> While the Latin features of the Lunar Empire are very obvious,
IMO, they are left over from the old RQ II days, when little was known about the LE. "Empire?" the players said - "must be Rome!" (Interestingly, Jeff Richard has said that when he first read RQ, the first image he formed of the Orlanthi was ancient Greece!)
I like the ancient Indian models for the LE, especially with the Goddess' emphasis on masks, mysticism and transformation. I kinda think of the LE as if India had reached out and administered Persia (Carmania?) and Assyria (DH?). (I know - Persia succeeded Assyria, but it's the images I'm after, here.)
>The features that I believe would stand out longest and most
obviously are clothing and the worship of the Emperor.
Clothing can be symbolic - after the horse nomads were driven out, the Dara Happans made a conscious effort to return to the "toga" (probably the Near Eastern type, from the pic's in GRoY), because pants were reminiscent of those wretched horse barbarians. Local customs will also last longer and show more variety due to the lack of mass communication.
> After all this culture [DH] is not being suppress by a conqueror, it is the
conqueror.
While one can't be definitive about a barely described setting in an imaginary world, here's my impression:
Yes and no. DH (Raibanth and Yuthuppa) was the first ally of the Goddess, but they later rebelled, unsucessfully. But DH refugees went to Dara-Ni to escape Lunar rule, and they may have gone south into Saird as well. (Wild guess - Mirin's Cross & environs were originally built by Dara Happans, but that may have been Second Age.) After the rebellion, Dara Happa was divided between several other satraps - Kostaddi, Scylilla, Darjiian, First Blessed, and the Silver Shadow. Alkoth, always most resistant to the Lunars and the last to fall in the rebellion, was left with no lands at all. (According to the Genertela book, it was even placed within the satrap of Darjiian - but I'm not sure I believe that one. Maybe the Lunars thought it was the only way to get Alkoth to stop viewing Darjiini as "usurpers"?) The Lunars deliberately tried to weaken the unity of the ancient tripolis.
Gradually, DH reconciled to the Lunars, and then began to influence the new empire. (For example, according to the Genertela Book, Red Fish was a city founded by Hwarin Dalthippa (up near Yuthuppa, on the Oslir), to prove that non-Dara Happan urban structure was possible. Before long it went thoroughly DH.) And DH was certainly well versed in the tradition of Empire - they must have had a lot of ancient magics pertaining to the concept.
In the Genertela book, "the Heartlands" are listed as Darsen, Naveria, and Pelanda - up NW of Raibanth and Glamour. (That's where the typical Pelandan Heartland hoplites come from, I think.) I think Dara Happa is still a culturally distinct entity.
But who leads who? Loren has suggested that the Empire's drive for the coasts of Maniria might be driven by Carmanian mercantile interests, and Jeff Richard guesses that the drive to take Whitewall may be a Dara Happan plan to finally destroy the Last Rebel. (They had to tack on the "building a Reaching Moon temple" part to get the proposal through Glamour.)
In summary, I think that within the Empire as a whole, Dara Happa is still quite an obviously different culture from that of Torang or Pelanda, as is Darjiian, Carmania, and probably Kostaddi. It is certainly a powerful voice in the empire, but other cultures (those of illuminated Torang and Pelanda) set the rules.
All IMO. Any thoughts?
Pam
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