> I've often stated that the big lunar innovation was their use of
massed journeyman-quality magicians.
I think this sounds right. Sort of the mass infantry approach vs. the great knight approach. Now was this learned from Sheng?
> But after all their shamans were killed, the idea of massed shamans
would be a tough one to come up with again (after all, for a century or
two, the shamans were thinly spread to administer to all the population
There might be other factors too. The Lunar capture/casting into Hell of Sheng (plus his subsequent torture) may have extracted secrets/magics from the nomad hero that the Lunars then put to use themselves. Only Sheng's later release/healing by Argrath would have returned this power to the nomads (and of course the Lunars were more or less crushed as a physical/military entity at that point).
> in their early (pre-Sheng) battles, the credit for their successes is
always given to their use of Chaos.
Peter Metcalfe adds a relevant point here.
>Unfortunately there are references in the Zero Wane Battles to Lunars
using massed spells (either the First Battle of Chaos or the Battle of
the Four Arrows of Light).
Given that this was before the Carmanian conquest, this should be priest-type DH magic borrowed from DH or Rinliddi. And the Carmanians certainly used massed magics against the Lunars. With the Lunar conquest of Carmania, the use of sorceric units would have begun, though these forces may have been focused upon the Sweet Sea conflicts, not the southern wars.
> The Moonburn
And the Skyburn both appear to be examples of long complex priest-type rituals utilizing the fire powers of the Empire.
> the Campaigns of the Conquering Daughter
Is mostly a hero campaign with the Conquering Daughter pulling her foes into mythic Hero Plane battles to achieve new results. There are no sources indicating massed magicians as I recall for this (and I haven't added any to it).
> one of the first cities sacked by Sheng was Yuthuppa, home of the
Buserium, the Great Priestly Tradition of Dara Happa. Surely this was
an unparalled diasaster.
This would have disrupted most priestly rituals (such as Skyburns, etc).
> I'm pretty sure that the magicians set up a pyramid scheme of sorts
(worship me!) so they gained effective magical power pretty quickly and
then stabilized it after the Red Goddess ascended into the sky.
The First Battle of Chaos certainly references a Lunar 'Inner Circle of Magicians' centered on the Seven Mothers, but seemingly larger than that group. This could have been a combination of ritual and heroic magic though, as opposed to the later Lunar Magician Field School.
My inclination is to utilize the idea of the Lunars exploring ways to control spirit magic (as identified in GoG). Why do so? Because, as Sandy suggests, their magics (or Carmanian magicians and DH priests) were effectively destroyed by Sheng. The Lunars knew how the Carmanian units had worked, but these had fallen because they couldn't counter the shamanic magics. So they synthesize a new magic using Carmanian ideas but capable of disrupting the shamans (by controlling/manipulating the spirit plane).
Given the disasters of the 3rd/4th Wanes, these probably started as journeymen banded together. Later they became established schools. Some schools (the Minor Class Schools) continued to focus on quantity (as many journeymen as they can get), while other schools (the Major Class Schools--the Ivy League of Lunar Magic Schools) pursued fewer members with higher quality (all must pass the Masters exam to join the field regiment).
Harald
By the time Sheng had come into Peloria the Lunar Matrix had become well explored to such an extent its mythic regions had been allocated and there was no longer any room for the spectacular increases
in magical power that had marked the Zero Wane battles.
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