A little thought on Sivar-Eshrad

Mekt-Hakkikt

Mpanty's bane
Hi!

We know that our dear priestesses of the Sivar cult chose the acceptable planet for the ceremony by using astrological data from a lot of systems (see SM2 guide for more details). Now consider this: It's post-war and the priestesses calculate that the next Sivar-Eshrad is to be held on a Terran-held planet.

What do they do?
 
We learned from Wing Commander Academy that the decision, despite being "handed down from Sivar", is politically motivated. They simply wouldn't choose a human planet.
 
In WCA the priestesse is Thrakath's sister. But is she always someone so close from the throne ? Is she even always from the dominating clan ?
 
Haa...
But wasn't she the one who chosed the location of the ceremony ? The highest in the order ?

In fact my previous question was about the priestesse, if not Zukara, who decides were to honor Sivar.
Could she oppose to the will of the emperor if she was from another clan ? If yes, she could decide to held the ceremony on Confed's planet if it is her or her clan's interest.
 
Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
We learned from Wing Commander Academy that the decision, despite being "handed down from Sivar", is politically motivated. They simply wouldn't choose a human planet.

Had they won the war, they were planning on using Earth, but that isn't really relevant to his current question.

However, I could see some militant Sivarist faction try to have one on a confed planet to try to restart the war in an attempt to rekindle the war. Argue that the current priestesses are not legitmate, they are misinterpretting things, etc. (I'm thinking along the lines of Protestant vs. Catholic, Shi'a vs. Sunni, etc.) How successful they would be is another question.
 
Is there any hard and fast information on how many Kilrathi are Cult of Sivar, and how many divisions within the Cult there might be? It'd be interesting to compare that with the problems the US is having with a certain madman who was recently evicted from Afghanistan.
 
It is certainly not the decision of any one individual -- pragmatically, the Kilrathi governing system could not survive allowing that much power to a single outsider.

The question, then, is *who* does decide on the location. The textbook response is that it's the 9,500 priestesses -- they get together and decide a suitable location based on some form of cosmology. This is simply religion in its original, pure form... The *truth* is that it's a politlcally motivated decision that the governing clans certanily have say in. Consider Fleet Action, where the Emperor requests that the Sivar be held on Earth... and then that Jukaga tells Thrakhath to do it elsewhere (to slaves, IIRC). Further, Thrakhath in 'Glory of Sivar' notes that the decision to hold the ceremony on Dolos was based on convenience rather than divine will.
 
It actually sounds quite similar to what was happening in the roman (byzantium) empire around 1000 AD. At that time the Highest appointed church official sometime had enough influence to remove an emporor from power and the emporor in turn sometimes had enough clout to have his relatives appointed to the head of the church...
 
I just thought that afte the war, where there isn't such an centralized government as before they would return to the pure religious form of chosing a location.
But it makes sense: It'd be self-murder if the Kirlathi assembly of clans chose a Terran planet. That is if they can agree on anything.
 
Unless for some reason, They allow Terrans to join them, either the ceremony of the religion itself. Then it could be held on a Terran world.
 
Err, as I recall, a good chunk of the population of the world the ceremony is held on ends up being sacrificed to Sivar. I don't see any Terran world volunteering to hold *that* kind of ceremony. :D

Mekt: I agree that it would be suicidal for the Kilrathi to choose any Confed world, or even a UBW world as they are aligned with Confed. What about some group like the Landreich, though? Given that relations between them and Confed seem strained post war, I don't see Confed being willing to risk another all out war with the Kilrathi over that. They certainly weren't willing to in False Colors.

Best, Raptor
 
Originally posted by Raptor
Err, as I recall, a good chunk of the population of the world the ceremony is held on ends up being sacrificed to Sivar. I don't see any Terran world volunteering to hold *that* kind of ceremony. :D
The planet must be cleansed of non-believers as part of the ceremony. Since the only way Terrans would be allowed to attend the ceremony would be if they followed the religion, that would not be a problem, because if they were followers of Sivar they would not be killed themselves and they'd have no problem with that kind of ceremony.
 
It might depend on attacking the Landreich, actually. Confed may see it as one of those, "crimes against humanity", making it not matter whether it was in someone else's territory or not.

But then again, they weren't really opting to help the Landreich the first time, your right. I guess, should the situation come up again, it would depend on how they felt about assisting, or not, a unifying Kilrathi force. (Will they be like 1600 France with the Germans, and have their top priority keeping them split up, or will they be like the modern day US/CIA and try to assist their favorite candidate?)
 
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