Ya know I make all the jokes about basically just becoming more of the abhuman federation but it does make me wonder. What kind of transition would it take to basically become that. The wards would ironically become a non issue since even the lowest person would have some magic, but the political ideals would change on such a drastic level. Nobles won’t want “federations” they want their power back. Healots aren’t educated enough to even start that, yeomen might do well but still. How would we even begin that kind of change to their style?
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I didn’t mention that because I’m pretty sure the Free Cities of the Qalsa (Corsairs) have already developed it, but want to kick the tires on my conception of the Qalsa a little more before I commit. 
I think the smallest scale at which you could stabilize your realm is probably going to be the city-state of Corlune or Aveche – a single big city with its immediate agricultural hinterland. The next step up would be a backwater region like the Shayard Rim or a good-sized chunk of the Wiendish highlands. On either of those scales, you’ll have a lot of opportunity to shape institutions and try to shape/control your population, but you’ll be more vulnerable to invasion by bigger neighbors. The latter problem could be dealt with through alliances (with your neighbors in the case of the backwater state, probably with a more powerful non-neighbor who guarantees your security if you want to assert control of a small, highly strategic location) and/or through extraordinary battlefield success (i.e. be Frederick of Prussia with a substantial Theurge corps).
The next step up would be control of a non-backwater region like the greater Aveche region (i.e. the 4-6 Hegemonic districts north and east of Avezia, like Lacevra, Rinocci, and Uvigne – with a somewhat greater challenge if you want to extend west to include Amaccia and the eastern river-canal linkage to Aekos, giving you the power to tax or throttle half of Karagon’s food supply). A state like that might be around the same size as your backwaters, but the substantially higher population, greater wealth, and neighborly attacks/stirring-up of dissension will make it harder to bring under control. (On the other hand, such a region would also have higher literacy and, unless it’s been totally devastated by revolts, greater state capacity.)
By the time we get to a realm the size of Rim-plus-Southriding (almost as big as our world’s Turkey) we’re no longer in small-state territory. It will still be easier to control and shape than all-Shayard, let alone continent-wide, realms…but should be substantially harder than the smaller states.
It’s a good question, and by the end of Game 2 we should have quite a bit more grist for that particular mill.
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Am I correct in assuming that the Corsairs take inspiration from the Barbary pirates?
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In part, yep.
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Gotta start training Marines.
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I see I may be slightly ambitious with my definition of “small” 
Still, this is useful info. Would the MC’s core Rim Square rebels be willing to accept any ending where the Rim ends up in someone else’s hands, or are they gonna want to include it in any state they govern?
On a separate note, what options do you envision for MCs who would like to remain non-state actors, but still propagate influence. Say, for example, our religion builders. I can definitely see MCs who would want to leave all that ruling business to someone else and focus on spreading their cult totally cool and awesome new religion.
Alternatively, will we be able to combine the two? Building a state(lete) to base out of, but propagating influence among the populace beyond our borders? Might make us a bit of a pariah but its an interesting concept.
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This is really the absolute minimum that would be anywhere near viable, even as a last resort, for my mc.
For my mc those are just not viable as it would almost certainly mean having to tolerate and even cooperate with slavery in forms like letting visiting dignitaries and merchants bring their slaves into your territory and maybe even having to cooperate with an abomination like a fugitive slave act and allow slavehunters onto your territory when they should be arrested and reeducated on sight or in the worst case killed, but never allowed to roam freely.
That is true, but in my mc’s case the core would ideally be the greater Avezia region and there is likely, as we discussed, a significant difference in state capacity, capability and even presence between that core region and its peripheries during a post-imperial warlord/revival era.
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Depends on whose hands you leave it in, and how. If you let the Rim spin off to e.g. become the Liberated People’s Republic of Bredenia, you’ll get considerably more support than if you try to trade the territory to the Neo-Thaumatarchy for diplomatic favor.
The geographic scope of your influence as a prophet, advisor, eminence grise, etc. will be closely related to the scope of the faction you’re closest to (even if you’re not the one leading it) plus those who would count themselves as your allies. You’ll be involved in the decisions about geographic scope for the post-Hegemonic regime(s) you’re closest to, and can encourage them to think big or think small – and your priority there could of course be “what will help me spread my totally cool and awesome new cult” rather than “what will lead to the most stable long-term political order.” 
And yes, if you do want to lead a statelet, you’ll be able to have a wider sphere of influence, through factions allied or friendly to you elsewhere, or through particular paths of cross-border influence (economic, religious, koinon-ish).
While we’re talking about cheery post-Hegemonic scenarios, my world model is finally coughing out figures I’m happy to (tentatively) share around what happens, famine-wise, if Theurgy drops to zero post-rebellion – i.e. no blood used anywhere on the continent for harvest-boosting or grain transport, while the biggest noble estates that have been most intensively extra-harvested see a collapse in fertility levels. This version of the model assumes farmers shifting out of cash cropping everywhere to grow more staple crops and less flax, sugar, oil, and wine, but also some increase in land left fallow, because of social disruption.
Some headlines:
- The main area of Shayard in food deficit is the arid, urbanized lower Southriding (south of Vaulens) which would lack food for 4.7m people. Without Theurge-driven grain barges, Grand Shayard and Osterport would massively deurbanize as people move back into the parts of the realm that are still in surplus. The same would be happening in Shayard’s other big regional cities of Corlune, Rheges, and Veldrin, though those populations live much closer to districts that will still be in surplus. (The less-urbanized Rim is the only region of Shayard whose main city, Rimmersford, has remained modest-sized enough to feed itself by non-Theurgic means from its own hinterland.)
- Though there will be lots of social upheaval and hungry internally-displaced people, if you keep Shayard unified within its current borders, you’ll have enough of an agricultural surplus (even without Theurgy) to feed your whole population, plus enough of a surplus to feed about 15 million people elsewhere (after taking wastage in transit into account). Which will be nice to have, because…
- Around 7 million Wiends will be pouring out of Wiendwic and the great lowland cities of Alsztyn and Stezyc, looking for food. So would another 6m mixed Karagonds and Wiends from the two big cleruchies of eastern Wiendrj. (Those cities, Kiectos and Vrashtev, weren’t named on the last version of the core gameworld map, but to the northwest of Veldrin you can see their rich farmland–sadly not enough to sustain them in a post-Theurgic world.) So 13-14m people from Wiendrj on the move, all told, a disproportionate number of them with Phalangite training.
- Across Erezza, the only district still feeding its full population would be Rinocci in eastern Aveche (a small city in the middle of rich farm country). Elsewhere, 5.5 million people would be lacking food across the five most populous Erezziano districts (Soretto, Cocenza, Avezia, Sescia, Moncesano), with another million or so starving Phalangites and camp followers near the Halassur border (until they start rampaging somewhere in search of food). All told, the isthmus would be able to fully feed 12-13m fewer people than it has today. Not a strong position from which to hold the line against Halassur.
- In Nyryal, aside from a few small agricultural and military colony towns, every single district would be in deficit. The 4.4m horse nomads of the plains currently rely on grain trade with the cities and Erezza (via ports like Umri) for around 1/3 of their yearly diet; now all of their sources will be starving themselves. Nyrnakan alone will have 2m more people than it can feed. Overall, about 11-12m Nyr will be desperately looking for food.
- The nearly 900,000 Abhumans who currently depend on grain exports from the Hegemony wouldn’t be starving to death, but they’d be facing a massive shock to their livelihoods. Who knows what kind of political upheaval it might kick off in the Federation?
- I imagine most MCs will have Karagon a good ways down their priority list, if not at the bottom. But of course it will be the worst off, able to feed only 31% of a population that has grown to rely almost entirely on imported grain. Up to 26 million starving people will be pouring out of Karagon – most of them into Shayard, because that’s where the food is.
Now, this nightmare scenario might, in toto, actually be impossible. It’s incredibly unlikely that we’d see a Game 5 world where all these regions have to go for years without any form of Theurgic agriculture at all. Maybe if you manage to decapitate every other major faction in the game (or raise the wholesale anarchy level so high that they all collapse) but then fail to put any kind of new order in their place? Can’t say yet whether that’s going to be an achievable outcome or not. Kala/Kalt might be willing to go to bat for it in principle – a pathway that lets 50m people starve to death but prevents Theurges from reinstituting Harrowing (which currently takes over 3.5m lives a year) will “pay for itself” in less than a decade and a half, after all.
But much more likely is that we’ll see a mitigated version of the above famine, with a number of large post-Hegemonic territories (maybe including the MC’s?) where Theurgy continues to feed millions more people – whether because the ruling faction is a Theurge-ruled Harrower state, or has a non-lethal blood tax being used mostly for agriculture, or has self-fueled small-scale Theurgy being used by lots of new-minted magi for their own village’s benefit. It’s also possible that some other mitigating factors will crop up, like new super-seeds or newly researched agriculture techniques spread by certain factions to improve yields without heavy dependence on aether.
But we’ll definitely see lots of areas where the chaotic collapse of the Thaumatarchy leads to a partial or total breakdown in the Theurgy-fueled agriculture system – and thus to tens of millions of migrants, millions of whom will be starving. The scenario above should be taken as one extreme, but the challenges it describes won’t be entirely absent from anyone’s playthrough.
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Speaking about state-building and behind the scenes influence, what actions could we enact with Sojourn.
Say we are able to make a hole in the wards, to allow trade through to Sojourn, what would an alliance with Herne look like. Would trading with Sojourn be only beneficial to them, I don’t see many resources available to Sojourn for trade (unless there’s undiscovered alchemy components for Theurgy).
While our main focus is winning support in Shayard and other disgruntled Hegemonic figures, Sojourn seems to be an element that could easily bite us in the back.
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The calculation you provide doesn’t even account for the warfare that 50m migrating people will cause, which will probably cause damage to the remaining viable agricultural lands. The Nyr in particular will probably be doing a fairly passible Mongolia impression. the Xaos lands people will also be starving harder and if the wards drop Vigil might not be the most proximate worry from that direction.
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Im wondering when the MC will realize that wards only devour a relatively small percentage of blood.
Laboring under the misapprehension that the wards consume most of the blood, my MC currently thinks that the need for blood can be reduced drastically by only having them on the border with Hallasur and the Xaos lands.
Mass self-powered Theurgy is going to be something I’ll really consider. That’s still going to cause a serious famine in the time people move from the big farming estates to their own smaller plots though.
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Hmm, these numbers both work and don’t for my MC.
I suppose what he’ll end up doing is something like claiming Shayard and directing his food to a junior partner in Wiendr, and hoping like hell he and Cerlotta can figure out a more humane way of doing Theurgy to keep Erezza from collapsing entirely.
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Just chiming in to say that my canon builds (and the ones that will get guides) will either leave the Theurgic Harrower Regime grossly intact, merely under rightful Shayardene dominion (the Aristos), or just burn everything down without any plan for the future (the Helots).
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As conquerors or as nomads? Or both?
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Both I think, though initially (during the MC’s natural lifetime) it will probably be limited to raiding for food.
Basically the Wendward Band with horses at the size and complexity of a nation-state. Yikes…
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Wonder if trade or possibly emigration and/or colonization further afield with the other, as yet undescribed, distant continents might also provide one of those small lines of relief?
Of course even if we are able to make distant friends or establish our own cape town type of agricultural colonies they’d only provide relief for hundreds of thousands of people at best, so it would still be a drop on a boiling plate, still everything and the kitchen sink.
True, and my mc is not opposed to it, in principle, he’d just view it as the ultimate last resort. Still it is better than keeping slavery and the caste system around indefinitely, so it at least has that going for it.
Looks like the gameworld version of the Morgenthau plan is going to hit harder than even I thought at more than double my own estimate of around 10 million people who’d die due to de-industrialisation and forced backwardness.
Making it either first or second priority for what food exports we can possibly muster together with the water power potential of lowland Wiendrj.
While it isn’t a good look I also wonder if the mc or somebody else might try to pull a Lukashenko against Halassur by deliberately causing a flood of starving refugees or even raiders to flood into the Empire. After all Halassur did seem to be most vulnerable to human wave tactics and this horde might be desperate. Heck it might not even need to be deliberate, if that ward fails then they automatically have two, admittedly bad choices, either make their way up a starving isthmus or risk foraging into Hallasurq lands.
There seem to be good, fertile, if a bit on the colder side (but probably nothing worse than Sweden or so), lands in the Xaos lands, on the opposite side of where our mc’s went. unfortunately they border the unquiet dead. Still they could probably feed quite a lot of people if necessary.
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So since these estimates are working off the assumption all Theurgery stops how much of the currently blood supply being used by the Hegemony is coming from a Theurge using their own blood supply or from Talismans?
Because just the agriculture needs would demand over a 1 Million people (or for others 250K infants) being harrowed each year.
It does not seem to me that from the games’ text so far that one decently trained Theurge around the MCs level is really equivalent to one harrowed person’s blood. Since you can’t exactly use most of your atherial content and live to do it again tomorrow, even if less of it does sublimate before use. I’m guessing like 3-5 self propelled Theurges to do the work of one Theurge with one harrowed person’s blood?
Because right now it sounds like teaching Theurgery to all the diakons would barely avert famine if that’s the case and that’s not great but would technically be mission accomplished.
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Is it possible to have a state enterprise, like a monopoly on salt, alcohol or tobacco?
What is the technology related to surveying and mapping in this game world? Also, is it possible to release maps, national statistics and national budgets to the public? What is the current state of intelligence in the game world and how can players improve it?
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How would water power potential of Wiendrj help in that situation?
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As others have speculated, if Sojourn survives long enough to grow and unify a swathe of Xaos, it could be a post-Hegemonic ally on the southern border that supplies you with alchemical components you’d otherwise need to bring from Erezza. Or it could just be a drain on the Hegemony’s own military resources. Or, yes, an enemy with numbers swelled by hungry Southriding refugees that bites you in the back.
Another reader queried by PM:
You aren’t the only rebel, or the only reason the current Hegemony is tottering. There’s no way to keep the current regime from collapsing at the end of G4. It will be possible to revive the Thaumatarchy, but that will inevitably involve some rebuilding and adaptation, not just taking over the current system.
Yep. Refugees eating farmers’ seed stock and unripe crops in the field, raiding every barn, stopping every wagon or barge to search it for edibles, sending farmers fleeing to the cities to petition for redress…your border zones aren’t going to get much of a yield for a while.
That partly depends on the Theurgic balance of power – remembering that cavalry is much more vulnerable in the gameworld than in ours – but yes, especially if the urban Nyr faction loses out to the nomads, and the nomads then draw a substantial share of Nyryal’s 3,700 Theurges, we could see Nyryal turn into magic Mongolia. And if most of Karagon’s Theurges end up joining an exodus or concentrating in the cities closest to Shayard, the Nyr nomads could go through northern Karagon like a knife through butter.
Not until some G4 conversations with Sarcifer, I don’t think. It’s possible that the well-informed Nyrish sage Harza you meet in G3 will have enough of a grasp on the dynamics to give you the first hints, but really, I think Sarcifer is the first person you’ll talk to who has the info to really open the MC’s eyes to this.
Got to run now – more responses later…
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