Writes on my comments about Lunar Society:
By and large, I agree with most of them.
>> The image of the Lunar Empire is more like Rome of the Late Republic
>> to me, ie there is severe internal strife among the ruling elite while
>> the Empire is militarily expansionistic.
>I usually use Roman Imperial parallels:[...] there was still severe
>internal strife under the Empire (look at the Year of the Four
>Emperors!); expansion was more likely to depend on the whim of one
>man (Moonson Himself led the assault on Boldhome). And, of course,
>there's the Emperor Cult.
>The Dara Happan Senate is IMHO as relevant to contemporary Lunar politics
>as the Roman Senate was under the Empire.
When I said the elite was fighting amongst themselves, I had in mind the Dart Competitions. For this I was looking to the political struggles of Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar and Crassus. Much of their authority within the political sphere resided from their personal power rather than any blessing from the Senate.
Turning towards the Lunar Empire, I agree that the Real Power belongs to those Bureacracy officals running the Satrapies. I believe the Satrapy positions are largely run on a nomenclatura basis in which Nepotism is rife. This means that the top jobs probably go to somebody who is in the same clan as the appointing official. This nepotistic state of affairs is largely tempered by the Dart Competitions. The Old Solar Nobility, I agree, is largely a relic and almost like the Japanese Imperial Nobility.
The reason why I looked toward late republican rome, is that Imperial Roman History is to me kinda boring. Then, all the political intruige occurs mostly within the Imperial Court which is somewhat incestous (although normally not to the extremes achieved by Nero and his mom). There's no internal political drama within the upper levels of society. You have to look very hard for signs of it and it's mostly impersonal boring stuff like the Empire had problems in collecting its taxes! Contrast this with the Late Republic and we have Marius versus Sulla, Anthony and Cleopatra, the Gracchi Brothers etc. I'm not saying the parallel is exact or even close, it's that when I think up RW models for Dart Competitions, I am struck by the Late Republic examples.
I'm not denying the Emperor a major say to running things. But it is my opinion that he is far less autocratic than assumed. Sure he's the head of the Lunar Church and the Lunar Army, but many of the clans can thwart him. To me, he's a consul for life - he is theoretically all powerful but the application of his power within the Lunar Heartlands is tempered by the Clans running the Satrapy. If he squeezes them too hard, then he could find himslef on the wrong end of a dart.
>>The Lunar religion has hardly the capacity to enforce ideological
>>uniformity considering the amount of Illuminates it has!
>But what if the Illuminates wanted to enforce ideological uniformity
>(which I believe to be the case)? You have to admit, it makes running
>the Empire easier!
Ok. The Illuminates in the Secular and Religious hierachies are all united belonging to the Order of Day and all that ie they recieve their Nysalor indoctrination from the Commisars to the extent that when they're enlightened they come to the same conclusion about the Empire in that the Status Quo must be mantained. Personally I blame Sheng for this state of affairs.
However this is only the official ideology. I don't think the Street level Illuminates (ie Hippy Philosophers and their groupies) actually feel the same way or that the authorities can actually compel them to do so. Some of the more extreme ones ('join us and we'll teach you how to lie while under a Truth Spell!') are ruthlessly crushed if detected but other illuminates are merely excluded from official positions (much like how the Nonconformists were excluded from university positions in England because they refused to accept the Book of Common Prayer).
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