Choice of Rebels Part 1 WIP thread

@LtRipley

Those numbers may seem a bit high for @Razgriz, but I think it is possible to get a large number of people on your side. Just in a quick playthrough, I was able to get 427 members with 152 arms. While these aren’t as high as Razgriz’s numbers, they are certainly in the ballpark.

There are two things which can help with that. First, either be very loyal to Shayarden, or be cosmopolitan. Either will net you an increase in followers (I admit, I like the cosmopolitan route a little more since I think I will find it interesting to get stuck in Weindrj politics).

Second, be either very devout without raiding religious establishments. Then, get a Diakon to visit…and then be made Eclect. You will then get a religious contingent with armed supporters joining up.

Note that you can get additional people if you are a known skeptic, and get a village of disbelievers to attend you, but that is a little tougher to get.

Other factors will play with the numbers. Some raids will net you money, but can result in loss of personnel. Something I need to double check is if taking out the Alastors will garner you weapons (taking them from the fallen). If you go into battle, like taking on the Architelone, you will lose people as well.

Heh, I admit, I would have liked an option that instead of taking grain from the aristocrats to poisoning their foodstores.

2 Likes

@LtRipley

I’m in even worse shape than you are manpower-wise. My total followers are composed of only 47 bandits. Yes, I am decently equipped with 46 arms but I think I have the lowest manpower count out of anyone here.

@Herrington Actually, I believe @poison_mara has 41 followers (40-50, it’s in that range).

Hmm? That’s more than my entire company. My count is a little over 300 personnel wise. I discounted about a hundred to be civilians incapable of bein used as front line troops but the majority of what could be considered elderly can likely use a bow of some sort. After all elderly for helots can only really be mid to late thirties before they get harrowed. I have roughly 100 stolen weapons for my party with everyone being trained in them.

That number is total members; if I was to figure full warriors, it would probably be half that amount. The arms count is definitely accurate, though. I had Combat 2, Charisma 1.

And to be honest, I figure most of those would be children. Not that there aren’t any elders, but very few helots would make it to that age before being Harrowed.

First, I saved as many people as I could. Event wise in Ch. 2, I took down the Alastors, raided the Caravan (though only took half the goods, but brought Elery along), Raided a noble house, went into smuggling, but did my best not to do any massacre. And as I said, by being cosmopolitan and devout, I gained a large number of warriors at the end.

Full warriors? I’d say I probably have around two hundred then. I was meaning my rebellion as a whole. Though I’m beginning to feel like unless we’re given reinforcements during the attack via the mercenary captain that’ll train your men or other such allies that the battle will be insanely difficult given the forces that’ll be sent at us.

Retreat isn’t an option and we’re heavily outgunned so unless we absolutely butcher their supplies,command structure and kill all of their scouts and mages we’ll likely just get overwhelmed.

nods I would feel confident going up against the Archon’s forces if it was just the Phalangites with the group I mentioned. After all, we would be fighting on our own ground, and we would have traps, etc. prepared beforehand. And a smart commander would definitely do other things like hitting other things. If anything, I would do a combination of bandit/ranger style attacks and withdrawals, and then a stand up fight once the enemy is whittled down.

The Theurges, on the other hand, would be the tipping point. Start one forest fire, and they could have the whole area in a blaze…of course, that is where guerrilla tactics would definitely be useful. If you can find out where the Theurges sleep/eat, then a little judicious throat-cutting/poisoning could even the odds. Even if they healed themselves from poison, that means they would have less phials to call upon.

And another concern is having the noncombatants leave before the battle happened. The Hegemony wouldn’t hesitate to strike at innocents to make a rebellion capitulate.

Which is why I’m thinking we’ll eventually be forced into a final stand at our most well defended stronghold. I mean if we send them away they’re done for and so are we to a degree. But if the civies are forced into the final battle they may make the soldiers fight a bit harder. After all could you live with yourself if you let one of those soldiers get past you towards the children?

And while I’d love to think we could just start executing the theurges like common assassins I feel that they’ll be too heavily guarded to slip in and out unnoticed.

My MC went Int 2, Cha 1 and practices theurgy.
Unfortunately that’s not enough charisma to go the full skeptic way. But when I pretended to go along with Linos’ plans to declare us Eclect I don’t remember getting armed supporters…might have to check back on that.
And I should try to see if it’s possible to raid the Alastor garrisson successfully.

Out of curiosity how high is your anarchy level?

The English language has no central authority – nor even a body that pretends to be the central authority, as in France. Language change happens in exactly the messy way we’re seeing here.

They may make some mistakes, but I don’t intend to write them as incompetent. You’re not going to be that lucky.

That said, they may underestimate you and rely too heavily on their Theurges and Plektoi, especially if you’re not a Goete yourself.

I saw it as my main chance in this game to change Kalt/a from the one-note fanatic I’d written so far to someone who could actually muster some sympathy. Glad it worked (for you at least) and thanks for letting me know. :slight_smile:

Even if Calea fancied her peers, she wouldn’t be interested in her poor and pathetic cousin; you may now be somewhat less pitiable than you were growing up, but the nineteen formative years have left their mark.

As for her preference for helots: you live in a culture where noble-helot relationships are condemned in the strongest terms as contaminating and immoral. But some people are turned on by transgressing their culture’s rules of propriety. Also, some people are only attracted to people who are much less or much more powerful than they are. If none of that makes sense to you, fair enough; it probably means you’ll have much healthier relationships than Calea ever will.

And stay friendly, folks.

They pop up next game, along with some of their lore. And needless to say they’d be even more miffed at the “sub” than they are at the “ab”.

The updates have been coming about once a year, so there’s been no real point to cluttering up the title. But since you ask, next time I post an update, I’ll change the title.

Definitely not why I wrote that section. Not at all. :wink:

Writing that now. :slight_smile:

6 Likes

Worked for me too! :slight_smile: I’m looking forward to their development in the future, too.

vibrates excitedly

http://s28.postimg.org/xhsgqr0i5/20160324_085917.jpg

3 Likes

True, but you can at least turn Linos down and not get involved at all in religion, at this point other than raiding a few temples.
My MC’s plan is to let as many competing religions as he can find in and gradually tighten the thumbscrews on the Karagond (but really the complete) Xthonic religion in tandem with the other religions, including skepticism, hopefully becoming more established.
Eventually he’d want to move to official state skepticism post-rebellion with religious freedom, much like in modern China, nominally allowed but only for religions sanctioned by the state (needless to say that the Karagond version of the Xthonic religion will be completely outlawed and the Shayardene version subject to severe restrictions and forced to renounce the caste-system).

For the high Int player it really all comes down to the institutional structures and propaganda we manage to create in the end as opposed to personal charisma and cult of personality. Which should become more doable once we get access to things like printing presses once we’re out of our backwards native part of Shayard.

1 Like

I like how you think, ideally my MC will probably strive towards that goal too.
Also yay for propaganda!
Actually do we know if printing presses exist in-game? We know there are books but not how widespread they are.

Printing presses were discussed at least to some degree back here . . .

2014, wow. Thanks for the info, very interesting!

Mass printed propaganda flyers we will have then!

“Humans cannot see that blood and idols beget each other.” - Angelus, Drakengard

600 to a thousand men plus plektoi, plus theurges, plus only slightly overconfident generals.

Well guess you might as well kick the chair out from under us at this point, the noose is already in place.R.I.p. rebellion.

What you see as a death sentence, I see as a challenge.

Mmmmmm I’m so pumped for this!!

I just can’t possibly imagine a scenario where we win against a horde like that.
They’re better armed,better trained, better supported, better lead, better in almost everything in comparison to our force. Even with the advantages we might have I just don’t see a way we can beat them. I feel like we won’t and it’ll have us abandon the civilians to their deaths.

But they haven’t the same passion.

3 Likes