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

Thanks for sharing. Hope it will improve in the next update

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Forgive my ignorance, I am not well versed in the study of history, but may I ask a question? Do you mean to say that the army officers underreported the size of their formations, and that lead to being short-staffed? How did that come about in a series of events? I apologize of the answer seems obvious, but I would be grateful if you would please extrapolate, as it is quite interesting.

I believe he meant to say overreporting.

“Why, yes, we have a full 200 men in our unit, we’ve taken no casualties, can we have pay, equipment and fodder for them?”
turns to the 100 men
“Have a drink on me while I count all this money.”

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I am a very recent XoR fan, but very quickly became very invested in it. Had been missing a deep new fantasy-ish universe that would hook me, and this made me fondly reminisce my old days of getting into the Darkover fictional universe. I joined the Choice of Forums to better follow progress and discussions surrounding this work. :smile:

I have checked around to try to find an answer for this, but may I ask if any fanwork created based on/inspired by XoR can/should be posted in this topic, or would it go elsewhere?

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I’ve always wanted a fanwork thread like that one for the Infinite Seas. See if @Havenstone would want it. At the moment there’s a Discord server though, so you might join that.

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There used to be a fanworks thread, but we closed it in a fit of forum-tidying.

You’re welcome to post fanworks here! Or to start a “Fanworks” section on the Fandom Wiki, where they’re less likely to get lost as the years go by.

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Thank you for taking the time to reply!

I think so as well, but I wanted to be certain and I’m just waiting for their answer (if ever they should, life is busy after all). Anyway, thank you again!

It still happens today in many parts of the world. One of several reasons ISIS was able to defeat entire divisions of Iraqi troops which on paper consisted of over 10,000 men each in the early days of the fighting was because those Iraqi divisions were filled with mostly ghost troops armed with ghost guns since the commanding officers were mostly pocketing the salaries and selling the arms and equipment on the black market.

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But then a fair number of non-ghost soldiers in those parts had a habit of defecting, equipment and all after their US funded training too, either to ISIS, or Iranian backed militia’s.

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Hello, this is something we were discussing on the Discord that I thought of and I figured I would ask here. It is fine if there is no answer, or if the answer will be revealed in later books.

Magic is obviously very strong in these books. Theurges can serve as everything from fighter jets to fertilizer factories to veterinary surgeons. They also play prominent roles in government…hell, the leader of the Hegemony is called the Thaumatarch!

Given all that, what’s the logic behind having a high-COM or high-CHA leader in charge of a large rebellion? A Theurge or pack of Theurges, being more powerful and/or influential, could either overthrow the leader or make him their puppet.

The Hegemony resolves this issue by 1) having the leader himself be an ubermage and 2) unrevealed Magitech. You have neither of those things. So how do you stop any Theurges that may join you from usurping you?

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I just finished uprising a few minutes ago. I bought this hours ago and didn’t even realize the sun was down until I finished it! Is there any place I can stay updated for when the sequel comes out?

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1: By being better at running the rebellion and maintaining the support of your Theurges, particularly Theurges who aren’t particularly suited for leadership roles. In particular, a Charismatic leader is better-able to handle the religious aspect of leadership.

2: In future games we’ll have the option to democratize Theurgy a bit and train INT 2 and 3 Theurges in palmcutting instead of focusing on a smaller number of INT 4 and 5 theurges employing a Harrowing economy. If Theurgy becomes more commonplace, then a Theurge won’t be able to take over by right of Theurgy even if they want to.

3: Even if we don’t democratize Theurgy, being able to win a dance-off with another archmage is less important than the number of our magi and the amount of blood we can bring to bear. That reduces the ability of a single Theurge to hijack the rebellion, even if it means that we probably want at least one master Theurge in our camp to train others.

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There is the Gandhi path too, which seems to be about starving the Theruges of enough blood to make Therugy non-viable. Basically, the economics of harvesting an entirely recalcitrant population won’t work. It costs too much blood to keep hunting blood strikers down and keep meeting ancillary demand.

Of course the side effect of that is rather catastrophic…

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I don’t think you’ll get many Theurges joining you, actually. The Thaumatarchy is a pretty good setup for Theurges; all the other social power centers (generals, spymasters, merchant princes, high priests) are subordinate to the Theurgic caste and at least nominally under the authority of an Ennearch. It’s lent credibility by the fact that, as you say, most aspects of power in this world are dependent on Theurgy. Most Theurges can’t imagine a better system for their interests, even if they’re unhappy with one or another aspect of it. They’ll want to destroy you, not join you and take over your revolt.

But an enlightened few (starting with Sarcifer, and including his pupil the Diadoch) believe that the hegemony of Theurges has led to an unsustainable spiral in which Theurgy is seen as the answer to every problem, and the needs of Theurges overwhelm all other considerations. The logic of blood extraction takes precedence over the rival logics of trade, military strategy, religion, etc. And the system’s coming collapse will be blamed entirely on Theurges. A stable new version of/successor state to the Thaumatarchy – if it can be formed at all – will need to have more of a balance, in which Theurges are not the sole dominant force and their interests are challenged by others.

Having come across Sarcifer’s notes on the topic, Cerlota recognizes this, and since she’s the one who’ll be training your Theurges (if you have any) you can count on her to promote this perspective among them. If your vision and hers clash, she won’t try to take you over, she’ll just go look for other more favorable allies to build her new world order.

For rather different reasons, Sarcifer himself will prefer using you to usurping you. Unless and until you manage to build a revolt on a scale that actually threatens to overtake his own. :slight_smile:

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I feel like this logic may run into a bit of trouble on the “Martin Luther” path. Surely in a society where everyone is a capable of therugy it will continue to take up the majority of political oxygen? With the blood as oil analogy, while many people cursorily object to the evils of oil extraction and production they are all participating in the society that is dependent on it. It almost necessarily creates a society with less balanced thought and discourse with regard the primacy of blood magic.

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Yes, well, none of the Theurges I mentioned are sold on the Luther path. :slight_smile: Cerlota may be persuadable. The others think it would loose mere chaos upon the world.

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Sounds like democratic leaders will need some CHA in their corner, while Thaumatarch MK. II will be easiest for INT-focused types, and focused combatants will need to compromise with someone who can do their thinking for them.

Interesting, very interesting.

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Only if they’re not helots and willing to keep up the pretensions of the nightmare religion.

They may be “moderates” on theurgy but I doubt they are moderates when it comes to the caste system. :unamused:

We do have ourselves…and Yebben and there may be another few with overlooked potential lurking among our helot and yeoman followers…as for the rest one of the points of the Luther strategy is to overwhelm whatever qualitative advantages the Hegemony has with sheer quantity of magic users.
It also has the benefit of letting the genie out of the bottle and then shattering the bottle so that, whatever happens, it will prove impossible to go back to the old system.

Why do you think it is the route that most appeals to me? :wink:

Indeed, though like I said since my mc is learning everything himself as he goes along too that does make the Luther strategy (plus hopefully rifles for the normal soldiers) the most viable route as on my main playthrough the Hegemony will very likely always have the qualitative advantage when it comes to magic.

Now my mc just needs some high charisma skeptics, preferably ones who don’t have extremely dodgy dealings with the Hegemony…:sweat_smile:

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Just you watch, I’ll do it with a skeptical helot. Of course, you’re right that my preferred methodology includes being an aristocratic Eclect. But that’s always been easy mode.

The big advantage of the INT route, though, is that it’s the one route you can take where you may be able to win (for certain values of “win”) without any kind of allies from the current power structure - a concept that no doubt appeals to you. You can train your own Theurges without having to convince Cerlota to agree with your vision.

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Hello, thank you for your response!

I guess where I ran into confusion is that earlier it was said that you would need blood magic if you wanted to be a major player in the world to come. I wasn’t sure where that would come from if not from friendly Theurges.

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