How are the factions?

[Cataphractarii]

Are there clearly good and bad factions or is it more nuanced?

[amleth]

Depends on your values.

 

Huana - Traditionalist, rigid, naturalistic, best de jure claim to the deadfire

Royal Deadfire company - imperialistic, nationalistic, progressive, intrusive

Valian - Mercantile, less aggressively colonial than the royal deadfire company, slower and longer term plan, seems to suffer alot of in-fighitng and individual incompetence

Principi -PIRATES!

 

Obviously PIRATES! are the best.

[Voss]

It seems pretty bad so far, though I haven't dealt much with the amauna factions (though first impression of the RDC was negative - the argument outside Arklemyrs mansion)

 

Valians are grinding up souls for money and the principi are murderers cleaning house on racial\cultural lines. (Though your contact somewhat pretends that isn't what he's doing)

[Crucis]

Doesn't exactly sound like any of these factions are "good", with the possible exception of the Huana.  They all sound like they have the negative points.

[rheingold]

Huana definitely not good, they have an appalling caste system. In many ways I think they are the worst of the factions.

[Purudaya]

Huana definitely not good, they have an appalling caste system. In many ways I think they are the worst of the factions.

The one saving grace is that the members of their lowest caste are guaranteed to be reborn into a higher caste in the next life. If you think about it long-term (in which souls are cycling from caste to caste and every soul gets to inhabit all statuses multiple times), it actually makes a weird kind of sense. Every culture in POE has its downtrodden, but only the Huana guarantee that theirs is reborn into a better station.

 

How (or if) they're able to actually manipulate the wheel in that way, I have no idea.

[rheingold]

 

Huana definitely not good, they have an appalling caste system. In many ways I think they are the worst of the factions.

The one saving grace is that the members of their lowest caste are guaranteed to be reborn into a higher caste in the next life. If you think about it long-term (in which souls are cycling from caste to caste and every soul gets to inhabit all statuses multiple times), it actually makes a weird kind of sense. Every culture in POE has its downtrodden, but only the Huana guarantee that theirs is reborn into a better station.

 

How (or if) they're able to actually manipulate the wheel in that way, I have no idea.

 

If that's the case, yeah I havn't got far enough to figure out if they actually hire watchers to prove the theory! Still it means unnecessary misery and punishment for just being born...

[Hazmy]

From playing, so far my biggest struggle is choosing who to ally. I have pros and cons for all the factions but in the end all of they seem like slimy lying bastards....at least the Princípi is straight-forward about not being good guys.

All the rest are pretentious lying douchebags.

The BIGGEST struggle by the end is also, that your companions lean towards one another and, whatever faction you choose, one of your beloved companions wll hate you for it.
 

[Crucis]

From playing, so far my biggest struggle is choosing who to ally. I have pros and cons for all the factions but in the end all of they seem like slimy lying bastards....at least the Princípi is straight-forward about not being good guys.

 

All the rest are pretentious lying douchebags.

 

The BIGGEST struggle by the end is also, that your companions lean towards one another and, whatever faction you choose, one of your beloved companions wll hate you for it.

 

 

I guess that the point is supposed to be that there are no "good guys", no "white hats" in the Deadfire.  And maybe the writers felt that they wanted to go this way to be different.  Call me "old school", but I guess that I just like having at least one obvious group of good guys around to align with and not feeling like I'm stuck trying to figure out which faction are the least worst, the least evil.

 

 

From a role playing PoV, if what Voss says is true, i.e. that the Valians are indeed grinding up luminous adra and thus the souls within for profit, I'd think that the Watcher (not to mention Xoti) would see that as rather disgusting, though perhaps it depends on what one thinks is happening to those souls after they've been ground up.  Or maybe how the Gods view such an activity.  I could see Xoti being a person who would hate you if you aligned with a faction that did this.

 

I've already reached the point where Aloth has made it rather clear that he's very anti-traditionalist.

 

I don't know where the other companions stand on the other factions, though I suppose that the blue orlan would favor the principi, and might hate being aligned with a faction that was against the principi.

[omgFIREBALLS]

 

Huana definitely not good, they have an appalling caste system. In many ways I think they are the worst of the factions.

The one saving grace is that the members of their lowest caste are guaranteed to be reborn into a higher caste in the next life. If you think about it long-term (in which souls are cycling from caste to caste and every soul gets to inhabit all statuses multiple times), it actually makes a weird kind of sense. Every culture in POE has its downtrodden, but only the Huana guarantee that theirs is reborn into a better station.

 

How (or if) they're able to actually manipulate the wheel in that way, I have no idea.

Yeah uh, I don't think it matters if it's true or not. The Rotaru are ****ed by the system and are rather powerless to change it, and those that aren't ****ed have no reason to change it. Excepting ethical ones of course, but I'm not sure that's enough for a revolution. Does it make a weird kind of sense? It's not weird at all. Controls the poor and numbs the consciences of the rich, whether it's true or not.

 

The Huana are probably the most "good guys" faction but it seems they've done some bad things to keep up with the other factions. They were nice. Couldn't win playing nice. Now they play dirty too. Although the caste system seems far older than this conflict.

[Voss]

Huana definitely not good, they have an appalling caste system. In many ways I think they are the worst of the factions.

Yeah, my sympathy for the Huana vanished the moment I wandered into the Gullet. Even if they do get magic reincarnation bonuses, its still extraordinarily fethed up behavior. Especially given the calculated opulence in the more upwards neighborhoods. (and the caricatured speech pattern is annoying anyway)

 

After talking with people who live under the Raurati, the RDC seems the best option. They want land for food and most of these islands are empty. They also seem to do well on the knowledge vs ignorance score. A bit harsh, but I can live with that.

 

The big downside is half the companions are faction aligned, and I can see which way the wind is blowing.

Edited May 11, 2018 by Voss

[Aramintai]

Just so you know, there is a point of no return with factions. After you swear your allegiance to one of them and do their final quest it all ends badly with the other factions who will turn hostile on you. Also, companions aligned to factions will leave you if you didn't choose their faction. It's all serious stuff.

[Aramintai]

Also, there is an option to complete the game without allying with any faction. For that you need to seriously upgrade your ship. The ending slides are quite chaotic though.

Edited May 11, 2018 by Aramintai

[InsaneCommander]

Just so you know, there is a point of no return with factions. After you swear your allegiance to one of them and do their final quest it all ends badly with the other factions who will turn hostile on you. Also, companions aligned to factions will leave you if you didn't choose their faction. It's all serious stuff.

 

This seems like good information to add to the romance thread. Is this correct?

 

Favored Factions by companions:

 

- Principi: Serafen

- Huana: Tekehu

- Vailian: Five Suns Pallegina

- Royal Deadfire: Maia

 

Do Eder, Xoti and Aloth care about these factions? What about Kind Wayfarer Pallegina?

 

And does this mean that if I choose a faction, let's say the Principi, I can't have both Serafen and Tekehu in my party anymore?

[Clerith]

 Also, companions aligned to factions will leave you if you didn't choose their faction. It's all serious stuff.

Earlier, it was said that one companion would leave you after you no return choose a faction.  You're saying that three will leave you. Which is the truth, I wonder. And is it tied to their personal approval?

[Gromnir]

 

Huana definitely not good, they have an appalling caste system. In many ways I think they are the worst of the factions.

The one saving grace is that the members of their lowest caste are guaranteed to be reborn into a higher caste in the next life. If you think about it long-term (in which souls are cycling from caste to caste and every soul gets to inhabit all statuses multiple times), it actually makes a weird kind of sense. Every culture in POE has its downtrodden, but only the Huana guarantee that theirs is reborn into a better station.

 

How (or if) they're able to actually manipulate the wheel in that way, I have no idea.

 

sounds like traditional "opiate of the masses" sales pitch for oppressive cultures and/or regimes to be using organized religions to maintain order.  promise o' reward in the next life helps keep the populace placid.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Aramintai]

 

 Also, companions aligned to factions will leave you if you didn't choose their faction. It's all serious stuff.

Earlier, it was said that one companion would leave you after you no return choose a faction.  You're saying that three will leave you. Which is the truth, I wonder. And is it tied to their personal approval?

 

Well, for example, I chose the Vailian Republics and after I talked with Tekehu and Maia about this they both left me. I had rep of 2 with them and did their quests.

When I chose the Huana nobody left, but Maia wasn't pleased at all.

When I chose Rauatai only Tekehu left, but there was no Pallegina's ending slide (bug).

When I chose Principi Maia left. Pallegina gets killed in the ending slide

When I chose not to ally with anybody, nobody left as well, was all neutral.

 

 

Btw, ending slides may be buggy, seems like it doesn't matter whether they leave you or not, you still get their ending slides. 

 

Also it's more fitting for the romances thread, but another point for slides bugginess is that I got two slides about Tekehu and Xoti where it is basically stated that I dumped them and they didn't take it well  I mean, really? All I did was decline their offer to get into my pants and they treated it as if I was their ex-lover or something?

Edited May 11, 2018 by Aramintai

[Aramintai]

Btw, if anybody wondered where to find promised hidden ships:

-one is a submarine given by the Rauatai faction at the end of the game

-another is a creepy ghost ship you get by allying with the Principi.

Edited May 11, 2018 by Aramintai

[Ryz009]

Also, there is an option to complete the game without allying with any faction. For that you need to seriously upgrade your ship. The ending slides are quite chaotic though.

 

I loved it.

 

The perfect "you lot sort this **** out yourselves i'm leaving." ending.

[Fiaryn]

The factions are quite well done in this game. None of them are perfect or even close to it, none of them possess anachronistic secular humanist 21st century values or beliefs to make the player feel better, they are very much behaving like the early modern era proto-nation states that they (mostly) are. None of them correlate 1:1 to any specific real world culture, but they all clearly show evidence that the writers have done some historical research and know how human beings of the period behaved.

 

The Huana are the natives, it's their home, but their caste system is legitimately monstrous and we have no evidence whatsoever that their beliefs about the Roparu being reborn as higher caste people is anything more than a post-facto rationalization. Especially given that studying the soul was, up until VERY recently, taboo. Nehetaka in many ways reminds me of some kind of polynesian Tenochtitlan, a central city-state to which the rest of the region owes (grudging, as the Storm Speaker in the opening shows) quasi-fealty.

 

Rauatai is technologically and scientifically progressive, but they're also explicitly an imperialist ethnostate run by a political faction that ardently believes in Aumaua (specifically Rauataian Aumaua) racial supremacy. They remind me a great deal of early imperialist Japan.

 

The Vailian Republics lack a race theory ideology, and are way more hands off than Rauatai but the flip side to that is that they do practice slavery. They don't seem to be practicing industrialized chattel slavery, yet, but if they go down that road that kind of thing tends to produce racist ideologies as a matter of necessity so that anyone involved can sleep at night. There's real reason to fear for the future of the Republics.

 

None of these are good people by any modern standard. They're all acting in what they perceive to be the material interests of their respective nation, nothing more nothing less. It feels real and human.

[Purudaya]

 

 

Huana definitely not good, they have an appalling caste system. In many ways I think they are the worst of the factions.

The one saving grace is that the members of their lowest caste are guaranteed to be reborn into a higher caste in the next life. If you think about it long-term (in which souls are cycling from caste to caste and every soul gets to inhabit all statuses multiple times), it actually makes a weird kind of sense. Every culture in POE has its downtrodden, but only the Huana guarantee that theirs is reborn into a better station.

 

How (or if) they're able to actually manipulate the wheel in that way, I have no idea.

 

sounds like traditional "opiate of the masses" sales pitch for oppressive cultures and/or regimes to be using organized religions to maintain order.  promise o' reward in the next life helps keep the populace placid.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

Except in POE reincarnation is a confirmed reality as opposed to a dogmatic belief. We can also probably assume that in a world with watchers/animancers/awakened, the Huana reincarnation mechanic of rotating castes has probably been confirmed to some degree. 

 

I think a lot of people are looking at it the way we look at caste systems irl, which are entirely socially constructed. In POE it's part social engineering, part metaphysics. 

 

I'm not *for* the Huana caste system or anything, I'm just saying it's more nuanced than at first glance. 

[Aramintai]

Personally, I like the Vailian Republics more than the others. That's not to say they are better than the other factions in any way, but I like what they represent in general - progress, commerce, inventions, non-militarism and flexibility. If anyone will be able to get kith out of the mess Eothas did in the ending it's most likely them.

 

Huana are too traditional and stuck in their ways. I've read enough about Indian culture to really dislike caste system. One trip to the Gullet showed quite enough.

 

Rauatai felt like a militaristic Japanese from the past century, visually too come to think of it. They're stoic, pragmatic and crafty, but seem kinda lacking sympathy for other nations or cultures. They felt like a machine that grinds and assimilates the lands of other cultures whether they like it or not.

 

Principi are just pirates. Never liked pirates, but I'm sure there are lots of people that do.

Edited May 11, 2018 by Aramintai

[Fiaryn]

 

 

 

Huana definitely not good, they have an appalling caste system. In many ways I think they are the worst of the factions.

The one saving grace is that the members of their lowest caste are guaranteed to be reborn into a higher caste in the next life. If you think about it long-term (in which souls are cycling from caste to caste and every soul gets to inhabit all statuses multiple times), it actually makes a weird kind of sense. Every culture in POE has its downtrodden, but only the Huana guarantee that theirs is reborn into a better station.

 

How (or if) they're able to actually manipulate the wheel in that way, I have no idea.

 

sounds like traditional "opiate of the masses" sales pitch for oppressive cultures and/or regimes to be using organized religions to maintain order.  promise o' reward in the next life helps keep the populace placid.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

Except in POE reincarnation is a confirmed reality as opposed to a dogmatic belief. We can also probably assume that in a world with watchers/animancers/awakened, the Huana reincarnation mechanic of rotating castes has probably been confirmed to some degree. 

 

I think a lot of people are looking at it the way we look at caste systems irl, which are entirely socially constructed. In POE it's part social engineering, part metaphysics. 

 

I'm not *for* the Huana caste system or anything, I'm just saying it's more nuanced than at first glance. 

 

 

No, we cannot safely assume that. Animancy being openly endorsed is a very new thing, and studying souls is still not well tolerated in most cultures.

 

We already had one example of a culture with beliefs regarding reincarnation that turned out to be ENTIRELY wrong (the Pale Elves in Rymrgand's Temple in PoE1), why would this be any different? Animancy and the mechanics of the soul is mostly used in these games as a metaphor for medical discoveries in the Renaissance/Early Modern period and the demystification of the human body, the Huana are quite likely entirely wrong in their beliefs.

Edited May 11, 2018 by Fiaryn

[Gromnir]

 

 

 

Huana definitely not good, they have an appalling caste system. In many ways I think they are the worst of the factions.

The one saving grace is that the members of their lowest caste are guaranteed to be reborn into a higher caste in the next life. If you think about it long-term (in which souls are cycling from caste to caste and every soul gets to inhabit all statuses multiple times), it actually makes a weird kind of sense. Every culture in POE has its downtrodden, but only the Huana guarantee that theirs is reborn into a better station.

 

How (or if) they're able to actually manipulate the wheel in that way, I have no idea.

 

sounds like traditional "opiate of the masses" sales pitch for oppressive cultures and/or regimes to be using organized religions to maintain order.  promise o' reward in the next life helps keep the populace placid.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

Except in POE reincarnation is a confirmed reality as opposed to a dogmatic belief. We can also probably assume that in a world with watchers/animancers/awakened, the Huana reincarnation mechanic of rotating castes has probably been confirmed to some degree. 

 

I think a lot of people are looking at it the way we look at caste systems irl, which are entirely socially constructed. In POE it's part social engineering, part metaphysics. 

 

I'm not *for* the Huana caste system or anything, I'm just saying it's more nuanced than at first glance. 

 

even if we accept unquestioned, the fact the system is a fact is actual making it worse.  to get out o' the prison o' your caste you must die, and in so doing you is condemning some other poor soul (literal) to take your place.  as one who suffers as a caste victim, you accept a future in which somebody else will need suffer the same limits and indignities as did you, but is ok, 'cause you personal will be moving up in the social strata.  

 

is pretty freaking grim and, well, soulless.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Veevoir]

 

 

 

Huana definitely not good, they have an appalling caste system. In many ways I think they are the worst of the factions.

The one saving grace is that the members of their lowest caste are guaranteed to be reborn into a higher caste in the next life. If you think about it long-term (in which souls are cycling from caste to caste and every soul gets to inhabit all statuses multiple times), it actually makes a weird kind of sense. Every culture in POE has its downtrodden, but only the Huana guarantee that theirs is reborn into a better station.

 

How (or if) they're able to actually manipulate the wheel in that way, I have no idea.

 

sounds like traditional "opiate of the masses" sales pitch for oppressive cultures and/or regimes to be using organized religions to maintain order.  promise o' reward in the next life helps keep the populace placid.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

Except in POE reincarnation is a confirmed reality as opposed to a dogmatic belief. We can also probably assume that in a world with watchers/animancers/awakened, the Huana reincarnation mechanic of rotating castes has probably been confirmed to some degree. 

 

I think a lot of people are looking at it the way we look at caste systems irl, which are entirely socially constructed. In POE it's part social engineering, part metaphysics. 

 

I'm not *for* the Huana caste system or anything, I'm just saying it's more nuanced than at first glance. 

 

 

The reincarnation system is confirmed to exist. But there is nothing about it that says that Roparu always reincarnate as higher caste. Or as Huana for that matter.

 

 

From all we know from PoE1 as Watchers this is pure BS. Souls are often grinded to pieces and put back together before they are sent back. And the best BS always includes a grain of truth

 

 

Edited May 11, 2018 by Veevoir