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

No, or probably at least not formally. The whole shambles is based upon the blood cattle being and remaining blood-cattle no matter what. I think in such a case the priests are just going to proclaim we’ll get an extra-special reward from the “merciful angels”…in the next life.
The best it would get would likely be to become prince nippletwister’s favourite house helot and sex-toy. A relatively easy life for a helot, provided you like being a sex-toy, but we’d still be expected to scrub floors and wait tables and won’t have any kind of status whatsoever.

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In previous posts @Havenstone has mentioned that the Hegemony may have secretly brought children with therugic potential into the ruling caste. However, this can never be known publicly as it undermines the both the goety and human caste telos narratives that Hegemonic society is based on.

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This reminds me Brave new world in sense an alpha will always be an alpha do whatever they do or talents. that close environment is dangerously unstable. If lowering class have absolutely no way to improve their station for they kids or for themselves. That creates a turmoil a hatred and make a great focus for revolutions. Hegemony is regimedoomed to collapse

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It was always my understanding that this only applied to the freeborn at least. As in the poor urban masses or rural yeomen, not the blood-cattle. If they ever did so with helots it practically has to have been done with babies and probably hasn’t happened in a very long time now.

In any case, coming back to Mara’s question once a helot does something openly and publicly heroic like she posits there would be no chance of doing that as it needs to be kept the utmost secret. So it would likely be that the reward would be “promotion” to house helot, if not a house helot already and the promise of an extra-special reward after their harrowing, but that would be it, no matter the talents or qualities of the individual in question. Anything else would risk the whole sorry shambles come tumbling down.

Horion does mention that some of the old city-states in pre-Hegemony Karagon had that practice, but the Hegemony according to Horion did not adopt that practice.
            *label helothistory
            "Did you know that in some of the free cities of old Karagon, helots could become citizens if they committed feats of sufficient bravery?"
            
            "What?" You
            *if horch3 < 3
              recoil, trying to
            *if horch3 > 2
              struggle to
            imagine the Karagonds, of all people, allowing any blurring of the line between helot and free.
            
            "Unthinkable, unnatural, yes, yes.  But read between the lines of the old histories, and it's clear enough."  Horion is clearly enjoying your astonishment.  "While in other cities, they declared war on the helotry once a year and encouraged young nobles to kill them by stealth.  The Krypteia, they called it.  Some of the less kindly bits of the Codex were written in those cities; and it's their vision of what's natural that's been passed down to us."  He shakes his head.

I think the XOR world is definitely going to need a wiki eventually. I’ve probably even read the posts to which you refer but I just can’t remember them.

There is possibly another promotion option. The Hegemony could perhaps promote such helots to Kryptast informant and allow them to become helot elders.

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They’d still remain subservient to any and all freeborn persons in any case and still ultimately destined for the Harrower. No real rewarding of helots is possible under their caste system, certainly not publicly.

If the price is becoming a Kryptast informant my mc certainly wouldn’t consider it an improvement at all.

Up to a point and only if their supervisors agree. Particularly with nobles involved that’s still no guarantee. And the fact remains they must continue to act subservient at all times.

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Subservient publicly. A Kryptast informant would have increased means to have troublesome freeborn people handled. The life of a helot is dangerous and hard enough even without Harrowing that some helot elders (particularly men who could still conceivably sire children in old age thus providing an excuse to delay Harrowing) might actually manage to die of something other than a Harrower. So getting to be a helot elder would certainly be a step up in their world.

Yeah That’s cool if you are male women are triple screwed. Life less years have to be firced to have babies and then being harrowing when menopause came.

@Havenstone I was thinkibg for another character if is possible farming kids in sense have a kid tribute in sense every family not noble has to give a kid to state each two years. Families have lots of members in helots
I think is far less cruel grabbing a baby in moment being born and let the rest of family live their life . I am thinking about my theurge character … still i don’t found theurge run fun still i need create a rp character to make me enjoy that.

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That’s what Halassur does. Havenstone has mentioned that will be possible to do.

No, definitely not – it’s 100% at the discretion of the Thaumatarch. That said, as the Leilatou demonstrate, a family that does well in the role may be chosen to continue in it.

Of course.

Too late for that. :slight_smile:

No, just to confuse it, in situations where similar teloi abound – for Game One example, where an airborne Theurge is scanning a forest for signs of life. As long as you’ve not added too much blatant artificiality to the landscape, humans will tend to blend in with the life around them.

Miners’ powder is indeed used for mining, but not much used in battle, in part because the only war of note for centuries has been carried on in heavily Theurge-ridden areas and across a Ward. Besides not being Ward-crossable, black powder is ungainly (very little tech development has gone into it as a weapon, for reasons explained on the WIP thread) and conspicuous – it’s too hard to keep Theurges from sensing it while it’s in transit to wherever you want it.

Once you’ve got it off a cart or ship and into a tunnel, it wouldn’t need to be all that deep to escape most Theurges’ telos-sense. Twenty feet deep, maybe, to avoid the notice of a sensitive Theurge who was actually walking over it? But Theurgic warfare doesn’t really lend itself to heavily fortified positions anyway; it privileges mobility.

In a civil war/ insurgency scenario, the tactical uses of miners’ powder will somewhat increase, as there will be walls you want to blow up in places that aren’t crawling with Theurges.

Once the aether’s out of it, meteoric metal is good for the same things in this world that it is in ours.

Would be awesome. :slight_smile: We’ll see.

I figured there would be at least a few players who had that reaction… :slight_smile:

Or limit it to a reasonable range of MCs. There’s no way that anyone beginning the series in Game 2 will have anything like the range of possible outcomes that you could have at the end of Game 1…the recap won’t walk you through every choice!

The Telones have all the negatives of being sell-outs to Karagon and none of the prestige. You mention aristos and Phalangites, but centuries of culture have gone into making those seem grand and glorious. You’ve got to be a pretty hard-headed radical helot to be completely unmoved by all the propaganda and not be at least a little subconsciously chuffed that your revolt has attracted “the better sort.” There aren’t any social scripts telling you to be thrilled that a quisling like Bleys has joined you.

Architelones don’t accept taxes in (human)kind.

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@Havenstone Could a wisard put aether back into meteoric metal thus creating a talisman? Even if it cost more aether to create a talisman than could be stored in the talisman, some of the more overtly devout wisard MCs might find possessing a talisman useful for other reasons. Such as: "Behold! The Angels have gifted me with a Talisman! So clearly I am an Eclect!"

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Yep, it gets Havenstone’s fictional Hegemony people like my mc and lots more like him now that their deterrent of existential fear is faltering.

As would major infrastructure projects, such as a grand canal, I would venture. The demand for the stuff that creates might even be enough to spur some innovation on it.

The looted husks of them anyway. I have no illusions on that front and in the only nominally loyal, warlord held areas a few might slip on by as it won’t be much of a priority I wager.
Aegre’s sister city is too important to not turn into the poster-child of this policy though.

Would also absolutely need a save game system.

If that’s just for Calea how bad will it get with prince(ss) nippletwister in the third game and onwards, I wonder? :thinking:

They are also hard working, educated and derive little enough personal gain from it that my mc sees potential in them. Tax collectors are always hated, but if my mc is more successful at bringing them into the fold it would do wonders for ensuring the population remains at least somewhat legible to any a successor state we might found. Particularly if we can use innovations, such as difference engines (which if they exist the Hegemony might dismiss as yet another toy) to bolster administration in the core territories. They could play a vital role by ensuring we end up the single strongest faction once the dust settles, simply by virtue of actually having a tax base the various competitors, particularly any warlords are either much weaker in or lack altogether.

Although I do realize, that like @P_Tigras said it will not necessarily be a popular move to salvage and depend on elements of the former “federal” government, even freed of its theocratic dominance and trappings over more provincial (read the corrupt provincial, rural nobility) institutions.

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@Havenstone Could a Pc be pro Hegemony and just want MAKE IT GREAT AGAIN and rescued it from the corruption and make it stable again?

Just saying I was thinking create a noble cosmopolitan theurge dreaming to conquering the known world and discovered a way of further screwing up helots.

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That’s more than alright, you’re the author. :slightly_smiling_face:

I think you can do something similar to it, at least. When talking to Horion, you can tell him that you plan on building a new Hegemony on top of the old one. It’s left pretty open, but maybe the MC would have the chance to adopt many things from the old regime when they reach power.

You know, I’ve always wondered how one can be Gandhi while simultaneously supporting a regime of military nobility enforced by strength of arms.

Evil Gandhi. Well Gandhi had a very peculiar vision and Hindu regime and culture is not most equalitarism ever. It’s a caste system very Similar to hegemony if you think about it. Even if he tried to change to a real democratic the culture and people didn’t want that.

Also I don’t know if you had played Civilization games. In first game there where a famous bug that turned Gandhi in the most powerhouse with nuclear power and a psycho personality. It happened because the pacifism go so high that data get corrupt and become negative.
People saw that so funny that now is a feature of series the Evil Gandhi or war Gandhi.
I called Gandhi due fact she is pacifist sort of and does not use direct violence except to defend from a direct attack.

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Gandhi: *is your friend.
Me: *Invades a far away country with all of my military units, leaving me defenseless.
Gandhi: *Declares war. "SURPRISE MOTHAF’CKA!

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Yeah, and when staring demanding tributes to not nuke you and then nuke you anyway. lol

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If you could be the Archon of any of the four provinces, which would it be?

  • Shayard
  • Erezza
  • Wiendrj
  • Nyryal

0 voters

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Shayardene Forever OUR GRYFFON WILL REACH THE STARS…

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