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

Indeed, which is what Halassur wants, bring their “kin” in Nyral back into the fold, enslave Erezza to loot its vast mineral wealth, presumably for their own industrialisation and be left with a pastoral and backwards neighbour in the new Shayard.

They are also all of them places I think we’ll need to keep on board, particularly the first two. Erezza is where most of the mineral wealth vital to industrialization, or indeed rebuilding is and Nyral would be especially valuable, being the home of skepticism, to anyone like my mc who want to get rid of the nightmare theocracy.
Tasks that will be much harder if not impossible if you’re going to limit yourself to just Shayard.

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How would you like to rule? A classic autocracy? I love my semi-constitutionalism with a bi-cameral legislation with the provinces sending representatives based on their population to the upper house and a lower house elected by the people in a wealth weighted system. Should make for some interesting dynamics…

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Just tried a COM2 INT1 Helot playthrough, which was pretty interesting. One of the absolutely greatest benefits is that you can be a ruthless bastard and raid everyone without losing too many followers in the fighting. Raid the Owlpeak passes two or three times, and then you can convince the merchants to send you 40 bushels of “food” every week. That is enough to feed half your band at full rations. Food issues are pretty much eliminated. I had some 30k gold and 60ish mules by the end of the winter.

Only issue was that deputy Breden became really powerful (but I went full Breden-romance, so that was somewhat according to plan) and when I tried to fight the massive army (100 peasants, 20 banners of nobles, more than 500 phalangites, 5 Theurges, 3 Plektoi…) the whole band of merry bandits was not quite as united as they could have been. Maybe if I had bought an extra 10 arms earlier…

We still won though. 277 surviving followers, 99 adults and 178 children. I killed Radmar* when he accused my beloved Breden of treason, Kalt* died when he threw himself at a Theurge, I think Bethune died when he (she?) held off a Phalangite attack on our defences, in total 354 followers died… Probably about 250 of those in the final battle. But not a single child died! Which was a bit weird, but I guess that was because I decided not to burn the forest…

All hail Brother-Eclect Starn Sawblade**! Future Eclect-King of Shayard, and surrounding vassals! Oh yeah, and all hail Eclect-Queen Breden! Whenever she gets around to agreeing to the marriage.

*Funny how everyone who was capable of opposing Breden died.
**Are saws even a thing yet?

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There we go! I basically did the same kind of playthrough as a noble, and it is so liberating.

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Slightly improved the playthrough. 151 adult survivors, and the priests now respect me in secret. Still didn’t get the band to actually like the battle plan. If Radmar had more influence, the battle could probably be much less bloody for us.

401 dead followers this time though (so we recruited 100 more followers than last time). Hopefully the kids grow up quickly and replenish our fighting force while Brother-Eclect Starn Sawblade travels in the nightmarish Xaos-lands.

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well i just probably said that because i didn’t meet any other characters beside kala, bleys and yed in my first playthrough. currently trying to get the noble suzanne to join our band but i’m finding it hard to feed my band while keeping anarchy low.

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Hmmm. I hadn’t been planning on this, and I don’t think I’ll add it, but I’ll chew on it a little longer first. Thanks for the suggestion, though!

My intent is that that should work about as well as it does in real life. So, no, you’re not locked in, as long as you accept the fallout. The extent to which characters you romance in Game 1 will be shattered/hostile/homicidal if you throw them over for someone else will vary by RO.

Your prologue characters (Carles, Olynna, Wolfbait the helot) are essentially from alternative universes, so they don’t show up in any successive book if you didn’t choose their prologue in Book 1. They will all have made an appearance by the end of Book 2, though.

On current plans, Kala will be mentioned in Book 2 and show up in Book 3, even if you got Suzane in Book 1. Suzane will also show up in Book 2 even if you have Kala on your team. Horion…well, we’ll not say any more about him just yet.

And Breden is about a year older than you are.

Yes. :slight_smile:

And I’m glad that the massive fight-out does actually work for a high-COM character in Ch 4, long enough for you to lose Kalt and Bethune…on my own test playthroughs, I usually reached that point with crummy enough morale that everyone started running away after the first bombardment.

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See, this is why you keep your beloved Breden away from any position of power. :smirk_cat:

The latter is a problem. You have to carefully weigh the value of each raid.

I have two pieces of advice. Mules are the most valuable things in the Whendward, and unless you’ve got massive stockpiles (200+ bushels), only a sap gives the healthy full rations.

That’s quite interesting. In my experience, if you train your band with Sybla, it’s almost impossible to end up with low morale - and if you’re fighting, Sybla is mandatory.

Likewise, a successful raider captain will generate more morale than he loses through casualties. Radmar will bitch about the losses, but I don’t think any player here cares much about Radmar’s opinion. :smile:

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  1. Ah Breden. As I mentioned, it is still my opinion that if Breden really were trying to stir up a rebellion on behalf of the Hegemony, then Breden would have played a more active role in the Fourth Harrowing whereas instead in certain routes the Laconniers have to bust the MC out of prison after the Harrowing.

  2. That was Linos actually, but my interpretation is that revolts are inevitable not that the Hegemony actually desires them. The logic doesn’t hold up to believe that the Hegemony would actually want the revolt. The rebellion has less than 1000 people and the amount of aetherial blood spent by 8 to 11 Theurges over the weeks of the summer campaign flying around, throwing fireballs, airlifting Plektoi, and so on likely exceeds the amount of aetherial blood gained even if the Hegemony successfully Harrowed the entire band. The Hegemony simply does not need the excuse of an actual rebellion to fabricate charges of such and Harrow entire villages. The Hegemony did exactly that during the winter in Harrowing an entire village that had nothing to do with the rebellion.

  3. It is up to the MC how to interpret that as such in my opinion it does not qualify as evidence. My MC interpreted Breden’s advocating for such defeatism as Breden’s resenting the arrival of the skeptical Disbelievers under their charismatic leader.

  4. That is an interesting puzzle. An alternative interpretation is that every adult helot (rebel or otherwise) knows that Harrowing is their ultimate fate. I suspect slow Harrowing may be less efficient at producing or simply cost more aetherial blood than normal Harrowing. Therefore, the only possible deterrent for adult Helots is to threaten to Harrow their children.

My MC is not really a pet person, books yes but pets no. My MC would however make an exception in this case for a living breathing self-reproducing propaganda weapon aimed at the heart of the Hegemony’s religion. It also occurs to me that if a breeding pair or whatever combination that creature requires could be brought back, then selling such exotic pets would not only be an act of propaganda warfare but a valuable means of fundraising. I don’t know whether the nobility and other wealthy classes prize exotic pets as a means of showing off status even if such pets would have to be hidden from the Hegemony, but having the wealthy bankroll the rebellion by purchasing pets that undermine the Hegemony’s lies would be appealing to my MC.

And yet, I just can’t bring myself to do otherwise.

I can't remember whether anyone has caught this bug before, but in Chapter 2 if Fedrel gets uppity, then even a skeptical MC swears by Xthonos instead of Rhupos.

Based on the source code from the end of the open beta:

  *fake_choice
    #"Who bought you, Xthonos damn it?"
      A despairing snarl rises from the shadows on the ground.  "Damn you, ${lname}. You want us not to starve this winter?  Let one of us hand you in for the swiving price on your head."
      
      "You were going to share the gold then?" you ask caustically, trying to catch your breath and your thoughts. "Come back and throw a feast, like the loyal friend you are?"
      
      "I'd have gone back to Wheldrake to see if my woman was still alive and my children there."  Fedrel's voice is thick. "I had a life before this, you little
      *if aristo
        aristo
      *if helot
        helot
      shit.  Don't you talk like I should be loyal to someone who pitched up not two months ago and starts trying to get us all killed."

I think the problem is the source code uses Xthonos instead of ${oath}.

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Thanks, Norilinde. There are times when even a sceptical MC will use Xthonos in an oath or refer to Xthonos in a phrase, just as plenty of nonbelievers in our own word don’t hesitate to say “Goddammit!” In particular, in the formulation “____ damn it” the other options for ${oath} don’t work as well.

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yep. it’s even more tricky since i stopped the harrowing and started the week with 17 anarchy, but i’ve finally managed it!

17 anarchy right after the Harrowing? Bleeding Angels, if you’re trying to go low anarchy, that’s not how it’s done. You don’t want to start your rebellion off with a massacre.

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that’s because i stopped the harrowing and lunged for the alastors and that’s when all hell broke loose :laughing:
i tried to stop the killing and looting but alas, my MC is no charismatic noble :sweat_smile:

but now I think I prefer a high anarchy rebellion over a low one

Or do you? :stuck_out_tongue:

Neato, and happy to help. Never really had a problem with morale in any viable playthrough. I do like the high charisma noble, so maybe that is not so odd, but even with the COM2 character I would always get out of the winter with perfect morale. The first couple of weeks are still tough though, because of the low morale you take extra losses, but you do not have time to slow down the raids if you want to get anything done before winter ends, so you end up taking some costly fights here and there.

But I love her, and want her to rule Shayard by my side! How can I do that if I let some Whendward bandit and ex-mercenary like Zvad lead the rebellion instead of her?

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does that mean i have to take horion and linos hostage to keep them alive so that i can still meet them in the next books?! :astonished:

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Hmm have to admit I’m kinda curious if Simon/Suzanne and Kalt/Kala’s interactions will be different if you recruit them later on?
Like maybe Suzanne being more hostile or wary of the mc if they have had high anarchy?

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Who said recruiting them would be an option? :slight_smile:

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De Firiac will hang with the rest of the rotten nobility!

Finally convinced my rebels to fully support the war plan. I think one of the biggest changes was giving Kalt command of the “bait” against Hector. Not only does he do very well there, he gains a lot of respect from the rest of the band. I also tried to use Radmar instead of Breden as my recruiter more often.

And I think this might be my best playthrough yet with this build:

I actually got the quick end to the battle this time, instead of the long slog. Traps are pretty great.

Don’t worry that I left Breden without any money (I gave it all away to priests to see how much they would love me), I’m sure she’ll find some way to survive. Maybe she can become an arms merchant.

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One of the reason Suzanne will join the MC’s rebellion was that she admire and adore the chivalrous manner of the rebellion , in which minimum anarchy was retain in order for her to acknowledge the noble effort of the rebellion …

Suzanne strikes me as someone who envision Courtly love, where literary conception of love that emphasised nobility and chivalry. A low anarchy rebellion is what differentiate between the MC’s rebellion with the rest of the current running rebellion …so we could say that if our anarchy is high , our cause won’t even attract Suzanne in the first place :slight_smile:

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Not sure if this is a bug or something, but I noticed that if you abandon the plan to threaten Telone’s family due to accidentally killing his daughter by Theurgy you still get the scene with robbing the tax collector? And the following scene acts as if you kidnapped the family?

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