I'll cut down on what there is I'm responding to, to not endlessly rehash things and make this much less aggravating. I previously wanted to stop, but I'm bad at following my own advice. It's not really short, but it's more focused on specific points, rather than this line-by-line response thing.
Taldahs is only ruling if you let him live and his only descendent is female. The Winter City is currently ruled by a queen. I acknowledged Khor'minos has a king, but I must have missed the part where it said that Tychris had a king. The vast majority of national/regional/tribal rulers so far encountered in the story have been female.
And I am very much aware that Savarra is not Earth, but since patriarchies are very much the norm for Earth, it wouldn't be a bad idea to explain why matriarchies are seemingly the norm in Savarrra. Or at least The Frost Marches.
Why need an explanation, when we can see that there are many super strong women? There's a principle in storytelling called "show, don't tell." I'm certain you've heard of it. Well, we've been shown that there's plenty of strong women, and plenty of smart women, who are just as capable, if not moreso, than many of the men. Not to mention that several societies are shown as biologically more disposed towards female leaders. The Hornets follow a queen, who birthed them. The Boreal Elves have two feminine sexes and one male sex, which shifts the proportions towards more women. The Marefolk can't have male leaders because males get rabies when becoming adults.
Are people being terrorized? Because the citizens of Hawkethorne, The Kitsune Den, Khor'minos, etc. Don't seem to bothered about what's going on. Because you're right, there are people being raped, killed, transformed against their will - but The Frost Marches is largely reacting to it all with a collective shrug.
Khor'minos is fighting a war, the people of Hawkethorne have withdrawn from trade and forestry and are staying walled up in their village, and the kitsune have kept themselves sealed off from the outside for so long that most of them probably weren't able to notice it due to isolationism. It's pretty clear that the people are bothered.
I think it's important because they're humanoid first, extra bits second. You see, there's an established "inner-logic" within the game in regards to the sentient races: They all have humanoid features, two arms, a head, a tongue, a nose, a penis and/or vagina... even reptiloid races like the salamanders have breasts.
So as you can see, most of the races are designed to be physically attractive to us humans - which is why they consistently have these features - human features. And while it's true that not every race has wings, or tails, or claws, etc. When so many women have penises (and no men do) it comes off as horny wish-fulfillment, and nothing more.
Again, I understand that people want to write what they want to write. And I'm only bringing this up because it can be very easily explained but isn't.
But, again, why? If you want an explanation on why a race has cocked females, then it's either "evolution found it advantageous" or "the god that made that race wanted them to have cocks". If you want an explanation for why many women chose to grow cocks, it's not socially unacceptable in any location and alchemy is a longstanding thing.
"A good chunk of them are male."
Who? Name names. Name every single living male national/regional/tribal leader that we meet that doesn't get removed and replaced by a woman.
I don't know if we meet the Khor'minos king. Taldahs isn't replaced with Ahmri though, because in the timeline where Taldahs is killed, Ahmri is kidnapped, and you, the Champion, assume control of the tribe. We will meet the king of Tychris, eventually, when the region gets added to the game, though that's still a while off. The Marked Men Mercs are run by a man, and though it's temporarily being run by a woman, she's way less competent than the literally immortal man who actually runs the mercs, whenever he deigns to show up. How many female leaders are there? There's Alissa&Etheryn for the winter city, Komari, Atani, Nyzerrah, and Arona. I'm not counting Ahmri, because, again, she never rules, she just gets kidnapped in the timeline where Taldahs dies. There's not that many leaders in the game overall, so, discounting the king of Tychris, I still say that a sizable chunk of the leaders are male. If we had, say, 10 more region or group leaders around, and all of those were female or futa, I'd say there's a clear imbalance, but with this sample size, it's just a female lean. It is majority female, sure, but it's not an overwhelming female landslide.
I've done the Convocation of Mirrors - which just reinforces my point about them being "real."
And sure, there are healing spells. Alchemical treatments, the like. White mages are great and all.
Oh. But there's this thing called a black mage that can literally set you on fire with the flick of a wrist. Who can summon beings of pure chaos and fire. Who can move earth, and call down lightning on their foes.
So as much good as a white mage might do, a black mage could do as much bad.
And you're right, grim dark is about tone. Nobody seems to care that people are raped or murdered and the like in this "light-hearted" game.
The fire, lightning, earth stuff would be really devastating, if it weren't for the fact that many of our foes treat it like foreplay. Most of the time, after a battle, enemies are just kinda battered, not even unconscious, just beaten up enough that they'd rather not fight more. You can blast a group of horny naked elves with an inferno and a lightning storm, and break their eardrums, and blind them, and poison them, and they say "wow, that was fun! Let's fuck now." Clearly, the people of Savarra are way more resilient than the people of earth. It's very rare for people to die, outside of the occasional dark spots.
"There aren't enough people to unite."
[Citation needed]
"Mobilizing and transporting troops to a distant part of the world takes time."
So what's stopping The Champion from using The Ways Between to quickly bring in help? Instead of chasing Kas around, why aren't we going to the major cities and at least making sure that everyone knows that things are going down in The Frost Marches?
In the people count, the individual settlements are spread out and isolated. If all of them got together, they'd be much stronger, but Khor'minos, the strongest power in the region, completely quarantined the mountain, the Winter City hasn't been in contact with Hawkthorne for decades, the Kitsune are feared and distrusted by everyone here, the Marefolk are too far south for help to go between it and Hawkethorne without getting kidnapped by centaurs, the centaurs got corrupted and started fighting, the Hornets got corrupted and started fighting, the Orcs are a bunch of raiders who got here and decided to start raiding because that's what they did (sidenote, there's a scene in the Khor'minos bathhouse if you bring Arona where it's shown that the Minotaurs are definitely racist against the orcs), the Marked Men Mercs fell into disarray when the leader took a vacation and as such started fighting and pillaging rather than being the defense force they were hired to be. There's enough people that they could unite, but the groups are all either isolated from each other or fighting each other, and the individual groups aren't large enough to push back and unite with each other despite the adversities, if they're even willing to reach out.
As for the Ways Between, there are a few instances when characters were talking about the Ways Between, which should probably have let you know why. The old system of idols fell into disrepair after the Godswar, and almost nobody had the knowledge or resources to fix them up and use them, aside from a few isolated individuals (and the kitsune, but they have a modified version which is its own private network, connected only to other Kitsune torii gates). The Way Walker title tells you, travel in the Ways Between was a closely kept secret of the Estelore mages, and as you've done the Convocation, you know that Estelore was annihilated first by the Wraiths. The Champion can't use it to go to major far off cities, because the pathways and idols simply are not connected. It's like taking a train to a location when the rails and stations have completely fallen apart.
