I’m really looking forward to future installments, if for no other reason to watch my relatively good intentioned Noble MC fall on his face. He’s reasonably intelligent and doesn’t go out of his way to harm those he doesn’t need to but at the moment he’s far more efficient as a war leader and due to severely lacking in charm has been forced to lead by example. Which is good until you have to actually lead a nation, especially when you have some relatively radical reforms in mind. He wants to keep the caste system but his ideas on upward and especially downward mobility will likely cause some uproar. He genuinely wants to make Shayard a better place but is too deadset on his ideals to have any real chance of doing so. Perhaps he’ll improve himself in later games but for now he’s a tragic hero.
So, adding those two up how far is the Hegemony’s economy, in which only free people can even dream of participating at the moment of course, down that sliding scale?
Magic has allowed the Hegemony to operate with a much higher level of enforcement, allowing an inflated economy. As the “anarchy” stat cuts into the cred of the enforcers, the economic consequences will be felt.
Though it seems that the player is coming in in the middle of that process.
If I’m not mistaken, part of the circumstances that led to the Fourth Harrowing (which allows the player to kick off the rebellion) are that within the last generation, the Thaumatarchy has been allowing increasing corruption at all levels of the food chain, from Alastors freely murdering and plundering yeomen and merchants to the “Architelone’s game” where nobles connive to turn a profit off the tax collector.
I have been waited for someone more knowledgeable than me to answer you. Now, from what I looked up in the code, it seems like if you have expressed your love for her in chapter 1, you may have a chance to romance her later in chapter 4 just before the archon’s attack. If you have not, then there would be no chance in this book/game.
Hey cool for replying! Huh funny I didn’t get any scenes with Breden after that 
maybe because I chose to fight against Archon’s forces?
That’s weird. Have you shared a romantic scene with her before?
The exact condition for that scene to happens is
*if (((bred_lover >= 4) or (bred_heart = 3)) and bred_here) and (bred_heart < 10)
bred_heart = 3 means you have expressed your love for her verbally (in chapter 1, it is the choice As steadily as I could manage, I said, “I think I’m falling in love with you.”).
bred_lover >= 4 means you at least have a kiss with her.
bred_here means she is with you in the band.
bred_heart < 10 means she doesn’t hate you.
So… if you have told her you love her, or shared a kiss, or both, that scene should happens. It does not matter which strategy you choose.
@Havenstone I do not recall seeing the following already mentioned so I thought I would ask about it.
We are told that the main purpose of the Xaos Wards is to keep the Xaos Storms out and we are told by Yed Gaverne that there are caves not touched by Xaos Storms, so I had assumed that the Xaos Wards might not go that deep into the ground to reduce Aetherial blood cost meaning that the way to smuggle something past a Xaos Ward would be either using a natural cave network under the Ward or an artificial tunnel. How far down into the ground do the Xaos Wards extend?
On a different note, from the XOR 1 WIP thread by @Havenstone:
No one’s purpose (in the telos sense) is betrayal or espionage. No one is by their very nature a traitor or spy. And seeing the intent behind a specific willed action is beyond any Theurge’s telos-vision.
and also from the XOR 1 WIP thread by @Havenstone:
The telos of a decoy – something made to deceive – would be more noticeable to them than the blur of whatever life you packed into it. And if they’re close enough, the greater complexity of human telos vis-a-vis animal telos (let alone plant telos) would be visible. (This is also a problem with traps, to varying degrees).
So I was wondering, how would Theurge Telos-vision impact the effectiveness of steganography (hiding a message in plain sight)? Would Telos-vision allow Theurges to realize a hidden message was present even if they could not decipher it? Regarding codes in general, how much of the message’s purpose would Theurges using Telos-vision understand without deciphering the message?
All the way down, as far as anyone knows. No one has successfully tunnelled under, and many have tried. Judge the implications for yourselves.
Telos-vision would be helpful in spotting e.g. a message written in invisible ink or catching something amiss with the classical cases mentioned on Wikipedia (a message concealed by hair or wax). It wouldn’t let a Theurge decipher the message, but the purpose to communicate and to conceal would be noticeable.
More sophisticated steganographic techniques, like hiding a message within another message, would be harder to discern. The telos of the overt message would look a lot like the telos of the underlying one, and the deception would be subtle enough that it would easily be lost in the “noise.” A specialist Theurge who’s put a great deal of research into understanding codes and hidden messages would be able to pick up on it, but not your average medical, military, or agricultural specialist mage.
Hmm, so when people try to dig under the stone wall that the ward is connected to does the wall just hang in the air or does it keep collapsing into the hole under it?
Does it matter if you try to dig with a tool vs your hands? What happens if you dig in either side of the ward simultaneously?
@Havenstone If every Phalangite is taught to read, why don’t Korszata and his ex-Phalangites count as literate followers?
Good point. Will fix that at the next update.
And @cascat, when people try to dig under the stone wall, they find the earth and stone beneath it impenetrable by even Theurgically enhanced tools. They can’t make a hole in the first place.
Okay I gotta ask, but what happens to Poric if you kill Radmar after he succesfully kills Breden and you decide to exile or execute him in chapter 4. Dude just disappears 
was he just hanging back in the crowd thinking “whelp there goes my husband better just disappear”
Good question. 
Another one for the next update.
I realized there is a fourth option already used elsewhere in-game.
Example 1:
The Theurge gestured back down the trail and snapped, “Hunt!” to his monstrosities. They sprang away from your perch with a gravelly, shattering howl. “House Keriatou should know that their faithful service to the Hegemony in Acron has not gone unrecognized.” The Karagond mage’s voice was cool, with a faint note of regret. “We are naturally solicitous of their cousins. Do mention me to them.” Without waiting for an answer, he skimmed off over the trees, following the baying of the Plektoi.
Example 2:
Your father’s command was unnecessary; by evening, you had a raging fever, muscle tremors, and couldn’t keep any food down. For three days you shivered on your bed, thinking numbly about your failure to protect the helot from the Karagond mage. On the fourth day, you regained some appetite, and your father nodded grimly. “I’ve made some discreet inquiries, and it appears your escapade has gone without notice. The Theurge and the Plektoi have departed, and so it’s time for you to be seen again. Before anyone starts wondering why you fell ill.”
“What happened to the helot?” you asked weakly.
Your father’s face instantly darkened with rage. “What did I tell you about questions?”
Fighting not to cry, you raised your hands to protect your head. “The…the Theurge told me to tell our Keriatou cousins.” You’d had nightmares about how you would fulfill his order. “What if he told them he met me? What if they come asking, and I don’t know how to answer them?”
Example 3:
The two Theurges stand in the middle of the agora, dressed in their customary long black coats and iron diadems. Under their coats, bandoliers with dozens of crimson phials are barely visible. Rim Square is too small a town to need a permanent Harrower, so the magi have brought their own: an eight-wheeled platform bearing a polished monstrosity of gears, hooks, blades, pipes, and urns. The machine’s oily, coppery smell faintly pervades the square.
Example 4:
Sarcifer, the renegade archmage.
Example 5:
It’s hard to keep from shuddering whenever you hear the name of Sarcifer the Goete. He was the villain in so many childhood fright stories: Sarcifer the Flesh-Eater, Sarcifer the Pallid, slaughtering villages or stealing the blood of children to feed Xaos-demons. In the tales that ended well—a distinct minority—he would be chased away by the brave knights and Talisman-wielding magi of the realm, never conclusively slain or defeated.
This also makes him one of the few unambiguously successful rebels against the Thaumatarch, although you’d never heard the story told that way before. “He used to be one of the Nine,” blind Yebben Skinner recounted, “one of the Thaumatarch’s deputies, the Ennearchs who hold up the Great Border Wards. After he rebelled twenty years ago, he went his own way, killing only servants of the Hegemony—especially other Theurges. That’s why they hate him so much, and spread all the stories that make him out to be a monster. But he’s not; he’s just too powerful for any of them to kill.”
“He’s still a Goete,” Yebben’s twin Elery said with a horrified grimace. “I mean, whatever he does to feed his magic, now that he’s no longer a proper Theurge…it can’t be good, can it?”
Yebben shrugged. “I don’t pretend to know good from bad Theurges, sister. All I know is whatever Sarcifer does, it doesn’t involve a Harrower.”
Example 6:
Its words slipped off your eyes until you scanned the line: “…I see myself without a mirror. I see the ends of all things. And I know I am the nature beyond nature….” Then you found yourself starkly awake, your hands trembling and nerveless. Nature beyond nature—hadn’t you just read that in a philosophy text as a description of Theurgy?
The shadows thrown around the room by the candle seemed suddenly tangible and malevolent. From childhood you’d always been told that Theurgy was a special gift of the Blessed Angels to a devout few. The Ecclesisasts darkly insisted that non-Theurges could only use magic through trafficking with Xaos-powers from the Void of Taratur.
The mysterious scroll had no reference to invoking either Angels or Xaos: nothing religious at all. But when you picked it up and avidly reread it, lines that had seemed mere nonsense now felt heavy with meaning just beyond your ken. Could this brief philosophical litany really unlock the power of Theurgy?
You’ve never had access to the rarefied “aetherial” blood that Theurges use to fuel their magic, of course. But the ancient texts suggested that one could accomplish similar effects by spilling large amounts of one’s own living blood….
Example 7:
Fortunately, Ecclesiast Zebed doesn’t notice your exchange with Breden. Entirely caught up in the ceremony, he bows to the senior magician, a tall, slender woman with close-cropped red hair. “Exalted Theurge Chirex.”
I do prefer mage to magician on the grounds that mage implies actual power whereas magician can mean someone who merely fakes tricks for an audience.
Example 8:
Chirex thrusts her hand out with a snarl. You feel yourself yanked off the ground, tumbling upward in dizzy spirals until you’re higher than the house-eaves around the square. “You dare to threaten a Theurge, traitor?”
You call back to her with confidence born of the arcane texts you’ve read. “Your Theurgy is your weakness, Chirex. You didn’t come with enough magic to put down a mob. You don’t have any oil of vitriol, and those bandoliers of blood won’t power an attack strong enough to tear apart more than two or three of us. So kill me if you will—but if I were you, I’d use that blood to ward myself and start running now.”
Example 9:
To your elation, you watch the charging helots overrun the panicking Alastors. The Theurges plainly don’t have enough blood phials to fuel magic more complicated than kinesis—throwing people and objects around—or to turn the tide of the fight through magic alone.
Example 10:
Chirex glances down at the remaining phials clenched in her fist. She is clearly weighing her ability to crush you or dash you to the ground and still fuel enough magic to escape herself. “What do you dream your little rebellion will achieve?” she finally shouts, voice shaking. “No more Harrowings? Xthonos be witness, we will wring the blood from every last man, woman, and child who stands in this agora today!” Before anyone can respond, she flies away to the east, fast as a stone from a sling.
The crowd mills around uncertainly as your new rebels grasp the full import of their actions. You need to keep them from losing momentum and courage. “Tie up those men,” you quickly order, pointing at the captive authorities. “Bind them tight. And the rest of you: destroy that machine.”
Cheers rise up from every throat in the square. The helots attack the still-clattering Harrower with their bare hands and harvesting tools, prying apart its well-oiled workings and emptying the blood urns into the dust. As they work, Chirex’s magic dissipates, the Harrower’s spinning central gear slows to a halt, and you feel yourself sinking slowly back toward the ground.
Example 11:
For all you know, you may be the only person outside Hegemonic control who has been able to learn the basics of Theurgy. You can’t let sentimental qualms get in the way of learning the rest. Becoming powerful enough to challenge the Thaumatarch is too important.
In any case, from your studies, you’re fairly sure that raw blood from a dead person can’t fuel magic. It has to be rarefied in a secret process to produce “aetherial” Theurgic blood. So even if you had been comfortable using the blood of sacrificed helots—and even if the crowd would have tolerated it—the contents of the Harrower’s urns would have been useless for your experimentation, since you have no idea of how to rarefy blood.
Example 12:
“Have you got the archers standing ready, in case that Theurge comes back for another look?” You’ve read that invulnerability magic consumes a lot of blood, and you doubt that Theurges can afford to keep themselves protected on long reconnaissance flights.
Example 13:
Yebben’s voice takes on a faraway tone. “Have you heard tales of Salareo of Aveche, Captain? From the last great Halassurq War before our current one. Salareo Mage-Bane, who once killed more than a dozen magi of Halassur in a single great battle.”
“Of course. The Blind Theurge.” As soon as the epithet has left your tongue, you fall silent.
A faint smile bends Yebben’s mouth. “I’ve listened to many stories of your raids, Captain. Of odd things that have befallen our enemies when you were in the lead. Some say it’s luck, or Angels. And before you say the same, consider: maybe Salareo knew something that gave him an advantage over magi who could see. Maybe I could learn as he did, and even the odds a little.”
Example 14:
“Don’t tell me the Phalangites are unbeatable,” Radmar growls at the dinner circle that evening. “Captain de Serin, be honest. In all the stories you’ve read and heard, there must be some times when they’ve lost—and to folk like us, not just Halassurq magi!”
Example 15:
And of course the Phalangites need the Theurges for attack, not just communication. Within two weeks, as the various flanking forces converge toward you, the magi will shift their priorities to hunting you down. If you could strike now, before they’ve fully committed to the hunt, you could turn the course of the battle.
Example 16:
In the past few days you’ve seen one or two outlaws attempt to fend off Theurges with arrows—even in one brave fool’s case a flaming arrow, with a rag soaked in oil of dittany. The mage doused the flame with a thought, and set the archer on fire by igniting the remaining oil in his quiver. Anything you try now has a good chance of ending much the same way as the dittany arrows.
Of the current options, Theurge and Goete both imply agreement with the Hegemony’s religious claims and Wisard moves a slider towards homelander. @Havenstone Judging by how mage/magi/magic are used, they seem to apply both to Hegemony Theurges and their equivalents in Halassur, so would that make mage/magi/magic a cosmopolitan option?
Also, while spell-checking this post, spell-checker picked up what I think is a typo.
The shadows thrown around the room by the candle seemed suddenly tangible and malevolent. From childhood you’d always been told that Theurgy was a special gift of the Blessed Angels to a devout few. The Ecclesisasts darkly insisted that non-Theurges could only use magic through trafficking with Xaos-powers from the Void of Taratur.
I think that should be Ecclesiasts.
On a completely unrelated note, I think the font used in the chapter headers should perhaps be changed.
The “t” in “chapter”, “strangers”, and “the” looks more like a lower-case Greek “tau” and the “g” looks more like a lower-case delta.
Although I suppose it would be fitting to have actual Greek letters in the chapter headings.
Okay, I think this is the right place to post this…
My second MC was a devout noble with high combat and low intelligence. No theurgy, naturally! Between his personal theology and dumping a bunch of cash on the ecclesiasts before the final battle, I got his religious approval up to “small degree of credibility”. I have the cap from my phone, even.
After combatively and magic-less-ly killing three awful demon dogs, my stabby boy was bounced back down to “trafficking with dark powers”. Um? How dare???
Anyway, I think I found a bug.
Not sure if this is the right place to post but here it goes :P. How you laid out magic (Thuergy) in your world is amazing, you first elegantly showed how magic can have noticeable impacts on the course of history. You could have just pretended magic had no such impact on the world that had led to the events that came to the founding of “your” rebellion, but no instead you held historical precedence on the creation of atherial blood by Karagon which stopped a rising Shayard from possibly ruling over the five regions. Secondly the checks and balances you have put on magic not only make perfect sense to the impact of the invention of atherial blood but limits the use of magic to a point it can’t be used as a Deus Ex Machina for you but still leaves it as an imposing thorn in your side throughout the game as the immoral Karagon choose to do what you may not and even if you did stoop to their level it you do not have the ability to make the limitless stream of atherial blood that Karagon has making magic (if you can use it) a very scarce and valued resource to be used in the most dire of times. On top of that the need for blood to do magic itself justifies why so few, despite having full ability to learn such things, use the art. The religion of the world rightly and justifiably believes that magic is bad (unless its done by Karagon but that just gives me more belief that their version is a perversion) lessening its use by the common folk, the amount of book on the subject being circulated too plays a factor in its scarcity. Overall I’d just like to compliment you on factoring the relevance of magic into historical events and explaining very well why not many use magic despite everyone having the ability to use it. Your storytelling overall is great but I love how well you have seamlessly woven magic into every aspect of your world and for that I’d like to compliment you for!
Thanks! Grateful for how thoughtfully you’ve engaged with the gameworld…
I just came her to share my frustrations with someone who would understand.
Due to my obsession with XOR, I’ve been looking for a good recipe for barley bread (gracefully setting aside concerns like “where exactly did they get the grain milled”). I’ve learned a great deal about neolithic, biblical, iron age, and medieval bread-baking habits, which has been a lovely digression. However, I have not found a recipe for barley bread which does not call for at least 1:1 or 2:1 wheat flour to barley flour ratio. Or a sourdough starter. Or a 3:1 ratio of spelt to barley. The only credible extra ingredient I read about is the skimming from malt liquor in lieu of standard yeast. To say nothing of the fact that some of these recipes require the dough to rise three times!
My baking efforts are thwarted, and now I have more worldbuilding questions than ever.
I have also attempted to extrapolate how many loaves of bread can be baked out of a bushel of raw grain. It’s a very rough assessment, but someone helpfully did the math for me. If we ignore some obvious differences, like that barley plausibly has a different density and grain size than wheat.
Consider that a lot of the grain will be used as porridge and ale, not just bread. Porridge is going to be particularly common because it doesn’t demand yeast and the water will thicken the grain; it won’t actually have more calories but it’ll make you feel more full (especially useful if you’re feeding subsistence or half-rations). And porridge is also the kind of food where you can throw in random treats if you find them - stuff that the game doesn’t track; we’re talking rabbits or quail killed by the kids, some late-blooming berry bushes, or maybe two-day-dead chicken that the looters chopped when they were raiding a noble estate.