Choice of Rebels: Uprising — Lead the revolt against a bloodthirsty empire!

I am torn about wanting to know. I personally love the lore however, I am afraid that damage the quality of role-playing as is based upon doing what a character will do even if you know the consequences.

Still I found all the Hegemony system interesting however I really think is undoubtedly inability to sustain everything long run. As they need more and more blood to just keeping going They will end reaching a break point sooner than later.

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I love these massive snippets of spoilery information. :slight_smile:

And yeah, I don’t think there is any way that my characters will be able to convince themselves to give up on Theurgy and Harrowing entirely. Too much power there, and our enemies are hardly going to give up on it either.

Is it currently known (in this thread) why the Hegemony is running out of “blood”? Lots of rebellions, or is the war ramping up, or do the magic walls require more than usual, or is the Hegemony wasting everything on creating blood-fuelled nuclear bombs? :stuck_out_tongue:

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Of course, the Halassurqs may not call it slavery, but Halassur is a place that’ll really suck to be a woman. You know, “concubines,” as referenced by the Hegemonic tales, employed as baby factories from 13 to 45 before having what’s left of their aether Harrowed out of them.

I wonder if calling meteors through group organic theurgy is feasible in such a way as to generate an aether profit. Mining the stars as it were. EDIT: And I see that I got scooped on this question. Oh well.

Incentive to start a theurgic space program perhaps.

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Disadvantage of High CHA character is that , this character needs to involve in lots of preaching and public speaking, hence i would believe it will invite multiple assassination attempt … could it be that such character needs to manage his/her own bodyguards ( example number of bodyguards by side, number of guards in the roof or surrounding area ) in order to prevent an assassination ? Such criteria could add another managing criteria in the game :slight_smile:

and assuming Breden is really an assassin , most likely Breden’s master will order the assassination of MC as well, such will give another dimension on where Breden’s loyalty really be… perhaps if we marry Breden or have high relationship , Breden will ultimately betray the master instead ?

Then for a High COM character , perhaps he/she can skip the public speaking part since conquer via brute force is the major plot :slight_smile:

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I’m calling one theory, by the way: Abhumans are a result of attempts to theurgically hybridize humans and animals to create animals with aetheric brains. Since - as Halassur has pointed out - humans make terrible livestock.

Hm. If we learn more about biology and biotelos, maybe we can figure out how to grow animals with other forms of aether-dense tissue? Nah, that would mean that it was actually possible to fix the inherent evil in the world. :smile:

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As you’ll see when you get to Grand Shayard, the nobility of your homeland is intensely factionalized. It might just be possible that a faction might “support” you in the sense of trying to wield you against an opposing faction.

Other than that somewhat wobbly basis for alliance, you’ll have to wait until your rebellion is actually the dominant force across a large swathe of country before your worst enemies begin caving in and preemptively offering you their money for their lives.

It requires a certain level of education. And yes, you could spread the word widely and educate your troops. MCs will have to decide how ready they are for a world in which every yeoman could potentially nuke you. (Of course @WinterHawk has already decided.)

Oh, absolutely. Your decisions as you encounter them will determine whether by Game 5 they’re your allies or rival factions in carving up the corpse of the Hegemony.

It is, but because of its volatile telos, it’s not very useful against Theurgy:

The rest of that post explains how the evolution of firearms was cut off in the gameworld, because “at short distances, or long distances with poor accuracy, firearms vs. Theurges is suicide.”

@cascat, in answer to your first question, aether sublimes very quickly from dead tissue. If you suck out someone’s living brain, you can capture quite a lot in the second or two before the tissue entirely dies. Every second you wait after death radically reduces the amount you can capture.

Grotesque speculation: It would be theoretically conceivable to have a sort of mini-Harrower wheeled to every deathbed so you could stick the dying person’s head in, keep a finger on their pulse, and scoop out the brain as soon as you’re sure the heartbeat has stopped…but it’s not something that I think anyone would consider feasible as a systematic measure? In the real world, it’s been a lot of work to get people to sign on to organ donation that at least leaves the face intact for funeral purposes. And the urgency of not being a second late would lead to a lot of situations where Theurges are seen to be shoving Grandma’s head into the wood chipper before her time.

It’s certainly an aggressively extractive colonial empire. But we shouldn’t overlook the fact that in their day (and considering the massive technologically-driven power imbalances many of them exploited) empires managed to be reasonably sustainable for a long time. It wasn’t until successful alternatives were modelled (and the tech imbalance reduced) that their governance flaws began to be consuming.

“Kleptocracy” to me implies a model that only works on the short term because you’re almost exclusively focused on looting. Extractive empires worked for longer because they’re a bit more strategic, with some sort of rule-based framework for long-term and large-scale plunder, and different rules for center, periphery, frontier, and foreigners. We do see the Hegemony at a moment when that framework is breaking down, but I’m trying to write a world in which it’s plausible that it had a pretty long run.

Low level Theurges aren’t taught that. They focus on learning about elemental manipulation, agriculture, combat…all the practical applications. They learn how to operate a Harrower but not what it does.

When a higher-level Theurge sees signs that their subordinates are actively questioning/ experimenting with this issue (or have figured it out), they make the call as to whether it’s time for that Theurge to be bumped up a Kyklos and formally inducted into the mystery, or time to extinguish the questionably loyal freethinker. This happens at higher levels, with deeper mysteries of Theurgy as well.

Sometimes they make the wrong call on who to promote, as witness Sarcifer, and Cerlota.

Yes, but slow-burning. You can get a lot done with a Talisman. Aether naturally occurs in the highest sphere in the cosmos; sublimation is its rapid re-ascent to that sphere.

The Wards are no thirstier than ever. Population growth and agricultural strain is part of the problem, but in the normal course of things, that might be manageable by aggressively stepping up the tempo of the Halassur war. A shift in battle tactics by the Empire has had a significant impact, though, as has a mysterious uptick in rebellions that are consuming more blood than they yield.

It’s a deeply horrific place to be a captive concubine from the Hegemony. (I should emphasize again that there aren’t too many of those.) Halassurq women themselves largely buy into the awfulness of their system–in large part because they’re keen to do all they can to avenge themselves against the murderous, centuries-long aggression of Karagon. You’ll have a chance to meet Erjan’s sister in Grand Shayard and hear a bit of this perspective.

I’m sure this is where some people will get off the bus, but…yes. To get to the aethereal realm, you’d have to traverse the empyrean (sphere of elemental fire), which is close to impossible. The only things known to survive that journey are the massive earthy missiles hurled upward by Xaos, to try to disrupt the ordered purity of the Angels’ aethereal home. (At any rate, that’s the acceptable Theurgic speculation about what’s going on with those meteorites falling “back” to earth bearing aether deposits.) I can neither confirm nor deny that an Ennearch is working on replicating this.

When you meet Mkyar a’Zerez in the Xaos-Lands late in G 2 Ch 1, you can ask her about your theory on Abhumans. :slight_smile:

That’s the spirit.

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@Havenstone Is this just a reference to volcanic debris reaching the thermosphere?

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Theurges who have observed that (or something similar) believe that to be the source of meteorites, and the primary way that non-organic aether is brought to earth.

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On one hand, rebel leaders able to induce a sufficient degree of fanaticism could get a lot of mileage out of theurgic suicide bombers.

On the other hand, there’s no stuffing the jinni back in the bottle.

I think my intellect-focused guy will elect to not go this route.

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It’s not just blood, it’s also money, which is earned by blood.

Part of the problem the Hegemony is suffering is that its various control mechanisms are seizing up and becoming corrupt. A generation ago, an Alastor who tried that shit with Jongleur Carles to seize a tavern’s revenue for himself would be facing the Harrower himself. Now almost every Alastor is doing it.

Part of the reason behind the Fourth Harrowing was because the Keriatou’s income was being chewed on both upstream by their Alastors’ corruption and downstream by the Leilatou’s taxes, and they needed a seventh harvest to make economic ends meet.

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Just wondering , what do you think if MC “compromise” with Hegemony ? in the sense that MC be given the main role in governing position in an attempt to eradicate corruption , so that less people need to be sacrifice for Harrowing ? Will such MC be consider a “Hero” then ? :slight_smile:

I was just thinking of the Matrix Trilogy in which Neo and the Oracle decided to compromise and negotiate with the Machine Empire instead , Neo didn’t manage to free human kind from the machine ( who use human body like a battery to fuse electricity ) , however the Machine agree to allow human who “wake up” from their dream a choice to live in the real world or go back to sleep in their dream world … Well, although i think the Machine Empire in Matrix is more generous in the sense that they allow humans to live in “good” dream the whole life …

It would require abandoning the religious power I’ve already claimed. Also, the Thaumatarch might object.

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Odds are that you’d be arrested as soon as you showed up to take on your new position, and then publicly executed by harrowing to both prove the hegemony’s continued strength and to serve as an example of what happens to rebels. The kryptast who talked you into their hands would likely be highly rewarded too.

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That’s not what happen in the Matrix ending, the Machine King kept his words … The Hegemony has no honour ? Lol :smile:

Of course they do.

Rebels are enemies of That Which Is and the order decreed by the Compassionate Angels. Anything done in the name of bringing them to the Harrower is honorable!

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If he’s still with us. His heir might be more receptive. :slight_smile:

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And among my MCs, Alya is very much planning for a meet-the-new-boss revolution, with limited (extensive) changes to the blood economy and a massive Harrowing of the existing leadership, but essentially keeping most of the Thaumatarchic structure intact. Hm, maybe it might be a good idea for her to marry the princess…

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That…my friend, look set to be the similar downfall of King Louis XVI and the French Monarchy .

The cause looks identical , following the Seven Years’ War and the American Revolution, the French government was deeply in debt. It attempted to restore its financial status through unpopular taxation schemes, which were heavily regressive. The next few years featured political struggles between various liberal assemblies and right-wing supporters of the monarchy intent on thwarting major reforms. Any right-wing supporters of the Hegemony who are intend to oppose reformation attempt by civilised liberals will eventually bring down the same conclusion as the French Revolution … Most likely it will eventually give rise to the Rebels " Reign of Terror " if a blood thirsty rebel alliance win the war … :slight_smile:

Luckily for the Aristocrats, in this world there is still chance that my pro-Aristocrat Rebel Alliance might win the war instead , so that the Aristocrat won’t suffer the same fate as those Nobles in the French Revolution :wink:

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Indeed. Wonder what’ll happen if we go for a ruthless, bloody-handed aristocratic rebellion…

@Havenstone has created quite the moral quandary here. My initial reaction is to abandon all therugy that isn’t fueled by self sacrifice. The major problem of course is that your enemies will exploit that vulnerability and simply make helots of you and your followers.

There are obviously ways to economize the system on the expense/demand side. More economical use and widespread practice of self-sacrificing therugy. Additionally, some IRL equivalent energy source as a substitute for mundane agriculture and industry like coal or oil. That obviously would be a lengthy conversion might not even be possible given the in-world cognitive frame.

You could make some changes to the supply side. Executions for certain crimes (likely already happening and then some), volunteers (chronic pain, terminal illness etc.), people in a vegetative state. Then it gets darker, harvesting one or both eyes as punishment for less serious crimes, full harrowing for even minor offenses (probably already the case…), some kind of lottery system, or exploiting some other class or nation the MC finds more agreeable.

Ultimately (at least to the extent I have tortured my mind to this point), barring some windfall/miracle/technological revolution like obtaining a new and substantial source of non-organic aether, I feel like Halassur is probably on to the most equitable way to run a blood economy. The franchise of sacrificing your first born would have to be extended to everyone, but the very horror of such a system should result in as economized a blood market as possible. The biggest issue is that any such system requires state administration. People will inevitably try to cheat, and powerful people successfully cheating leads to corruption and grievance.

One possible enforcement mechanism I thought of was that access to therugic public goods like miraculous healing or tax free food etc would be restricted to those who made the sacrifice after a certain age. You could also make hiding a first born a harrowable offense. I can see how this would lead to a horrifically gendered society. It’s definitely a tough nut.

@Havenstone I presume the harvesting and then regrowing of eyes will not balance the aether sheets? Is it possible for a theruge to use the living sacrifice of someone else’s blood if they cut themselves in proximity? Also is there a finite amount of aether in each person? Is that why the MC starts passing out? Is this permanent or do you “recharge?”

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