I am actually hoping Teren would be every bit as clever as Horion. I disagree that being a noble would necessarily mean never quite respecting former helots. Horion seemed to me when I played a helot MC to genuinely accept that an INT 2 helot proved the point that the distinction between free and non-free was false.
From the XOR 1 WIP thread by @Havenstone:
While much of your analysis captures the mindset well, @P_Tigras, I don’t think this does justice to how a highly stratified caste society judges the people at the bottom. (Maybe because my writing so far hasn’t done justice to it either!) Most nobles would have the default assumption that even a thoroughly dumb or corrupt noble is still naturally superior – ethically and intellectually – to the helotry. (It helps that most of them meet very few helots, and almost always on terms that reinforce the prejudices.)
A fairly open-minded noble might get as far as to think that the smartest helot beats out the dumbest noble; you can be sure that Horion Leilatou believes that lots of his acquaintances are dumber than a smart helot. But to think that the average helot is smarter than a dumb noble is a pretty big shift from the conventional wisdom.
@idonotlikeusernames I did prefer the earlier answer about Yebben but authorial vision can change. Still perhaps it may yet change back.
Well, as I mentioned earlier, my MC expects the rebellion to end up with thousands of wisards and for the war against the Hegemony to last for decades. So in that much time with that many wisards, it does not seem unreasonable to suppose that some would specialize in healing and become proficient at it through sheer practice. I do agree that my MC as well is probably never going to specialize in healing but stating that literacy is key to wisardry and wisardry is capable of healing even Poric is a statement of fact not a promise.
That is a personnel management issue. Kala/Kalt is useful properly deployed. Don’t send Kala/Kalt to interact with nobles (such as Chapter 3) if you want the nobles to survive the meeting but as I mentioned before, facing the Hegemony there is no shortage of targets appropriate for Kala/Kalt. In any case, I prefer Kala/Kalt to going easy on the Hegemony just to get Simon/Suzane.