Breden isn’t a kryptast, they’re exactly who they appear to be, that is to say a charismatic helot…whose job it was to quietly draw in subversive elements from the helotry to be culled in the harrowing. The rebellion itself was an unexpected outcome. Frame Breden’s actions as a small-scale spy way in over their head. Breden is highly suspicious and does little to allay those suspicions, so probably not a professional. Also explains why they get picked for the harrowing as well. The Hegemony wouldn’t execute a trained spy for doing their job, but some random helot, who may very well begin to sympathize with the dissidents they work against? Disposable. Toss them out with the rest of the trash and voilà, no loose ends.
Yeah, that’s certainly plausible. I guess in the next game we’ll see if young Simon might be a Laconnier plant.
Given that the Laconniers seem to be a foreign (Hallasur) backed nativist Shayardene “noble” conspiracy, they are almost as bad news as the Hegemony itself to my mc.
My fear however is that Breden may not be the only Kryptast in our little merry band, particularly when the mc gets back from their sojourn into the Xaos lands, as there will at that point be some new and unfamiliar faces in the band, including most likely a more professional Kryptast spy then Breden.
That said, yes you can, but only in small doses (you can’t just pay them off as if they were yeomen or helots). What they like most is low anarchy: if you work with the nobility and prove your bona fides, they’ll be more inclined to work with you in turn, particularly if they think that you won’t kill them once you’re in power.
Congratulations @Havenstone! The final release is amazing and the additions since the open beta closed only made an already incredible game even better.
I’m fascinated about:
Talismans: a handful of immensely sacred, near-mythical objects that allow a Theurge to wield Angelic power without shedding blood. Used by some Eclect heroes in the stories of the Codex, and reportedly by the Thaumatarch and some Ennearchs today.
It might be helpful to perhaps merge this thread with the Author Interview thread. Similarly, the XOR Hints thread might benefit from repeated linking to the WIP thread which is helpful for both lore and strategies.
I only noticed one bug and it is after the fighting at the end so it does not affect the game mechanics.
@jasonstevanhill This may be a stupid question but does the full email address end in dot com?
Since I wasn’t sure, I’ll just append the pictures of the bug.
EDIT: Yes, it does. My apologies and I’ll email pictures of any bugs there.
The bug is that the number of casualties of food poisoning is given instead as the total number of people in the band at that point. It affects only flavor at that point so far as I know.
This is the state of your leadership and the rebellion:
Kuria Alya Seriatou
Born a noble of House de Serin
Self-taught Theurge
Prophet of the common Angelic voice
Epithets
Called by your followers:
Open-Handed
Traits
Charisma: You are reasonably persuasive and charming.
Combat: You’re unlikely to win a fight or lead others to victory.
Intellect: You’re widely read on many topics, with an excellent memory and strong reasoning skills.
You are popularly seen to be:
Ruthless: 17% Compassionate: 83%
Skeptical: 23% Devout: 77%
Homelander: 24% Cosmopolitan: 76%
Followers
Your rebellion has 542 surviving followers, including 364 adults and 178 children.
Of these, 67 are literate.
Since the rebellion began, 94 of your followers have died.
Morale is exceptionally strong.
How did you manage to keep blood at 4? I always lose at least 2 to get rid of that damned first Plektos without dying as a “mage”?
Also I think your mc is too friendly with the oppressors, but then I guess they are one themselves.
Well, I just sinished two playthroughs (but I’ll admit I skimmed a lot of writing the second time) and it was great, as the beta was. It’s certainly more polished, with less bugs, the writing has, consistently, proved to be stellar. I have already sung XoR’s praises many times, and I don’t feel like I need to do it again, but I’ll drop a thought for the final launch:
I think this is the second best game CoG has ever released, and if it were a bit better, it’d be as good as Choice of Robots.
Also, playing it made me realise that Kalt is a really interesting character, and that the Helot path is good. But I still like the Hector-Calea-MC dynamic too much.
And I’d like to ask some questions to @Havenstone:
1.Since I always custom name my canon characters: Aristos usually use Greek names from Classical Antiquity and the Byzantine period, right? And a Helot’s surname usually reflects their profession, like Reaper, Skinner, Thresher, Sower and so on?
2.You once mentioned that the Halassurqs are heavily based on the Turkic peoples of Central Asia, but are they visibly different from most citizens of the Hegemony, like the Shayardenes? Can someone like the MC, from a backwater town, point a finger at someone and say “Oh, So and So looks like a Halassurq”?
Had a cool error playthrough. Shut down my phone before finishing chapter 1 and it saved my values for traits and stats but let me replay the chapter.
Must have been caught before because while I ended up with impossible traits, it handled the stat problems very elegantly. It ended up setting me at 2/1/0 using my original choices rather than boosting me to the 2/2/1 I was trying for.
Well, of course. We oppressive aristocrats have to stick together against the lower orders and conquerors alike.
As for the Plektoi, if the enemy don’t know you’re a Theurge, then you can defeat them all with just your own blood…
@augustus27: After the next patch I’ll cook comething up and post it in the other thread. My current strategy’s specifics involve working with and around a bug that I’ve already reported, and I’ll want to adjust the specifics.
I wouldn’t have expected anything else from you @Sneaks.
And, yes, pretender is probably the right word, since they’re probably nothing more then the puppet figurehead of an Hallasur funded conspiracy and terrorist organization.
As a huge Robots fan myself, second-best is what I was aspiring to.
You’ve got the naming conventions right, and Halassurqs (like Nyrs) are paler than your average Erezziano or Shayardene. Someone in a backwater town in the Rim couldn’t tell a Halassurq from a Nyr, but they’d know they weren’t from around here.
I actually think it is the best Choice game I’ve played to date, Choice of Robots was very well written, but I guess ultimately too predictable and a bit lacking in the romance department (which I think is that author’s main weakness in his other game too, but then I tend to value romance fairly highly) for me.
Well the helot still has a dynamic with Hector and Calea and some male helots can if they wish significantly expand their dynamic with Calea in future games it seems.
My canon mc hates both of them, Calea for (ab)using for her cruel games and then taking away his friend and likely first Crush Dann and Hector, well Hector where to begin. For my mc Hector is the living personification of (almost) everything that is wrong with Shayard and the Hegemony. The latest blow has of course been that his second crush, Ganelon turned out to have been one of Hector personal little torturers all along.
True, but then most characters in the series, at least the mayor ones are interesting. Though again I’d say for a relatively minor character Ganelon really had a huge impact in shaping my mc. Hector too of course.
The mc’s dad in his own way was interesting too, still a bit sad that he had to die.
If I recall correctly aren’t Shayardenes are of mostly Mediterranean complexion, I suppose the Erezziano are as well.
Hope @Havenstone does a codex for those lore details with the next game, when it becomes more and more critical for our mc’s to get to know more of the world too as we get further and further from their backwoods, backwards homeland.
