[ericthered]

Originally Posted by TGLS

"Any idea what specifically Maximus wrote?"

Gurdo: "I haven't seen the exact orders. There is a big preamble about providing others with peace and safety, righteous combat, and about trusting the emperor. They always appoint a general, and they're pretty courageous troops. Which given what we usually fight, is a great thing. They seem to think they're in some sort of heavenly war, and I don't know that they treat the whole thing as real. Not at first anyways."

I'll try to use Memetics to estimate how the priests (?) would react to a request to meet with Maximus. I imagine that my estimate is probably going to be very different from reality if there is someone is manipulating the situation in the temple.

So if no-one is manipulating the situation, you'd expect other-worldly visitors with a weird carte-blanche authorization who request to see the tomb of the emperor to be politely entertained for half a day or even overnight while the request is formally processed and the priests go nuts looking for the appropriate action, a precedent, the catch, or the scam, and then eventually be granted a fair amount of time at the emperor's tomb.

Originally Posted by the_matrix_walker

Vassarious looks over the research and considers what kind of staff may be admitted to the temples for operations and maintenance beyond the priests.

There are the animal soldiers, of course. Further research reveals that the priests themselves do a great deal of manual and technical work: many areas are completely off limits to someone who is not a priest, thus many low ranking priests look a great deal like janitors, plumbers, and technicians. He does discover a potential opening: If something very specialized is needed and no priest is trained for it, an expert can be formally brought into the preisthood for the job. They will remain a priest, though a very dormant one.

"I wonder how it would be perceived if we were to appear in the temple to offer aid, rather than request it."

Gurdo: "Depends on how you phrased it. A general always wants more resources, but he can do without yet another someone second-guessing everything he does."