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

Choice of Games games
, ,
4522

I’ve been re-reading the old WIP thread, and a question occurred to me. It’s been mentioned before that the Hegemony is a pre-modern state just starting to tackle the bureaucratic problems that come with that. For example, it doesn’t even have a centralized system for collecting blood supplies from the Helotry.

With that in mind, how are Kryptasts handled?

I find them kind of interesting. A lot of people in-universe seem to dread them as these faceless inquisitors that ferret out everyone’s secrets eventually. In the ‘Chirex’ chapter alone, it’s mentioned that a relative of the Aristarch was dragged away, your PC can mention their harassment of nobles as a grievance, and Radmar’s gang are very disquieted at the possibility of you being one. But all of that implies that:

  1. They’re trained to be able to do so, which implies some sort of school to teach them their trade – which then in turn implies some degree of centralization of espionage. Whether at Archonty or Hegemonic level. (As an aside, one of the reasons I’m leaning toward the answer to this being in the positive is that the Tagmatarch and her soldiers recognize the code that Breden gives you, which implies the existence of an intelligence body.)

  2. If there is some sort of state infrastructure dedicated to internal espionage, then how does it find the right sort of recruits? Do they try and cultivate informants and then take the most promising? Do they take from the Helotry who are probably desperate enough to take a chance like that to escape the Harrower?

This is all just spitballing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve missed something obvious which answers this. But how 'bout it? :grinning:

Edit: It’s also occurred to me just now that Kryptasts might not even exist at all, and are just a story propagated to disincentivize rebellious behavior.

Cast a wide enough net and you inevitably catch some fish, right? The response to attacking the Architelone i.e. torturing and harrowing a noble, prominent member of the Syntechia, or a Telone seems to lend weight to the possibility that the Thaumatarchy doesn’t really care about getting the right person. So much as they do about frightening people into not emulating such behavior.

6 Likes