>I commented on this to Greg and he asked me
>pointedly, did he at any stage in ANY of his writings on the Emperor, show
>him as having a life before the return of a new mask?
"Our Red Emperor is one in a long line of wizard-kings
responsible only to their mother, the Goddess of the
Red Moon. Our emperors are immortal in that no natural
death can slay them, though they can be slain in combat.
Because of our emperors' dedication and courage, many
have been slain in defending and expanding the Empire.
Each Emperor maintains the policies of his predecessor,
so that our emperor prospers as if ruled by a single
mind, which indeed is true."
Talking to the Moon Woman
Gods of Glorantha
The Lunar Wane history has an incarnation {later known to be Magnificus) hiding in Doblian for 11 years (4/40 - - 4/51). That means that he has returned immediately after his death at the hands of the Mad Sultan at a time when Sheng has sacked the Moon and killed half the Egi in the process.
Given that the dead Egi needed to be replaced before the Red Emperor could return, we have a chronological problem. Compounding this is the fact that one of the heroes who helped the Emperor at Kitor is Aronius Jaranthir, who became an Egi after helping the Emperor the second time around. This implies that he became an Egi after Kitor (Genertela Book p33 states he was active from 4/51 to 4/55 (sic)), presumably when the Emperor recaptured Glamour. So it looks as though Magnificus is announcing his presence _before_ there's the necessary full component of Egi.
>I checked FS
>assiduously and found none, other than his initial genesis.
Yet the same Fortunate Succession states:
This Rite of Rejuvenation has misled some people
to believe that there has been more than one Emperor
since then, and the foolish historians of Darjiin
insist on numbering them. Yet none of us who truly
know are fooled by outsiders and we can easily see
that the soul of Antirius has united the Masks, one
and all.
Fortunate Succession p64.
But since all Yelmic Emperors had the soul of Antirius (cf footnote 1 p70), this merely reveals that the Dara Happans who wrote the document cannot refute the Darjiinians. We also know in a footnote to the above paragraph, that the Darjiinians disagree on the number of Masks.
While the exact Darjiinian theory is not known, I do believe it to have some validity even while bearing in mind the singularity of the Emperor, given the known chronological shenanigans surrounding the Emperor before his third return.
If Dozkalos merely became the vessel for the Emperor what prevents anybody else from becoming a new vessel for the Emperor? Although they might think that by agreeing to the ritual that they become the Emperor, the Emperor really takes over their likeness and subsumes their insignificant personality.
End of The Glorantha Digest V7 #571
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