How about the Wiends? Those are the most important for my alternate mc, considering he is already a clan chief after all and that guy’s grand plan is to, in a nutshell, co-opt the idea of a Koinon but turn it into something more resembling the Holy roman empire, weaken Shayard by splitting it and then become the first elected Emperor of that confederation and head it from Wiendrj.
To do that however he also needs to conquer Wiendrj for himself to be elected (high)king of that realm first.
Even for my main mc there may potentially be great value in developing parts of Wiedrj as a model province to develop a working and far more radical system first.
Good, getting as many of the merchants as possible on their side is important to both my mc’s.
Anxious to see who they are.
Pretty much a requirement for my main mc, as I don’t think his radical vision would fit with any of the other three of those either. Temporary alliances on the other hand could be possible and for my alternate mc, well maybe he can sell at least one of them on his specific version of the elected imperial koinon idea.
I wonder, since my alternate mc may be willing to an extent to go native in Wiendrj if at one point the nationalism stat for him would flip from Shayardene to Wiendish?
FWIW, since my forum profile bio was feeling a bit out of date, I’ve just changed it to read:
Of course I’d love to finish it early enough in 2023 to be one of the Christmas games for that year – and I’ll push for that – but I’d rather share the more conservative and realistic estimate with the world at large.
You met your first plot-significant Wiends in G1, unlike all the other groups I mentioned. (Alaine doesn’t really count as a Nyr.) Wiendrj will also be the first province you can have a full chapter in – G3 Ch2 is planned to be either Cabel/Westriding (for the more Shayard-focused path) or Wiendrj (for the broader path). You’ll still engage with the Cabelites if you choose Wiendrj, but not at the same level of detail.
You’ll have a similar G4 choice of Nyryal or the Reach, and a G5 choice of Erezza or Aveche. Of course we know which you’ll pick in the latter case.
Definitely not, I’m afraid.
Your homeland will always be perceived as the place you were born–so the “homelander” perception stat will always reflect your relationship to Shayard. You’re attractive to dissident Wiends as a clan leader precisely because you’re not Wiendish, and don’t bring the baggage that any fellow countryfolk would.
It is worth noting that what we’ve seen so far of wiendry is likely not representative as we have a sampling bias at play as we’ve mainly met the wiends willing to work with/meet a rebellion
Yes, but they’re not a substitute for winning Laconnier support – rather, getting the documents/regalia to back up your claim would be a clear sign that you’ve already won the support of the people that matter. No faction will be swayed by a macguffin hunt.
Is there a way to lean nationalist without appeasing the Laconniers or the nobility? A rebellion primarily backed by helots and yeomen probably have a different vision of a free Shayard in mind.
Yes. Cabel already does it, although that is primarily Northern Shayardene nationalism. Still it is very distinct from the Southern noble dominated hard Laconnier and soft Leaguer nationalism. So I suspect the mc could develop their own nationalist vision for Shayard too, if that is what you want to do.
Is there any daylight between the other three more imperial visions or is the only real difference of significance between them who/which dynasty would be the emperor and imperial family?
One thing we know is that Sarcifer wants to seriously reduce the importance of theurgy and the power held by theurges in the Hegemony, because he realizes that “throw blood at it” being the solution to every problem is unsustainable.
Phaedra is a student of his, which is part of why she’s looking for a biotech solution to replace using theurgy on entire fields to grow shrub yams and grain in a day. If I’m reading what Havenstone has said correctly, she’d rather have something like Choice of Magics’ eggplants, which allow enough nutrition production from farming alone to sustain the Hegemony’s population without needing any Theurgy past the initial biomodification.
If we go down a spiritual route, how much control over the beliefs we can alter/create will we have? as one of the taglines is “Reform the empire’s religion or start your own.” Im particularly interested on the “Start your own” part.
Will we be able to decide if it has deities? how many? names and roles? and various other aspects of founding a religion.
Still that reads to me as necessary reforms only, they won’t really do anything about the caste system and slavery, or the nightmare religion sustaining it, nor abolish the emperor/thaumatarch position. Only in their case prince nippletwister would take over a couple of decades early at best.
Now for the other two, assuming those two even count as one of those three imperial rebel factions to begin with.
Well, would take over at all. The Thaumatarch is immortal…
And the “imperial factions” can only be identified as such in Book 5, I think, because they’re only really contending for the throne after Aekos falls.
It isn’t necessarily incompatible with abolishing the caste system either. We haven’t met Sarcifier so we don’t know how strongly he feels about other issues.
he could well be a single issue rebel who is ambivilent about those other things
Could, theoretically, a highly skilled theurge use other people aether? Like, without harrowing, imagine you have a bunch of people in front of you and you want to utilise their aether remotely.
Indeed but if he is indeed working with prince nippletwister then he at the very least does not have abolishing the caste system as a high priority as that is almost certainly something that, if he thought about it at all, was quite willing to sacrifice to work with the nippletwister.
As idnlun said, yes. Being a nationalist definitely doesn’t mean you have to be pro-noble.
Oh yes.
The only religion you can start from a blank slate would be kenonism (which you can launch in Game 1). The others, like the “inner voice” G1 path, will all build something new on the spiritual matrix of religious ideas that are already out there. Pretty much all successful new religions in the real world start that way, innovating from a familiar foundation. Even L. Ron Hubbard was working with a well-established American tradition of therapeutic hucksterism plus the more recent but pre-existing craze of UFO cults.
If you decide you want to go with the return of the Wiendish Forgotten Gods, you’ll have some room to pick deity names from G3 onward. But there will never be a point where you’re given the choice to just make the whole thing up from scratch.
No. The aether in people’s bodies is fixed and unusable for Theurgy unless extracted. And if it’s extracted without the proper alchemical process, it sublimes away before it can be used.
FWIW, Sarcifer is not working with either the Thaumatarch or his heir apparent.
