Done! And it’s 20,000 words. 
Not quite the “tax collector raid” as side plots go, but a satisfyingly meaty little side quest with various lore and relationship bonuses for people who read Game 1.
You’ll see when I post it!
We’ll see if and when I write it, but it could easily be the final factor that pushes de Firiac to go join a rival faction – especially if they’re already grumpy at you for being some combination of dishonorable and brutal.
Yikes. That’s a match made in hell. As you suspected, based on how Simon feels about dishonorable and ruthlessly brutal people.
Maybe!
They’d certainly appreciate the irony of getting a helot on the throne, though it would be warring with their “no thrones no masters” instinct.
Kalt/Kala will certainly have the chance to grow out of impulsive violence–though even their G1 violence is not as unconsidered as it might seem–but they’re highly unlikely to be persuaded that intrigue and politics are more effective than violence in bringing about the kind of revolutionary change that’s needed. I like Wolf Hall too, but I don’t think that’s where the character is going.
In his mid-fifties.
In a system of discrimination as deeply entrenched as the Karagond one, most people won’t go for a subaltern leader with questionable credentials unless they’ve got an incentive like “without him, the masses will clearly have our heads on spikes.”
Both wide and awkward. She’s not interested. Same for Korszata, Bjel, or Zvad. I’m sorry to pour cold water on so many of your ideas for alliance-building through matrimony, but I’ve got quite enough ROs in the pipeline already.
It doesn’t, but a really successful merchant family can often find a hard-up noble house to marry into and get a name for themselves.
Right – marriage alliances will be possible between a number of factions, not just Laconniers.
The Blacklist sounds like a fun show, but I’ve got no plans at present to have the MC build up connections with the underworld only to sell them out to the authorities. There’s zero chance of the MC being given immunity from Harrowing, no matter who they turn in.
Possibly? I don’t think it would happen through murder mystery stardom, though, and in general the questionable bit is the MC’s ability to determine Jac’s successor. Even if you managed to have Jac killed without your hand in the murder being evident, you’d need a lot of nationalist yeoman clout to be confident in your ability to choose the next Cabelite leader.
Not very. I’m not planning for mule management to be a big part of future games.
Refined blood lets you (a) use other people’s blood, not your own, and (b) get a much higher aether concentration than you can get from your own body without irreversible damage. Those provide an enormous boost on what was otherwise possible. The wisards of Shayard and other practitioners before the Theurgic Revolution used their own blood, not other people’s; their skills were also much more poorly understood, and @NotMyRealName is right than education was a barrier to wider uptake. (Not so much with Theurgic trance as with being able to do much of anything once you’re in trance. The MC did a lot of work to wrap their brain around the Stoicheia of Hyron before the game starts, and that’s what gave you the insights that set you off as a budding elementalist.)
To be clear, the pre-Hera helot krypteia wasn’t sacrificing them for Theurgic purposes (any more than it was with the Spartans in our world).
I think you’d have to rewrite a LOT of code for that not to happen. Foodstores get reset regularly based on your actions.