Alex (of Italia)
> I thought that to become an Imperial Citizen you had to become at least a
>lay member of the Emperor Cult. Now that this widespread Emperor Cult
>doesn't exist anymore, is Citizenship just a mundane status?
Not quite mundane. Citizenship can come from several sources, because the Empire has been trying to increase the amount of citizens since the Jannisor rebellion. However, all citizens learn Sedenyic philosophy as a basic skill. Imagine if you will that the citizens argue theology as much as the Byzantines did and it gives you an idea of its importance. This is one reason why the White Moon is so prevalent and why there are many differing groups of Lunars, often opposing one another.
> BTW, I liked the idea of the Emperor as the focus of the people's love for
>his mother. I guess that now the Body of the Goddess takes care of that, or
>am I wrong?
The Rufelza cult is the cult of the masses, she is the easily seen and understoof face of Sedenya. However, her church is ruled by the Emperor and he has direct power over appointments. As I mentioned before, this is a power used by the Emperor on troublesome nobles. He simply raises a mob and lets them run all over the place causing damage, as a lesson to his annoying nobility. Robustus was the first Mask to use this method of noble control (as opposed and directly opposite to crowd control) in a big way.
> So the Emperor is all the members of the Egi at the same time?
No. The Egi are part of him in one sense but he is independant of them. They can council, though he doesn't have to listen. What they do when he dies is enact the rituals of reforming the Emperor and they empower those rituals. This means they have to be very strong magically and usually very learned in the powers of their position. The Emperor is a gestalt of many different powers. To recreate him, the Egi have to find his scattered soul parts from the mundane, the underworld, the sky, the mythic past etc and reunify them.
>Who are the members of the Egi?
They vary. The original Egi were those who participated in the Tanist creation ritual after the first year of Castle Blue. The Goddess created Takenegi (who was not Emperor at that point) to be her vanguard in the battle on the lake. He had to be more than human, he had to be a god. Doskalos was the name of the man whose body was used but the spirit created within him was only partly him, it was also part of the goddes and part of the gathered participants. Yelmgatha also participated and his heroquesting magics were a major part in the ceremony. After the ceremony and the resulting victory a couple of year later, the Goddess rose and the survivng Egi joined her. Takenegi then ruled jointly with Yelmgatha until his death and became the Red Emperor.
The current Egi are different; Sheng Seleris killed most of the originals and they had to be replaced. This was one reason why the Emperor took so long to return after the sacking of the moon. His soul was split and was assembled by surviving Egi and their helpers. Many new heroes of the Empire were recruited to become Egi. It is possible for a player to become an Egi and they do interact with the mundane world, though usually through agents. Also, the Egi don't all have the same agenda, which can cause problems...
>I thought that the Emperor was a normal child of the
>Goddess, before her full apotheosis, who was deified later. On the contrary
>you seem to imply that the Emperor is a magical creation of the Goddess,
>sort of an embodiment for the Egi. Is this right?
Yes. He is an individual entity that can return from death via the recreation powers of the Egi. This is another reason why Sheng tried to kill them, to stop the pesky Emperor returning all the time like a bad penny.
> Are members of the Presidium (if it still exists) eligible/bred to become
>proxies? Say, Bellex Maximus looks like the perfect Iron Proxy.
At some points Bellux Maximus was the Iron Proxy. Not always though. It seems likely that the "Emperor" killed at Boldhome was the Iron Proxy, sent to lead the war effort.
BTW, I do not believe the Emperor Proxies are necessarily all alike in appearance. The role of the proxy is an ancient one in DH and does not require direct physical duplication. Rather it is the role that the proxy is performing, not the appearance of the Emperor. Hence the Golden Proxy looks nothing like the Emperor but is widely known to be part of the Emperor and acting under his commands. To argue against a Proxy is the equivalent of arguing with the Emperor in all ways.
Also the Emperor has other proxies for more mundane tasks. One proxy, for example has the enjoyable duty of taking injuries, diseases and spiritual attacks meant for the Emperor. The Emperor has the ability to shunt damage away from himself to others. He has many other abilities. He has a proxy whose job it is to take blame (in American this would be the Oliver North Proxy) for things that go wrong but can't be tied to him for political reasons.
The Kasdevanic clarification of Yelm had Emperors similar to Takenegi but his main difference from that period is in the control he exercises over the process.
Martin Laurie
End of The Glorantha Digest V7 #551
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