@Havenstone Havie I was thinking about the supposed Hallasur Lacoste relationship. And Like Mara is pro Shayardene could Mara in a way pact with Halassur she gets the independence and They get the rest of Empire . Even if Mara will never use herself or let her people use theurge blood and use her people I could imagine she couldn’t object other country do whatever with their own citizens if Serve the main goal.
I mean I as person seen it totally Hypocrite however in several religious revolutions or crusades Religious leaders has directly allied with contrary belief groups because was accepted as a lesser evil. It could be a good think to explore. After all Mara used her new Lacoste spears to save her life and has lived using theurge all her life. So the hypocrisy is always there. Like the old popes and their wifes and bastards lol
I assume you’ll also be able to continue to have a tense cold-war esque relationship with them. In my mc’s successor state’s case over their (previous) support for the Laconnier rebels and the various old and unresolved irredentist issues. But where neither the mc’s new state and hopefully the Halassurqs are particularly anxious to have the situation actually turn “hot” for various reasons?
One issue my MC would have with a cold-war relationship with Halassur is that even a peacetime cold-war arms race might kill thousands if not more probably millions. The total body count may actually be higher from a lengthy period of peace with Halassur as opposed to an all-out effort to remove the threat posed by Halassur. It is unthinkable for my MC to permanently settle for routine murder of innocents as a strategic deterrent against Halassur.
Superpowers have neither friends nor allies, just interests. It may in some cases beneficial for internal politics to have a credible external threat and of those Halassur is the more predictable one, as compared to whatever survives of Broracha, the Abhuman federation or possibly starting a rivalry with one of the as yet largely unknown more distant powers over on another continent.
Most of those would be from proxy wars in far-flung locations tho, if our cold war is any indication. So they won’t be killing citizens in your core provinces by the score.
Some MCs may choose to continue what the Hegemony has done for several centuries regarding Halassur. My MC would never choose that if there seemed to be a decent chance at ending the cycle in a favorable way.
I refer to aetherial blood “drives”. Those may manage to kill more of the new state’s people in the long run than a hot war would have.
The key word being favourable, which I’m not really seeing. At least not with my main mc, considering how Halassur is the prime backer of the rebel bunch he hates most, besides the actual Hegemony. The Laconnier backing is going to create a lot of bad blood between my mc and the Halassurqs right from the moment he figures that out and has proof of it.
They would have to display a level of contrition towards my and his new polity to make up for those transgressions that I don’t think they will even contemplate.
In any case my mc would be happy to return the favour and sponsor rebels in Halassur in turn.
No reason you can’t harvest from the people on “whose behalf” you’re fighting the proxy war, in order to protect them from the evil Halassurq influence. Again, it tends not to be the superpowers themselves who really pay the most onerous costs of their foreign policy.
It is too soon to say. At the moment, the Rebellion isn’t even strong enough to threaten the Hegemony.
That would be an effective way of turning our neighbors into threats. Even if the new state did that, I’m not sure it would yield enough aetherial blood. The Hegemony certainly could not balance its aetherial blood budget using just foreign “donations”. I suspect acquiring a copy of the Hegemony’s aetherial blood budget may be one of the most important intel goals for the Rebellion. It would be rather hard to do long term planning without it.
How “finite” is finite really here. We know it is preciously limited on the planet, but if it is say put out on the solar wind of stars in this universe and accumulates on celestial bodies with no or a very limited atmosphere in appreciable quantities then, given sufficient (technological) advancements the supply won’t be that much of an issue for most of the future.
That would assume the new state uses all of the Hegemony’s ticks, it won’t because that model has proven utterly unsustainable. In addition to maybe moving to a more Halassur like method of obtaining magic juice the arms race may be focused much more on conventional tech too. My mc is particularly interested in exploiting the full potential of the air rifle to create a soldier, as opposed to a warrior caste driven military culture, and that’s just for starters.
“Karagon” would probably be a sticking point there. The Halassurqs have some very specific things in mind for the Karagonds which they won’t want to carry out under foreign inteference. You’d also get resistance from the many Nyrs who have no desire to fall under the rule of their benighted, superstitious, gender-obsessed cousins. But it’s a not-implausible division of territory if you can clear out the other post-Thaumatarchy factions.
That will be possible–and a massive diplomatic achievement. As the Hegemony falls apart, the pressure in the Empire to launch a campaign of vengeance, paying back the centuries of “Karagond aggression,” will be hard to resist for any Halassurq ruler.
@Norilinde, belatedly, by “thinkable” (for the author) I did indeed mean “achievable” (for the player). Where the Hegemony has failed for centuries to make more than incremental progress in conquering Halassur, it’s currently hard for me to imagine any circumstance in which Game 5 could involve a successful conquest–especially as one of the other key factions has their own well worked-out vision for Halassurq relations, and you’d have to worry about them stabbing you in the back if you got overextended to the east. I suppose if I think a little more about the example Napoleon offers in our world, I might get inspired.
Can I say here that I’m impressed by how much animosity you’ve managed to build up toward this mystery faction about which almost nothing is actually known in-game?
If they send you a Talisman. There are otherwise no known ways–not even in legend–of doing Theurgy without bloodshed.
Don’t forget that the Hegemony is at best an early-modern state. They likely don’t have a centralized blood budget, or for that matter a centralized cash budget covering the vast majority of the costs of administering their territory. State budgets are a technology that took centuries to develop, along with the skilled professionals that make them.
Whatever the future may hold for the gameworld, there will definitely not be a silver bullet appearing in these games in which supply constraints and the associated dilemmas are suddenly removed.
Well they seem to be focused around the nobility and even have Hector Keriatou as a member, so it’s really not hard for my mc to absolutely loathe them. And that is before the fact that they are also Halassur-backed traitors. My mc doesn’t bow down and kowtow to the Thaumatarch anymore so why should he do it for a descendant of the old family who proved four centuries ago they were no match for Hera and her then fledgling Hegemony?
Well…workable fusion power is likely what would enable our real world to enter much of the territory associated with post-scarcity. Not that I expect it to be easy as those currently in power would do everything in their power to delay such applications as long as possible, even if humanity had the tech already.
So our Mc can research yeah? Maybe they’ll focus on this, obsess over it, and use rebel resources in search of ways? Can a theurge-society be created by game 5?
@Havenstone While thinking about Napoleon’s example, I suggest also considering the Eastern Front in the First World War where Germany did manage to prevail even while fighting on the Western Front.
A Google search turns up results for the finances of Ancient Athens and the Delian League, another search yields Roman finances (with the caveat that the author does not call it budget information to avoid modern budget connotations). I do think the Rebellion will need the reports on aetherial blood intake and spending.
Considering the continental span of the Hegemony even just holding it all together probably will be a military campaign worthy of legend. In some ways there will be Napoleon parallels too if the MC goes with Theurge mass mobilization and takes advantage of ideological motivation among their volunteers and potential conscripts. In this scenario I’m thinking Halassur is Russia…
There won’t be a lot of opportunity for that, I’m afraid. I agree that it would be more than reasonable for an MC to pour money and research into it – into any blood-free alternative to the current Theurgic economy – but as an author concerned for the fun of my readers, I don’t want to give them too much time pursuing a string of choices that would ultimately lead to a dead end.
Depends on what you mean by a Theurge-society. You can disseminate the knowledge of Theurgy… but the more widely you do so, the greater the social upheaval, and the longer it’ll take to settle into a stable equilibrium. With widespread understanding of how Theurgy works, I’m not sure there’d be a stable “Theurge-society” within the MC’s lifetime.
To be fair, they mostly lack the devastating winters.
Otherwise, yes, it would recall that classic Eddie Izzard Dressed to Kill bit: ‘Napoleon had been steaming in there 100 years before: “I’m going to kill them, I’m going to kill them, going to… Oh, it’s a bit cold, it’s a bit cold. Right! Ok, ok, bad idea.” And then Hitler, “I’ve got a better idea, got a better idea… Oh, it’s the same idea! It’s the same idea, it’s the same idea…”’
(Fresh in my mind from a few weeks ago, when I thought: someone needs to play this to the next GOP leader who suggests a US government shutdown as leverage for getting something through Congress. We now return you to XOR.)
I like the less militaristic player here. Could I use Mara force persuasion powers To ideologically converted other players far more stronger than me in almost absolutely EVERYTHING. I mean Mara will be max Charisma and rest in intelligence absolutely no point in combat. I could imagine the shayard could become some sort of Vatican or center in religion and art With some cool dressed Inquisitors as personal guard with Halassur maces that fake being rusty and the ceremony mules as guard members .Mr pumpkins as honour coroner or something.
Fortunately for me it wasn’t General Winter, but rather outrunning their logstics capacity that did both invasions in. I also get a vaguely Central European hordelands vibe from the our friend Hal though that may because they trigger memories of the horse people from the King of Dragon Pass for me for some reason…
Well, that’s interesting. And those are interesting names, too. Though I suppose names aren’t really final until very late in the writing process, so I shouldn’t get too comfy with them.
