Have I mentioned how absurdly hyped I am to meet Cerlota? I can’t wait to have a very long discussion with her over how we’d restructure the realm. She sounds like one of the few people in whom my character(s) could find a genuine ideological ally.
My #1 goal in overthrowing the Thaumatarch is ending the systemic slaughter of helots (or anyone else, really) in order to fuel the blood-based economy. That means reducing the world’s dependence on aetherial blood where we can, and finding ways to more humanely (even if less efficiently) manufacture aetherial blood where we can’t.
Cerlota is probably one of the few people with both insider knowledge of theurgy, and who’s thought about viable pathways to accomplish the above.
Before anything else, I mostly just want to vibe with her about having shared goals, to the extent we have them. (Is she motivated by helping the helotry/humanitarian reasons at all, or is she solely trying to curb the importance of theurges in the system because it’s unsustainable? Is she driven by an activist’s zeal or a cold, logical analysis of the hegemony’s fatal internal tensions? I don’t think any of this has been revealed in the thread thus far–and either way, I’m eager to work with her.)
But then! Post-vibe session, I want to grill her about so many things!
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Is it possible to fuel theurgy with still-living creatures? What about the blood of living theurges? Could we make the entire population into super low-level theurges, but keep them ignorant of how to actually do any magic with it, then have them link arms with high-level/competent theurges as an external fuel source?
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Is it really necessary to have those killed during a Harrowing experience pain in order for their blood to be rarefied? Or is this a lie told by the hegemony, and being Harrowed is merely made as agonizing as possible for the purposes of social control? For that matter, is there some super-secret way to rarefy blood without killing anyone at all, pain or no pain?
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How much arable land would be otherwise covered in Xaos storms if we weren’t maintaining the wards? If it’s not a lot (and it’s just land that rich and powerful interests use for non-agricultural purposes), how much less frequent could we make Harrowings if we solely dedicated society’s aetherial blood toward increasing agricultural output? In other words, no more wards, no more military–just barley?
In her opinion, would doing this lead to geopolitical instability? And if so, what does she believe to be the minimal amount of blood usage we could achieve without the world collapsing? -
(If the player is a theurge:) Could you teach me the most effective ways to kill other theurges? Perhaps specialized magical techniques designed/suited for the purpose? If I have enough aetherial blood, other theurges are the only thing that can threaten me in combat, so it makes sense that I figure out how to counter them. And maybe I also want to become like Sarcifer–a terror in the night for all theurges still loyal to the hegemony.
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(If the player has high combat stats/is a warrior:) Could you teach me how to use theurgy to augment my physical capabilities? After all, I’d imagine my telos as a warrior is, at least in part, to be as fast and strong as possible, making such changes easier. Is there a blood-efficient way to do this?
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During your time in the Xaos-lands, have you figured out any way to harness the powers of the Xaos-storms with your theurgy? Or found any interesting ways that the two interact? I’m looking for potent weapons to use against the thaumatarch and I’ll take anything you’ve found (even if it’ll earn me the label of “trafficking with Xaos for power”).
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What kinds of governance structures would she prefer to our current one? If she wants theurges to play a lesser role in the system and to constitute less of a privileged class, how would she propose we keep them that way? Are there any particular mechanisms she favors to prevent beneficiaries of the current system from re-asserting themselves, post-revolution?
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Is it possible to rarefy the blood of animals? No? What about intelligent non-humans? What about the blood of intelligent bio-engineered creatures? Could we go a factory-farming style route, where we breed enormous, blood-filled, speedily-reproducing creatures and slaughter them to fuel the economy? After all, we have made things like Plektoi before. Why not a new species specifically for blood harvesting? We could stop harrowing helots, and start harrowing these creatures instead.
(“And if non-humans don’t work, why don’t we start with a human and transmute them via theurgy into the first of this new species? The more grotesque we can make them look, the better!” explains the MC cheerfully. “That way, the public never actually views killing the things as an abhorrent violation of basic ethics!” Cerlota turns green, her face twisting in horror, as she realizes the MC is a monster worse than the thaumatarch.)
… hopefully not that last one, since I have a soul. But it would be an interesting route for a villain MC, or a harsh-utilitarian type MC who sees the suffering of such hypothetical creatures as a smaller sin than harrowing the helotry, to take.
I also really want to ask Cerlota about how theurgy actually works, and why aetherial blood can fuel it. My current theory about aetherial blood is based around 2 hypotheses:
(1) Telos doesn’t exist in a physical sense, and is instead intimately connected to the mind that perceives it (in a way that somehow keeps an object’s telos non-subjective).
(2) As a consequence, only blood connected to a mind can be used to fuel theurgy.
Blood from your own body is still connected to your own mind–no problems there. Blood from a deceased individual, however, is no longer connected to a mind. In order to use it for theurgy, you’d have to do something to it that changes this. Hence, I would theorize, why the skulls of helots are cracked open during harrowing and their brains aren’t filtered out from the rest of the blood. I’m gambling that those brains/brain fluids are key to the refinement process. I think they might be needed in order to infuse a mind into potential aetherial blood.
My crazy fantasy is to reveal to Cerlota what you’ve discovered thus far about theurgy (via investigating a Harrower, talking with Horion, and your own experiments) and have her either be impressed with how far you’ve come in deducing its underlying mechanics, or impressed with how incorrect your understanding of theurgy is despite all of the information/hints contained in game 1. 