I’ll see what i can do to describe the blessings better. thanks for the feedback.
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I do find it curious how the abominable practice of slavery has not only survived openly in this world but, if anything, seems to be on the rise.
Which makes me wonder how it has gotten as modern as it is with open, chattel slavery still being a thing as historically the institution of slavery has been a barrier, not a driver of social and technological progress. Case in point being that the Ancient Greeks had working knowledge of steam engines and possibly electricity and the atom too, but slavery rendered acting on this knowledge decidedly unprofitable.
I don’t know if I wouldn’t call them “blessings” exactly, as again, if they are so virtuous and if they did consider our slavering bastard of a father and our equally bad brother good enough rulership material, but not our uncle. Who really cannot be any worse than our father and brother from where my mc is currently standing, being a slave and all. In fact his first reaction would probably to cheer on his “uncle”.
I must also question that even if our father’s writing is apparently on the wall why these gods do not lend their powers (and extract their price) from our “brother” instead, after all he’s the valiant “true” prince, whereas we are just an insignificant nobody.
The mc is not trained or educated to anywhere near the standards of a modern “Emperor”, more importantly with this world having cell phones and something akin to the internet censorship is practically impossible, so that every indignity we suffer while a slave is likely recorded somewhere and will be played back endlessly should we succeed in becoming “Emperor”, meaning we can forget about ever building any respect or credibility.
My only conclusion then is that these “Gods” want an easily pliable and widely disrespected nobody at the head of the state for their own nefarious purposes that I doubt in any way include abolishing slavery. Maybe we are to usher in some form of repressive theocracy akin to modern Iran, in which case they chose the wrong person with my mc being gay and not very “moral”.
The introduction into this world is still incomplete at this point.
“Blessing” is what it is called by the gods themselves and at this point, again too little is known to make much more of them.
As to, how did they advance - I’m not sure but there are magical and interventions from the gods to consider … the gods are weak and require cooperation to accomplish miracle blessings at this point in time but in earlier times, who is to say that advances were not gifts from the gods? Just as ancient Greek advances were attributed to the pantheon of gods; who is to say the cell-phone was not a gift from this world’s equivalent Mercury?
@shilo_pace is creating a mixed world and I’m willing to go with it for the most part as written - the blessings are the first choice of consequence though and that is why I want more there. My MC would know all the nuances of each of the three gods just as an anceint Greek would know all of Apollo’s aspects and his usual behavior … so if Apollo offers to give an anceint Greek the gift of music, healing and such, she’d also know about his jealousy and irrational rage at times…
in this story, the MC should know more what the dragon-war-god gifts or the earth-mother-healer… I hope I’m clearer here?
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True, i was just wondering is all.
Yes, I think this “magic” will come at a cost to our mc though, magic almost always does and it will be very much the question if my putative mc here will consider the “reward” worth the price that magic demands, particularly because, unlike in XoR, I do not view this mc as someone with a wider goal and broader ideology beyond "abolish slavery yesterday!"
Particularly if paparazzi and the internet equivalent make it either impossible for us to ever gain any respect or if we are just meant to be a mere figurehead for the slavocrats. In any case so long as they agree to abolish slavery I think this mc would be content, even determined, just to dump all the problems of actually running what is likely to be a war torn and greatly weakened “Empire” by then on the petite-bourgeoisie and let them sort out the mess, so long as they let him have his freedom and leave him out of it.
True, or perhaps we were not really educated on the old gods, society seems to have gotten much less religious after all and our mc being a servant and then a slave probably hasn’t had much of an education at all, which again makes our mc governing anything effectively by himself, particularly in the complex, modern times without such over-reliance on their “advisers” so as to, for all practical purposes, turn them into a mere figurehead practically impossible. Which is again why I think those gods may prefer us to our “brother” as we would be in way over our heads, should we succeed.
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A lot of good points, and it is true that magic has a price as do the gods. I will be expanding on their introduction but not to much as they have things they don’t want you to know. though the MC has the possibility of never being a slave as they could have escaped at the start or if a girl been taken back by your father.
as for your brother the “true” prince, he was born when you were ten making him eight years old by the time your uncle takes over hardly king age and i doubt the new king is going to keep a possible usurper around.
Last note from me is that slavery is stil around as a way of keeping the poor and undesirables down by the upperclass. in kingdoms other then this one are places without slavery and they trade with this kingdom so technology reaches there just fine.
And then daddy sells me off to some…man 
Thankfully he doesn’t want to marry me either, too bad he doesn’t have a nice sister for me to marry instead 
There is a girl romance in that route though, in fact thats the route im writing right now the first part of it will be in the next update.
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Yay!! 
Too bad the King couldn’t have talked to me out all that before selling me off like that 
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Considering that my mc then is apparently one of those undesirables that doesn’t make him favourably inclined towards those upper classes here, certainly not favourable enough to be willing to be their slave again in order to serve as the slavocrats figurehead, puppet “ruler”.
Besides now that we know that not the entire world is this bad, my mc might possibly demand new identity papers, a fully fueled jet and a bit of cash from the petite-bourgeoisie before he leaves, since leaving and having a comfortable life elsewhere are now suddenly valid options.
Like I said my slave mc likely isn’t educated enough (and he certainly wouldn’t be willing to bust his ass in order to gain that education “on the job” as an adult, where we won’t even receive a degree for it) to run a country (and in this one he would positively loathe all of his possible “advisers”), plus with something akin to the internet in place it doesn’t seem like a former slave would ever be able to gain a modicum of respect, which likely means being a widely disrespected figurehead being run by a “wife” he wouldn’t want and his “advisers” while everyone would be biding their time until one of our brats reaches the age of majority and then they will likely force an abdication anyway.
Well as a guy he doesn’t even deign to talk to the mc at all, which doesn’t make my mc at all willing to assume the family name, marry a proper “wife” and become a widely disrespected figurehead.
The question is will my mc be willing to pay it? He certainly doesn’t want to institute a theocracy where the country becomes even more backwards and it’s flat-out illegal to be gay. 
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It’s not illegal to be gay. Its not proper for royalty but gay marriage is legal in this world. and i don’t force straight relation ships on any MC. Do i give the impression that being gay is illegal?
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No, but I was just wondering what the potential price of those Gods would be and a theocracy would merely be one possibility and most theocracies have not been known to have liberal social views, particularly when it comes to the issue of marriage.
And we are very much not “proper” royalty, considering how legally we’d very much be the usurpers of our “proper”, royal “uncle” should we succeed.
Then this is the crux of the problem for my mc, while a “proper” prince who has a spare who can get children might be able to get away with it a bastard with no other relatives would likely not and would be under tremendous pressure to marry a proper, noble princess (read stuck up bitch who will never respect us and expects us to be her cuckold to my mc), which is one more reason for my mc to not want the job.
For example over here we have a monarchy and gay marriage is legal, this should technically allow our (future) monarch to gay marry, but it’s not that simple. The heir to the throne needs to get permission to do so three times (in practice, two times de-jure). First the reigning monarch has to approve of the prospective bride or groom, just like with a straight marriage, if they don’t then there is either no marriage for them until they become the head of the family themselves, or no succession. Secondly they need the de-facto permission of the PM as he/she has to put it on the agenda for a vote in both houses of parliament. Should the populists or the conservative or Christian reactionaries happen to ever hold it when a possible royal gay marriage comes up, they can just delay doing so indefinitely, for as long as they remain in office.
Lastly there is the formal vote. There is an unofficial understanding that this is done quietly nowadays (and really has been ever since the monarchy became constitutional in 1848) but that unwritten rule or understanding might very well not hold with a potential gay marriage, again likely depending on the strength of the conservatives, populists and reactionaries in parliament at that time. In which case we might get televised votes, inquests and hearings in which the poor guy or gal is publicly dissected, much like USA (Supreme Court) confirmation hearings. All potentially very embarrassing and stressful with a decidedly uncertain outcome.
Depending on how much power our fictional mc has here, none of this might apply to them, or all of it might, should we need to make so many concessions that we effectively become ceremonial/constitutional monarchs, which is a position my mc definitely would not want to fill.
Compared to that, plastic surgery, a new identity and a new life in a better country that doesn’t still practice slavery would probably sound like heaven to my mc.
Well i do have plans for some hardships for a gay mc at time of king/queen ship. but a happy ending is possible regardless. As for the gods and their prices.
EDIT: i know how to do spoilers now.
Each god has an agenda that you being in power could help them achieve, for all your help they will expect you to do this task for them and if/when you refuse they may just force it on you if they can or they may punish you and take away all your blessings. But choosing no god has its punishments as well. with out the blessings its harder to succeed. but you owe no one anything.
As for an ending where you leave the country I can do that.
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Yay! I get to be Queen AND happy? 
You can do spoilers by either clicking on the gear by the emojis or [spoiler] tag
This is politics, you’ll always owe somebody something. Of course my mc’s preferred exchange here would be handing the country over to the petite-bourgeoisie in exchange for plastic surgery, a new identity, a fair amount of cash and a fully fueled private jet to take him wherever he wants to go.
If not that then we will always owe our political “allies”, possibly including shady megacorps, foreign governments/nations and NGO’s something and that might turn out just as badly as owing those “gods”. 
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Updated.
contains a the first part of the arranged marriage path to get on that path you need to:
Be a girl
convince your father to buy you from the slavers.
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wow… i guess i’ll try it later (not really confident playing as a girl 
)
Yay! Got something to do at work tonight
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It seems that once you try going past choosing a god scene for the arranged marriage path you get an error message no matter what.
when you choose Sospes you get:
Doctus gets this:
Malum gets this:
and choosing None gets this:
I was playing as an half elf princess, for reference. I solved the guard’s puzzle for him and convinced the king I was worth it.
Hmm randomtest and quick test don’t produce these errors and doing the convert tab to space doesn’t fix it. Yet i played it my self and sure enough it gives an error. but if i test the index file on my computer it works just fine.
@dashingdon Do you know what i’m doing wrong?
Hmm not sure. I’m looking into it now. Maybe something with the encoding. UTF-8 vs ANSI
EDIT: Took a look and there were tabs on all indents after line 1658 but spaces were used on all lines before that line. Text editor maybe got mixed up or something?
Anyway ran a quick Tab to Spaces in Notepad++ and it appears all good now. 
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