Havie’s being a bit nice so I just feel obligated to say that an author’s under no obligation to respond to your questions. They might have a reason to do so and going to them, “Why did you not answer my question?”
Might make them feel a need to manufacture an answer for something they don’t particularly have an answer for or don’t feel comfortable answering at this specific time.
Just be more cognizant of this and try not to pin them down or call them out if they miss you.
Okay, I’ll try not to rush things too much.
I interpret our protagonist’s Father — both helot and aristo — as someone like this: with a crucial distinction that for him it’s not acceptance but rather despair. Thinking that the world can be no other way than the monstrosity it is, and that it’s for us to live with its injustices. To the helot, that merely means surviving, after the man he loved died for who he was. To the aristo, that means being “the hope of our House”, that cruel burden grandmama ${orig_lname} passed on to him: to bring glory to the House in a world ruled by the Hegemony and its collaborators. Under this framework, our rebellion isn’t just a threat to his life. Rather, it’s anathema to his entire life’s purpose: and every moment we draw breath, we are living proof that there is another way to live — that he, perhaps, could’ve lived. And our rebellion reduced all he’d done to nothing.
(To be clear about my biases: I agree with the belief that Father is the “traitor” for the two likeliest cases of betrayal — the hellebore poisoning at the High Crag and the capture of Breden’s gang before the Fourth Harrowing.)
But first I want to talk more broadly first about accepting evils and the social order, then pivoting away from Father to talk about about conservatism in the ΧoR setting.
I think every subject of the Hegemony has, in their life, reached the crossroads of how to live beneath such a cruel, suffocating empire. Those who can’t find a way to accept it have tended to die as rebels. Even our protagonists, sparks who’ll ignite the pyre of kindling wood that is the Thaumatarchy, had to accept things on the surface before the Fourth Harrowing. They probably lived through 57 Harrowings before that fateful day. Look at how the prologue of Uprising ends: it’s a litany of injustices that everyone remembers, but remembers in silence.
Like everyone else in the Shayard Rim, from childhood your daily life had been shaped by rules that went unspoken and unquestioned. No one ever challenged the Ecclesiasts’ interpretation of the sacred will of Almighty Xthonos and Its Angels. No one stood up to the bullying Alastor law enforcers, who kept the helots in line and imposed the Karagond Canon across the Hegemony.
And no one spoke at all when the Theurges descended on the town for a Harrowing. No one questioned how they chose their helot victims, or why such a terrifying quantity of blood was required to keep up the Xaos-Wards.
The day you first asked yourself, Does it really have to be this way?—that, in truth, was where your rebellion against the Thaumatarch started.
Two of the most powerful lines in ΧoR come from a dialogue between a Helot MC and Simon/Suzane de Firiac in the Brecks, about living under hegemony. “But no soul living could survive under that eye without needing to create refuges that They don’t touch.” — and on those secret worlds:
Ours was shared," I say quietly. “The tales no aristo would ever hear, let alone the Karagonds. The games they’d not see, or understand if they saw.”
Amidst suffocating evil, people find hope. Those small things to cling on to stay alive, to not fall into the depths of ruinous despair, because that’s all one can do.
The seed of rebellion can be planted here: that damning question, Does it really have to be this way? These secret worlds represent possibilities for something new. But this won’t always be the case. People learn how to live in an oppressive system, and they can fear the unknown world that awaits beyond it. It’s important to see that here, because of the Hegemony, the gap between quiet subject and rebel is not so wide.
And for the rest — I wouldn’t say it’s an attachment to this order, but rather an attraction to order itself.
That’s why I find the label “conservative” imprecise for this kind of character, and for the examples listed. There is a world of difference between, say, a Theurge jealously guarding their place at the top of the Hegemonic hierarchy versus a farmer who’d rather take the shitty hand they’ve been dealt than to throw it all away on the chance that something changes. Take away the Hegemony and build something new and better in its place, and only one is likely to long for the old days in the end. I doubt many outside the most loyalist elites would object to throwing off their Karagond oppressors in principle: what they lack is an alternative future they can trust and believe in.
And when it comes to ideological conservatism, the status quo and tradition are not one and the same. Take, for example, a reactionary vision for Shayard: a ‘trve retvrn’ to the olde days of Shayard under the True Sovereign restored, undoing centuries of a foreign imperial culture being forced on the nation. This reactionary would be the enemy of a ‘conservative’ who supports the status quo; and yet the reactionary’s goal is a conservative Shayard. Both could be reasonably described as such; consequently, it’s more useful, I think, to focus on the differences.
(A phrase we can’t use yet but will probably come into fashion once the rebellion starts to grow is the counter-revolutionary)
From the perspective of cold, hard calculus, I see this. But I do think it’s noteworthy that even this is a decision to sacrifice people deemed less important — in fact, people already deemed less important, left to die, by the Hegemony — for the sake of others deemed more important. Those people should suffer more so that our people suffer less. That’s a strong aesthetic throughline from the Hegemony to our future rebellions: a choice of rebels, to be tongue-in-cheek about it.
That said, there is a case to be made that it’s desirable to kill as many Theurges as possible, so as to further hurt the Hegemony’s forces. Depending on how much we trust each faction to achieve that goal, there may be a particular balance that optimises the number of Theurgic casualties that isn’t just “sacrifice one faction”. And there’s the vision of Sojourn that might die with it too: a refuge for those fleeing the inert softlands and a force of order.
I can’t answer this question, but I can note that weather manipulation is already in the Theurgic toolkit, without uncertain ideas like cloud seeding. We can (potentially) witness this during the Battle of the Whendward by setting fire to the forest:
The enemy Theurges constantly appear in the sky, trying to break the fire’s momentum with landslides, pulling streams from their beds to spray the blaze. One mage hovers in the air for hours, a barely visible speck, before clouds appear on the horizon from all sides and come swirling around her.
Hours spent before anything happened. And considering all the other actions taken to contain the blaze, it was probably a last resort at that. Though this isn’t a surprise: weather systems are notoriously chaotic (Xaotic), and reliably Changing them is likely a costly feat.
That said, we should bear in mind a story that reflects the raw power of the Thaumatarchy and evokes certain other Changes that should in theory be monstrously expensive:
It all ended in the Great Scouring: hundreds of Theurges setting the hamlets and woods of the Westriding ablaze, followed by three months of incessant rain to wash away everything that survived the fire.
Heh. I’ve wondered sometimes whether that specific exchange makes that scene sprawl too much – just so I could indulgently shoehorn in that idea from a source I no longer entirely remember about surviving under totalitarianism. (Probably Havel or one of his admirers.)
I’ll wonder no longer. 
Not necessarily. There is simply much more people in lets say Westriding, in the region and possible rebel faction both. It perhaps should be one’s responsibility to act where he can make a difference, instead of chasing after personal preferences - that could be Sojourn and sympathy for Xaoslanders.
Kind of a random ADAT, but a decade ago today I was typing XoR with frostbite blisters the size of grapes on my fingers. Making an impromptu decision to try to summit a nearby 5100m peak without equipment – including any gloves – proved unwise. Who knew?
But that visit also laid the groundwork for moving the whole family out to Nepal a year and a half later, so no regrets. (And my fingers fully recovered, so no harm no foul.)
Is the game still only chapter one, is the other chapters or are they coming out when the game comes out?
Still chapter one, but there should be the next chapter soon.
I know you wanted to give Nepal’s people a hand, but I’m glad you didn’t do it literally.
@Havenstone What is/are Shayard national colour(s)?
Bonus question: Are Laconniers associated with some symbol (except Shayardene Gryphon perhaps)?
It’s Shayard’s gryphon because that’s the symbol of the de Syrnon’s. I assume that since restoring the old Royal family is their main thing that’s their symbol.
Hopefully this should answer your question.
Hello, hays anyone found the Storm-source? According to the description on the first chapter, that’s something that can be found, or at least search on. I hope that someone has found it, and perhaps tell us what is the origin of the Xaos Storms.
Yes. If you want to find it yourself you need to choose to have saved the Helot Wolfbait in the testing menu, then talk to Bellem (on the Village path) or Kylik (on the nomad path). Exhaust their dialogue and go with Wolfbait, enjoy from there. I recommend going as a Theurge for best results.
Once the second book is out i will totally be up to supporting you on Patreon, Choice of Rebels is one of my favorite IFs out there.
Unfortunate but understandable, i have kinda already waited for like 7 years i wouldnt mind waiting 1 more tbh but whatever you do im happy to read.
Normally my ADAT shout-outs will only go to people who are still with us on the forum community today, not someone whose last forum post was a year before XoR 1 was published. But today I’d like to note that it’s been a decade since @WulfyK’s first post on the WIP thread.
Wulfy stands out in my memory as the first person to throw a majillion questions-per-post my way, so relentlessly that he quickly outpaced my ability to write answers and I had to start breaking up the response into multiple posts.
While Wulfy’s been gone a while now, the style of encyclopedic question-posting he pioneered has never been gone for too long. In answering both him and his successors, I’ve deepened my understanding of the world I’m writing – and I just wanted to say that I’m grateful for that, and for the enthusiasm for XoR it reflects, even though I’ve slowed down the pace of my responses lately in the name of getting the writing done.
I believe in Aprilduin!
I definitely don’t have money riding on you posting an update before the end of the month.
And today an ADAT for someone who I think is still semi-active on the forums: it’s been a decade since @Rebelmaiden first contributed to XoR.
Her suggestions inspired me to write the Hector romance backstory and the Calea exchange linked to it, which ended up as one of my favorite parts of G1…so thanks again, Rebelmaiden!
@Havenstone Oh my God, it has been a whole DECADE. 
Thank you so much for the mention, and for including these scenes - and thank you for creating such an amazing story and game, it remains one of my favorites on CoG!
