Sorry to be mostly absent from the forum lately. We’re seriously screwed in my neck of the woods for the next month at least, and it’s been a distracting, busy time to be responsible for a couple of hospitals. I’ve had one dose of vaccine and am hoping I’ll be able to get a second soon, which will hopefully reduce the chances of CoG having to bring in Brandon Sanderson to wrap up Choice of Rebels.
Alas for plans for the MC to become an awesome scaly Xaos-beast – with which I sympathize – I’ve written myself into a corner where it’s basically impossible for me to give you that choice before the Wards start coming down (not possible until the end of Game 3). As others have noted from earlier discussions, the primary function of the Ward is to exclude Theurgy-transformed flesh. Once a Storm Changes you (in any way that you can’t cut/burn off like Yed), you’re not going to cross the Ward – except through a heavily guarded Gate manned by people who want to kill you.
Attacking a gate is a tall order, given that you’re fighting on either side of a practically infinitely tall/deep barrier through which neither weapons nor magic can pass. That does also make defending it an interesting tactical challenge. If you could take and securely hold one side, someone from the other side would have a hell of a time dislodging you. One side’s fortifications could be cut off and overwhelmed by a sufficiently clever surprise attack.
By the same token, though, you’d have almost no chance at actually breaking through; by the time you’d subdued one side, the defenders on the inside would be fully alerted and prepared to slag anything that passed through the cart-sized gap in the Ward, and you’d have no way to get at them without going through that gap. It wouldn’t take a lot of soldiers and Theurges to make it effectively impassible; and the Thaumatarchy keeps a lot of soldiers and Theurges on each gate and its environs.
So as noted, you’d need to attack simultaneously from both sides to be able to take a functioning gate. You don’t (yet) have a force on the Shayard side that could have the least chance of doing so, however well Game 1 went for you. While mustering an army of Xaos-landers from the doomed city of Sojourn to take the southern fortifications of the Abhuman-facing Wardgate may be a possible tactical option in Game 2 – and one which would give a nice boost to the old Anarchy score – there’s no realistic way that would get you through the gate. Your best conceivable outcome would be closing the Gate from the far side until such time as the Hegemony managed to bring sufficient force around from another Gate to reconquer it. And without a Theurgic corps of your own, yet, you’d struggle to have any chance of taking and holding it.
Thus I can’t write you the option to become a walking tree or beetle-person in Game 2, because that would keep you “on the bench” for too long in rebellion-leading terms. I need to write the Xaos-lands section such that you avoid being Changed by a Storm and can thus slip back across the Ward when the time is right… far from the woods and brecks where Plektoi with your scent are on the hunt and the local folk have a chance of recognizing you.
In later games you’ll have options to Change and be Changed. We’ll see how extensive I can make those and still have a chance of finishing the story! If I don’t end up including the option that would make you happy… well, there’s always fic.