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

[Norilinde]

@Havenstone

Halassur does use Theurgy for agriculture to sustain its large population. But they overall need a significantly lower blood volume, and would need markedly less if the war with the Thaumatarchy ended. Of course, one hope of many Halassurq generals (and perhaps the Emperor) is that if they do finally defeat Karagon, they’ll learn the secrets of some of those distinctively Hegemonic Theurgic feats like ward-building and mountain-floating, and scale up their blood economy by mass-Harrowing the Karagonds, Erezziano, and anyone else who doesn’t fall in line.

So Halassur may want to actually increase its harvesting of aetherial blood even after the Hegemony falls. Well, as I mentioned before, my MC would be willing to consider a short-term alliance with Halassur against the Hegemony. However, in the long-term:

Of course your realize, this means war!

@Havenstone

In answer to your later question, yes, you can make aetherial blood that really is just blood, but (as you’ll find out while cooking it in Game 2) it takes a LONG time to build up a quantity that allows you to do much of anything. If you tried to harvest “liberty blood” at national scale, you’d have an entire population staggering around sick all the time from daily bloodletting and you still wouldn’t have enough to replicate a fraction of the stuff that either Halassur or the Hegemony currently manage.

How long will it take to replenish the pint of blood I donate?

The plasma from your donation is replaced within about 24 hours. Red cells need about four to six weeks for complete replacement. That’s why at least eight weeks are required between whole blood donations.

Well, daily bloodletting would be too frequent anyway. The idea however is to collect any aether from those my MC’s rebellion is unwilling to kill. My MC would prefer “donations” of more than just blood come from non-innocents before anyone else. Currently it looks like criminals and Hegemony prisoners will be the first to “donate” more than just blood. Even if this proves unnecessary, there is no good reason why prisoners and criminals cannot contribute aether non-lethally. It would still be more aether than the rebellion would otherwise get out of them without killing them. Unlike Halassur, my MC is looking to reduce the killing of innocents not increase it.

@Havenstone

If you did somehow manage to unite Empire and Hegemony (and let’s be clear, I’m not sure that’s a remotely thinkable ending), given the particularly intense mutual loathing between Erreziano and Halassurqs, you might do just as well with a capital in Aveche anyway–or Aegre in Shayard.

@Havenstone If an independent Halassur would always remain a hostile threat on the rebellion’s border forcing the rebellion to harvest aetherial blood just to defend itself, then that is all the more reason to permanently remove that threat and end Halassur’s practices once and for all. So it is certainly a thinkable ending, achievable is a different matter. However, Cyrus the Great, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the unification of Imperial China, Imperial German unification, Italian unification, and the expansion of ancient Rome certainly count as examples of unifying former enemies into one new state.

@Ramidel

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.

@Havenstone

@Ramidel

Nah, that would mean that it was actually possible to fix the inherent evil in the world.

That’s the spirit.

It may be @Havenstone’s intention to try to force horrible choices upon the MC, but it is the MC’s Choice to look for better solutions. “Necessity is the mother of invention.” That is the spirit in which we the MCs should view this game world!