Now now. The blood a helot produces when Harrowed will more than make up for the grain used to feed him till then, plus we get labor out of him till then too.
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Grrr. Just got blue screen of death on my laptop.
It’s almost ten years old, and has weathered multiple past crashes (including a literal one down a flight of stairs in Hua Hin). So I can’t say I’ve not got good use out of it.
But this slows me down at the worst time. 
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But you do have your files backed up… right?
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“Jesus saves!”
“No. Microsoft Word saves.”
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If I didn’t, I’d be saying something a lot more forceful than “grr.”
I write XoR in a Dropbox folder, hitting Ctrl-S every paragraph or so, and also have a hard disk backup. No WAY am I taking a risk on losing this baby.
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I figured lmfao. Losing hundreds of thousands of words worth of work would be soul crushing, glad you’ve got it sorted. Here’s to a swift replacement 
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You’ve just made the tagline for games four and five here. 
And that goes for all or at least most of our mc’s, mine being a radical might get there sooner but unless they die reaching this point does seem a case of when, not if. 
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That would imply that you started out as a hero.
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Not quite, when dead anybody can be made a martyr and a hero.
For example poor Breden will always be the tragic martyred “hero” who played a pivotal role in getting the revolution of the ground only to perish before his time in the first winter. But when revising history my mc will make sure Breden died a hero fending off a kryptast ambush instead of a slip and fall while crossing a river.
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Realistically, how large of a state do you think your MC will end up with?
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I’m going for holding most of the Hegemony - except eastern Erezza, and that only so I can use it for irredentism points and/or a bleeding ground.
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Random musing: I wonder where S’ rebellion will draw members from if the MC is running a populist lower-class revolt. It seems like they’d have trouble recruiting a helot army or something under the pitch “come work for a noble and don’t rebel as hard or be as successful”, it might turn out the S ends up acting more “legit” than we see in G1. Maybe heading up some sort of “secret” cabal of dissatisfied Rimmer nobility (and possibly priests and merchants), perhaps even spurred to rebellion by Hegemonic failure to crush the MCs slave revolt.
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It needs to be at least big and powerful enough to live up to my mc’s principle of never treating with slavers, which means it needs to be a regional power no matter its exact size.
A two ocean power would be ideal…to get that in the western option it seems we’d need about 40% of the current Hegemony but the western part seems to be, much like it was in America, rougher terrain and less dense population so we might be able to get away with it, even if it may require more concessions to actual federalism and capitalism than my mc might, strictly speaking, be comfortable with.
Western option plus giving them the ward tech also seems to offer the best possibilities for reaching a somewhat sustainable modus vivendi with Hallassur.
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If I may tell my vision; I want to build a Hegemony over all the current border but I may add the xaos to it as a new part. I still don’t know what would I do with Halassurqs and Abhumans because I don’t know enough about them and I need to see them myself through out the story to reach a conclusion about what I want to do with them and what place in world I will allowe them. Also I need to know more about refined bloods so I choose whoes bloods I want.
Knowing These are important for me to make my plans for future. But exept that I would build as big as I could with me the monarch of it all.
The only level of state independence I would allow is very much just in some areas like taxes
or/and merchandises but everything else goes through me. That is a need for a united country. And I would give provincial governorship to only my best generals that I’m sure are loyal not someone like breden that is both a kryptast and disobedient when it’s at the worst moments.
I think for now in between my current people I just trust Elery Suzanne/Simon and Zavad
Radmar is a hot head and I would only trust him in a war and only as a army general not a Governor
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Idk yet but probably some combination of western Shayard, Xaos Lands, and southern Wendry. The rebellion I’m planning with my main character is planned on exploding the Hegemony from within by revealing as much about the theurgy to the general population as possible. The areas his movement can control will be unified by a combination of mass self-sacrifice theurgy and protestant angelic fervor. I expect I’ll get something like Prussia or the Swedish Empire as a result. Probably not enough population and natural resources in the area to be truly dominate but a century or two of first mover advantage.
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I am not so sure. S will certainly try to reconcile with upper classes but I don’t think he will have much troubles with recruiting helots and yeomen. They joins you with a group of helots they assembled, after all.
My MC will be fine with current Shayard archonty borders, although even that may prove to be too difficult to conquer and reliably manage. He plans to align himself with more nationalist factions so he will certainly need to curtail more irredentist plans of his allies (like regaining Szeric, Veldrin Hills, Aveche…)
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Well, my failrun Helot MCs will end up with…nothing at all. Actually, even my successful Helot MCs will aim to create a world of anarchy where Theurge-Warlords and Xaos-Beasts roam around fighting each other.
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That’s where mine is currently at. That would be a very large country all on its own. The goal is also to have good relations with the neighboring Archonties, to include trade agreements, a mutual defense pact and probably joint occupation of Karagon while it is “reconstructed”. That’s the soft nationalist version. There’s a smaller possibility Caroline will flip and go full cosmo now that she’s moved outside her provincial bubble somewhat and is meeting people from many different places (which is helping her to see the value of the common Koine language and culture) in which case she’s likely to want to keep the Hegemony in existence with a much reformed administration, probably attempting to achieve some sort of collective leadership a la the so-called Dominate of the late Roman Empire. Basically making a deal to split administration with others of the post-Kleitos contenders that would be amenable.
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I want at least the whole Hegemony. Not sure what else would be feasible but whatever we can get while keeping it.
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Is there any way to use blood to increase one’s lifespan? I ask this bc I may be idealistic enough to want to tear down everything that makes the Hegemony and free everyone from it’s control but i’m not foolish enough to think that that would be feasible in a normal lifespan (Come to think of it what is the normal lifespan for people? 50 years?). So I hope that would be smth that one can do.
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