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

Yeah, that’s a big problem for my mc too, as he absolutely needs to break the system, and frankly I think any ex-helot who doesn’t want to be reduced to a serf or sharecropper at best under any new regime would need to do the same.

Also managed to win the fight and keep everybody important alive today, turns out I need to burn all those poor trees. :cry:
But they are martyrs for the cause and will be fondly remembered. :deciduous_tree: :evergreen_tree:
Once we have prisoners of war we’ll make them plant new saplings.

4 Likes

Well, the problem with breaking the system is that you’d also be purging the people who know how to run it. You’d not only have to replace the Phalangites (who are majority-aristocracy) with a new army and build your Theurgic power from the ground up (Havenstone already made very clear that winning without developing some magical capacity is flatly impossible) but you’d have to replace the existing administration of the Hegemony in toto. In short, you plan to govern the Hegemony exclusively using people with little education or knowledge of governance.

There are the merchants, at least for now my mc and his rebellion seem to get on well-enough with them. They can probably also fill the administrative posts that really need specialized knowledge that cannot be taught within a couple of weeks.
The caste based religious nightmare theocracy of the Hegemony really needs to end in order to give my mc and former the chance of every being anything else than slaves or blood-cattle or in the best case near-slave serfs or sharecroppers.

On the other hand the problem with not breaking it is that (former) helots will never have a place in the halls of power, apart from scrubbing the floors. My mc is doing this to free the helots, including himself and he never wants to go back to being a slave or servant ever again.

2 Likes

RE: Breden…when you can practically smell the traitor on him but you still want the d so you choose to play through as the most oblivious, trusting MC imaginable

9 Likes

Absolutely know the feeling. :frowning_face:

7 Likes

Contrariwise, my MC is proceeding on the idea that most helots don’t really want a revolution. What they want is safety, a full belly and to not be tossed in the Harrower or forced into breeding (as Zebed’s heretical doctrine preached).

At the end of the day, Alya’s sure that there’ll still be those who rule and those who serve. Elevating some helots to the aristocracy (like Elery) won’t change the fact that there will still be rulers, and even if you liquidated the entire upper class, you’ll still have former helots and merchants turning into aristocrats - they’ll just be worse at ruling because, by and large, their telos wasn’t shaped for it.

2 Likes

My MC is pretty much the same, though he does hope that more widespread religious education will give some helots upward mobility too (as priests, and through the grace of their protector, Prophet, and Eclect). Physical and spiritual comfort is what they need.

1 Like

I think that is pretty well the main line of the “faith” by now.

And the moment they have that people, especially the more talented, will want more then to be poor farmers. In the caste system even with some serious reforms. Reforms that you most likely can’t implement without splitting the faith anyway, Eclect or no, will only allow for the first three layers on Maslow’s pyramid to be satisfied for (former) helots.
Possibly not even the third if you want to keep luxury spending at current levels and the wards up, because you still need them as blood-cattle.

In any case, even supposing you can find a way you no longer need to use helots as blood-cattle all caste system’s are designed to deny their lower castes most of the opportunities at aspiring to any sort of esteem or self-actualization.
For my mc as well as our more prominent followers that is an absolutely unacceptable state of affairs.
As I’ve said before my mc is not fighting for a mere regime change and a slightly better deal on the physical conditions of his enslavement and that of his peers.

In any case as long as the caste system remain intact helots can’t have any of those things

This is pretty much exactly what caste systems, and the Hegemony’s is one of the most brutal examples, are exactly designed to prevent. In order to have that you’d need to break the caste system anyway.

4 Likes

No caste system is absolute, especially when every ideological underpinning for it comes crashing down. An army who’s primary contingent is helots (blessed with divine providence) toppling the old nobility makes the idea of the caste and Karagond telos absurd. The fundamental operation and construction of society isn’t on caste, though, but class: something much harder to change.

2 Likes

It never did on the Indian subcontinent for the Hindu caste system. Which is a big part of why I think that the caste system really needs more to be broken then and a simple regime change won’t be nearly enough to accomplish that. Hindu Kingdoms and Empires have risen and fallen but the caste system has stayed largely intact all that time. Besides Karagond is a theocracy, which means the nightmare religion must be weakened and preferably be allowed to split and schism in order to get the current caste system de-legitimized and out of the way.

Sure, but you can have really hard, immutable class borders that are nearly impossible to cross or you can have softer ones and a society where merit, talent, ability and sometimes sheer luck can allow people to rise. For that to be possible people need to fundamentally be seen as people, not as untouchables, blood-cattle or untermenschen. This is not something that is currently possible in the Hegemony’s theocratic nightmare as both the state and far more so the religion will never allow it.

2 Likes

Yes, but not without exception. The most reliable way to beat it was conquest, as in the case of certain tribal leaders turned kings and nobles. The helots can gain a measure of equality (as humans, if not materially) the same way: victory over the Hegemony, with the blessings of the Angels. Victory in war and control of the Xthonic means the Hegemony’s caste system can be radically altered or even displaced entirely.

This is the goal, though. You primarily need one thing to be a priest: an education, and with the sponsorship of a ruling Eclect, promising helots can get it. Seizing the Xthonic faith doesn’t mean leaving it exactly the same, but does give you the ability to alter and tweak it for the betterment of society.

The Angels are telling my MC that it’s a heresy. Therefore, it’s a heresy, to be purged with fire and Harrowers.

Already did that. I think I’ve mentioned that the current Karagond priesthood and their Canon is gonna go.

With that said, first, most helots are still going to have most of their day taken up with hard labor as before, so they’ll have (in exchange for sustenance and safety) as little time to plot for how they’re going to climb the ladder as possible.

The other thing a good caste system has is a limited amount of mobility. Promote a few helots to the aristocracy and that doesn’t damage the system as a whole. Maintaining the caste system in its full rigidity was never my objective - Elery, for example, could be used as a shining example to all the other helots who are never going to be as noble as her, while manumission can be made a (theoretically) achievable goal. Escape valves are a good way to keep caste systems from becoming a pressure cooker.

1 Like

The problem is that my mc isn’t conquering Karagon and its Hegemony at the head of a horde of foreign tribes, but that he is instead a part of the indigenous blood-cattle class and the current nobles would rather subjugate themselves to foreign invaders, who are at the very least human, then their own sub-human blood-cattle class/caste.

Are not needed to conquer the Hegemony. Pretending otherwise risks rendering you a puppet to the nightmare religion and for those in the lower castes that will never end well.

I disagree with the priest or eclect parts, yes education is needed the rest is not. There is already an undercurrent of anti-clericalism that can be built on to attract followers. The nightmare version of the religion propagated by the wordly, theocratic power of its current, unified Church absolutely needs to go the way of the Dodo. The best way to do that is by decapitating its current leadership and using its current highly corrupt centralisation against it. Deprive them of both public funding and the doctrinal unity their upper echelons provide, as well as outlawing the Karagond Codex and the the Xthonic faith will splinter under the former Diakons who will now for the first time have to be responsive to their flocks in order to make money to survive and will have to compete against each-other and the other and new religions allowed to enter the market.

Maintaining the caste system in any way, shape or form will never allow my mc to remain at the top. Besides it won’t be needed as my mc would rather base a new regime on (theoretical) popular legitimacy, rather than a supposed “divine” mandate from Xthonos or his merry band of abominations.
To poke holes in the system that are large enough to allow a former helot to go from the very bottom all the way to the top risks shattering the whole sorry shambles anyway. Particularly in the case of my mc since he refuses to play either the eclect game or the “lost nobility” one as both mean that from that point on you’d need to play the game by the rules of the priesthood and/or the aristocracy. We all know how my mc would absolutely abhor even the minimally required decadence to pretend to be a “noble” in the current system and by this point in the story his lack of faith and piety is already quite well known.

I’ve already said that I think this is a trap, the charismatic character won’t have much of an impact past their lifetime as the they’re likely to ultimately be too easily duped by the sheer volume of theology and doctine, while the high Int “eclect” will have the opposite problem. They may be able to devise a way to use the Church’s own theology against it to unravel the horrid system but won’t have the charisma or sheer weight of followers to then ram those reforms down the throat of the Church.
That ignores that helots, notwithstanding Linos, will never be accepted as “Eclect”.

2 Likes

Now, here’s where I partly disagree with you, though you have a point. A helot rising to the top does not break the system. You want the system broken for the sake of breaking the system - which is fine - but it will absolutely be possible for a helot to gain and maintain the support of the aristocracy and maintain the caste system. The aristocracy will (grudgingly) accept a helot as one of them - if, of course, that helot is willing to play the aristocracy’s games of honor. (Not necessarily decadence.) But as you have noted, they will fight a helot who doesn’t play the game, who threatens the very system of aristocratic privilege, to the death.

Martellus von Blitzengaard explains how it works.

1 Like

Ooh, that Baron character who was apparently the previous ruler sounds a bit closer to my mc. :grin:
As for my mc he hasn’t the patience or the charisma to put up with those games and likely has a good deal of utter contempt, if not worse, for the current aristocracy. In the best case he might grudgingly tolerate some of them, but he’s never going to force himself to play their games by their rules.

You are refuting your own statement here, as everything you write there makes it clear a helot rising to the top will in fact break the system. A helot who isn’t willing to hide the fact under some pretense of “rediscovered lost nobility” or “eclect” nonsense that is.
Of those two playing the games of the aristocracy is likely the more promising route for those who can stomach it, but that still requires shattering the worldly power of the current church even if you’re fine with going with rediscovered “lost nobility” if you leave the Church intact they’ll never accept it though. On the other hand the eclect route, alone or in conjunction with lost nobility is by far the more dangerous one for the reasons I’ve already mentioned above.

1 Like

The point isn’t their foreignness, but the primal legitimacy that comes with military conquest.

No, but the conquest proves you have them (to the faithful, anyway). Religious and military legitimacy go hand in hand, reinforcing each other.

You might be too cynical here. If the Karagonds could revise, erase and replace the old Shayardene codex, then a sufficiently talented and supported MC should be able to do the same.

3 Likes

No it doesn’t. I imagine claiming noble blood would help, but I never discounted “hey, I’m a noble now, any objections? hefts axe

Oligarchs tend to be surprisingly willing to accept people into their ranks if said person will defend their privileges. (Which you won’t, but again, separate issue.)

4 Likes

While we don’t know the exact details I think Hera merely introduced the rest of the world to the Karagond Codex. The Karagond Codex itself was likely devised (slightly) before Hera’s time, maybe even by her mother or father. In any case she was always at the head of an already established apparatus of oppression and thus always had legitimacy among her own people. Our mc’s, especially the helot mc, have none of that.

Right but that’s what my mc needs to de-legitimize the current institutions. The Thaumatarch and his Eclectoi being overthrown by a mere helot is, like I said half the work to getting there.

Sure, and unless you exterminate the entire current priesthood the risks I mentioned will be very much pretty as the priesthood will seek to use such an mc to perpetuate their system under a slightly different guise at best.
The aristo mc may stand a slim chance at pushing some reform, the helot one, not so much I think.

On the other hand the thing my mc most abhors about the current aristocracy is their decadence and corruption. He’s slightly more likely to play games of “honour” then partake in, let alone defend the decadence.

1 Like

Sorry, slow edit. Meant the Shayardene Codex, along with the native religions of Whendry and the other provinces. The Karagonds largely extinguished them with the threat of their power: by comparison, a ruling MC editing the Codex would be considerably easier.

I’m completely in love with this game, and not just because I love revolutionary stories in general. Major props to Havenstone and everyone who helped with its development over the years. The world feels extremely real and immersive, and the characters all feel extremely believable, with their own motivations.

I really, really love Breden. I absolutely think he’s a Kryptast… but I don’t think that makes him a continued traitor. The scene where he gives the love interest MC the code is pretty telling, to me, and my response afterwards definitely felt like “Okay, I know and accept it and still trust/love you” moment. His emotional reaction felt extremely believable (as have most of his emotional reactions), and while I’m sure being a kryptast you’d have to be a pretty good actor, he obviously had no reason to trust you with the code unless he thought you might accept him anyway.

In short, I think that he’s a kryptast but that he flipped a long time ago, first in sentiment and then in action and became an “actual” rebel. I think he sold out his friends in Rim Square under threat and completely felt sick and regretted it when he saw the consequences of that action, and that everything kind of follows naturally from that.

Who knows though? Maybe I’m just naive & trusting.

15 Likes