I’d say more like INT 4 personally. INT 5 seems like Sarcifer level territory, considering Havie’s said previously that some of the endgame bosses in game 5 will have Theurgic abilities equal to INT 6.
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From what’s been dived from the code (which may not be final numbers but seems to be the way it works), INT 5 is Third Circle, so yes, Cerlota is INT5. Likewise, such words as “archmage” and “Ennearch” usually define INT 6, so Sarcifer is almost certainly there.
Havie’s also mentioned that one of the factional top theurges is something comparable to INT 9. This is probably Ghaesh, though we don’t have the details on that.
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Here’s the link to that conversation:
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Is the plan to get one increase to one stat in each following game, so you really have to specialise?
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@CottonWolf Yes, you will be able to increase one stat at the beginning of the sequel and at some point during every game after that. The highest you will be able to get a stat is at 6 by the final game, if you are willing to keep the other two stats at 1 and 0
Edit: Is there a way to have your band know that you are a theurge, but still remain a secret one to the people outside it? I thought I read once that it was possible if you practice in the woods (after the first week of winter) and tell your rebels but refrain from obviously using it in battle. I’m only asking because I want to raise morale, but still be able to wipe out all the theurges in one blow
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@Havenstone Will we be able to conduct some kind of White Revolution(of course adjusted to xor realities where we lack modernity circumstances and have much more extreme social structures) in Shayard if we go reform-ish route of Low Anarchy and trying to force compromise upon all classes of the nation(or most of them)?
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That’s a relief; thanks for your continued generosity! 
#4: “Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor (and Father of Realpolitik)” Build
a. Basic premise: A cunning politician (of aristocratic origins and conservative leanings) who “possesses not only a long-term national and international vision but also the short-term ability to juggle complex developments” (COM is definitely 0, and I’ll tentatively guess that INT is 2 and CHA is 1)
b. Backstory/in-game trait leanings: aristo, devout (FYI, historical Bismarck was a devout Lutheran), homelander/nationalist, and brutal (given that “Bismarck’s tool is aggressive, ruthless diplomacy”)
c. Will befriend/tolerate Breden only for as long as she is useful to his political goals (and in fact, has this realpolitik attitude towards almost everybody else in general)
d. Prefers low anarchy during G1 winter
e. Overall goal/vision:
Bismarck wishes to re-unify/restore the Shayardene Kingdom/Empire back to its historical borders (by selectively provoking wars in a manner that makes Bismarck’s opponents look overly aggressive/stupid/unreasonable while he himself remains publicly blameless, (allegedly) holding the moral ground, and is then placed in a position to have his nation-state thrive off the spoils of war), while also aiming to keep the peace and keep everybody else’s expansionist ambitions in check (via balance-of-power diplomacy).
Within the Shayardene Kingdom/Empire’s boundaries, he aims to rule with absolute power as Chancellor (or the XoR equivalent of such a title), with the basis of said power coming from a conveniently tailor-made constitution (in which “a strong chancellor bullies a weak monarch,” e.g. 1- either Abelard and his future Laconnier heirs, 2- or the impressionable Simon/Suzanne and his/her future De Firiac heirs).
f. Relationship goals (historical route): Will seek to marry a Shayardene noblewoman (so either Suzanne or Teren)
(FYI, even though Bismarck’s nationalistic attitude is in stark contrast with Teren’s cosmopolitan leanings, Bismarck’s “peacemaking through balance of power amongst nations” approach very much appeals to Teren’s sensibilities and goals of maintaining a koinon amongst the former ex-Hegemony states)
g. Bismarck’s attitude towards the post-Hegemony world that he’s helped shape, along with his anticipated status/fate in this new world:
Would feel smug/proud of all he’s accomplished so far, but would also feel worried/insecure about his nation-state’s future (after being ousted from power by a second/third generation Shayardene monarch who refuses to be Bismarck’s puppet and has expansionist ambitions of his/her own).
On another note, Bismarck’s nationalism-fueled decision to annex Aveche into the Shayardene Kingdom/Empire at the expense of Erezza (perhaps inspired by how historical Bismarck took Alsace-Lorraine from defeated France) creates a lasting wedge of resentment between Erezza and the Shayardene Kingdom/Empire (perhaps lasting enough to one day cause war between the two).
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Yes to the first part, no to the second. Each future game should (if I get the design right) have a mix of special bonuses for players who are super-high in a stat and special challenges for players who are super-low. So a specialized player will enjoy both pluses and pitfalls that a more balanced one will not see.
I’m pretty sure I wrote it so that once your band knows, the secret will leak out. I’ll double check when I’m back on my laptop with the code.
Absolutely. (My MA thesis on Islamism and democracy included reading about the White Revolution and its aftermath; some specifics of Iran’s experience may well filter into XoR.)
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If you didn’t, then please make it that way. Whether Breden’s the traitor or just a bad cook, there is no way in Xaos that the Kryptasts don’t have at least two or three spies in your band. And once the Kryptasts know, it’s going to immediately be added to the Ecclesiasts’ propaganda.
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I’ve been re-reading the old WIP thread, and a question occurred to me. It’s been mentioned before that the Hegemony is a pre-modern state just starting to tackle the bureaucratic problems that come with that. For example, it doesn’t even have a centralized system for collecting blood supplies from the Helotry.
With that in mind, how are Kryptasts handled?
I find them kind of interesting. A lot of people in-universe seem to dread them as these faceless inquisitors that ferret out everyone’s secrets eventually. In the ‘Chirex’ chapter alone, it’s mentioned that a relative of the Aristarch was dragged away, your PC can mention their harassment of nobles as a grievance, and Radmar’s gang are very disquieted at the possibility of you being one. But all of that implies that:
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They’re trained to be able to do so, which implies some sort of school to teach them their trade – which then in turn implies some degree of centralization of espionage. Whether at Archonty or Hegemonic level. (As an aside, one of the reasons I’m leaning toward the answer to this being in the positive is that the Tagmatarch and her soldiers recognize the code that Breden gives you, which implies the existence of an intelligence body.)
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If there is some sort of state infrastructure dedicated to internal espionage, then how does it find the right sort of recruits? Do they try and cultivate informants and then take the most promising? Do they take from the Helotry who are probably desperate enough to take a chance like that to escape the Harrower?
This is all just spitballing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve missed something obvious which answers this. But how 'bout it? 
Edit: It’s also occurred to me just now that Kryptasts might not even exist at all, and are just a story propagated to disincentivize rebellious behavior.
Cast a wide enough net and you inevitably catch some fish, right? The response to attacking the Architelone i.e. torturing and harrowing a noble, prominent member of the Syntechia, or a Telone seems to lend weight to the possibility that the Thaumatarchy doesn’t really care about getting the right person. So much as they do about frightening people into not emulating such behavior.
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My guess is that it’s similar to how most intelligence services operate. They recruit university students who like to hit people and lie.
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My main mc really is going for INT-6. I wonder if there will be a hidden stat raise too somewhere that will require the mc to sacrifice something big or do something really unethical. 
If I am going to run a smart helot turned politician/emperor on their own merits I’d probably go for an INT 4, CHA 3 build, by the final game. COM would still be 0.
Which means both of my mc’s would need to rely on and be careful when purging the military, so they don’t dispose of somebody like Zhukov while they still need them
Besides both of those, but certainly my main mc would need to rely on novel tactics and hopefully later on mass use of air-rifles, so that requires developing new military doctrines anyway. So the ones most proficient at them would not be the current warrior-caste officers but the bright youngsters who rise organically through the rebellion, plus maybe some more adaptable defectors, like some of our possible Wiendish followers
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It’s inevitable, I think, that Kryptasts are to some extent an illusion of a panopticon. Someone starts whispering “Kryptast” and people shut up. No one knows who they are, but if they’re watching, a slip of the tongue could cost you everything. Make someone disappear every now and then to keep the legend alive, and then let the people police themselves.
My take, based on what little knowledge we currently have, is that the Kryptasts likely draw from the educated nobility for recruits, and to spitball ideas, I’d suggest that they have these recruits “abruptly vanish” and “disappear in the middle of the night.”
The historical antecedent for the Kryptasts is clearly the Spartan Krypteia, where young Spartan men roamed the countryside, killing helots and brutally suppressing the possibility of rebellion, that perpetual fear the Spartan elite had. The Kryptasts had a similar origin in pre-Conquest Karagond.
And I conceived of the Kryptasts as having evolved from an old tradition of Krypteia in some bits of Karagon. When Karagon began its Theurgy-fuelled conquests, there was a sense that these poleis could no longer afford their annual hunt (all blood needed for military use), so they were encouraged to go to the colonies and hunt curfew-breakers and other troublemakers instead. Over time, this evolved into a specialist role rather than a rite of passage.
I’d suspect the heart of this hasn’t changed: among the young, educated elite, the Mystikon finds those who are perhaps clever, skilled, and willing to get their hands dirty – people like themselves, I would argue, perpetuated through the generations – and shapes them into spies. The Thaumatarchy is built on seeing helots as fuel and as slave labor. If that foundational myth collapses, their whole way of life collapses. And considering the historical anti-helot role of the Krypteia, I’m doubtful that Kryptasts look to recruit from the helotry. Consider how the Tagmatarch reacts, for instance, to being given a helot name during your Accounting:
“And you expect me to believe that you’re an Angel-swiving Kryptast, ${girl}? Not the helot scum you smell like?”
Kryptasts are feared because they’re an Other, so utterly mysterious. People don’t just openly declare themselves as Kryptasts; that defeats the point of being spies. But Kryptasts are still people, and I think the vanished noble hypothesis neatly explains how they can be both so other and active. There’s “no explanation and no appeal” for their disappearance: all the rest of the world can do is move on. Nobody knows who the Kryptasts are, because all the Kryptasts are “dead” – and all that’s left for a Kryptast is their role and their duty.
There are three historic rebellions introduced at the beginning of the game: Cabel’s Rising, Sarcifer, and the Laconnier Order. Of these, it’s the Laconniers that the Kryptasts are firmly tied to:
Over the past century, at least three Shayardene Pretenders have declared themselves heirs of the Lost Prince of Laconne and won swathes of the nobility to their banner. All three rebellions were swiftly quelled: two with Kryptast assassins alone, one with massed military and Theurgic force.
And while Cabel’s story is told by Elery (a brilliant military leader, reflecting the Rising’s armed rebellion and bloody suppression) and Sarcifer’s story is told by Yebben (our resident Theurge-in-training), the Laconnier Order’s story is told by our favorite traitor candidate Breden, whose “old masters” allegedly fancied themselves rebels against the Karagonds. Intrigue, espionage, and secrecy – that’s come to define the Kryptasts and the Laconnier Order both, and the one who links us, the readers, to their stories: Breden.
To draw another parallel, many characters speculate that Kryptasts are sowing the seeds of rebellion across the Hegemony to harvest as blood. Meanwhile, we’ve already seen a hooded nobleman set a rebel free into the wild because he’d “rather like more people to imitate you” – but that wasn’t a Kryptast (or was he? 
), but rather Abelard, a Laconnier. And it’s the Laconniers – likely funded by the Halassurqs – who try to make sure that nascent rebellion survives by giving it the tools to kill the Thaumatarchy’s Plektoi.
And more of the Kryptasts being the natural enemies of the Laconniers, from Horion this time…
Teren tells me that young Abelard has been muttering about a restored monarchy…and if ${xhe}'s heard it, I imagine the Kryptasts have too.
And it’s pretty likely, I think, that the Laconniers (and the Laconne forest) are named after Laconia, home to Sparta – or in other words, the land the Krypteia would’ve policed.
The Mystikon and the Kryptasts being of the nobility, for the nobility, then, would follow these parallels to the Laconnier Order, itself a rebellion of the nobility nominally for the sake of some supposed old Shayardene tradition, while exposing a delicious irony that these enemies really aren’t that different, in the end.
As an aside, this plays well with the suite of ideas framing Breden’s old masters as Laconniers, who Breden may or may not have had a hand in killing. A wilder possibility, for fun, is that Breden’s “old masters” are themselves disillusioned Kryptasts, who cultivated Breden as an informant/agent before being unceremoniously purged.
But if you wanted to get real crackpot, I think “Abelard is a Kryptast and a Laconnier” would still take the cake. I’m fond of it, though I don’t think it’s true.
Anyway, because this has gone on long enough already, fearing the Kryptasts is letting Them win and once we see them as people, they’re probably just as vulnerable and petty as people can be.
Unless they turn out to somehow actually be a panopticon through the power of Theurgy. In that case, [REDACTED]
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Just how important will literacy become in later games because from what I’ve read of societies that have had sudden literacy drives especially ones intended to be revolutionary they have had massive effect and in this case I feel would really help the helots establish a cultural identity not based on serving the nobles
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Also will there be any advantages of being ruthless over compassion because at the moment the ruthless option seems to be the stupid one. Maybe a reputation for ruthlessness could make enemies scared to cross you or ruthless options in future games could be more goal oriented and less just pointlessly cruel for example you could take over organised crime in the cities to fund the rebellion or be willing to work with unpleasant groups like the hallassur or maybe even the unquiet dead
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Today my writing caught up with the first dialogue I ever wrote for the Xaos-lands. 
That’s a good feeling. Still further out from posting G2 Ch 1 than I’d hoped to be at this point, but I’m making steady progess on enjoyable bits of the story!
Quite important–especially if you want to bring about change by non-violent or less violent means, but useful also for violent rebels. Freirean education practices have served both types of transformation in our own world…
Cruelty is a commonplace tactic in real-llfe rebellions. The ones I’ve been closest to – the Nepali Maoists and the Afghan Taliban – succeeded in significant part because of their use of absolutely horrific cruelty against the enemies of the revolution. Ruthlessness will definitely continue to have advantages in future games.
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over the long run how will non-violence work against the hegemony because I can’t see them having a crisis of conscience over killing someone who isn’t violent
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The Hegemony won’t have a “crisis of conscience” over killing any rebel, violent or non. But nonviolent resistance doesn’t rely on the oppressor’s conscience or restraint (notwithstanding self-serving narratives by some Brits and Americans about why the campaigns of Gandhi and MLK succeeded). It has transformed plenty of brutal dictatorships.
Fundamentally, a nonviolent resistance campaign tends to build a broader base of support because dissatisfied citizens can take part at significantly lower risk to themselves personally – not zero risk by any means (there will be plenty of casualties), but way lower than taking up arms. The goal is to provoke non-cooperation and spread it over time to more people, more sectors of the economy/government, and increasingly disruptive forms of non-cooperation. Done strategically, it can be devastating.
Erika Chenoweth has written well on this – see here for a short sample:
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I think there is a point of concern here though. With the Hegemony able so efficiently and involuntarily convert labor directly into commodity, which also as a byproduct contributes to their terror campaign, pure non-violence seems unlikely to succeed without a broad propaganda coup for the rebels.
This appears to be exacerbated by the underlying cause of instability being a lack of blood supply.
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So when we say non-violence we’re talking about something like a general strike thanks that makes sense. the brutality of the hegemony could also be a big help with this then as they would likely do more to turn people against them in their attempt to supress this sort of thing.
Although I could see a fall in production do a lot to alienate the nobility and merchants so maybe more of a keeping what’s produced and not kicking any back to the hegemony would be more likely
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