I said:
>>look at the East Roman Empire. There you have the multinational court
>>composition, sufficient decadence, your choice of state religions and
>>tolerated ones, and lots of political murder.
> 'your choice of state and tolerated religions'? In the Byzantine Empire? > As in Hobson's Chorce or 'Choose the Official One or Die Horribly'?
Well, the Alexiad by Anna Komnena states that the Empire contained and employed greek-orthodox christians, manicheans, serbs (with their own blend of orthodoxy), armenian and nestorian christians, pagan or semi-pagan "Scyths", Pechenegs (with shamanism?), muslim Turks, and even roman-catholics (e.g. the Varangian colony and guard). Mostly restricted to certain locales, but that's true for the Lunar Empire as well:
The Citizen Foreigners of Carmania who may continue to worship their form of "Humakt" and other dark aspect deities, the Thrice Blessed people, the Zarkosian Provinces, and the Theyalan Provinces all have their own native religions, plus the ancient Pelorian regional religions of Dara Happa, Darjiin, Rinliddi, western Peloria (Doblian and Oronin sultanate Lodrili), and minor groups. At times some of these peoples or religions are persecuted, like e.g. the River people of the Oslir, or of course the Orlanth worshippers of the Theyalan provinces. At other times they are tolerated, as long as the taxes keep coming in.
BTW: I tend to side with Sandy on one of Peter's other major quarrels: The 3rd Age has been a Dark Age for most of Genertela. Fronela fell back into everything between Stone Age and 970ies rebuilding phase (after throwing out the God Learners) during the Ban, Rokarism is the bane of all progress whatsoever, and has been rampant in southwestern Genertela for most of the age, Orlanthi revisionism has weakened the Orlanth worshippers more than the Castle Blue embarrassment, and the Lunars are on the fast track to replace culture with decadence all over Peloria (not that their precedessors weren't prone to this as well). Teshnos is firmly gripped in its lethargy, and only Kralorela may or may not be an exception to this trend. Prax, Pent, the Wastes and Ignorance didn't have much culture to lose, but even undeveloped regions like Balazar suffered severe civilisatory and cultural backdrops since the 2nd Age.
This doesn't mean that the 2nd Age has been a Golden Age of civilisation: only the 3rd Age is worse than that.
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