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History of the Provincial Overseer

Posted on September 18, 2022

Prior to 1555, there was no Provincial Overseer. During the 4th Wane, the various provincial client kings were managed from Jillaro. After the Red Emperor returned to Glamour at the end of the 4th Wane, the focus on the empire was removal of the nomads and resettlement of the Heartlands. The Lunar Way spread peacefully and haphazardly through the South – in 5/27 (1490) Hon-eel attempted to integrate the Lunar doctrine into the Tarsh Earth Cult, but the attempt was only partially successful. She left an infant son on the Tarsh throne, but the kingdom was torn apart by civil war as soon as she left. 16 years later, her son finally ascended to the throne, but by then focus of Hon-eel and the Red Emperor were entirely on dealing with the Redlands.

In 1555, General Phargentes reconquered Tarsh from a usurper backed by the Shaker Temple. Phargentes and his brother were military officers in the service of Emperor Robustus, and the legitimate rulers of Tarsh. Upon Phargentes’ success, the Red Emperor reorganised the tribes and kings, and Phargentes was appointed “Overseer of the South” by the Red Emperor, a title of broad and uncertain definition. Phargentes fought in Tarsh, Sartar, but also Balazar and Aggar, asserting imperial authority throughout the South. Emperor Celestinus had a passion for organisation and order – preferring to govern through scribes, eunuchs, and other dependents.

Emperor Celestinus later reorganised the Provincial System, ridding it of many native officials (who were viewed as crypto-Orlanthi and hopelessly corrupt). Quinscion of Red Fish (chief fiscal official to Phargentes) was directed to send assistants to check the records and accounts of the provinces.

After Phargentes died in 1579, Emperor Militaris organised the Provincial bureaucracy into three departments, each headed by a “general”:

  • Procurement and Disbursement. Records and collects taxes of silver, bronze, and barley. This department has always been headed by Quinscion the Patient. He has four assistants who rotate on five-year shifts between the provinces. Reports to the Imperial Treasury.
  • Provincial Church. By decree of the Red Emperor, the general in charge of this department serves no more than seven years. Reports to the Red Dancer of Power, a demigod who changes shape each year to bear a child by a different assistant.
  • Provincial Army. This general is responsible for the military affairs of the Provinces. Reports to Militaris (who was in the Provinces in 1582).

When Militaris died in 1586, Emperor Reclusus appointed a proxy to coordinate and command the provincial departments. This proxy was Appius Luxius, his “son” (probably the son of Robustus or Celestinus), who was made Overseer of the South or Provincial Overseer or Bronze Proxy. Appius Luxius was the stand-in for the Red Emperor in all matters – as a member of the imperial family, he is “within four generations of a god”, allowing him to participate in many dangerous rituals without harm.

Appius Luxius served as the Red Emperor in the consecration of the New Lunar Temple in 1625 and was devoured by the True Dragon. He was probably pretty old by then, maybe around 70+ years old. He’s the only guy who had ever been Provincial Overseer.

Since then, the departments are uncoordinated – but then again, that is the least of the worries of the Lunar Provincial leadership.

What can you tell us about the New Monks Revival? I presume that you are talking about the New Monks that expanded the Order of the Day during the Mask of Artifex? The New Monks were a “lay movement” not controlled by the 7M priesthood. So a 7M initiate could join the New Monks as a “lay sister” and go out into the villages and barbarians and show the Lunar Way. They weren’t responsible for performing worship ceremonies or doing magic – they were there to show people how cool the Lunar Way is.

Think like the Catholic missions in New Spain, or the Islamic missionaries in South Asia.

The New Monks got mixed up with the Order of the Day because the Order of the Day had come out of the “good mystics” that had been hidden among the ranks of the Order of Kerestus. The Red Emperor wanted to make sure that the Order of the Day was patrolled by devout and evangelical 7M cultists, who would be loyal to the Red Emperor and less likely to be tempted by magical insights, ambition, or other spiritual occlusion.

By the Sixth Wane, this sort of popular movement had likely died down, and the New Monks are no longer new.

By now, I am sure they are exactly what the Red Emperor sought to prevent.

So early in the Fifth Wane the reconquest of the southern territories, including the satrapy of Sylila and the provinces of Vanch, Imther, and Aggar, were brought back into the empire through the New Monks Revival Movement. This lay movement revitalised the ancient sisterhoods which were the real basis for the established Lunar Empire. These organisations had deteriorated during the barbarian ravages of the Third Age and The “Strong Making Peace” period of the Fourth Wane had kept the entire Lunar priesthood far too busy for missionary work.

By 5/7, some had returned to their old missionary zeal and founded new temples and “monasteries” in the southland. The native leaders of this region sometimes voluntarily submitted to the Empire, and the area came back within Lunar control by mid-wane (say around 1475 or so) without major wars.

The Red Emperor later expanded the Order of the Day (one of the most prominent Nysalorean schools) with the New Monks movement, which meant that the Order of the Day was reinvigorated by these popular Lunar sisterhoods.

Jeff Richard

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1475 ST, 1490 ST, 1555 ST, 1579 ST, 1582 ST, 1586 ST, 1625 ST, Artifex (mask), Celestinus (mask), Hon-eel, Militaris (mask), New Monks, Order of the Day, Phargentes (king), Reclusus (mask), Red Dancer of Power

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