I actually opine the same. However Havie has said Mara could have chance. So maybe Mara is like Darth Vader force persuasion also religious tactic is effective too
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If you use the whole religious thing, you can have your followers do all the stabbing while you keep your hands clean. That way technically you aren’t breaking your pacifistic morals.
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Nope THEY ARE STUPID AS HELL. Mules have far more sense lol Also my men have a defend mara suicidal switch like lemmings they launch to defend Me and defeat like two theurģes and monsters lol even if we were like twenty with no weapon except lacoste spears. So maybe Mara is a mystic power lol
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Sorry, my question was a little opaque. I was meaning to ask if we would be able to have a positive relationship with them in future games. Edwer doesn’t seem to represent diakons at-large, as he’ll join your rebellion even if you have low cred with the priests. And as our new religion spreads, the clergy might become less amicable to it (especially inner voice/kenon, as both will displace them from their current position in the social hierarchy)
No, you were clear and the answer’s yes. You can bribe the priesthood into supporting you near the end of Ch. 1 - Edwer helps with that but isn’t necessary.
@Bryce_Kaldwin There’s nothing wrong with being the Eclect and a good number of things that are right. However, the Inner Voice methodology is a good way of marking yourself apart from the corruption of the Thaumatarchy, not to mention giving you a chance to change the liturgy without Cha 2. I use it as part of a strategy of compassion, particularly on my commoner theurge alt.
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Which new liturgy do you normally go with?
Depends on what I’m doing. With Ronia Thresher, the liturgy is fire, and then mercy all the way. Alya Seriatou does Water and mixes vengeance in general, middle approach to priests and merchants, and to the nobles, “Vengeance - but to those who stood firm, the rule that is their birthright.”
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I always thought the middle road stuff smacked of equivocation. Religious folk (particularly rebellion against the state types) generally aren’t fond of equivocation…
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Alya’s a noble and a politician, not just a priest and a theurge. She equivocates because she doesn’t especially want to piss off the clergy (and doesn’t want to piss off the merchants) but doesn’t want anyone to think she’s merciful either.
That said, I will probably have Alya go Eclect once I have to make the final decision to carry into book 2, which requires her to keep the existing liturgy. It makes more sense for her to seek a shiny new dictatorship than a koinon or another kind of more inclusive state.
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Because I don’t feel like replaying XoR just to get Kalt and go on the sheep raid, does anyone have a transcript with that encounter?
Kalt/Kala's life story:
*label kaltlifestory
"Very well then, ${kuria}. We'll see what you make of me."
You sit in silence while ${zhe} plucks a fennel stem and chews meditatively on the seeds. At length, ${zhe} glances over at you and says, "You know the first thing I remember my ma teaching me? 'Do as you'd be done by, ${kalt}.' It wasn't that some Diakon had said it to her, either. Ma'd figured it out for herself when she was a girl, along with all kinds of other oughts-and-shoulds. And she loved to talk about them. She loved that the pattern Xthonos put in the world was as clear to her as to any highborn or priest.
"Our lord kurios… well, he thought it was funny to have a helot pigkeeper who'd tell him what was right and wrong." A small, bitter smile settles on ${kalt}'s face. "He'd stop by to argue with her after Helsday services, sometimes. They'd go back and forth, and she wouldn't hold back, she'd speak her mind about how she thought things were faring on the estate. Always friendly-like, and with a smile, earnest as anything.
"And sometimes it'd change things. One time he came swearing that he was going to flog and sell off a young couple who'd got themselves caught in a hayloft… but he'd waited until he spoke with Ma, and after they'd argued for a good hour, he stormed off to the Diakon and had the two married instead. If I ever spoke up when he was about, he'd smack me across the head, tell me to mind my place. But he didn't lay a finger on my ma.
"His chamberlain, on the other hand…" ${kalt}'s lips twist, and ${zhe} looks down at the grass. "He reckoned anyone who'd speak so bold must be… well."
*fake_choice
*if aristo
#"Say no more." I don't want ${zhim} to shame ${zhim}self or ${zhis} mother by speaking of it further.
"Well, there won't be much of a tale if I shy away from this bit, ${kuria}." ${kalt} doesn't look up. "It
*if helot
#"Doesn't take much boldness for them to use that excuse." I don't want ${zhim} to think the shame is ${zhis} alone.
${kalt} shrugs, still looking down. "It
#"Did you kill him?" I wouldn't put it past ${kalt}.
$!{zhe} laughs, still looking away. "I was nine, ${kuria}—too young to even understand what was happening. It
#I stay silent. Best to say nothing.
"It
had been going on for about a month when the kurios found out about it. I found out too, then, 'cause he came and had a shouting fight with my mother. Called her unchaste and other names I hadn't heard before… while she yelled right back about his not protecting the folk in his care, and blinding himself to the liberties his retainers had been taking. I was hiding in with the pigs, wondering if his guards would kill me when they came to kill Ma. But instead kurios Anthanos walks back up to the grand house and dismisses the chamberlain as a scoundrel."
"Truly?" You'd also been braced to hear the story of ${zhis} mother's death.
${kalt} meets your quizzical stare, and you can see tears standing in ${zhis} eyes. "My ma was so happy. Thought it proved what she'd been saying all along. Most people see the pattern. Most folk understand [i]Do as you'd be done by.[/i] There aren't many folk who are too bad to be reasoned with… and if you run into one of the bad ones, get help from someone else who can be reasoned with."
$!{zhis} voice trails off. Both of you look up at the stars for a minute without speaking. "And then?"
"The kurios kept coming back for those chats with my ma. At different hours than he had before. Doing as he'd be done by." ${kalt}'s voice is savage for a moment. Then ${zhe} sighs, shakes ${zhis} head. "The lady kuria had just died, and my da'd been Harrowed when I was five, so no one living had reason to complain. In truth, ${kuria}, while that lasted, I don't think my ma was all that troubled."
*if aristo
You shift uncomfortably;
*if bred_lover > 10
whatever your own judgment on the chastity code,
it's a strain to hear someone talk thus about their mother.
*if helot
It's not hard for you to imagine what's coming.
"But it didn't last?"
*page_break
"Kuria Aline arrived. And my ma had another shouting fight with kurios Anthanos. She thought it was ten-ways obvious that things had to end then. He didn't think so—and in the end, he didn't give a damn what she thought." ${kalt}'s hands clench at ${zhis} sides. "Four more years, he'd make his visits. No more friendly chats in the pig-yard; no one wanted the new kuria to see them together, and besides, they didn't have much to talk about any more.
"I had a brother and sister, both older, both big enough to make the kurios nervous at their looks. Soon they got moved out to work-gangs on far bits of the estate. We didn't hear that they'd been sold until a month after it had happened. Also had an aunt, who tried to shame the kurios by talking loudly about what the Angels and Canon have to say on unchastity and abuse of widows. He heard her out for about five minutes… then declared that if he ever heard some letterless yaud quote Canon at him again, he'd send the Ecclesiast round our camp to sniff out heresy.
"My ma stopped smiling the way she'd used to. After a few months, she stopped crying, too." ${kalt}'s voice is completely steady despite the tears streaming down ${zhis} own cheeks. "And she knew that if she didn't keep eating mullow, the lord kurios would sell her away from me in a heartbeat. Of course, every year without
*if aristo
breeding makes the Theurges look closer at you for Harrowing. Four years… and it was her time."
*if helot
breeding…" $!{zhe} doesn't need to finish the thought; you both grew up knowing that the barren are more likely to get Harrowed. "Four years, and it was her time."
*fake_choice
*if aristo
#"$!{oath}… I'm so sorry," I breathe, trying to imagine myself trapped in anything like the same morass of shame and fear.
"Sorry's no help to anyone," ${kalt} snaps—then stops, wipes ${zhis} cheeks. "Forgive me, ${kuria} ${fname}. You deserve a bit better than that."
*if aristo
#Nothing I can say will do justice to this. I sit in appalled silence.
${kalt} wipes ${zhis} cheeks but says nothing.
*if helot
#"Taken, never gone." The well-worn helot words for acknowledging the memory of the Harrowed come to my lips.
"Gone before she was taken," ${kalt} says desolately, wiping ${zhis} cheeks.
*if helot
#"Damn him," I growl fervently.
"Maybe one day," ${kalt} says, hoarse-voiced. "Done my part now, I suppose."
#It's just the way of the world; I say nothing. But I know it's always hard to lose a mother.
After a time, you venture: "So his son… there was more revenge to that than you'd told us."
"Aye, Markos." ${kalt} sucks in air between ${zhis} teeth and blows it out again. "The lord kurios' only child by the late lady kuria. The first time he showed up in the pig-yard, I thought he was there to kill me, even though my mother'd been gone a good five years by then. Took me a time or two to realize that no, I'd somehow caught his eye, and that he was trying to find some corner where he could know me better."
"So you took the firedog to his skull."
${kalt} nods, but with nothing like the vehemence you were expecting. After a long pause, ${zhe} says, barely audible: "Not the first time." When you just sit in silence, ${zhe} eventually tumbles on. "I hated his father. I didn't hate him—didn't know him. That first time he caught up to me when I was digging roots in the woods… how could I say no? He could have… ah, he could have done whatever he wanted. Angels, did I even want to say no? He didn't have the look of his father. He seemed more honest. Straightforward, anyway."
"The second time, you killed him?"
${kalt} closes ${zhis} eyes. "Took me a month and more, ${kuria}."
*page_break
"We'd talk sometimes, too. Young kurios Markos was a cheery fellow afterwards, liked to talk about his estate. He loved the land, loved finding ways to get the most out of his kine and his grain. Seemed to enjoy listening, too; seemed fond of me. Had me wondering for a bit whether I could live with it.
"Then there was a day… we'd just finished butchering a few pigs outside the Great House, for the lord's table. Pigs had been screaming, as they do. Some young guests of the family came out to complain about the noise, saw a few of us helots washing up, and thought they'd have a bit of sport. Took a horsewhip off the stable wall, had us run round naked, then roll around with the pig carcases for a while in the blood and shit."
*if aristo
You have
*if arrog < 1
to admit, you've
seen similar games.
*if helot
You shake your head grimly at the all-too-familiar tale.
"Markos too?"
"No. He just watched. Said nothing, did nothing." ${kalt}'s bared teeth are shining in the moonlight. "That day I knew. No hope of any of Them ever treating me anything close to how I wanted treating—let alone how they'd like to be treated themselves. We were just so many more swine to Them. Had I thought twice about butchering the pigs, however loud they'd scream? Why would I expect anything more from an aristo? The next time the young kurios got me alone, he started by telling me he 'regretted' how his guests had behaved. I told him I didn't want his swiving regrets and I bashed his swiving skull in.
"I've seen what happens when
*if helot
They
*if aristo
your noble cousins
see us as friendly, or reasonable, or humble, ${kuria}. I've seen how far appeals to the Angels or the pattern of Xthonos get us. If we're ever going to be any freer, we need their fear. They need to see us for a ruthless pack of killers—too strong to beat, too hard to crack, and absolutely sure to hit back."
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@Havenstone Is it possible for Theurges to make themselves invisible (not so much from Telos-vision but at least in the visible light spectrum)? The MC still seems caught in the ancient Greek misunderstanding of light claiming the eyes emit light, but it is not hard to find problems with that belief such as if my eyes emit light then why can’t I see in a dark room. If invisibility can be managed, then while the cost in aetherial blood might be high, not being seen while flying overhead scouting could be really useful.
Regarding aether, is its presence in the human body tied to brain activity? We know its concentration is higher in newborns than adults, but does it only start appearing in fetuses once their brains are sufficiently developed? What about adults that have a serious head injury and are left brain-dead? Will their aether remain as long as the rest of the body still lives even if higher brain function ceases?
Also, it occurs to me that even if blood transfusions do sicken or kill affected Theurges, that just means the Hegemony would need to be more selective about who becomes a test subject. I don’t think that field is something that would ever be abandoned simply because the potential benefit once understood is too huge to overlook. I think it is more likely that captured “miracle workers” or Theurges that were not deemed suitable for instruction in more closely guarded knowledge would instead be used as test subjects. Oh, and credit where it is due, I realized while doing a quick search of this thread to link the earlier relevant post that @idonotlikeusernames was the first on this thread to suggest blood transfusions.
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What exactly is a yaud?
This is a world where blood fuels magic. Are you sure that all the Aristotelian science is a misunderstanding? 
That said, invisibility is something into which Theurges have poured massive effort without success. Maybe a mistaken understanding of optics is at the root of that failure.
Aether is not tied to brain activity. I’m still on the fence about transfusion technology, but thanks for continuing to share ideas on it.
Google is your friend… It’s archaic English for “mare.”
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Are you implying that blood does not fuel magic in the real world? 
(cancels order for silver dagger and black robes…)
I did not claim all of Aristotelian belief was wrong in the XOR world. It would have to be internally consistent though and that can be… difficult. For example, it was possible to construct a model of planetary motion with the Earth as its center. I imagine those models would get even more complicated if the body you observe is actually a moon in an elliptical orbit around another planet in a different elliptical orbit around the sun. I am not claiming it is impossible, but finding an alternative force to gravity other than wishful thinking to drive the whole thing would be… challenging.
I still wonder whether the Ayleid view that “fire” is an impure form of light might be correct in this world.
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Trying to make real world science in a high magical world building is always a big error. As the point of a high magical society is the physics are different and that affected everything in world.
The elder scrolls lore is a big example with the Dragon breaks events and the changeable timeline. People trying to add real quantum physical laws fail spectacularly. Because this is a universe where believe something is god makes it so. Where a event could be complete same time with three winners and a person could be dead and alive same time in different places and an entire civilization changed of existing plane using mathematics.
Here is same even if in minor scale… Copernicus haven’t flying magic and mutants lol
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Hey, some of the best minds to ever live bought the idea of Humorism for about 2,000 years, It’s not that hard to believe that even a high intellect MC would accept such a theory given the time period, hell, there’s probably a lot of wacky shit that we consider “common sense” that people several centenaries in the future will laugh at us for believing in.
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I disagree. The scientific method always works. In a world of magic, you’ll obviously end up with different results, but the process is the same. Whether magic exists or not, the world still needs to be internally consistent. For example, if the belief that eyes emit light is actually true in a story, then there need to be plausible explanations in the story universe for the real-world contradictions in that belief.
Well even an INT 2 MC presumably had a limited education by the standards of what would be available to Theurges in the Lykeion of Aekos. So my concern is not the MC having that belief. I’d be concerned if trained Theurges have that belief. Disputing the idea of everything in the night sky orbiting the Earth may require a telescope, but poking holes in the idea of the eyes emitting light does not require special equipment. When it comes to believing nonsense, I am also less inclined to cut slack for people with Telos-vision. I can well imagine them declining to share their discoveries, but if none of them manage to realize when such beliefs are wrong even after centuries of Telos-vision observations, then that seems less plausible.
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Scientific method is impossible on a world that can’t SCIENTIFIC proof experiment anything. LOGICAL consistency is not same SCIENTIFIC methods. You can’t measure proof and empirical value anything that doesn’t exist in real life so any scientific method is by definition IMPOSSIBLE. Logic consistency is what is the use to make all believable. Not scientific method
So, yes the scientific method always works. Whether the XOR world has started using it is another matter.
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