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

@KuriosIasoun, the city of Aveche/Avezia is smaller than Shayard City, but the region of Aveche is fairly sizeable – almost as big as the Rim.

A 2-3 province empire will be possible, as indeed will a new Hegemony across all 5 provinces if you beat all the rival contenders and form a stable social order of some kind. As for reasonability, though, a multi-province empire will be a lot harder than consolidating your grasp over Shayard alone, in whole or part, and each province you try to add will increase the challenge.

To be clear, the scale of Theurgy required to deal with mountain ranges goes beyond what even the legends talk about. Dropping a single mountain is rather a big deal and doesn’t happen often. As for burning/flooding, the infamous Scouring of the Westriding didn’t manage entirely to snuff out Cabel’s rebellion, and that was in some of the least friendly imaginable terrain for guerrillas. A Hegemony with a now far more strained blood supply and an emboldened foe on the eastern border would be mad to try to Scour you out of the Whendward or Wiendrj itself.

Aekos is (as idnlun says) the heart of the Karagond trading/finance system, and also contains plenty of high value industrial production.

How much of your time you can spend on counter-insurgency will rather depend on how much territory you’re trying to conquer. The level of violence and chaos in post-Hegemonic Shayard has a numeric variable attached to it which you will continue to do quite a lot to influence. And yes, the 3-4 most important post-Thaumatarchy factions (not counting yours) will all come with extremely experienced Theurges at or near the helm.

While they’re certainly a class vulnerable to accusations of uselessness, it’s worth noting that nobles also include a significant proportion of the legitmate and knowledgable administrators of the rural Hegemony. The aristarch-level families are often much more effective than the Alastors, especially since the latter took their turn toward rent-seeking. You can definitely adopt a “hang the last noble with the entrails of the last priest” strategy, but not without losing some capacities that you’ll find yourself missing as you try to rebuild your massive new empire.

Well, that’s what Breden is for. (Wait–what did you do with Breden again, idnlun?)

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