[Glorantha] Re: Humakt and Humath

[Simon Phipp]

I always wondered about the mechanic of joining cults together or making new cults.

My general rationale is that certain events happened in the God Time to certain deities. Then, with the splintering of the world, the fact that peoples were separated and destroyed and that myths were forgotten or destroyed, various different versions of the cults survived to the Dawn.

Then came the First Council missionaries. They went around finding people who survived the Darkness. In many cases, they found cults that were similar to their own or to others they had encountered. They did a lot of HeroQuesting to put those cults together and to stabilise their own myths. Sometimes during those HeroQuests, they found out new things or discovered old things depending on your point of view. That allowed them to make other connections to other cults.

This happened throughout the First Age and was continued by people like Harmast who put together the lost Lightbringer Quest myths. They made the Evil Emperor/Yelm match and a lot of similar matches and made them stick, mainly because they were rediscovering who these people were and reforging the links between the various mythologies.

In the Second Age, they went a lot further and made connections that were not obvious or were not true. So, they made a pan-Trickster cult and said all the Tricksters were the same deity, which was clearly false. When the EWF and God Learners fell, a lot of their mythmaking was forgotten but some remained in place.

In the Third Age, the Lunars are doing the same sort of thing, but they tend to show how such and such goddess is an incarnation of the Moon or one of her servants.

So, various forms of Humakt could well have survived the Darkness and been discovered by the early Theyalans. Did they get as far as the depths of Fronela? Maybe. In any case, it is not inconceivable that a form of Humakt survived way up there, met the Carmanians and was absorbed into their religion. It could even have happened earlier, before they were forced to march across a continent.

I doubt if they were the source of the Heortling Humakt, though, as there were definitely Humakti around before Arkat joined his cult. Now, it would be interesting to find which Humakt cult was involved in making Arkat Humaktsson during the Sunstop. They might have contacted Humakt in Malkioni lands but with Elven connections. Since Arkat was unaware of his heritage beforehand, it probably wasn't Humakti who raised him, but the Orlanthi who brought him back definitely recognised something Humakti about him, and not just his Sword.

Anyway, I digress.

See Ya

Simon

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com