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

I’ll do that. Is Sescia directly opposite Aegre on that bay or further up the coast? Because I haven’t put it down on the map it appears.

‘DariaRF’ is fine. :sweat_smile:

Here it is, @Havenstone!

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XoR was challenging and fun to play. I really thought it being a bit stat-heavy would make it too frustrating for me to enjoy but the character interactions and world-building really sucked me in.

I’d like to create a secular nation after the revolution. But at the same time, my secular MC would want to go after the big players in the priesthood and nobility and utterly destroy them. At the same time, my MC has no trouble with a neutered priesthood and nobility filled with small fry existing.

Would it be possible to do this middle of the road approach; you know the kind of people who will be okay destroying temples and going after powerful aristocratic families might want to go full throttle and not spare anyone so I’m hoping they can be convinced to temper their passions. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Aint a wise thing, but again this is choice of games bad decisions can be done

why would you destroy people who have good education and can be used as good propaganda tools?

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Haha, maybe it is a bad choice. The reasoning behind the idea is not to commit too much resources all at once trying to stamp out the known enemies. The “unknown unknowns” are what my MC will be more concerned about.

Maybe once the Revolution is secure, then destroying the nobility and priesthood entirely would be more wise

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Absolutely! But as you note, the challenge will be tempering the passions of your followers. If you’ve won them over by your blistering secular critique, you may have trouble convincing them to leave a neutered priesthood in place rather than a campaign to “ecrasez l’infame!”

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In other news, the final version of DariaRF’s map is now up on my FB page and below, with a couple of tweaks that may be of interest.

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Excellent! Caroline de Serin will be very pleased. Sounds like her current overall strategy should be viable and she’ll have some flexibility on how to proceed.

Perfect, some indirect interference seems like the max what would be reasonable. I appreciate the answers.

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A game of spot the difference, huh.

Vigil is the most striking addition, probably a settlement at the location marked by the skull. To speculate, Sojourn has been called a “doomed city” before; Vigil could be a place that has already that doom, a city mostly abandoned and destroyed, a failure. Maybe it’s a former city of the Broracha, marked by their Goety into a place to be feared.

Or, if we want to get more tinfoil, it could be the seat of the Stormwright, keeping an ever-watchful vigil for…something.

Sojourn seems to located on that spit of land right past the Ward connecting the Xaos-lands and the Abhuman Federation. I might be reading the map wrong, but that spot makes sense because it’s sheltered from the full impact of Xaos-storms, surrounded by the Ward and water. Not to mention, that it’s near the southern Wardgates, so it’s less distance to travel if we attack. But it does raise the question anyway of why that the Ward was built to allow that narrow corridor between the two.

The Xaos-Lands themselves are a little less barren, and there’s that curious spot in the central west where it looks as if there’s plant life, but I don’t know what to make of it narratively.

Now, for some relatively minor differences:

  • Mountains now stretch north past Wiendrj and seem to demarcate the Xaos-lands from the Bloodless Reach. Now, there’s a very clear border with Nyryal, while Wiendrj is cut off from those problems.
    – The area between just west of the Bloodless Reach is suspicious: surrounded by mountains on three sides and the ocean to the north, it seems like a geographically natural place for a nation to spring up. Maybe something to do with the Broracha, or those who Nyr who rode into the “endless cold horizon”, or that ancient prince with a different proposal for resisting the Hegemony. I don’t know, it’s just suspicious.
  • The southern Abhuman Federation is tropical, but a notion of that has been established in previous maps. The Corsair Coast is similarly lush.
  • Halassur’s geography has strong Egypt vibes, with a north-flowing river at the center of a lush region. Meanwhile, a part of the southern Halassur that was previously depicted as lush near the rivers’ headwaters is now more of a desert. It does leave one to wonder how well Halassur can actually project its power further south, and whether there are any opportunities for distraction there.

Altogether, though, it’s a great map with some interesting teasers for what we’ll see next.

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That’s probably where the Kingdom that Hera dropped a mountain on was based. The Xaos lands were formed when a massive-blood ritual that the Prince you mentioned instigated went horribly wrong.

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That one’s just a design choice on my part. The assets I used are actually just dead trees. I also thought the Xaos-Lands looked a little bare, so I thought I’d try and make it look a little busier. Some small ruins (the square looking thing in front of the trees is actually a decrepit manse); hills; some small vegetation etc.

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You’ll have to add a pretty substantial gate if that bay is used by the Hegemony Navy! Naval warfare through a ward is interesting to think about.

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They dont need it

It is! Projectiles that are not Theurgic or primarily/obviously designed as weapons can be hurled through a Ward, so you could have bombardment back and forth – but I figure a land fortification held by Theurges would have a huge advantage against ships in that kind of battle, both in terms of the ability to take hits and the mass of the projectiles it could deploy.

A ship with any weapon below decks would be damaged or destroyed by being caught up against a Ward, and any armed sailors would be swept off on their original side if the ship crossed. So in the rare case where you could have ship-to-ship combat across a Ward – which on my current [edit: previous] view would only really be in the Aegre Strait – the ships would need to be super careful not to get pulled into the Ward while they chucked projectiles at each other.

I think the primary defenses of the great bay would be land-based at the strait, with some naval capacity inside to quickly catch and mop up any unauthorized (and by necessity unarmed) vessels that made it in through the Ward.

As ever, appreciate your thoughts on this and other Ward-related tactics. :slight_smile:

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I guess I was thinking though the logistics more but you bring up some interesting points. You would need a large dockyard, cured timber, and skilled craftsmen to build a navy of any sort. I’m guess with the Greek inspiration that the ships would be galleys of some persuasion. Certainly no shortage of helots to use as oarsmen and something more brutal than normal Hegemonic military discipline is hard to imagine.

I’m guessing ships would be assembled without armament inside the ward, primarily at Aegre? And then rowed out to Searthe where it would be armed.

I presume Hegemonic tactics would be centered on closing with the enemy ship and using magic to burn the enemy. A theruge should just fly over to an enemy ship though which would eliminate a real need for projectiles. Ships might be more centered on being comfortable for theruges as a base and perhaps have some of their “laboratory” equipment. They would have to transport refined blood through the ward via a gate or make it outside the ward though.

I wonder if Greek fire could pass through a ward as not “inherently” a weapon? Might be another interesting “non-magical” secret the Hegemony has up their sleeves.

I think non-magical combat would follow a similar trajectory to land warfare in that projectile weapons are of limited utility other than wasting enemy blood. Decision is achieved in melee, which means boarding action at sea. Also another opportunity to capture battle captives and turn them into blood. Prize money awarded based on blood taken maybe? I could see the side war with the corsairs actually being a net positive enterprise from the strategic perspective to the Hegemony elite.

Finally without gunpowder I’m a bit skeptical of utility of costal forts. Certainly to repel a landing or deny key terrain, but the range of any war machines would be minuscule without gunpowder.

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Love these thoughts, thanks. A quick clarifying note:

On my current thinking, if a Theurge launches a projectile (e.g. a big boulder) into the air with Theurgy, that wouldn’t stop it from going through the Ward as long as it had been “released” first, at which point it would follow whatever trajectory the Theurge had managed to get it on.

The Ward stops things physically altered by Theurgy, aetherial blood, and items with a primary weapon-telos. That doesn’t, I think, prevent bombardment as long as the projectile hasn’t been specifically wrought to cause damage – nothing explosive, sharpened, etc.

So that would give range comparable to gunpowder.

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That’s interesting. Especially if a war machine gives the stone its initial velocity and it is guided and accelerated further by a theurge. That would also conform to their authoritarian instincts to make the forts nearly useless without theurgic support. That could work for the warships too. A ballista using smoothed stones would probably work best in this situation.

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is fire inherently a weapon-telos? could you get flames across the ward, say if someone were to start a fire with lethal intent on one side?

Well the Laconniers only seem to tolerate nobles or at least free born people in leadership positions, so that might be an issue if you’re playing a helot even a Shayardene nationalist one with any personal ambitions.
Aren’t there also Cabel’s bunch who can also be pretty nationalistic? Although they might be more a sub-nationality within the current province, like Scottish nationalism in the UK?
In any case their brand of nationalism seems to be more focused on the anglo inspired parts of Shayard and lionises the old smallholder farmers, not the overwhelmingly southern high nobility and the old monarchy.
While my mc personally hopes to win their support through other things than nationalism, such as a compromise on land and agricultural reforms to bring them into his coalition I see no reason why a more nationalistic mc cannot appeal to and use their alternative nationalism as a rallying point of their own and against the Laconniers and the current provincial nobility too.

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Fire as such can cross a Ward; its consuming telos is too broad to be shut out as a “weapon.” You could chuck a flaming tree across a Ward.

On the other hand, a hollowed-out metal sphere containing naphtha (or other wrought incendiary devices) would be a weapon and would burst against the Ward rather than getting through.

Absolutely – and your engagement with them can determine whether they withdraw into a narrow Westriding-plus-Rim yeoman nationalism that feels betrayed by and alienated from the coastal elite, or hold to a broader Shayardene identity.

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Can you get both Cabelites and one of main nobles faction such as Laconniers or Leaguers on your side?