Editing Theocracy (section)

==/tg/-cracies==
Before Warhammer, [[Dungeons & Dragons]] offered quite a few theocracies. Oddly the first-published in the [[Greyhawk]] setting was ''under'' said setting: the [[Drow]], in [[Drow trilogy|GenCon XI]]. These fallen elves are a henotheistic theocracy of both types; they qualify as the first type in that whilst the various deities of the [[Dark Seldarine]] are acknowledged as existing, but all are seen as subordinate to [[Lolth]]; and they qualify as the second type in that, well, nobody can deny the existence of gods like [[Moradin]] or [[Pelor]] when there are priests and priestesses casting bless and flame strike in their name. It is the Priestesses of the Spider Queen who hold power absolute, and no matter how powerful the nobles may be, that power is always inferior to that wielded by the priestesses. A half decade later Greyhawk's overworld got published with the Theocracy of the Pale and the See of Medegia.

[[Mystara]] got Hule, implicitly the same merger of Platonism with caliphal Islam which Khomeini was running in Iran, which the [[Desert Nomad series]] REALLY hammered into us with the third of that trilogy. [[Eberron]] has Thrane, the site of [[The Silver Flame]]. Thrane is unusual here because the existence of the Silver Flame is, unlike the other faiths of Eberron, provable and Thrane does not have a monopoly on worship of The Flame (even though the physical Flame is in its borders) causing it to fight other worshipers in the Last War.

The [[Imperium of Man]], conversely, and counterintuitively to normies, is not a theocracy; because whilst the [[Ecclesiarchy]] is a power-bloc within the government, they are not technically the ultimate authority of the Imperium. It ''does'' have theocratic elements, but isn't completely ruled over by the priests of the God-Emperor. It is ruled over by the ''actual God-Emperor himself'' . There is no name for such a type of government, because for obvious reasons we haven't had to invent one... ''yet'' (there technically is a term: thearchy (rule by God/a god/gods). But this term has never been put into actual practice for obvious reasons). Ignoring that, since the God-Emperor is basically a deified near-corpse on (what everyone else thinks is) life-support, the ''actual'' day-to-day running of the Imperium is handled by an enormous bureaucracy descended from the council that reported to him when he was more fully functional.

[[Category: Gamer Slang]]