For criminals, this would work, but not for helots who lay down their lives to protect us from Xaos. Their people always get their bodies back. That’s an important part of the “deal,” and one of the things that even a horrorshow totatlitarian dictatorship would need to weigh carefully before discarding. Legitimacy questions never entirely go away; dictators fear bread riots. Helots who have learned to tolerate being treated as cattle might well not tolerate being treated as hamburger.
The Plektoi were designed with scariness, not efficiency, in mind, and Laguz is right that their design is both inefficient and unsustainable. The only way Plektoi “work” in terms of calorie-burning is continuous magic kludges, e.g. using blood to boost the nourishing telos of food. This will be just one of the many things regarding Plektoi and Plektasts about which the Abhumans are smugly disdainful.
Very true. But I won’t let myself off the hook that easily. Too many of the current NPCs are “satellite characters” (to borrow another label from Laguz) who seem to stop existing whenever the main character isn’t looking their way; their character is largely limited to their interactions with the MC and their opinions of the rebellion. I can do better next time. 
Nor does my friend. I take their criticism to be that my characterization of S/S leans a bit too heavily on that one trait, rather than fleshing S/S out in more directions. And thanks for the excellent music.
The Codex doesn’t identify any other corrupt emanations. Animals have souls, but it’s recognized that they are simpler things than human souls, incapable of elevation to Elysia.
The downside of pretty much all heavens.
Good point! Yes, that turned into something else that punished 0 INT.
Authorial oversight. Thanks! Look for that in the next update. And as far as I know there’s no maximum save limit, though lots of people complain if they save too many that they can never find the one they want. (There’s also no deleting saves.) That’s a CoG-team issue, I’ve got nothing to do with it.
Yes and no. No, a week-to-week survival grind is not something I’ve got planned for future installments. But the other key feature of Ch 2 is the ability to do lots of different things, different ways, on different playthroughs… and the first Grand Shayard chapter in Game 2 should be quite like that.
Choose how much of your time you’re going to spend engaging with:
• The priesthood of the Angels, which has both its orthodox faction under the Archimandrite and its secret heretics.
• The drudges and day laborers who work the manufactories of the city, load/unload trade goods at the river and seafront, and engage in petty smuggling/crime to make ends meet.
• The traders’ guild or Syntechnia, whose Shayardene Guildmasters are growing increasingly unhappy with the restrictions imposed by Karagon.
• The foreigners in the Merchants’ Pale. These are mostly Abhuman, but include some of the independent trans-Halassurq nations of the eastern continent, which indirectly handle trade with Halassur during times of war.
• And/or of course the major noble factions: traditionalists, cosmopolitan malcontents, and supporters of the Hegemony (Laconniers, Leaguers, Loyalists). You can infiltrate either of the former factions.
Yes, he was born blind.
As long as you never need to cross a Ward again. In Game 3 you’ll meet a Nyrish sage who had his face forcibly changed as punishment by an Ennearch–a mutilation to keep him out of Aekos and all other provincial capitals.
The Xthonic religion is quite keen on new knowledge, as long as it’s held by the right people. According to the Ecclesiasts, the single most important thing to know is one’s place.
People in certain social roles are expected to know quite a lot more. Theurges, obviously, dig deeply into the way the world works, the better to Change it. They carry out reasonably unbiased inquiry, but are expected to discuss many of the results only with other Theurges…and in the handful of areas (aether-related) where naturalistic inquiry does threaten Xthonic doctrine, they’re expected to at least pay lip service to the established non-heretical interpretations of those facts.
Your new order, skeptical or Xthonic, can decide to encourage the capacity for inquiry more widely or keep it within more readily controllable social limits. Skepticism doesn’t necessarily break down the barriers that keep knowledge from catching on.
No, she just never joined your rebellion in that timeline (along with the rest of the Rim Square helots). Unless she crept away in disguise to join, being a Kryptast, and you just never noticed.