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

I think you’re underestimating how many we can teach during the years of rebellion and how much territory we’ll de-facto control in game 5. Obviously we can only fully implement all the new stuff in the areas under our control. Law enforcement and the army are also the most critical priorities to stock with former helot veterans in the upper ranks .

Besides, when it comes to reading and writing the yeomen, at least in our home area of the Rim are barely any better educated then most helots in these subjects. So tapping them for the police force would result in the same problems, just with slightly less loyal people. The merchant class/caste, at least in our starting neck of the woods seems like it would be too small to fill all of the crucial spots, and my mc would prefer them in the parts of the bureaucracy less concerned with the application of force.

Maybe the currently oppressed (but technically “free”) urban masses can be part of the solution, assuming we can win their loyalty and assuming their education and record keeping skill are any better than those of our rural yeomen, coming from a provincial backwater like we do, but they would be unfamiliar with much of the territory outside the cities, which would be a big drawback to placing them in charge of rural police.

If they would my mc would not trust them to actually enforce the new laws anyway, so it’s a moot point but there are likely to be much more like the “noble” mc who are barely nobiity anymore anyway and might have to take any paying job they can get post-revolution. My mc certainly won’t be subsidizing the priests and nobles any longer.
In ancien-regime France they obviously found nobles, or at least their lesser (and some bastard) sons who would, but that’s not a route that would sit at all well with my mc.

Most organizations tend to be pyramids, especially the military and law-enforcement. So the stocking will begin with the very highest ranks and work downwards from there. Obviously, I’m anticipating more success with educating some of our adult veterans then you do, but I think my mc would at least be able to find former helot veterans, now used to commanding large numbers to fill such positions as the provisional minister of police and immediately downwards. After that come the most loyal yeoman and merchant veterans, etc, etc, and like you I will stock the lower ranks, as in most of the common officers with former helots too.

True and my mc has little trouble with stocking the relatively vast middle ranks with anybody (except former priests and nobles) who can meet the criteria, but he’d need to keep the upper ranks loyal. So unless he somehow has enough loyal veterans that he trusts from the former merchant caste that’s still going to fall to the better-educated helot veterans.

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So you are going to disband the army and police in their entirety, consider all former soldiers and police ineligible for the job, and replace them all with peasants?

The former Alastors are not merely ineligible they are also to a man criminals themselves, as our impromptu trial makes clear. Apart from that one kid, who might be as much of a pink unicorn as Simon, the out of town Alastors were only spared for lack of evidence. Had there been helots from their hometowns and villages present, they’d have certainly joined the body pile of Rim Square’s “finest”. Needless to say, you cannot build a police force out of a single, non-corrupt Alastor kid.

As for the army, I expect most of the current phalangites will not survive the rebellion and will be killed in action. Their mostly green replacements would likely not be of the highest concern and especially for the army we’ll probably have our own core of hardened veterans. My mc will see what can be done about some of the non-noble rank and file, but all Hegemony officers are simply too dangerous to ever trust.

Edit @Eiwynn @Gower why did skynet just remove my quoting of cascat?

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Well fortunately you have a real world model to prove the efficacy of your plan: Iraq. You are sounding a lot like Paul Bremer comrade… “Extreme De-Ba’athification” got a 2016 ring to it yeah?

Iraq did not replace the former regular army with the core of the rebel army (or at least not the core of rebel army that had actually won on its own). As for the police force, again, given the widespread corruption of the former Alastors they would indeed be ineligible for police duties. For one they are far too accustomed to all of the extrajudicial privileges of the Alastors that the new police force simply won’t have. The freedom to rape unpersons for example. For one because there will be no more unpersons/blood cattle and two because rape is a crime, as are theft and assault. Given that those three things seem to be the main activities of Rim Square’s “finest”, yeah, even for those let go for lack of evidence there won’t be room for them in any new police forces.

De-Hegemonization/Karagondization and de-theocratization of the government and military are absolute top priorities, yeah.

On the contrary Shiite militia and and Peshmerga were key elements in the plan to rebuild both institutions, though Bremer’s definition of a Ba’athist as disqualifying criteria were not as extensive as yours by comparison.

Presuming we will “win on our own” is a false assumption for one since @Havenstone has made plain our MC and their faction will be one of many standing on the corpse of the Hegemony.

Unless we’re gonna take massive Hallassurq “assistance” it still won’t be comparable to the US installed and backed new Iraqi regime.

Ok I mean I think that’s beside the point. In any event you will need that level of power to disband the police and army completely and to ensure you don’t rehire the same people. The Hegemony is way bigger than Iraq as well both in terms of population and land.

Since rehiring the same people would only lead to the slow harrowing of any helot mc, I think that’s less of a risk than you seem to be implying. I don’t think those people would still want the job, if it meant taking orders from “animals” or sub-humans anyway. So again, I don’t think there’s a big chance the surviving Alastors and phalangites would even want to work for my mc’s faction.

Given that we’re apparently gonna be unable to control all of it anyway…

On the contrary, it’s because I recognize just how much territory there will be to police that I’m skeptical that we’ll have enough literate, numerate helots to run the police force required.

So you think someone who just learned his ABC’s and can read simple sentences like “See Spot run.” is qualified to determine military strategy, let alone run a logistical supply line? This strikes me as unrealistically optimistic.

We do live in a backwater.

Your MC seems to be falling into an “Us” vs “Them” mentality with “Us” being helots, and “Them” being everyone else. I suspect there will be plenty of loyalty issues for your MC among helots as well, especially those who don’t take well to your MC’s anti-religious bent.

In my view, you’re going to get more competent people if you allow them to select the positions that call to them. Or are you trying to create a new caste system with the helots on top?

I suspect they’re the population the Alastors currently draw from.

Sure, you may get a noble or priest to take the top positions, but they’re unlikely to lower themselves to the role of beat cop. And we both know you’re not going to appoint nobles and priests to the top positions. So like you said, it’s moot.

I expect quite a few of those veteran helots will turn into serious sectarian problems for you, stirring up hatred with extreme responses that work better on a battlefield than a time of peace. But they don’t really know any better, because that’s that’s all they know how to do.

Every time we have a conversation like this your goals and methods put me in the mind of Maoist China. I’m doubtful you will even be able to stop the spread of anti-intellectualism once you put into power an army of poorly educated people with a vested interest in keeping their better educated former oppressors down. Your own revolution may even turn on you if you attempt to reign them in.

That was basically the argument for de-ba’athification is what I’m implying. You think the Saddam Regime’s crimes and atrocities committed themselves?

Weren’t the people who got sent home the same people who led the violence that led to the troop surge and bloodiest fighting in the Iraq War?

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Yep. No one made them surrender their weapons or even stopped them from heading back to their now unguarded bases and arming themselves to the teeth. Unemployed and furious at the poor way they’d been treated by Bremer’s government, they launched an insurgency.

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They were also anticipating retaliation from the Shiite majority. Bit of self-fulfilling prophecy there…

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Agreed. In the Baathist view Bremmer and by extension the US were handing Iraq over to Iran on a silver platter. Baathists tended to see Iraqi Shia as an untrustworthy fifth column beholden to Iran.

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Aren’t some of our “Destroy ISIS coalition” members the militia commanders we were fighting then?

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It’s complicated. That was the Sunni Awakening movement that Petraeus and others put a lot of effort into wooing to our side. We pretty much hung them out to dry when Obama left Iraq and Maliki cut off funding. Now it’s the Shia death squad commanders on Iran’s payroll that had been trying to kill our troops several years back that we’re sort of grudgingly allied with.

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Hell even Muqtada al-Sadr is a counterweight to Iran if you can believe it… If you want to see how strange bedfellows can get look no further than “Destroy ISIS.”

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Between a rock and hard place…you don’t get that many good options big tiger. Giving the current Xthonic “intellectuals” an inch would result in my mc’s slow harrowing and any outcome even any other death is better than that one.
I think we’ve already established that the Karagond/Xthonic caste system is not going to be shattered by half-measures and incrementalism. As we’ve also got a real-world model for that in modern India where the caste system never truly went away and is currently on the rise again. In fact some of the acts of the informal “cow protection squad” vigilantes, who are at least tacitly tolerated by mr. Modi’s government look suspiciously like the extrajudicial activities of the Hegemony’s Alastors. :unamused:
The caste system currently stands in the way of any and all reforms my mc would want, as he isn’t doing this to get a slightly better deal on the conditions of his enslavement from the anti “animal cruelty” crusaders of the current Hegemony. To break that system in the span of less than a generation is going to need a shock of seismic proportions, but if Hera could implement it within a single generation, we are hopefully able to destroy it in the same timespan too.

So for my mc I’m more wary of repeating Ambedkar’s mistakes than George W’s. As my mc never wants to return to enslavement or servitude again. So subordinating himself to any “noble” or the Karagond priesthood is out of the question.
Besides he couldn’t hold the Eclect title, even should he want to, because he’s categorically unable to even fake any sort of piety and he certainly wouldn’t accept the priesthood trying to control him by such nonsense as declaring him “the bride of Xthonos” in order to prevent him from having sex or other such nonsense.

Then that might confirm my suspicions they are also insufficiently trained and educated. So if it comes down it my mc prefers poorly educated former helots over poorly educated people from the other former castes, yes.

True, for the purpose of literacy lessons the current game seems to not distinguish our helot followers from our yeoman followers at all.

Mostly true, the “them” in my mc’s mind are of course the (former) nobles and the priests and he does try very hard to appeal to the yeomen and the merchants (with some success thus far). Of course in the current game, I don’t think it is even possible for a helot mc to appeal to the “nobility” at all as they will always see a helot mc as a threat. With my mc that feeling is very much mutual.

As for the post-rebellion mess, then I guess my mc would, at least to a certain extent, favour loyalty over competence as competent people who want to enslave and harrow him are not going to be a joy to try and work with.

And that was a major mistake. My mc’s rebels will certainly try to loot all miitary assets first. Still any rebel army would need to do that, but the US invaders came with their own weapons and had little need for those stockpiles (that were likely very much inferior to what they already got) so they probably neglected them.

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al-Sadr has certainly evolved. People thought al-Sistani was making a huge mistake when he intervened and saved al-Sadr from his doomed stand-off with the US in 2004, but it’s actually turned out for the best…