Well they eat the loss so to speak I don’t recall the nobles ever getting paid for the helots used in it. As it stands they get a great many rights and privileges by simply being the hegemonys local rulers so to speak. Now what the nobles think about it all varys from noble to Noble and even if they hated it not like they can openly disagree least they themselves be found guilty and get a death sentence.
The number of helots killed Everytime is why they want them to breed and make more babies to replace those lost every year and if they don’t it’s a guarantee they will be on the list for the harrowing. There is variations of course to this which is seen and heard about in the course of play and are choices.
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Maybe compared to the helotry they have nothing to complain about But the nobility are pardon the pun very entitled. For reference as a real life example william the conqueror executed nobles all the time for not paying taxes or rebeliousness but it didn’t stop people from trying it.
And if nobility lose money when the hegemony collects blood then an increased demand from say one province splitting off would mean the slave owning class are less happy with the hegemonic system.
Also the harrowing and encouragement for helot to have kids means that the helot are disproportionately made up of children who can’t work as effectively as adults
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Lol you know I wasn’t defending the nobility yes? But you are correct the more provinces that break from the hegmony the greater the burden can be put upon those still within it if they want to maintain the status quo hence why the hegemony trys to come down hard on our MCs rebellion in game.
Also you would be correct if it was just kids working there are older helots as well there just rarer depending on the local system. we need to remember that no one region is the same while all parts have a class system the treatment of anyone within it helot or otherwise depends on the demand of the hegemony has on a area and that local areas direct ruling elite.
It makes my looking forward to the next game greater cause I am looking forward to all the different posibiltys. 
Hope yourself and everyone else is having a great day.
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I know you weren’t I was just pointing out that having it good isn’t enough for the nobility because they always want more.
I was both curious about how it worked and interested in the as far as I could tell largely unexplored conflict in interests between the slave owning noble class and the imperial mage class who want to use the slaves in human sacrifice
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@idonotlikeusernames: You’re right that helot social climbing is totally unthinkable to most of the population of the Hegemony. In a system that has encouraged the impoverished free to console themselves with, “at least I’m not a helot,” and increasingly kept the nobles and merchants in line with the terror of a helot revolt, almost no one would welcome helot-led change.
@Ramidel is right that the “safeguarding of wealth and power” (rather than an attachment to noble bloodlines for their own sake) is the key motivator for most nobles and other well-off elites across the Hegemony. That said, it’s important to recognize that right now, keeping the helots in their place will be seen by most elites as an absolutely essential cornerstone for that goal.
As the system comprehensively breaks down, the potential for “axe-hefting” change becomes much wider–and could be taken in either the “destroy the Four Olds” direction you intend or the “co-opt useful values and features of the old system” direction that I think @Ramidel envisions.
The point at which a helot could declare themselves king of Shayard would be the point where social order had broken down so far that “king of Shayard” would be basically meaningless. But at a substantially lower (though still very high!) level of anarchy, it’s thinkable for a helot warlord to claim noble blood and have a significant numbers of people (especially merchants) in their sphere quietly accede to their claim – as long as said helot had managed to carve out a significant space where life and trade could proceed securely, and there weren’t better options locally on offer.
I did. 
Nice voice!
A lot softer and more potato-ey.
The cooption of the real-world anti-corruption agency culminated in the appointment of a head who was himself allegedly profiting from key corruption-affected sectors, notably medicine and export/import, and turning a blind eye to political cronies who were doing the same. He was eventually turfed out by court decision (before he could be impeached) which somewhat discouraged the abuse of the office. But on historical and cross-national trends, this is likely to be a lull rather than an End.
The helotry of the Rim might be satisfied if your backbreaking fines reduced the Keriatou to poverty, as a merciful alternative to execution. But anything that preserves the prosperity and honor of the oppressor is going to lose you significant popularity with the helotry. There’s a real trade-off here that can’t be haggled away.
And a Keriatou suicide squad is going to have to remain in the realm of fanfic, I’m afraid.
You’re right in that assumption. In general, when I do use a Latinate word in the gameworld, I treat it as part of the language family that runs from Shayard’s Southriding through Erezza, i.e. as a Shayardene term that has infiltrated your koine. For the corsairs, I think I’d have only Karagonds refer to them as “peirates,” since the Shayardenes and Erezziano (even if cosmopolitan) will be more inclined to use the word with local historic roots.
There are no privateers because the concept has not been invented yet. We’ll see when we get to later games if it makes sense for you and your merchant buddies to get the chance to invent it – that seems potentially fun, but we’ll have to cross that bridge later.
If you’re going to forge evidence of a bloodline, you need a pro in texts ancient and modern, not an adult literacy student. That’s an outside hire, from Grand Shayard, and not a drudge/day laborer either.
Simon/Suzane would be appalled at the suggestion of concubinage because polygamy and indeed extramarital sex are against his/her values.
If you used Theurgy to Change your face to resemble Abelard’s – which would require the plektosis skills of an experienced Abhuman plus a genius portrait artist’s eye for the fine detail that distinguishes one human from another – you wouldn’t be able to cross the City-Ward into Grand Shayard, which like all the capitals has a Ward around it. On the whole, I don’t think that’s a path we’ll go down.
As with any syncretic creed, you’d have to get over the hump that you’re asking both sides to unite over what neither of them believe. A devout Xthonist won’t think it’s OK for the Abhumans to worship the Eclectoi; a devout Abhuman won’t accept that the Nagyeh are dead mortal miracle-workers. With enough charisma, you might do it. But I’m not sure it’ll be the best path to peace or toleration.
Gellard will probably not show up in G2, though he will in one of the later games, TBD.
@wonderfulcarpet, thanks so much for the kind words, and glad you’ve enjoyed it!
This will be a plot point in G2 Ch 2, actually. The nobles are definitely not compensated (or, to give the Thaumatarch his due, they’re not compensated with anything other than the Wards being kept up, the Halassurqs being kept out, and the helotry being kept down). Rather, any noble family that doesn’t maintain at least five helots has to pay a hefty additional tax every year in lieu of providing blood for the Theurges.
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It also seems to me like it would be a self-defeating course for a helot as it sets up a never-ending stream of other pretenders to your own forged claim, since helot families are extremely large and widely dispersed due to the pro natalist breeding requirements of the Thaumatarchy.
Which is why I asked about the axe-hefting. I mean if you are going to go for your own dynasty as a helot I think you would be far better off declaring it yourself and it only containing you and (if you have them by that point, since you said this game series will span decades) your immediate offspring/relatives.
Otherwise it is an open invitation to have pretenders crawl out of woodwork for the rest of your days.
As for my own mc, apart from forging “nobility” not being at all attractive to him I suppose he would have enough trouble as it is without spawning an army of pretenders to a pretend title.
Lastly for cosmopolitan mc’s who are less radical than mine it seems a secular way into the “nobility” is already open since, if we recruited Korszata and friends, we will already have been made into the chief of a new Wiendish clan, helot roots or no. Of course you do need to be cosmopolitan for that, so homelander helots wouldn’t have that option but then you always did say the branches would not be completely equal in opportunity.
While my own mc will be quick to downplay any association of the traditional office of clan chief with “nobility” as his fellow Shardene and the Karagonds define it and proclaim the other clan-chiefs who probably currently serve as de-facto and de-jure nobility under the Karagond system to be a twisted subversion of a “traditional” Wiendish role to suit the oppression of the Thaumatarchy, not all cosmopolitan helot players need take that very particular stand.
It also offers the benefit of not having to deal with many previously unknown relatives and “relatives” popping out of the woodwork. For people who want to go the route of turning it into a full-fledged “noble” dynasty.
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Hey @Havenstone. I know you’re a busy man – and honestly I feel kind of foolish for asking, considering it isn’t all that important to the XoR-verse. If you’re keeping these details close to your chest, you don’t have time etc I completely understand.
But would you mind if I asked you some questions about Karagon before Hera ‘united’ it? I kind of want to try doing another map, and I figure that era would be interesting. Halassur and it’s neighbors can wait for another day, when and if the trans-Halassurq kingdoms get some worldbuilding too.
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@Havenstone Would choosing to raid only the Hegemony during the winter or refraining to raid even them will result in some consequences in future games? Will it be ever mentioned?
hi is it possible to make a character that like starts off compassionate and just but slowly turn into like a ruthless dictator? I have a character build I would want to try if that is the case lol
@DariaRF I’m sorry to say that my sketch-maps for the Karagond city-states and the Halassurq continent are still at a stage where I’d better keep them close to my chest – once you’ve turned them into works of art, it’ll be harder for me to change them, and I want to keep that possibility fully open.
I don’t have that choice specifically tracked, no – just the consequences of it in terms of anarchy and which social groups despise you.
Yes, that will definitely be possible.
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@Havenstone Can I please ask if there’ll be extensive opportunities for readers who wish to remove all heriditary structures from societies across the entire Hegemony? There’s a lot of enthusiasm for claiming power for our own characters, but I’d quite like to install meritocracies as far and wide (and deep) as possible, leaving no bloodline-oriented power systems in place.
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Okay, no problem! 
But uh… does this mean that despite Hera’s conquests Karagon is still mostly decentralized into their city states?
Worth noting that the Roman Empire was also decentralized into city states during the height of their power. To avoid needing a large central bureaucracy, they delegated most local governance to local elites (especially where there was an established tradition of civic governance through town councils and magistrates, such as in Italy or in the Greek East) – the role of the Roman governor was to command legions, handle justice, and collect taxes. The Hellenistic monarchies which are a more direct inspiration for Karagon also made use of Persian-style satraps in provinces, but kept the polis-style of government intact for Greek towns. Though unlike Rome (until the later empire anyway), the Hellenistic monarchies did make use of an extensive bureaucracy and retained structures from their Egyptian and Persian forebears.
Since Karagon governs through local elites in places like Shayard, I imagine in their heartlands the city-states may include whatever governments they had in place before the establishment of the Thaumatarchy?
Just my musing anyhow! I am also interested in what Havenstone has to say about it.
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Replacing hereditary structures with meritocracies is a multi-generational project in any society, with the first efforts always at best being partial successes (and more often being massive failures, leading to cooption or violent collapse). Even in a fantasy context, I can’t justify writing more than the first steps along that multi-generational path.
Hera forced the city-states to adopt institutions consistent with her vision, wiping out a lot of the earlier political diversity. Karagon is pretty centralized for a pre-modern state, with a lot of decisions made from Aekos. But the city state background will be relevant to the contemporary map of Karagon, so I don’t want to share any of it before I’m happy with it.
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Will we be able to work for somebody/some faction or our MC is forced to be the leader regardless of how small can be the faction of his own?
Of course in this world the mc and a small clique of true believers may have a way to “cheat” that by theurgically enhanced lifespans to make tutelage work better than it could in our world.
I mean some theurges live longer than the United States is old. So that certainly counts as multi-generational and they could have witnessed the gradual expansion of the vote from the 2.5% of wealthy anglo male landowners in the time of the founders to every subsequent expansion (and contraction) of the franchise.
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Permeance is power. The longer one holds onto something, the stronger the institution becomes.
Rotation of positions is essentially castration. That’s why you rotate your subordinates around, that way they can’t build a rival powerbase from which to depose you.
While you stay in the top seat.
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We know that there are 20 million helots in Shayard. And what’s the amount of freefolk? How many yeomantry, townfolk, aristocracy and Karagonds are there?
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Good thing our MC will live long enough to see it through, amirite? 
Havie has said that we’ll be able to step aside and allow someone else the reins. In fact, one major ally’s ideology is at least potentially focused on that!
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I have a feeling, by the end of it- your MC’s epitaphs are going to read something like this.
“Johnson the Son of the Tenant Farmer, Johnson the Great Compromiser, Johnson the All-Knowing, Johnson the Humble, Johnson the Warrior, Johnson the Dove, Johnson the Romantic, Johnson the Hard-Headed Pragmatist, Johnson the Preserver of Traditions, Johnson the Crusader for Social Justice, Johnson the Magnanimous, Johnson the Vindictive or Johnson the Uncouth, LBJ the Hick, Lyndon the Satyr, and Johnson the Usurper”.
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