Havenstone says that he doesn’t intend to support mods, sorry.
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In future games could theurgy to enhance your physical abilities, like a fantasy super serum?
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Since we’re passing through a ward, who’s hoping to get brushed by a storm and end up with some bad*ss scales? Perhaps could use some theurgic manipulation to choose how to modify your body while being grazed? The storms clearly use some kind of theurgy to change the elemental composition of one’s body, so I assume it’s possible for a theurge to manipulate that process.
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Yes, but permanent enhancements whether it is to strength or de-aging yourself will make it impossible to cross a ward, so other than limited healing I think that plot-wise magical self or lieutenant enhancement may need to be saved till after the part where the wards fall.
Not me, particularly since the mc will need to cross back over again and that would be impossible with permanent magical changes. Maybe it will be featured as a non-standard game-over though where you make a new life for yourself beyond the wards. 
How is it impossible? the half tree guy already did it and survived.
From the author himself:
I guess it is possible the wards around major cities are more secure than the border wards.
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The half-tree guy got partially across the Ward. His tree parts didn’t make it.
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Yeah, and he didn’t even have a proper weapon to cut his tree parts off with. He had to use a shard of obsidian ( ouch ! )
I never said anything about dropping a ward.
Fine! In some cases you can cross a ward, if you don’t mind losing some irrelevant bits of your body once you’ve been exposed to permanent magical effects. Of course if the magical mutation is in your brain…
In that case dropping the Ward would be the only way to cross back in with all body parts intact.
Who say’s you need to drop a ward? Perhaps there is some loophole or alternative ways to pass like digging a tunnel or something.
If we want to recruit from Xaos lands then we will have to find one since most of the inhabitants have probably been grazed by a storm and are experiencing magical mutations; why else would they remain there?
Doesn’t work. It’s been tried, and wards extend all the way down.
So you can drop the ward, or seize control of a gate (and then hold it against the inevitable Hegemonic retribution), or go around by sea.
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It’s also as I’ve stated quite a few times that the Wards were never meant to be a permanent solution. I feel that the Hegemony covered up a serious reversal in the East, which combined with revolts as nationalist groups tried to rise up upon the assassination of Hera the Immortal meant that the Second Thautmarch threw up the Wards as a way to secure the borders while he went about trying to solidify his hold on the conquered territories.
It’s just that the Hegemony is simply too large to be effectively ruled while also conducting massive and costly foreign military campaigns to finish Hera’s vision. The Third Thautmarch is the one with the real short end of the stick because the means that the Second Thautmarch instituted to try to stabilize the country to allow him to continue his plans of conquest to come to fruition were inherited by him and they weren’t… well, frankly due to the wards and the horrific oppression that is required to fuel them meant that it was only a matter of time before another wave of massive rebellions occur that can shake the Hegemony to the core.
So logically speculating.
Hera went about and conquered a good portion of the sub-continent using her reputation as an immortal, peerless, and undefeatable tactician/strategist/magic user to keep everyone in line as she went about carrying out her divine-imposed mission to conquer the known world. She dies with this work undone on top of a few significant reversals that meant that her successor had to deal with a bunch of issues very quickly.
The Second Thautmarch inherited a deteriorating situation in the West caused by a ritual gone wrong (Un-Quiet Dead and the like) on top of massive full scale revolts and most likely a serious military threat in the East so he had to quickly come up with a way to calm the situation until he can go about and get to the other ones. That’s why the Wards came up, since he (rightly) prioritized the creation of a Karagon Regime at home and squashing the nationalist revolts. He just never was able to muster the momentum required to do everything. The Western and Southern Wards are necessary because they keep out the Storms from hitting the Hegemony. But, I don’t think they were ever able to get the amounts of aetherial blood that is required to power the Western and Southern Wards while also mounting a massive military push into the other Empire.
The Third Thautmarch is dealing with the repercussions of all of this and it seems that for the most part… he doesn’t have full control over what’s going on.
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There are coastal wards in most places as well…the whole thing with fishermen needing to trade for or craft their knives, hooks, harpoons and other weapon-like tools beyond the ward.
And much like with the gates I suspect the few places where there are no coastal wards would be heavily guarded by the Navy probably with ground forces on standby too, to deter naval invasions.
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To an extent, something to remember is that just because you have a long coastline doesn’t mean that you have a lot of landing zones.
I mean look at the Kingdom of the Netherlands, back in the day a significant portion of your home was swamps.
Which are famously bad landing areas because 2/3 of your army will get sick and die.
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Sure, point is that if we try it at all the rebellion would probably be better off trying to capture a land border gate, as we have no ships or marines and certainly no one with expertise fitting them into a strategy and by the time we might be able to acquire some…well I suspect that is at the very least at the same time the wards are probably going to start to fail and fall anyway.
It was always far easier to just waltz in over land, our border with Germany was never very defensible, although it was home to the closest thing we ever had to a ward or something like Trump’s wall…that being the partly electrified fence the Germans put up there during WWI.
The other border with Belgium is more defensible as it has rivers and hills.
So, part of the problem with holding a gate from just a pure military standpoint is that it allows for the Hegemony to concentrate sufficient forces against you and ratchets you up in priority.
As in, to put it simply. These Wards are so high on the Hegemony’s strategic areas that if you take them they have no choice but to send a massive show of force.
I’d avoid those for now, best to establish your hold on an area of the Hegemony that is defensible and not a priority to retake immediately. Especially in the face of more dangerous revolts or external threats.
Coughs in Mao
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Depending on what sort of connections we can make beyond the wards a border gate raid, as opposed to committing to hold it could make sense if it would allow us to import weapons and weapon-esque tech or magic we cannot obtain otherwise. Like the tax collector raid just way more difficult.
I agree that we shouldn’t be thinking about trying to hold it any time soon beyond the minimum amount of time it would take to ship whatever might be vital enough to risk such a raid in the first place safely across.
Well Ideally we should try for a sweet spot, somewhat better than Rim square and certainly better than the brecks but not too important.
Mao’s strategy is not going to be 100% here as there would be no third power who would sweep in to destroy Halassur, after it destroyed the Hegemony and then leave a severely weakened regime behind that we then steamroll with our fresh forces and stranglehold on rural areas.
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I wouldn’t risk a raid on a gate, it makes sense to see how it works but if you make it known that you have an interest in them- I think you’ll bring the wrath of the Hegemony on you fully. The main thing that has to happen is that you have to establish legitimacy. You have to prove that you are a viable replacement, that you can provide them with stability and sound governance.
I understand your MC’s sentiments about massive transformation, but you need to make sure that you have a wagon attached to the horse. A model province, something to prove to your class of people that you aren’t just going to let them starve to death for something that won’t last.
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