That’s what I’m curious about. On the one hand, it seems unlikely that someone could have known that you were going to start a rebellion from early age, on the other, it’d explain why he’s such an abusive, discouraging piece of garbage. Though the simpler answer to that is that he’s just an abusive monster. I cheered for his death.
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Good read. Maybe I should just leave Suzanne to lead instead lol.
The problem with that is that in a functioning society, there’s only so many murderers, rapists and bandits to feed the Harrower. So either you have an incidental amount of blood that won’t solve the farming problem, or you’ll get the Niven Effect: when society is fuelled by capital punishment, the range of crimes that get the death penalty will steadily widen, and soon we’re back to where we started.
Also, the Erezza Ward is still probably needed.
@Bryce_Kaldwin I must have missed that. I was out for a lot of the original development of the game.
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The farming issue shouldn’t be TOO bad if I can bring theurgy into common practice. A village should be able to raise it’s own crops collectively. The death row bit is just a supplement, not the main solution.
I was hoping to either defeat the Halasurqs or finally make peace with them, but even if I can’t, that’s a pretty small ward compared to the others, at least according to this map.
We also know theurges can throw mountains, so worst comes to worst, we have a backup plan (a ton of blood at first, not much afterwards).
Speaking of: I couldn’t find the Unquiet Dead on the map. Is the location of that area unknown?
The wiki page you linked to says the unquiet dead is to the north.
How do you plan to deal with the Xaos storms?
So north of Nyryal then?
As for the storms, they are survivable, so I assumed that there’d be a way to adapt to them.
They may be survivable, but they will utterly wreck agriculture and exacerbate the overpopulation issue.
Blood is a finite? resource, and I don’t really see how making theurgy common practice will solve the farming issue. Without the harrowing there’d be drastically less total blood available in the hedgemony, and having more theurges just means that proportion of blood available to each theurge is less, and that you (as a ruler) cannot direct how that blood is used.
Unless supplemented with some other factor, such as instant industrialization, theurgy won’t be able to avert a famine.
I do wonder - Xaos storms dissipate quickly over water. Exactly how quickly, in terms of meters?
I haven’t followed this thread closely enough so my theurgy-lore may be inaccurate. But it is my understanding that the volume of blood is proportional to the amount of power, with aetherial blood being more effective than normal blood.
The amount of blood made available by the harrowing, is the volume of blood inside an adult body * the number of people harrowed that year (aetherial). This is the amount of blood that the Hedgemony currently uses to sustain their population, as well as other things.
The amount of blood available to a theurge, per year, is the amount of blood an adult body can regenerate (non aetherial). People being people, the theurges are also not going to dedicate all of it towards community use. This is obviously a much smaller amount than in the previous scenario.
Currently the Hedgemony is using aetherial blood from the Harrowing mainly on the wards, and the longest length of the Wards is along the Xaos lands. If we remove them and let the Xaos storms in, there would need to be increased amount of blood directed towards agriculture to compensate. Obviously this being a fictional world there can be no actual numbers, but I think there’d need to be some compromise between blood use and famine here.
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The theurges would use their own blood. It should be more than sufficient for local agriculture. Though industrialization is a good long term goal.
Can someone tell me what abhumans are exactly?
Here’s what I’ve shared so far: Choice of Rebels: Uprising — Lead the revolt against a bloodthirsty empire! - #3125 by Havenstone
And the Unquiet Dead live in the Bloodless Reach northwest of Nyryal.
Finally, Bryce was referring to the height of the infamous Pun Rebellion. See here and the following posts: Choice of Rebels Part 1 WIP thread - #2656 by Havenstone
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Smaller, yes, but not so small as to make farming sufficient food impossible. As I said before, we’ll need to drastically reduce how much food people consume, at least at first, but not to starvation levels. Keep in mind that the extravagance of the Nobles no longer needs accounting for as I have no intention of preserving their status. I’m not sure how much this will effect things, but I feel it will be at least somewhat significant given how much a noble eats compared to the average peasant.
As for Rarified Blood, it’s actually a mixture of blood, brain matter, and other stuff (maybe the whole human?) that contains the magic.
Spoiler tags on the nature of aetherial blood and other Book 2 secrets, please!
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Sorry, forgot about those.
I’m also curious about this “Sarcifer” character you can learn of in the first chapter. Is there any way to find out more about him in the first book?
Ask the helots about him when you’re planning sedition.
I meant after the rebellion had already started. He was the story I asked about.
Is It possible for Elery to survive the food poisoning with a 1INT character?
Depends on what sort of magical variant of MAD we can get.
The ward would no longer be needed if we could convince Halassur that our regime has both the ability and the willingness to reduce the world to a wasteland if they try to invade openly.
Besides if the Erezza ward is still needed the others are too, otherwise the Halassurqs could either try to court the Abhumans for a stab in the soft underbelly or try to simply sail around it and do a naval invasion.
I still think cold war is the best way forward with them, it just comes down to figuring out how to create the proper deterrent to make that happen.
Well the main problem with the Hegemony’s agricultural model is that current “best” magical farming practices exhaust the soil so that year after year slightly more blood is needed to get the same results. Combine that with a policy that is firmly pro-natalist, at least among the lowest castes and classes who do make up most of the population and you get into the hole the Hegemony is currently in.
Now, of course, dropping the wards and stopping the waste of magic on luxury uses should present at least a temporary windfall, even accounting for the other disruptions to society, but unless soil quality is addressed or the population declines substantially or both it would just be a temporary respite.
yes, there is none of it particularly encouraging, imho. He is both too powerful and seems to caught up in some sort of bloodline nonsense.
Anyway the non-bloodline based inheritance system that allows for the current equality of the sexes and gay relationships is one of the few things my mc does very much want to preserve. Just opened up to everybody especially the former helots, like himself who are currently denied its benefits in practice due to the aforementioned pro natalist policies of the current regime.
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I think if you recruit Bleys and his family, his wife will tell you the herbs needed to cure the food poisoning.
He’s the telone that can be threatened into helping you during the winter tax raid.
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I’m conflicted about the pro-natalist policies of the Hegemony. On the one hand, with the inevitable blood shortage, people will have to have fewer kids, on the other, I worry about the risk of anti-natalism, which is far worse. I do have to wonder if methods could be devised to clone people or artificially inseminate, or otherwise allow for reproduction without needing both a man and a woman.
I do agree that we need to solve the soil quality issues. Over-farming will need to end, and we’ll need advances in agricultural technology. Crop rotation, planting plants that restore the soil etc. will all be necessary. I do have to wonder if the Xaos lands could be farmed, provided we found a way to survive or deal with the storms.