Since yesterday I talked about the Orlanthi concept of “freedom”, lets look a little bit at the Lunar ideology of power:
Like the Orlanthi, the ideology of power in the Lunar Heartlands isn’t a modern liberal ideal of individual rights protected by impersonal laws and institutions. However, it has a radically different foundation and very different implications.
To begin with the Lunar idea of “freedom” is spiritual liberation – freedom to be liberated from fear of Chaos and Time. It isn’t a modern liberal ideal of individual rights protected by impersonal laws and institutions – it is not even a political or worldly concept.
To the Lunar mindset, legitimate power always comes from above. The emperor’s authority was originally derived from Yelm, and the emperors had to be able to prove that they enjoyed that blessing through the Ten Tests. In turn, the emperor appointed or recognized others who could aid him in his cosmic duty of rule. The emperor does not “earn” that authority – it is innate in being emperor, and can be lost through improper action. However, rebellion – even against a bad emperor – is wrong. It is the role of the gods to punish bad emperors, not his subjects.
The Lunar Empire takes this ideology even further. The Red Emperor’s authority comes directly from his mother, the Red Goddess, who is the daughter of Yelm. Every Red Emperor is considered eternally the same immortal being, reborn repeatedly into a new body (a new “Mask”). Each incarnation is a distinct individual—often from very different backgrounds, social classes, or even provinces—but the Egi confirm that the candidate truly carries the immortal soul of Moonson. There is no succession, only recognition.
All other power in the Lunar Empire comes either from the Red Emperor, or directly from the Red Goddess (such as Great Sister). Hon-eel and Jar-eel were his daughters. The Crimson Bat serves the Red Emperor. Glamour was his creation. And since it is always the same Red Emperor, there is no transference of power.
A vast permanent bureaucracy exists to carry out the Red Emperor’s will. As there has only been one Red Emperor for 375 years, this bureaucracy is also effectively immortal. The Red Emperor can by arbitrary decree change the law whenever he desires, but the bureaucracy carries it out.
Refusal to follow the personal commands of the Red Emperor is not only disobedience but blasphemy. If he commands, you must obey. If his subordinates command, the only appeal is to the Red Emperor, who may decide that the subordinate was disobedient or did not properly carry out the Red Emperor’s will. But if that was not the case, then disobeying a subordinate is also blasphemy.
The Lunar Way is very inclusive, and everyone within the empire has a place within its cosmic order – even Chaos. As long as the Red Goddess is acknowledged and the Red Emperor obeyed and respected (and that includes to those who carry authority delegated by him), subjects may worship who they wish, follow their traditional laws in most regards. However, defying the Red Goddess or the Red Emperor is a cosmic rebellion and can result in entire populations being massacred.
Lunar “freedom” is ultimately spiritual and cosmic. The Red Goddess promises liberation from the Great Compromises that bind mortals: freedom from the terror of Chaos (by embracing and taming it), freedom from the inexorable decay of Time (through illumination, reincarnation, and the eternal cycle of the Red Moon). The Lunar Way teaches that true freedom lies in transcending illusion, fear, and separation—achieving mystical unity with the cosmos (“We Are All Us”) and release from the wheel of suffering.
This spiritual freedom justifies hierarchical earthly rule: mundane obedience to the Red Emperor and his delegates is a small price (or even a virtuous discipline) for the greater liberation the Goddess offers. Personal political autonomy is secondary, even illusory, compared to enlightenment and cosmic harmony. Rebellion against the divine order only binds one more tightly to fear and chaos.
The Lunar ideology explicitly rejects the Orlanthi-style reliance on personal, continually-reproven charismatic authority. Instead, it grounds legitimacy in a divine, eternal hierarchy headed by the Red Goddess and her son, the Red Emperor. Yet, through the cyclical nature of the eternally-reincarnating Red Emperor, the empire achieves something that feels remarkably impersonal and institutional in practice.
Even though it rejects impersonal institutions the Lunar Empire effectively has an impersonal institutional bureaucracy because the Red Emperor is acknowledged to have personally ruled for 375 years with minimal interruptions. It is the same Red Emperor that established his decrees in 1255 that rules today in 1625.
As a result, the Lunar Way has created one of the most stable and enduring bureaucracies in Glorantha without ever admitting that power derives from impersonal institutions. Instead, it insists that the bureaucracy’s immortality flows from the literal immortality of Moonson himself. The empire gets the practical benefits of institutional inertia and continuity—predictable administration, long-term planning, standardized laws across vast distances—while remaining ideologically pure: all power still ultimately derives from a single divine person, not from abstract offices or laws.
The Red Goddess is the daughter of Yelm? Yes, see Mythology and the Lunar Way.
And the Red Emperor is the rightful Yelmic Emperor. Period. And rebellion against him is cosmic blasphemy, regardless of what the Red Emperor says and does.
Now after the Red Emperor had ruled for a generation or so (1/23), the Tripolis (Raibanth, Yuthuppa, and Alkoth) rebelled against him and raised a false emperor against him. They even allied with Orlanthi barbarians, and in 1/28 made it to the gates of the Inner City of Glamour before being utterly defeated by the Red Emperor. After ten years of sieges, the Dara Happan cities were crushed, and in 1/38, Shargash humbled before the Red Goddess and swore to accept the Red Goddess.
And after that, the Tripolis learned their lesson and never rebelled again.
In the Lunar Empire, the theological claim is not a con, not a cynical power-play dressed up in mysticism, and certainly not something the “bigwig Lunars” secretly laugh at the Yelmies for believing. By official dogma—and, crucially, by the lived conviction of the Lunar elite themselves—the Red Goddess did transcend, complete, and supersede the old Yelmic order while remaining its rightful fulfillment. The Red Emperor is the legitimate Emperor of the Universe, the true heir of Yelm, and rebellion against him is cosmic blasphemy, full stop.
This isn’t a facade that crumbles under scrutiny; it’s a successful mystical synthesis that large parts of Dara Happan society came to accept as self-evidently true after the military and magical proof of the early wars.
Consider the sequence again:
- The Red Goddess achieves apotheosis on the Red Moon, an objective cosmic event visible to the entire world.
- Her son Moonson claims and demonstrates imperial authority over the Heartlands.
- The Tripolis—the very core of traditional Yelmic legitimacy—rebels, acclaiming a “pure” claimant and even allying with barbarians.
- They are crushingly defeated; Shargash himself, the destroyer-god of Alkoth, is humbled and submits to the Red Goddess in 1/38 ST.
- After that, no serious Dara Happan challenge to Lunar legitimacy ever re-emerges.
From the Lunar perspective, this isn’t “haha, we tricked them”—it’s divine vindication. The gods themselves (including Yelm’s own fierce enforcer Shargash) acknowledged the new order.
There are no winks and nods in private. Jar-eel doesn’t secretly roll her eyes at Yelmic ritual; she performs it with perfect sincerity when required, because she knows the Red Goddess has encompassed and elevated it. Great Sister doesn’t mock the old priesthood—she incorporates their knowledge into the New Light.
Us moderns are primed to see any claim of divine legitimacy as either naive belief (by the masses) or cynical manipulation (by the rulers). But in Glorantha’s mythic realism, these claims can be literally, cosmically true in ways that encompass previous truths without negating them. The Lunars aren’t “fooling” the Yelmies—they have forged a new, broader mythic reality that the Yelmic gods themselves ultimately accepted.