I got the impression it was more like an “energy shield” and that the armor was impenetrable, but it can only absorb so many impacts until the magic wore off. That’s what sand is a good idea too because it generates a bunch of dispersed impacts which would hopefully wear down their magic faster with little effort expended.
Do we have artillery guns now? I swear every time I check on here we get new weapons. Will we have cruise missiles and chemical weapons next?
I’ve come to believe you’d probably despise my MC. His goals are to create a United Shayard again instead of burning the whole country to the ground. Viva le revolution! Viva le Shayard!
Eh, geographically mine wants to keep most of the Hegemony together, besides I get the feeling he may like the Neres and the Erezziano more then his fellow Shayard natives.
However for a (former) helot to be allowed to openly use magic and openly be in charge of anything that caste system and the religion that supports it must be smashed to bits and given how intertwined it is into almost every aspect of daily life we’ll need a fair bit of anarchy in order to discredit it enough to have any hope of transforming it in a way that abolished the caste system altogether.
As for the rest of what Mara likes to call his “grumpiness” (but note that most of this is only ever comes to the fore when he is directly confronted with the “decadence of the nobility” and consequently he has been quite cheerful, in spite of his circumstances for almost the entire winter), it’s an extreme contrarian reaction tied to his extreme hatred of Shayard’s nobility. Mostly exemplified by Hector and Calea Keriatou, his former “masters” so as much as Hector likes things such as horses and fancy clothes is about how much my mc absolutely despises them as “decadent tools of oppression” . In all fairness though @Havenstone did a brilliant bit of writing here for my character’s motivations, given how nice that Ganelon guy initially was he was already on the way to starting to lose some of his intense dislike of Shayard’s “nobility” and then that seemingly friendly “noble” turns out to be a traitor and torturer of the absolute worst kind, confirming all my mc’s bad prejudices again.
In very short order my mc currently blames Shayard’s luxury loving, decadent nobility for the deaths of his mother (who apparently died needlessly of a treatable illness) and for killing the guy who was likely his first childhood crush, Dann in addition to the “standard” list of grievances against them that nearly everyone born a helot has. Then that whole thing gets compounded by the only seemingly decent one among them (and the guy who was likely his second crush/love) turning out to be a traitor and torturer of the absolute worst kind, like I said confirming all his negative opinions and feelings about the nobility again.
The latest chapter in that saga is of course Simon, who unfortunately for him arrives when my mc’s feelings about the “nobility” of Shayard are at an absolute low and consequently, as much as he may be attracted to the guy and wants to like him, he only begins to have a sliver of faith in Simon when the guy shows exceptional bravery in the face of certain death.
So I guess I really should congratulate @Havenstone for his superb writing again and for the emotional rollercoaster and the attendant motivations and opportunities for role-play it has provided me thus far. 
Oh and @Razgriz as to how my mc would feel about yours would depend in a large part on if he wants to rebuild the old, feudal Shayard or go for something new and more equal. Of course he’d still consider stopping at just Shayard naive and short-sightted, but true hate would probably only be the case if yours is a noble who simly wants to become the King of Shayard.
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Grumpy Helot GRUMPY. 
he needs good hug…
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Not from you. You’d stab him with a poisoned syringe immediately or use your bard charms to do as you say. I currently have my soldiers on the lookout for both enemy troops and a beautiful noble bard. Both are equally deadly.
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Thats not true he is my friend! You are grumpy too but no hugs for you.
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I’m fine with that. I prefer to be at least arms length from the person who boasts about being the most evil person around. ;).
Btw has anyone thought of what song they’d have for their rebellion/New national anthem once we win? Mine is either a variant of Maryland,My Maryland or a variant of The Irish Volunteer.
Oh! I’ve not seen this before. I miss so much when I’m not checking this thread everyday.
I think given it’s theme of rebuilding and its solar themed refrain, which would be in direct opposition to the Xthonic faith, I my character would prefer a version of the old East German anthem “Auferstanden Aus Ruinen” (risen from (the) ruins) as the anthem for his new, central state.
As for the part of the former Shayard that holds its former capital, Grand Shayard, he might stick it with a version of this in order to denounce the Laconniers (except that he would never let one of the sub-states call itself the “greatest country” in the refrain).
My nan always sings the “Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles, über alles in der Welt!” part of the anthem and I’m like, “nan. we don’t say that anymore”.
I’m of the mind that if they should have kept anything of the old East, it should have been their much nicer anthem (with some slighty updated lyrics of course). Note that Germany almost still would have had this one as a second, or perhaps its primary anthem if mr. Kohl had not been so dead set against it. 
As to the Deutschlandlied you stole that melody from Austria-Hungary, considering it ought to be “Gott Erhalte Franz den Kaiser”.
Then again, perhaps you Germans should seriously considering updating the anthem again to something more modern, reflecting the new Germany in (or perhaps at the heart of) the EU. I’d recommend this one: 
Or if you are determined to stick with your stolen melody, maybe change the lyrics to this. 
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I prefer Deutschland hoch in Ehren, but that’s just coming from a germanophilic Asian immigrant with a Canadian citizenship.
It’s a good song, but in the context of this game-world’s situation something like that would be too conservative and glorifying of the (Shayard’s) past to be suitable for the vision my mc has for the new state. But for a more conservative, nationalist (proto-) democracy, or a somewhat more liberal new kingdom of Shayard it could certainly work.
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I prefer versions without lyrics, but that doesn’t make a good anthem now does it.
Linky:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBWM9D_Q7wE
PS: How do you put a link inside a word just like what you did with “song” in the post above?
You highlight the word and then click the link button in the edit window and finally paste the link you want the highlighted text to link to in the box that pops up.
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Well the himn I choose for Mara is sad and the heroic but I think it could be a song her hero the Joungleaur could have sing to her and Could go well for a rebellion fated to fail heroically. One of my favorite songs . Green leaves of summer Alamo soundtrack and a fitting song.
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So, I have been following this game for several years on and off now. Long ago I even made a COG account just for this thread called Divine_Heretic, but I forgot the login info for it. Anyway I came back to check in a few weeks ago and I must say I am liking the new winter very much.
In light of my fascination with this game I feel obligated to bring up some things that may or may not have been brought up before and that you may or may not know about that have caused me to do better than you may have intended for a player to be able to do. Namely, the player is able to sell all their mules on week 10 with no negative effect. I tend to end the winter with about 50 mules (though a new strategy I have been thinking of adopting may reduce that to 43-44). Still, even 40k silver is a HUGE boost. Even the architelones (probably spelled wrong) mules are sellable.
Something that may make more sense is if mules were only sellable 3-4 per week (in game excuse could be that a merchant mysteriously aquiring any more would attract the attention of alastors or local village telones)
Maybe even make it dependant on merchant rep? (Could say that more merchant contacts means able to spread out the selling to sell more per week without notice)
I will do a playthrough tonight and post results to show the huge amounts of wealth avaliable if you sell all mules on week 10. Again maybe you already know this and are already planning on changing it, but I decided to make this new account to bring it up just in case it escaped your notice.
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So this is what I got. I was able to sell 41 mules on week 10.
Note for playtesting:
You’re an aristo who chose to steal from anyone.
Your morale is 558.
Your notoriety is 151.
Your anarchy is 34.
You have 491 followers, 47822 drachems, and 138 arms.
Your credibility with aristos is 218, helots 160, merchants 235, priests 225, and yeomen 210.
Your followers’ leadership is: Breden 4, Zvad 6, Elery 2, Radmar 8
Popularly seen to be:
Ruthless: 21% Compassionate: 79%
Skeptical: 25% Devout: 75%
Homelander: 60% Cosmopolitan: 40%
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Well either @Lys was right about the use, scarcity and therefore (rarity) value of “working” animals, including the mules, in Shayard, or there is simply something off with the pricing. However @Havenstone continuing on this I do have a question, if animals, mules, horses etc are really so damned valuable and noble status-symbols to boot then why don’t we loot the de Merre’s stables as well? Even if we cannot sell or really use the horses my mc could still “serve” them to his followers as an additional source of food to get through that winter. Besides losing their horses would likely be a huge humiliation to the de Merre when we let them live. 