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[Vgray]

You struggled to articulate the reasons. "My mother told me…she used to say that we had failed our helots. That we were called to keep everyone on our lands safe and fed, especially the ones we rely on for our own food and shelter. That protecting the defenseless was what it meant to be noble."

Breden looked away with a pained expression. "I'm sure your mother was a good soul, kurios. But in my experience, even the good-souled aristocrats 'protect' their helots in much the same way they protect their pigs…."

"Yes! And that's what I hate," you cut in furiously. "The way my father and other nobles treat you as no better than talking animals. As if you're not due the same compassion we'd extend to any other person—just cattle to be bred and sold and worked until the slaughter. How can they not see that Harrowing is a monstrosity?…"

1) "There must be some way to keep the Wards up and Xaos at bay without murdering thousands of people."

2) "Even if there's no other way to fend off Xaos, I don't care—it's too high a price."



((For the record, by free folk, it does also mean merchants and yeoman farmers. But our character is noble after all.))

[A Thing]

1

[NRDL]

1

[Vgray]

All right—I believe you, kurios." Breden nodded slowly. "Well and good. What else?"

You plunged straight on to another thing you find nearly as appalling:

The subjugation of Shayard, my homeland, and its forced assimilation into a foreign empire.


"A Shayardman proud and true?" Breden quoted a much-beloved folk song.

"Can you bear the arrogant Karagonds imposing their alien language, faith, and law on our people?" You couldn't keep the heat out of your voice. "Three hundred years hasn't healed the wound, or made it any more tolerable to be ruled by foreigners. Shayard for the Shayardenes!"

A slow smile spread across Breden's face. "So how is it, then—breaking the silence? Sharing the rage?"

"Truly?" You could barely begin to decipher all the shivers going through you. "I'm terrified. I don't know why I just said all these things to you. You've got the power to get me killed now, and you're…you're a helot." You gave a helpless laugh, tears pricking at the edges of your eyes. "And I feel alive, like I don't remember ever feeling before. I'm afire. There's so much more to say, and I don't know how to say it."

She held out a cautious hand, looking around. "If you'll keep trying to say it, kurios…and perhaps listen to more talk from me as well…I'll put myself humbly at your service. But no more talking here in the road, where just anyone can see." She dropped her voice. "Since kurios Mikal lost the hands to keep the dikes in repair, the whole de Rose North Edge has sunk into marsh. No one passes that way. Meet me in the stand of alder between the river pond and the outbuildings—a week from today, at the ninth hour."

"I will," you promised. "Farewell then, for now…."

"Go well, kurios." Breden watched you unreadably from her roadside post as you reclaimed your borrowed horse. Just before you rode off, she abruptly said,

"We don't say farewell to each other in the camps, kurios Hugh. Just 'scapewell.' Escape the Harrower till I see you again."

You Are Jolted Out of Your Reverie


…both because Ecclesiast Zebed is reading piercingly from the Codex of Liturgy, and because you have at last spotted Breden, halfway between you and the Harrowing platform.

Breden's face is half-turned toward you, enough that you can glimpse a worried tautness to her lips. She also seems to be searching for someone else in the throng of helots. You watch her for a few moments, but she doesn't notice you—and eventually the priestly recitation reaches a volume and intensity where you can no longer ignore it.

In the eight years since he displaced Ecclesiast Olynna, Zebed has proven himself zealous in rooting out sacrilege and lawbreaking in his parish. You've seen him regularly at the weddings, namings, heritances, and other ceremonies for the nobles and tradesfolk of Rim Square (or "Acron," as he, the Karagonds, and a few assimilated nobles call it). It's given you a great deal of practice in masking your intense dislike. Today his eyes shine as he concludes his reading from the Codex:

For it is the end of all things to praise with the Angels of Xthonos and magnify the glorious Thaumatarch whom They have chosen.
The noble magnify Him by their lands and by their wealth.
The wise magnify Him by their wards and by their wonders.
The helots magnify Him by their toil and by their blood.
Thus shall His dominion grow from glory unto glory, that Xaos may be unmade and all the world rejoice as one Hegemony.

"Blessed Angels forfend," you whisper at the contemptible little man, too quietly for even your father to hear. Then you catch Breden's eye at last. She doesn't even smile a greeting, just desperately mouths a name at you: Radmar?

You Remember


"Trust you?" Radmar snarled. With one bound he crossed the small room and loomed over Breden, fists trembling in her face. "Trust you? Are you kin to me, to ask such trust? Or just mad?"

The atmosphere inside the decayed shack was even more stifling and muggy than the summer-baked marsh outside. Yet Breden sounded coolly unfazed. "You've trusted me so far, Rad. What on earth do you gain by stopping now?"

You were frozen just inside the doorway, no less astonished than the ten guilty-looking helots gazing up at you. The six times you'd come here before, it had been with Breden, and of course no one else had been anywhere nearby. Today, for the first time, you'd ridden out alone to the swampy fringes of the de Rose estate, not really expecting to find her there.

Radmar's flared nostrils were the size of silver drachems. "You just told a…you just up and claimed to a Housed aristo of the Realm—begging your grace, kurios—that we were all talking the…the death of the Thaumatarch."

It had been an outrageous greeting, even by Breden's standards. She was still wearing her mischievous, by-now-familiar grin. "I just reckoned kurios Hugh would enjoy the talk. Even add to it! After all, we were only asking what might become of us when today's Thaumatarch shuffles off to join his two predecessors at the Angels' side. He's more likely to want to plan out how we'll sneak into the Floating Palace and send him there." Half the helots in the room sucked breath; you don't think the others were breathing at all. Breden's eyes shone merrily as she beckoned to you through the door. "Won't you join us, milord?"

You swallowed your shock and replied:

1) "I'm sorry…I didn't mean to bother you." Head spinning, I turned and left.

2) "Join you? Xthonos, Breden. Never speak to me again."

3) "Nothing like a little sedition on a summer evening, I always say." Quelling my anxiety, I stepped into the sweltering little hut.

Spoiler: Current Stats (click to show/hide)

You are Hugh de Huguenot, aristocrat of the Shayard Rim.

Traits
Charisma: Not yet defined.
Combat: Not yet defined.
Intellect: Not yet defined.

  Ruthless: 30% Compassionate: 70%   
  Skeptical: 50% Devout: 50%   
  Homelander: 69% Cosmopolitan: 31%   

Anarchy: 0

[A Thing]

3

[NRDL]

3

[Paxiecrunchle]

1, I mean do we really know we can trust them yet?

[Dorsidwarf]

This thread confuses me. This is some kind of video game we're getting a transcript of?

[MCreeper]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

http://store.steampowered.com/app/748890/Choice_of_Rebels_Uprising/

Text game, actually. Absolutely awesome, try it. 

[Vgray]

Breden's friends gaped silently at you as you doffed your riding cap and hung it on a splintered bit of doorframe. "As that insufferable troubler of the peace said…I'm Hugh de Huguenot. And yes, she's already heard me talk freely enough. So let's not stop talking now."

"Shall we talk about Kryptasts, kurios?" a fierce-eyed young woman asked. Radmar made an approving sound, halfway between a grunt and a chuckle.

Somehow you didn't think they were asking you to share about nobles' fear of the Hegemony's assassin-spies. "I'm not one. I'm afraid Breden's left us with little choice but to trust each other on this. And if Breden were one, I'd have been dead months ago."

The helot girl sounded unconvinced. "They play a long game. Everyone knows that. Draw as many fish as possible into the net before hoisting it."

"You really think that's what the Kryptasts are for, Elery?" Breden cut in, eyes ablaze. "Look what the Thaumatarchy's done to us. They make a few people disappear, let it be known it was done by a Kryptast—and suddenly we're all watching everything we say and do around everyone, because anyone could be one of them. But they're not everywhere. Here in the back end of Shayard, in a meeting that doesn't even include any of the aristarchs' helots…you really think we'll be unlucky enough to draw a Kryptast?" She let the silence stand for several moments, then grinned. "I'll bet my life we won't."

As Elery shrugged grudgingly, another, much younger girl—perhaps ten years old?—piped up from her perch on a rafter. "I'll take that bet, Breden—and bet you my life that we could invite some of my friends from the Keriatou estate to these talks without trouble."

"Thanks, Pin. All things in good time." Breden turned to you with a slightly exaggerated bow. "In deference to your noble blood, kurios—would you tell us what to talk about next?"

It took a few meetings before the helots trusted you enough to truly open up around you—before they began asking the extraordinarily uncomfortable questions like, "Nobles have a right of self-preservation and we have a duty of self-sacrifice—does it ever work the other way around?" and "Should we be inviting some of the de Huguenot helots to join us?" On the latter point, you quickly convinced them that it would be too risky, and then spent the next few days wondering uneasily about your motives.

As the helots' caution faded, they began sharing every story of revolt against the Thaumatarch that any of them knew. The one you'd previously heard least about was:

1) The yeoman rising of Ester Cabel.

2) Sarcifer, the renegade archmage.

3) The Laconniers, keepers of the Sovereign Bloodline.

[MCreeper]

3

[A Thing]

3
We must do as the CK2 adventurer, and come out of nowhere with a claim from 300 years ago and a massive army.

[Paxiecrunchle]

2 sounds very interesting.

[Digital Hellhound]

3, sovereignity sounds like what we’re all about.

[NRDL]

3