What inner voice What is that? I only madeup a water fire ritual of non sense Not inner voice … It is a narrative voice like Stanley parable?
Inner Voice is the path where you get rid of the Eclect and Ecclesiast but keep the angels. Also known as the “common angelic voice,” the idea is that anyone can hear the Angels, not just the Eclect and Ecclesiasts.
Stupid for Mara I WANT CONTROL them. Not let commoners get ideas and believe them holy. I need a priesthood under mine and noble control and capable of accusations of heresy to rivals. My goal is feudalism I need a priesrhood
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Sure. But if an army as to walk across half a continent to invade, you are already at a very big advantage. And it’s not as if you’d be wide open in the place where you put the ward down. Even with theurgy superior positioning, fortifications and preparing the terrain are still huge factors in warfare as some of the endings of chapter one prove… I think the wards exemplify one of the main flaws of the hegemony: over reliance on theurgy. It seems to me that, while it is an undoubtedly incredible power (and one of the most compelling and coherent magic systems I’ve ever read), it is not necessarily always the best solution to a problem and that is particularly true in the case of the brute force approach the hegemony employs. In light of that, I wander if wards in general are a good idea and if the treats they are meant to contain couldn’t be handled in other, less costly, ways. But that is a problem for waaaay down the line where we’ll have a more adequate knowledge about both theurgy and the threats looming at the edge of the map. Incidentally, I seem to recall reading about a spreadsheet you wrote detailing the blood budget of the hegemony. When the right time comes, I’d love to read that 
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Absolutely. If the Thaumatarchy was primarily concerned about an army, they’d have been more selective in their Ward-building.
A beautiful idea, beautifully rendered in the Maha Upanisad. Thanks for sharing it, and in general for the friendly dharma-prachar. 
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I am in same page with you , Medieval Feudalism is my goal… although it won’t necessary need to be a priesthood for any religion , Well… if you follow the structure of Warhammer’s Brettonia Kingdom, the priesthood is replaced by Enchantress and Witches who bear the wish of the Lady of The Lake 
Although in my playthrough, i am already an Angel Eclect… so i guess i must uphold the priesthood for this case
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I go full Charisma no fighting so i need religious something (I am not theBeatles) An structure for the religion is needed to further control masses
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Same as me, in both my created MC… they are full Charisma figure… one romancing Breden while the other Suzanne, i should be more committed towards Suzanne since my plan is to put her to the throne with me as Head of Angel ( Angel Eclect) to support her claim 
and i know about the Inner Voice , but i banish the thought…you were right in the sense that it would be chaos if everyone claim they have an inner voice within them, the next thing will be everyone claim they are the true prophet and there will be another war of proclamation , so we should be in control of the priesthood in order to maintain peace and harmony
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So, if nobody is going to tolerate others. Then whatever the MC does, even with a cosmopolitan, or balanced religion (Devout-Skeptical) character even if different other believers are not persecuted by the law or administration, there will always be endless war among different factions of followers.
Yeah, I had a fear that my suggestion would be misinterpreted as “Dharma Prachar”. A relief…It’s a friendly one.
@idonotlikeusernames You want to be skeptic, at the same time devout followers will be allowed to remain in cooperation with the skeptics. Seems to be a nice idea. But…
Then as per our author, the more devout followers will completely disregard your skepticism and vice versa is also true. Then set aside the war with other independent Empires/Provinces, the civil war within the MC’s conquered realm will be enough to eat it up.
Again he says that his upper Echelons would favour scepticism.
Then that can no way be called a Secular state.
There is another word for this: “Favouritism” or “Pseudo-Secularism”.
And when the administration itself favours one ideology over another, that is in no way Secularism.
For secularism, the complete judiciary (law & enforcement), administration, and government all should be free from laws favouring one religion or the other, while the administrators can practice their religion in Personal Level.
In this part, we have the same opinion. My MC’s realm would also be a state free of Slavery and Casteism, and imposing Freedom for non-straight individuals as well.
And in the current game world,
Slavery is there for helots.
Casteism is there, for restriction in marriage in-between the Aristocrats and Helots, or may be with priests as well. Also the yeomanry despise the helots.
And for non-straight individuals, we can can see, that breeding is the only reason Hegemony justifies for a marriage.
And I don’t understand what you meant by a “lawful religion”.
It seems, your administration will authorise some religions to be practised freely, and some will be persecuted for following their own religion.
Oh God! That will never happen in my MC’s realm. There will always be freedom for practicing your own religion. I repeat, unless until you inflict threat/violence upon others.
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Let’s not be too hasty. I agree that tolerance and harmony are easier to achieve when people share a metaphysic that says “All paths to Ultimate Spiritual Reality are equally valid.” But that doesn’t mean tolerance and harmony can’t be achieved under other, more exclusionary metaphysical frameworks. It’s possible to tolerate someone, refrain from war against them, and indeed live in friendly harmony with them even if I don’t think their beliefs are valid.
On the flip side, sadly, harmony and nonviolence are not a guaranteed consequence of living with the “all equally valid” metaphysic. Coping with disbelievers and exclusivist rival creeds has often stretched the tolerance even of Hindu communities to breaking point.
There will be plenty of options within Choice of Rebels to pursue tolerance. It’s just that none of them will follow from a set of ideas that don’t currently exist in this corner of the gameworld… because trying to engage seriously with Hindu metaphysics would be biting off more than I can chew. (Also, I don’t want the horrible caste system I’ve created for the Hegemony to be misread as an implicit critique of Hindu religious ideas.)
Well, I don’t think it’s a bad word. I’m grateful when people offer their dharma to me to consider, in whole or part. I’ve had very enjoyable experiences being proselytized by Theravada Buddhists in Yangon, Muslims in Afghanistan and the UK, Hindus and Vajrayana Buddhists here in Nepal, Jews in the US, atheists in the US and England, and fellow-Christians just about everywhere. (And a few bad experiences too, of course: pressure tactics, hostility, fear. But they’re much outweighed by the good ones.)
Out of such encounters grows real tolerance, real harmony…not the fake kind premised on all citizens hiding our deepest beliefs from each other and only talking about the areas where we’re sure we agree.
They will certainly not accept that each other’s viewpoint is true. But with the right charisma, the right arguments, or just the right level of coercion, a leader can get people with rival viewpoints to tolerate each other. Especially if they have an external enemy.
And that will definitely be an option in the gameworld. As will idnlun’s “all belief systems are equal but some are more equal than others.” (To be fair, I suspect that at least 90% of what he means by “lawful religion” is the same as what you mean by “not inflicting threat/violence upon others.”)
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On the topic of religion, do you guys think that a low charisma character deciding to be declared an elect while being a skeptic could have problems down the line? Because if you can’t keep up the lie or you can’t make people acknowledge your title it could hurt your rebellion immensely. But on the other hand the authority that comes with that and the possibility to be a leading voice in the reformation of the religion while promoting tolerance towards other belief systems are not things that can be dismissed so easily.
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Okay, we in the Netherlands called ourselves a secular state for a long time when the upper echelons were still favouring Calvinism quite heavily, but generally, it worked out and eventually the state did become genuinely secular (and much less religious in general), but that has been a generational process.
What the (pseudo) secularism mainly means at this stage is what it meant in our late republic/early kingdom period. The absence of religiously motivated persecution by an inquisition and the abolition of literal lynchings and witch-hunts over superstition and generally letting the non-dominant religions practice their faiths in peace.
In-game it would mean that the new regime does not play favourites between the lawful religions. I’ve already said above what I take “lawful religion” to mean in context.
The current, organized church of Xthonos being what underpins the nightmare caste system is explicitly not a “lawful” religion and isn’t very well tolerated by my mc’s rebellion. Once it begins to schism any splinters and possibly the Shayardene version of it, providing they disavow slavery and caste systems and do not preach anti-gay sentiments would be tolerated as it will no longer be state business to dictate how many Angels should be able to balance themselves on the tip of a needle. Let the various schisms debate that one among themselves.
While the regime would have policies to deal with organized religions that look like they are becoming too powerful and distorting the free religious market, the favoured method by far would be to use infiltration and more subtle manipulations to induce a schism. False flag ops and “terrorism” charges would be the last resort there, not the first. Which is a stark contrast to the more direct and brutal repression and oppression the Hegemony currently favours.
And it will be since skepticism is not a religion. All religious favouritism will be removed from the laws. As it was in our abortive late republic reforms and as it has been in the kingdom ever since the Constitution of 1848.
And this is why many de-jure secular states retain favouritism and “glass ceilings” that take much longer to bust. Did the Constitution of 1848 that formally introduced secularism mean that the Catholics and Jews, not to mention the few Muslims and atheists suddenly gained true equality of opportunity overnight? Of course not, the true upper echelons remained Calvinist/Protestant into the early 1960’s.
Many de-jure secular states still have some form of favouritism at the top, most top officials in the US, for example, are still some form of Protestant and modern France favours a stealth form of state atheism.
What secular laws do accomplish it that they make a diverse and pluralistic society much more viable.
No, this is a misconception you might have picked up inadvertently from my previous posts as this is only true for helots (and maybe the poor urbanites and the bottom rung of yeomen). it is also mostly a de-facto thing, except for the helots where some ecclesiasts, like the late Zebed are increasingly preaching it as if it were gospel truth.
The theory in the Hegemony is that every person has their other half and they can be of any gender, so the “true love” of a male aristo can as easily be another man as a woman or nb person.
For helots the practical need, from the point of view of the Hegemony, that they must breed supersedes this in practice and gay and lesbian helots are harrowed early, thus discouraging such “unions” and some ecclesiasts like Zebed have also taken to preaching that it is blasphemy and against helot telos to “imitate the higher castes in love”.
Any religion that disavows slavery and the/a caste system and is not anti-gay. The second requirement that won’t be written down in any codified law is that its organized churches do not get powerful enough to distort the free religious market. But, as I’ve said before, that latter requirement won’t be written down and the favoured way to deal with it would be by “encouraging a schism” within organized religions that appear to be distorting the free religious market.
That is what we had for most of our republican period when we, for example, let the Portuguese Jews immigrate and settle here and to a lesser extent in our colonies when the then Portuguese and Spanish regimes were kicking them out. At that time Calvinism was still the state religion and enshrined in law.
Too late 
I have always been drawing some comparisons and it helps that for a time me and mom lived next to Indian, Dalit refugees. So I did hear some of the horror stories. Add to that the fact that in the modern India of mr. Modi caste-based discrimination again seems to be getting much worse, not better and I’m tempted to say that even with the current anti-immigrant sentiment our government should put the Dalit refugee/asylum quota we had until the early 1980’s back on the books. 
A more concise summary to be sure and it sums up many of our real-world secular states too, including the USA.
Again, no advocating for slavery or a caste system allowed and no anti-gay preaching either. Those are the main points of it. Not too powerful of an organized church is the informal requirement.
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Hopefully you won’t get the same kind of aggressive pillarisation that went with it later.
Even pillarism would be vastly preferable to the current nightmare system of the Hegemony. But you’re right that it did take until the 1960’s for pillarism to crumble and eventually disintegrate. But, again, if pillarism is what it takes to move away from the nightmare system the Hegemony currently has in place I’ll take it.
Pillarism at least allows diverse populations to live alongside one another, even if not truly with one another. Also it didn’t deny the basic humanity of other people and had no slave caste.
The fun part is Mara religion is totally against slavery and defend same policy of romances that have Hegemony to nobles. Still better with free use of mullow and no necessity of having babies. Fully adoption for homosexuals acceptance of nb people.
Still a heavy priesthood organization to help maintain feudalism a more near to ideal feudalism.
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And that is the part my mc would object to as he’d never be a “noble” nor deign to become one, since it would mean having to play the game according to a rule-set he really doesn’t know, nor care to know.
But even “evil Ghandi” does seem to at least offer some benefits over the Hegemony, for the survivors that is.
But then so do the “evil” Laconniers and my mc doesn’t care for their brand of feudalism and petty Shayardene nationalism either.
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The evil part Of The evil Gandhi came from She knows she will condemn almost 75% of Hegemony to die by famine. And she has accepted it to breaking down the blood circle. And came to another type of society. Is a idealist in a way, she doesn’t want they to die but has accepted the price for the future of Shayard
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Not very good Jews, then. Judaism is not meant to be a proselytizing religion. It’s not the goal of Jewish faith to cause gentiles to convert.
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This thread has made me release I need to replay this game! I did not even realize there was a Suzanne character (gotta figure out the potential romances for my MC. Do not have highest hopes for him and the heir 
) ! I also have not played as a Helot…
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This does not address the other aspect of Halassur’s system:
From what I have read:
It does seem likely that because child sacrifices yields more aether than adult sacrifices, Halassur may have a lower body count than the Hegemony. On the other hand, choosing to sacrifice women when they are no longer able to bear children speaks volumes about societal values.
Other than preventing general starvation and defending against foreign invasion, there is not necessarily a need for a blood-driven economy for Halassur. The Hegemony only needs Theurgy for food production because its population has deliberately been increased beyond what can currently be fed without Theurgy. So Halassur may not need magic to feed itself. Halassur also does not have wards so far as I recall.
So other than maintaining a strategic blood reserve for national defense reasons, Halassur might not need large-scale harvesting of aetherial blood in peacetime. Desire for “revenge” seems a horrid reason to harvest more aetherial blood than is absolutely necessary.
I can imagine feeling that desperate acts are necessary to prevent some more horrible fate. But Halassur and the Hegemony have been using their respective systems for hundreds of years. A successful all-out effort at complete victory over the Hegemony followed by ending harvesting of aetherial blood save perhaps from criminals would probably have killed more people in the short term but fewer people in the long term compared to letting the wars resume every few years for hundreds of years.
@Havenstone I dislike having even to ask this, but if newborns have a higher quantity of aether than adults, what about premature babies or when the fetus is still in the womb? Caesarean section to harvest fetuses would also be horrid but I’m guessing both the Hegemony and Halassur have probably tested whether it would increase aether yield.
There was also the following:
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