renounce the caste system and slavery. Hopefully we can split the nighmare organized church into at least 1337 different denominations with most of them hopefully being lawful.
Would Ganelon be alive if you go down the INT 2 healer route because I can’t remember if there is any mention of him. Being impaled and in a mad dash to heal your arm doesn’t leave many questions like is Ganelon alive.
I don’t know if this was answered on the uprising thread, I’m on 1150 of 5125, either I’ve missed it or haven’t found it yet.
On this one, Caroline told Zvad of her suspicions after the raid on the merchant town having high casualties and Zvad kills Breden after the poisoning. Which means that Elery doesn’t hate Caroline.
I’m back, and have read through all hundred of the posts since I last commented. Suffice to say, my thoughts got out of hand, so for ease of organization, I’ve divided them up into 5 distinct parts, which I’ve bookmarked here. (1/5) focuses on democracy and the post-Hegemonic world; (2/5) is a miscellaneous set with some gameplay/code-diving notes; (3/5) is all about religion with some aesthetic theorycrafting at the end; (4/5) is about the Seracca; and (5/5) closes things out with some discussion of the setting itself. Replies are not arranged in chronological order; and no pressure on anyone to reply in turn.
(1/5)
A future where people look back on the Thaumatarchy with fondness and nostalgia is possible, which is why it’s up to those who survive it to not forget the tragedies it created and to prove the wrongness of the Hegemony through the new world that emerges.
After all, even as — especially as — rebellions take power, there will be those who’d rather have the ‘simpler’ days where despite living under oppression, they didn’t have to worry so much about civil war and famine, and where not standing for anything was the status quo. And, of course, those who’d unironically suggest that the Thuamatarchy is worth preserving. Best that these people not be the ones who tell the stories for generations to come.
That said, the fall of the Western Roman Empire might not be the most accurate parallel for what’ll happen. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that many people here have drawn analogies to various periods of Chinese disunity, as recently as the Chinese Civil War (and subsequent failures of the Communist Party), probably in no small part because that’s a case where an imperial state and identity persisted despite collapsing many times over. And what’s noteworthy about those is that disunity could last for decades and even centuries. Our story is inherently limited to the single lifetime of our protagonist, and it’s difficult to say what their legacy will be.
For example, I’d hypothesise that should a state with imperial ambitions secure the bulk of Shayard, Erezza, and technological + administrative aspects of Karagon (that is to say, looting Aekos, or what’s left of it), that Great Power would be well-positioned to eventually become hegemon of the continent for a time, even if it doesn’t immediately ascend to that role amidst the anarchy. Ultimately, the only way to tell is to see things through to the end. Revolution is in practice far more than theory.
Erjan: whistles innocently
Time will tell if Tevqar’s got that Mehmed II in him…
So, moots. They’re a thing, and I think they’re ultimately ideal for the emancipated helotry, even more so than an apella. After the war is won, we can consider restricting participation, but 14 is the better number for this historical moment.
It all comes down to demographics: the helotry skews young. Out of the 292 helots in Rim Square, 178 (61%) are children, with our protagonist estimating the number below fourteen as “every second or third one you see”. These are the people who haven’t broken under the Hegemony’s whip; the people who are most open to accepting new ideas and shattering old ones. And they’re the ones who are going to inherit the mess we create.
They deserve a say in the decisions that will shape their lives and their future, and they’re the ones we should want speaking up and becoming politically conscious. And because so many helots are so young, for the generation that follows emancipation, the rate at which former helots enter the voting population is likely to be faster than that of any other demographic.
Besides, it is kind of silly that neither we nor Breden are old enough to participate in any apella before the end of Chapter 3 and have to do the song and dance of Zvad asking us to speak on his behalf. The same would be true for many of the young helots who were the catalyst for this rebellion, and they’re the kind of people we ought to empower across generations.
For me, at least, where the work ought to begin seems to be at the local level, building participatory institutions that interface directly with the people, in the process nurturing political consciousness that can grow into national institutions. And ideally, this proto-democracy would emerge from those already-existing cultural memories: for Shayard, the moot. For Wiendrj, the Oath-Holder. For Nyryal, perhaps the Nyrnakan Republic, or even hearkening back to their nomadic era. For Karagon or Erezza, it’s harder to say simply because we haven’t learned enough about them, but there very well could be a republican (albeit probably not democratic) tradition rooted in their city-states. I find this a lot more natural than trying to, say, impose an apella on all nations.
This is disunity, and probably a barrier to any imperial-scale solution more unitary than a continental NATO (an alliance of free peoples) would be, but I’d rather bet on homegrown democracy than one demanded by those who hold the monopoly on force. The shape of it would be different, but the ideals of freedom and emancipation the same.
Trouble is, protecting that vision probably demands a lot of power. But we’ll cross that broken bridge when we reach it.
(2/5)
You may have already caught this fun detail, but throat singing makes a cameo appearance through the Whiskered Hawk, likely inspired by Khöömei.
“Our ancestors sang so,” in Jyrrek’s words.
In short, I agree and I imagine the Xaos-lands must be beautiful when not ravaged by hellstorms.
“Literacy” is one of those weird variables that’s simultaneously concrete and made abstract as a concession to gameplay, and as a result, both interpretations are valid in the absence of authorial comment, but there’s an elegance to it only counting adults that I find appealing. My justification goes into the exact mechanics of how literacy is calculated by the game, and you might not want to have that elucidated, so I’ve left it under the spoiler tag.
For every rebel student in one week, you gain 1/10th of a literate rebel. You can interpret this as it taking on average 10 weeks of study for a rebel to gain basic literacy; or as 1 out of every 10 students having the aptitude to pick it up in a week. The ‘truth’ of the matter is somewhere in between.
For example, assigning the bare minimum of 2 per week leads to 18 worker × weeks, rounding up to 2 literate rebels. This intuitively makes sense. But if for just one week, you assigned 50 rebels, then it stands to reason that at least 3 of the 5 literate rebels gained learned enough in that one week. The ‘reality’ is based on the relative weights of these scenarios.
Children are a flat weekly bonus; for every child, you gain 1/100th of a literate rebel. In practice, that’s roughly the equivalent of 17.8 bonus rebels studying per week (Naomi and Jerome Merryweather don’t make a meaningful difference because they arrive too late).
The elegance emerges when we look at the lower bound. Assigning 2 rebels to study each week, including the bonus from children, makes the weekly gain of literate rebels 1/10 of 19.8: rounding up to 2 literate rebels per week of study. This means you can’t gain more literate rebels than total students, assuming each week was different students.
Importantly, the natural number breakpoint where this becomes the case for 178 children is 2 rebels per week. If you could only assign 1 rebel per week, then at most you’d have 9 rebels who studied at all, but you’d gain 17 literate rebels, disproving the hypothesis that it only counts literate adults. But the game is coded to prevent this contradiction from happening. This serves as a mechanical explanation for why you can’t assign fewer than 2 people weekly.
This interpretation has narrative weight too: eventually “Your more experienced students understand enough now to help others get started”, and since the children are studying this every week you assign the task, they build up experience that can help your rebels learn faster and also provide motivation. Here, it makes sense to have diminishing returns on effectiveness for larger study groups as well, since you’d be spreading their attention across more pupils (this is roughly the argument for a low student-faculty ratio). The idea of Pin Thatcher being head TA of the literacy class is also too spectacular an image to pass up on.
As a consequence, this does mean that maximum efficiency is achieved at 2 rebels per week assigned to alphabeta: diminishing returns start immediately. Some guides have noted this for years now. And these diminishing returns pose a major challenge to getting a high overall literacy rate for the band itself. To raise, that ratio, well, that’s when we get into the unorthodox techniques of a malformed objective function.
Since literacy rate is a ratio, increasing the number of literate rebels isn’t the only way to raise it: you can also reduce the total number of rebels. We can take this fact and align it with another: Korszata and Bjel’s Wiends, all 22 of them, are literate. So the smaller the Whendward Band is when they join, the larger the effect they’ll have on literacy rate. To avoid this, we’d need constraints (e.g. max literacy rate while having at least X rebels) or a different metric altogether, such as total literate rebels.
That said, there is actually an obscure bug that enables infinitely scaling literacy in Uprising. I consider it mostly harmless, though, considering how rare the circumstances are to have it happen.
A seemingly simple question that exposes some of the complexity behind how the Hector encounter is coded, because it’s seriously impressive how much is in there. The most nested segment, I think, is confronting Ganelon before he dies, with a whopping 25 tabs at its deepest point. But to answer your question:
I think there’s always the possibility that Ganelon survived on the healer route. Or in other words, there does not exist a possible healer world where Ganelon is guaranteed to die. While the code exists for a perfect victory (all veneurs dead with no casualties), it is barely not possible to have a strong enough ambush to achieve it on a healer path. Sharpening your outlaws’ spears (a prerequisite) prevents you from using other, more effective Theurgic techniques; and while de Firiac is usually better at the ambush than Kal because of their hunting experience, for the healer path specifically they get a penalty to make them equal to Kal when they delay the pursuit to take care of you.
That means the best outcome is that “Three of the veneurs crawled off wounded. All the rest are slain” — meaning Ganelon very well could’ve been one of the survivors.
At the end of the day, these are early capitalists, and we’ve seen in history how the old aristocracy can be overtaken by the new aristocrats.
Alaine does mention restraint in not attacking “merchants or our noble clientele” as a positive, and the merchants we’ve encountered so far dislike the more violent means of administering vigilante justice that rebels offer. And like the aristos, they love it when someone robs the taxmen and eye recruiting the taxman with suspicion. But that’s just a matter of first impressions, getting your foot in the door. At the end of the day, what merchants often care about is their business, and their alignment with the aristocracy seems less out of loyalty and more out of a fear that whatever happens to the aristos could very well happen to them. And fittingly, for all but the most silver of tongues, building inroads with the merchants is chiefly about proving yourself ‘useful’ (i.e. profitable) and ‘reasonable’ (i.e. listening to them).
Mechanically speaking, you can gain the support of all five of the major factions in Uprising (if you’re playing as an aristo), and aside from that it’s all too easy to pick a single scapegoat and unite the rest against them. Such a playstyle can still engage in violence and destruction, just all focused against a single target.
(3/5)
Linos is a fascinating mess, and his teachings about compassion are no different in my opinion. Tell him that your rebellion will succeed because “Others had some hesitation…some limit to what they would do to destroy their enemies. We won’t.” — he’s rendered speechless and visibly shaken, likely understanding that his and Horion’s lives are in real danger at that moment. As for the Doorways of Xaos, that’s something he’ll only discuss with an aristo, and it’s clear why:
“And yet…compassion also makes us flinch from the sacrifices that are necessary to preserve Order. Compassion lies behind every misguided attempt to free helots, to end Harrowing, to make peace with the Xaos-loving nations beyond the borders of Hegemony. The highest virtue, and the greatest danger.”
— Ecclesiast Linos
He doesn’t want this rebellion chasing that dream of freedom for all, or a world without Wards, or a world without Harrowing. He criticizes the ambition and scale of the empire as hubris, greed, and decadence built on a foundation of unjust violence; that could make him an ally, but only so far. Even if he’s a rebel, he’s still an Ecclesiast, and a confidant of the Archimandrite, high priest of Shayard. He’s a part of that entrenched power structure — and of noble descent as well. Ecclesiasts like Olynna have a sword hanging over their head with every compassionate act they take, and even she lived with a sad acceptance of Harrowing and the injustices of the world. This ‘kindness’ from above can only go so far.
Instead, we can look to the Diakon priests, who are closest to the helotry. They’re the ones who witness the aftermath of every Harrowing; they’re the ones who abandon their posts to lead helots to freedom in your (devout) rebellion, even if that rebellion is despised by the priesthood at large. They’re the ones willing to believe in religious reformation, and especially Inner Voices: “We’ve seen the least and the lowest respond to the Angels’ word, saying it’s what they’ve heard in dreams or the silence of their hearts. We’ve seen the leaders guided, and the sick comforted in their last hour.” When the Archon comes a’hunting, it’s the Ecclesiasts who rally a mob to kill us; it’s the Diakons who send us crucial intelligence about the Theurges.
For a helot rising, it seems we ought to focus on them instead. They’re distant enough from Hegemonic power; as a class, they have far more in common with the free peoples of the towns and cities than the Ecclesiasts playing the political game; and they’re more willing to flirt.
Flirt with religious reformation. Yeah, that’s where that sentence was going.
Yeah, to add onto this @mshan95032, we can look at some historical examples. The Investiture Controversy (a true understatement of a name) comes to mind, as a western European conflict between church (the Roman Catholic one, fresh off schism with the Eastern Orthodox) and monarchy (chiefly the Holy Roman Empire). Yep, there’s a theme that certainly never came up again in European history.
Long story short, the church wanted to be solely in charge of appointing bishops and abbots and future Popes, taking away that role from the monarchy. Subsequently, Emperor Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII both declare the other to be illegitimate, and the Pope outright excommunicated the Emperor (three times). Let’s have a look at what he wrote, translated:
in the name of Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, I withdraw, through thy power and authority, from Henry the king, son of Henry the emperor, who has risen against thy church with unheard of insolence, the rule over the whole kingdom of the Germans and over Italy. And I absolve all Christians from the bonds of the oath which they have made or shall make to him; and I forbid any one to serve him as king. For it is fitting that he who strives to lessen the honour of thy church should himself lose the honour which belongs to him.
Then some aristocrats rebelled against the Emperor, they were defeated after three years, the Emperor chose his own Pope, attacked Rome to depose the old one who excommunicated him, that guy died in exile, and it would be another 30 years (with all the original parties dead, and one First Crusade later) before a compromise was reached.
Now, there are noteworthy differences between the Holy Roman Empire and the Karagond Hegemony; for one, the Theurges already exercise immense control over the church: the state is, in theory, a theocracy, where the Thaumatarchs and the Ennearchs are Eclectoi, Chosen of the Angels. This creates a significant power disparity based on each side’s willingness to kiss the Thaumatarch’s boots. Stilos Keriatou can get Olynna killed for heresy. Ecclesiast Zebed can have Alastors kill a young noblewoman for heresy. It’s all the same Hegemonic game.
They’re both so entrenched in the system that it’d make sense for rebellions trying to tear down the whole wretched thing to face opposition from both. But a more sellout compromising approach might offer one or the other a better deal, and that’s when any such supposed ‘natural alliance’ could easily falter.
A potential hurdle with this religious faux-freedom right now is that the standards of “no slavery, no castes, gay tolerance” really only include one extant ‘religion’ in the gameworld, the Seracca’s faith. The Forgotten Gods might qualify on the basis of us knowing nothing about their prescriptive belief system, but they’re also, well, forgotten.
That is to say, this “more diverse and pluralistic religious market of lawful religions” seems overly dependent on these compliant religions not only coming into existence but also becoming a prominent enough force that the unrest that arises from outlawing non-compliant religions is manageable. Not an impossible bet, but one that seems more challenging unless the rebellion is actively supporting and engaging in this religious reformation. Making something more pluralistic than the Thaumatarchy is trivial; but how pluralistic would this future be? That’s a much trickier question.
It does, at least, address the feature of religious freedom that protects harmful doctrines and allows them to flourish.
This is a fascinating perspective for me because I’ve never once believed that some higher power in the narrative was responsible for the earthquake. But it’s not going to be proven either way; and in that void where only belief persists, what matters is how the belief shapes reality through action.
Of course, I’d argue there’s a difference in that someone could try to ascertain if the quake was manmade by studying the evidence. Theurgy is our only known mechanism for how it’d happen, and if so, it was likely done with aetherial blood. The viability (or lack thereof) of that mechanism can be empirically tested. And there could be records: the blood had to come from somewhere. There could be requisitions correlated to a time and place; there could be orders from upper management and witnesses at each step. The tragedy is that any such evidence might as well not exist. It’s in enemy hands, and by the time someone who cares could get their hands on it, it’d probably be lost already. It becomes just another tragedy without justice in some town whose name hasn’t even been remembered.
And yet that process and possibility can exist, and people can evaluate any such investigation with their own faculties. Arguing the will of ‘the Angels’ as rewarding this order, on the other hand, carries additional burdens rooted in tradition. There’s a circular nature to it: the earthquake could be interpreted as evidence supporting this paradigm, but that presupposes the paradigm’s existence in the first place. It comes from the mass belief and the seeming correlation with past events, more so than inherently arising from studying the event itself, foregoing other explanations. If the Order of the Hegemony should seem to reflect the Order of the Angels, maybe it’s because the Hegemony has the power to shape the world in its own image? Breaking that equivalency is a key source of rebellion depicted in the story so far: it’s how Linos balances his identity as both a champagne rebel and Ecclesiast; it’s at the root of both the Eclect and Inner Voices path. And one of the most promising reasons to spread the secret of Theurgy far and wide, consequences be damned, is to shatter the belief of Theurgy as being a divine blessing exclusive to the Thaumatarch and their servants.
I wonder if something like “the voice of a prophet” is an acceptable faith-neutral phrasing, particularly for those approaching it from other spiritualities (Halassurq, Seracca, Old Wiendish, etc.). “Prophet” can easily be used in a secular context too — not that kenosis is exactly irreligious to begin with. The word itself even has Greek roots. Though I’m personally fine with “speak with the Angels’ own voice”; even for a skeptic, it’s high praise.
I also feel like we haven’t seen the last of prophecy in this story, real or not, not just through Erjan and Dilek, but because that History article has had this “Oracle of Aekos” detail not mentioned anywhere else. Aekos-as-Delphi was already established through the omphalos, but there’s certainly room to toy with this aesthetic further: Delphi, on the slopes of Parnassus, sacred to Apollo and Dionysus (now there’s a surprise Nietzsche cameo, hello The Birth of Tragedy), an intertwined aesthetic that finds an easy home in a story about destruction and re-creation. Delphi, which some call the navel (omphalos) of Gaia (the Earth-Mother), while Xthonos too is an earth deity.
Delphi, where the sun slew a primordial serpent. A primordial serpent, which we might then associate with the Abrahamic tradition of the serpent of the Garden, later associated with Lucifer in Christian thought (of note, Hera’s daughter Eosphora being clearly adapted from εωσφόρος: Lucifer); or the even older serpent who took immortality from Gilgamesh at the end of his journey.
One of the posts I’ve long considered writing is a sequel (of sort) to my post about Vigil, but focusing this time on drawing connections between Cunning-Quick and Hera, particularly as thieves of fire and trickster deities. A dark spin on Prometheus, where blood magic is the ‘gift’ to humanity. It’s a fragile theory, barely held together. But I can see the aesthetic clicking into place. And that might blind me, of course, to the reality of the text; I certainly wasn’t able to write anything satisfactory to explain it.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. I say that as if discussing the wording of text that wouldn’t even be visible through ‘legitimate’ means until the fourth game wasn’t already far, far ahead of ourselves.
What sort of investment to the Seracca have in defending these trade routes? They seem pretty valuable, exporting luxury goods (most of which are inedible) and importing grain, but what we’ve learned about the Seracca so far doesn’t exactly suggest a naval tradition. Maybe some whale-Seracca? Seal-Seracca? Shark-Seracca? Speaking of sharks, this is the energy I’m sensing from what we’ve heard about Laj-jas.
That said, the world of the Hegemony doesn’t seem well-primed for much naval action in the first place. The central conflict is on one continent, and between the Wards and Theurges with their, ah, ability to rain down sulfuric fire on their enemies, naval military technology has probably been inhibited for centuries. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Theurges have developed their own version of Greek fire to wield against the Halassurqs and Corsairs. It does make me wonder if we’ll see a paradigm shift should the Halassurq Ward fall at some point…
…and if we’ll see other means of wielding water as a weapon against the Thaumatarchy. Uprising already had a small-scale dam breach operation, after all. As for the extensive canal system — who’s to say that grain and other trade goods should be the only things on those waterways? These canals link the continent, and when the speed of power projection matters, well; I’d be eyeing those barges as a huge logistical edge to whoever can control them.
The Seracca have been on my mind for a while but this is the catalyst right here.
I’m with @apple that, based on what we’ve seen and been told so far, the Seracca Federation is the unequivocal best state and most promising ally for our rebellion. At the same time, we haven’t really had the chance in-game to meaningfully criticize them (not that doing so to M’kyar’s face would accomplish anything); in part, because our protagonists are only just now becoming situated to the geopolitical perspective of the Federation. But as we peel back the nuances and meet more Seracca with their own views of the world, I hope we’ll get opportunities to call them to account.
At the end of the day, the Seracca strike me as, in part, inspired by high fantasy wood elves. This is not the whole of their identity, but the parallels add up. They’re a people of magic, long-lived with an even longer history that predates all contemporary civilizations, geopolitically neutral by choice. For a stretch, they may be named (Doylist) after the Saraca genus of plants, which notably include ashoka trees, sacred and mythologically significant. Though what’s not in question is that they live in the jungle, amidst nature. And I bring this up because they inherit many of the flaws that come with this aesthetic.
The Seracca Federation is a nation of privilege that has chosen to stand by and do nothing about the injustices beyond its borders. They refuse asylum and demand those they catch fleeing across the Ward to choose between Xaos or the Harrower. M’kyar claims the Seracca have nothing to fear from the Thaumatarchy’s forces, but to date they’ve stayed in the shadows, talking about injustice but doing barely above the minimum to help those who suffer because of it.
How many people could they have saved if they’d opened the doors of their paradise? If they’d granted safe haven to fleeing helots, how many might have been spared the Harrower or the Xaos-storms? If they’d fought to nip the Thaumatarchy in the bud, before the Wards went up, how differently might history have played out? Their inaction has fed the injustices of the world, and what little they’re doing now is no redemption. Of course there were reasons why they refused to take a stand, but for them to say that they rage at the Thaumatarch’s crimes against humanity on one hand and idle away trading luxury goods to the Hegemonic elite on the other reeks of societal hypocrisy.
And the worst part is that this might genuinely be for the better, because if one day the Seracca turn towards militarism and interventionism; well, that might not bode well for whatever new order our rebellion seeks to create.
(5/5)
A detail I haven’t seen mentioned yet regarding Yebben is that in the story, his inspiration is Salareo of Aveche, Mage-Bane, the Blind Theurge. As our protagonist speculates, “Whatever he learned, it’s presumably taught in the Lykeion of Aekos these days.” — potentially noteworthy, should those hypothetical teachings be helpful for the illiterate as well as the blind. But that’s not where the power lies.
Salareo proved it was possible, and Yebben saw himself in that story. Once the world sees a helot mage — once people break free of the lie that a helot could only acquire such power through dark pacts with Xaos — that’s when we might see more of that overlooked aptitude awaken on its own, for our institutions to find and nurture.
That’s the Bookend we’ve been waiting for. “Chapter 2: The Outlaws of Whendward” — struggling to not starve in the woods, buying barley off a small clique of shady merchants. “Chapter Whatever: Things Are Going Just Great, We Promise” — now you hold life and death in your hands. What’s even more fun is if our grain stores are the ones being attacked by armed bands trying to feed themselves (and their families?). I surely couldn’t imagine what it’d look like from their perspective…
That said, this train of thought has given me new appreciation for another potential gastronomic throughline: poaching. All those aristos with their forests full of game, primed for hunting. Sure, it’s not exactly sustainable to empty those woods, but people gotta eat. And if even the ‘compassionate’ aristos like de Firiac insist on executing every last one of the people who dare become poachers amidst a burgeoning agricultural crisis; well, that seems like a recipe for class war.
“My forebears might have held their land since Calebre, for all I know. Didn’t keep the aristos from whittling it down to nothing, backed up by Alastors at every step. Now it sits with one lord or another. Whose rights are we going to see restored when the Karagonds are beaten?”
— Alira Bowyer
The more I hear about Wiendrj, the more perfect a place it seems to be home base for a rebellion, and our presence along the Whendward Pass seems to be no coincidence in that regard. It took Hera thirty years to conquer the highlands, longer than it took to take all of Shayard. And should Wiendrj break free, I get the sense the Thaumatarchy would first have far greater worries in preserving Shayard and Erezza.
One day, those Wiendish Phalangites are going to have to make a choice between their masters and their homeland, and every single defector is a soldier trained by the Hegemony, one who knows their tactics and habits. What Wiendrj needs is an alliance with a nearby agricultural power to counteract post-Theurgic famine; our rebellion is primed to fill that role. With that, it seems eminently feasible to enact a turtle strategy and dare any imperial heir to try attacking. Especially if the Great Powers that emerge from the wreckage of the Thaumatarchy form an uneasy balance of power in the immediate aftermath, too preoccupied with guarding their flanks against each other’s imperial ambitions.
That is, of course, assuming that Wiendrj survives as a unitary political entity in the absence of the Hegemony; that’s easier said than done.
Shayard isn’t really a poor backwards backwater right now, and I’m doubtful that it will become one just because of industrial technology. As it stands, Shayard is home to the second- and third-largest cities in the Hegemony, with all the administrative, academic, and technological baggage that brings. In comparison to a place like Erezza, it may seem short on mineral resources, but it’s not devoid of them or the ability to access them. Steel and alchemical materials are major trade goods that Outer Rim merchants and nobility can obtain; there are merchants like Gorbel who focus on these goods and wildland miners who extract them. And what Shayard’s agriculture offers is a means to sustain a larger population, and to produce a surplus of valuable goods for trade.
Erezza is also hardly Siberia. It’s a fully-fledged state with technological parity while possessing a far more battle-tested military tradition. And good luck with the terrain. If ‘Golden Age’ Shayard couldn’t conquer Erezza in its city-states era, in my opinion it alone stands little chance of doing so now — unless it calls on Halassur. A two-front war with what may be the continent’s only superpower on the other end would probably stand a decent chance at subjugating Erezza, with the, uh, caveat that:
I just don’t see a good path forward that embraces both Shayardene irredentism and successful anti-Halassurq resistance. It just seems like more trouble than it’s worth compared to an imperial-scale approach that treats Erezza as an equal partner rather than a resource mine for the metropole’s industrialization. Choosing to forego political power in Erezza doesn’t preclude forging closer trade and security ties.
Also, this shouldn’t need saying, but colonies: bad. Let’s not have that blood on the hands of our post-revolutionary state.
I disagree, but I can see where you’re coming from. It’s important to remember that Hera’s innovation, the alchemical process to extract useable aether from other people, is more an academic and technological achievement than any singular grand act of magic itself — and that’s something often built on the shoulder of giants and the vibrant collaboration between minds. Aetherial blood production in bulk demands a state apparatus to do so, and without that, even the most brilliant of Theurges is limited. For something like the Wards, it still takes labor to lay the stones. To conquer anything, Hera needed armies who’d fight for her. She needed priests to spread her new divine word. Those traditions preceded her, and she likely emerged through those traditions.
Karagon was already a slave society before Hera; her actions codified it further, but had aetherial blood been first discovered elsewhere, the society that would emerge would likely still be horrible, but in different ways. Take Halassur: distinct gender roles were already normative in their society, and their method of harnessing aetherial blood reflected that. The world Hera created was born out of the world she inhabited, in a way that transcends the personality of “Hera” herself. From this perspective, Hera herself is rendered almost insignificant; or rather, the Order of Hera and the Order of Karagon become one and the same.
This can be interpreted through great man theory: the world (the Hegemony) now reflects Hera’s desires — supposedly — and it was her actions that made this happen.
Or we can say that the Hegemony is the world Karagon created, because they developed a technological edge and successfully wielded that to defeat their rivals. And we don’t know enough about how aetherial blood was discovered to say whether Hera was indispensable. Had it not been her, would it have been someone else?
Hera is a myth; she’s the founder, the figure who was made to define the era to come. I’d argue we’re a shadow of Hera’s myth, and like her the torch-bearer for a new world. That Hera is, in effect, a 6-6-6 stat character: the genius alchemist, the great conqueror, the reformer of religions. Too good to be real, really. Maybe she really was just That Good; and she was undoubtedly a genius for what she accomplished. But it seems far more likely to me that she was lionised by history (and propaganda) as a symbol of the Thaumatarchy itself.
There is one concession I’ll give to great man theory, though: gender equality. That’s one of the few areas where I think we can see the Hera behind the mask of rulership, because that’s “one of the Angelic truths that Thaumatarch Hera was Chosen to bring” — a change she brought herself through the power she wielded. And ironically it’s the only good thing to have come out of the Hegemony.
By the way, I would like to ask you a simple question. How many kilometers is the empire’s territory from one end to the other? I think it will have a big impact on governance, communications, military, and so on.
Well their trade relations would need to change, particularly since in my mc’s new order demand for frivolous luxuries would plummet, maybe not cease altogether as my mc has likely not got the political capital to waste on that but a new and less wealthy “elite” with different values would certainly do a number on trade. On the other hand the trade in basic commodities, food especially, and books might actually increase, assuming they have any of those to spare.
Doesn’t it?
It is better to have the resources you need to fuel your industry yourself than to have to acquire them at a significant markup through foreign trade that also render you super vulnerable to economic extortion, we’d call it “sanctions” today.
Ones that are likely supremely unequal in Erezza’s favour where we’d need to trade cheap crops for their finished industrial goods at significant markup. That is about is unequal as the trade relations the British imposed on China and a recipe for weakness with at best an aenemic industrial sector of our own.
At, again, presumably significantly higher cost and far less abundance and way more vulnerable to all kinds of disruption than what you could get from Erezza.
It’s not that you can get no industry that way but the size of the industrial sector would be far too weak and seriously reduced from where it needs to be to actually compete with Halassur if the vast majority of Erezza is not in the new state.
Shayard without Erezza in the current era is a recipe for a game-world equivalent of a mix of a petro-state and a bread basket like Ukraine, which would be an absolute nightmare scenario. Petro states are horrible to manage and too weak to really compete internationally without great power protection, whatever sham modern facade they put up to mask this does not hide that. Being a bread basked in addition to that just makes you doubly exploitable to more developed powers.
Not controlling sufficient resources for reliable industrialization, even worse. If that is what it should come to. But the mere act of having to source these resources through a long and vulnerable supply chain over the ocean from another continent is still far sub-optimal to just retaining enough of Erezza, particularly if we do not want to end up in a Halassur dominated world.
There is some potential in the Xthonic faith too if it is severely reformed, loath as my mc would be to admit to that. To get there you need to cut state support for it and decapitate the current leadership, this puts the diakons in the position where they need to actually minister to their flock for their own survival and financial security, instead of carrying out state directives if they want to survive of voluntary donations. That is liable to split the nightmare religion into a large number of competing denominations, some of which might actually be decent enough to qualify as lawful religions. After all the codex with the caste system was a pure hegemony imposed add-on and as for no slavery that just requires an interpretation of the “Shayardene” codex or simple morality. Gay tolerance is already largely baked in, except for the helot caste and even then that is a fairly recent thing among those priests who follow Zebed’s line. It is not and never was a problem for anybody but helots under Xthonicism.
If we could draw a line on a map to mark the border of our new revolutionary state, of course we’d want Erezza. My point was twofold: first, I believe the claim that Shayard cannot industrialize without imperialism is hyperbolic; second, even if Shayard pursued an aggressive imperial strategy to seize mineral resources, I question whether the foreseeable but unintended consequences make it so that a more diplomatic solution is preferable.
For instance:
This comparison is unconvincing to me. It seems like it begins with the assumption that Shayard is this non-industrial state, while Erezza is this industrial state, and then selects a historical example based only on those two features. For one, let’s not forget how different the world is today now that China is industrial and Britain lost its empire.
Shayard, along with likely all the other major Hegemonic cities, already has automation technology preceding an industrial revolution (“machines that look as elaborate as Harrowers, but turned to the spinning of wool, the grinding of flour, or the weaving of cloth”); while it’s fueled by Theurgy, the mechanical principles remain, as does the institutional knowledge needed to build and maintain such technology. What Shayard also has is an immense population with that accompanying economic potential, both in producing and consuming goods. For Shayard to be totally unable to industrialize suggests not maintaining the status quo, but actively entering a dark age.
This is why the assumption that Erezza will produce all the finished goods and Shayard will have nothing to do with it doesn’t ring true to me. Such a world could feasibly exist, but I have yet to see justification for why it must exist, as opposed to a more equal trading relation where both nations have industrialized and are integrated with each other’s markets.
Which brings us to the point of the feasibility of conquering Erezza.
I just have a hard time seeing how making Erezza the periphery to Shayard’s metropole won’t likely lead to a Halassur-dominated world, or at least one with Halassur greatly strengthened. Erezza is the first line of defence against Halassur, demanding an immense concentration of force at that border.
If Shayard tries to consume Erezza, what’s to stop Halassur from doing the same? Let the two bleed each other first, then skewer Erezza from its flank.
And that’s assuming that Shayard has the capability to seize and successfully control substantial Erezziana territory. Again, they didn’t accomplish this in a time when Shayard was the Great Power of the continent and Erezza was a set of city-states. With Cerlota being an Erezziana nationalist, we might suspect that any Theurgic edge Shayard has would be chiefly in numbers, rather than ability.
And again, Erezza is the nation that’s actively been at war (on and off) for the past three hundred years. To draw examples from the modern day, compare Ukraine’s military readiness in 2022 to 2014; or look at South Korea’s military readiness. Shayard has been a guest actor in Erezza’s war, and one that’s hardly done a good job at retaining those ‘heroes’. Herne, an accomplished soldier, was driven to crime and then forced beyond the Ward. Loane de Firiac, a skilled blademaster and officer, was killed by offended Hegemonic loyalists. Shayard’s present circumstances do not suggest a strong groundwork for military strength compared to Erezza; and that’s not even getting into the terrain.
Faced with that cost, it just seems like pursuing a union with Erezza diplomatically seems far more enticing a possibility. Things might change down the line, of course. But that’s where I see things now.
And no. Colonization is not the only path to industrialization, and the sacrifices made for the sake of resource extraction in our world have often been terrible; that I won’t budge on.
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For one, these nations are united under the Thaumatarchy. The Thaumatarchy that we’re going to overthrow, with probably years of revolt before that final collapse. I just find it unlikely that the geopolitical configuration of the Hegemony will survive unscathed enough to not have to put in significant effort, whether militarily or diplomatically, to preserve that unity.
And not nationalist. Imperialist. Which is what the Russian colonization of Siberia was, and continues to be (with Moscow and St. Petersburg forming a very clear metropole).
Yes. Therefore, if Shayard can obtain these resources, wouldn’t you agree that there’s a decent possibility that they would be able to utilize those resources to build some industrial-scale technology? If so, then the path to Shayard being a “backwater” non-industrial state is if it’s unable to muster enough resources to even begin this process at a meaningful scale.
So I brought up that Shayard already has some of these resources in the Outer Rim alone; not much compared to Erezza, but enough to suggest that we don’t know enough about the rest of the country to write it off as a mineral wasteland either. I also brought up trade with states like Erezza that do have these resources. I believe these are viable, and consequently view the claim of a backwater Shayard as an exaggeration. Not without merit, of course, but more a spin that can be used to justify policy (particularly imperialist policy) more so than a reflection of Shayard’s capabilities.
Being vital doesn’t make it not part of the periphery. All I’ve heard in this discussion is that Erezza is so valuable because of its mineral resources, and that they ought to be extracted to fuel industrialization in Shayard to create a Great Power able to fend off Halassur. Not exactly promising language for the Erezziana. What’s their end of the deal? What’s the incentive for them to be a part of this? Is it just fear of Halassur, given that we’ll be making a better world than them?
Hence my preference for trade on equal grounds, which is also what the Thaumatarchy is inhibiting right now by focusing on resource extraction to fuel the likely industrial lifestyles of Karagon.
We’re not choosing between Harrowing and colonization.
You seem to think we must all be Shayardene nationalists. Erezza, Shayard and the rest are already united, which is one feature my mc would keep where possible.
China is big enough to essentially have all the resources, including human, it needs, Shayard seems more precarious and neither population nor knowledge change non-availability of crucial resources, Egypt for example has a large population but not the resources or knowledge base to use that fact to full effect, Cuba meanwhile has good quality education but lacks basically everything else.
You still need the minerals and materials to build and maintain the things in the first place and for replacing a good portion of what is now theurgy fueled tech with alternatives that are closer to real world tech the demand for mineral resources would become even more intense.
You said it yourself, it is not the periphery but a vital part of any post Hegemony state, heck my mc’s desired capital, Avezia, is in Erezza. All the provinces have something to contribute, one of the most optimal sites to concentrate the non theurgy fueled industry would be the Wiendrj, particularly its lowlands due to abundant availability of water and, in much time, hydro power to drive it.
The Hegemony makes perhaps even more terrifying sacrifices already since they extract their chief resource through harrowing which is just about the worst death imaginable.
Colonization may not be the only path but for a long time it was cheapest and most reliable path as great powers would scarcely trade basic resources, just expensive finished products and the experience, technology and institutional frameworks to leap to things like the EU, or even the far more exploitative WTO are simply not present in the game world.
I think one of the major things with my MC is ultimately that I feel that as they see more and more of the world and hear more about how things were pre-Hera I think ultimately they’ll start to realize that things can’t go back to how they were. Karagond’s triumph changed the known world for better or worse.
I think a good comparison for where we are in an interesting term is we’re in a Han-Chu contention period. Hera’s inability to finish the job and her death meant that there’s this unfinished business. The Empire is also a heavily militarized state with Theurges that if there’s a general collapse of the Hegemony can quickly shift over to the offensive and seize the territories they used to hold.
Something I think is very viable to at least trigger an understanding is ultimately- the threat of the Empire. I said this in our RP yesterday- but what triggered the late-model HRE was the threat of a strong French State and the Ottomans. You might not need to do overt imperialism or colonialism- but I do feel that you can at least leverage a looser form of hegemony of the successor states by leveraging the threat of the Empire.
I don’t want to overly speculate or narrow my thinking down a path because there’s still so much my MC and I don’t know about the Hegemony outside my little speck of Shayard. All I know is that I don’t know if we can ever go back to what was or if it’s wise to do so with the Empire looming.
You would not be wrong. But a lot hangs on what’s taken to constitute a “favorable deal”; and “large segments” is consistent with plenty of different outcomes.
You can try to establish a system of moots/apellas for participatory decision-making by elected leaders; a suspicion of elites (aristocratic and mercantile) and attempts to keep those elites from gaining power through your new moot system; a centralized executive with a cult of personality; and xenophobia and persecution of targeted minority groups. Is that stew Jacksonian enough to count?
Certainly to other countries within the Hegemony – there will be dedicated chapters in Games 3 and 4 where you can choose to either consolidate your rule in Shayard or spend time in Wiendrj, Nyryal, and Erezza. You’ll also be able to influence to some extent the levels of political stability in the Abhuman Federation and Halassur.
If “modern police force” extends to some the earlier examples offered here – the High Constables of Edinburgh or the Paris Police under Nicolas de la Reynie – then yes, something like that will be possible. Important to note that the core idea of these early modern forces would be as urban keepers of public order, rather than “solvers of crimes” – more reactive than preventative or investigative.
Jury trial will be an option, yes. “A lawyer system” – probably not, if you mean a system in which most court disputes involve legal professionals other than the judge or other presiding magistrate. There aren’t and won’t be enough literate specialists to make that happen in your lifetime. Specialists in law will be rare, and all the more so if you end up remaking the existing religious law extensively into a secular code that priests won’t know and existing lawyers will need to relearn.
Something like that should be a reachable outcome. I’m not sure any of the potential Rump Hegemony factions would give up the Westriding/Coast (i.e. their fundamental food security) without a fight – and if you beat them, it’s likely that some of the peripheral factions in Wiendrj, Nyryal, and/or Erezza would be able to escape their sphere of influence as well. But if you hold on to Shayard militarily and then try to cut a deal where you offer grain for peace, the continent could stabilize into two imperial blocs plus a scattering of independent rebel statelets.
I’d note here that under the Thaumatarchy the priests are directly responsible for significant chunks of state administation, notably grain tithe collection (one of the major Hegemony-wide taxes), storage, and dissemination; canon law; and keeping/disseminating official records as (a) the largest uniformly literate class and (b) guardians of the printing techne. They’ve been the spearhead of some of the key “legibility” state-strengthening campaigns like giving surnames and promoting uniformity of weights and measures (for e.g. that grain tithe). So yeah, the Ecclesiasts are a close second to the nobles in terms of the actual admin capacity they bring as a class, not just propagandists.
There’s a terrific three-part series on ACOUP where Bret Devereaux looks at the extent to which this was true of Rome. The nutshell version is that (even discounting the ERE) much more of Rome survived the fifth century than the traditional “decline and fall” narrative suggests, especially when we’re talking about culture, knowledge, and identity…but that Rome’s collapse as a politically integrated trade bloc nonetheless sent agriculture and industrial production crashing, with devastating effects for the wellbeing of the average citizen.
raised eyebrow So…you gonna tell me so I can fix it? It may be obscure, but could be game-shattering as the benefits of literacy for state-building come to the fore in later games.
Negligible. For the most part, they let the Hegemony land its ships in Yludud, and trade there, with the Hegemony shouldering the whole risk of Halassurq/Corsair attacks on either leg of the sea journey. The merchant adventurers like Laj-jas who venture north also rest on Hegemonic security for any trades they arrange from the cities of the Hegemony. So far, the Seracca are fine with letting the Hegemony rule the waves.
Over 5400 km from Mlazyc Vale in Wiendrj to the Erezza-Halassur border in the east. And around 4200 km from south (the Abhuman Wardgate) to north (the fortress of Yanzir). There’s a lot of sea in the east, of course, so the total land area of the Hegemony is more like Australia (7.7m sq km) than you might otherwise guess from its more China-esque maximum dimensions. Still, it would take a Theurge about 34 hours of max-speed flying under good conditions to get from east to west.
It’s a good-sized continent, even before you add in the Xaos-Lands and other bits outside the Wards (another 4.9m sq km) and the Seraccan subcontinent (6.5m sq km). The Halassurq Empire has a land area of 8.1m sq km, composing about a quarter of its continent.
A Federal League is a good option for non imperialistic and hegemonic MCs who want to prevent the domination of the Empire in my opinion.
Federal Leagues along the Hellenic model comprised of a League Council that had delegates from every city-state, a series of judges who acted as arbitrators for disputes, and a Strategos for a unified military command.
They had issues of course in coordination and infighting- but overall for the most part they worked on preventing outside foreign domination.
But overall- I feel that this system might be close enough for the post-Hera world to accept.
This is what I see my MC’s thinking evolving towards over time from her sort of romantic provincial nationalism as she becomes more aware of the wider world during the rest of game 2.
I’m not sure if my MC’s fully sold on the idea of this provincial nationalism idea. Yeah, Shayard used to be “great” and if it wasn’t for that dastardly Hera we could have continued to be the dominant power! She’s skeptical about that overall. I think she sees herself overall as a citizen in the Hegemony.
Her misgivings are predicated on the fact that she’s not sure there’s any good and neat answers for the issues facing Hera’s national construction. Triggering a famine by ending Harrowing to wean the populace off of Theurgic magic is something that she won’t ever buy into because I suspect by the time she is in that place to make a decision like that she’s going to be looking at the Empire and will be deeply against anything that’ll trigger an internal revolt and famine while she stares down her main rival or other major successor states.
No we’re not because my mc definitely knows which one he’d choose.
It contains the preferred capital of my mc, Avezia, my mc will certainly do his utmost to bring development, including industrial to the capital region where such is feasible.
In contrast to the Hegemony who have set up a model to extract everything of value to Karagond and Aekos my mc actually favours more spread out industry and he’s certainly not opposed to industrializing parts of Erezza too, preferably the area around Avezia. The exception to that would be the border regions, where apart from the border defenses, roads and ports it would be preferable to not have critical infrastructure there in case the Hallasurqs do attempt something.
Erezza is also valuable for its anti Xthonic philosophers though they are, sadly, an historical curiosity now. It also seems to make the best wine.
And we have the option to be among the contenders who want to maintain an imperial scale state, as per the author, hence imperialists by definition.
That would require the tradeoff of digging up desperately needed agricultural land for the equivalent of a brown coal mine. Even if the resources are there better to it where the land is less valuable for agriculture. In addition it is more likely we’d face the same problems as Wiendrj and maybe even Karagon itself, lots of mountains that are worthless for (economical) extraction, at least with the technology the Hegemony has right now.
Logically Shayard’s other mountainous neighbours, Wiendrj and Karagon itself must also have resources in those mountains but unlike in Erezza where extraction seems to be relatively easy and straightforward (I imagine like parts of the Congo, where they said you could just dig with your bare hands and get gold, even if that was likely colonialist hyperbole it seems to have been only a slight exaggeration) maybe they are kilometers deep or maybe they are in the seafloor just off the coast. In either case the tech to extract those economically or even extract them at all, even if we knew the resources were there to begin with is likely to simply not exist yet in the game world.
It may be obscure, but could be game-shattering as the benefits of literacy for state-building come to the fore in later games.