[Glorantha] Humath + Hu'Makt = Humakt...

[Graham Robinson]

Greg quotes(1) aside, there's a lot of evidence to support my theory. I'll touch on a few bits below...

The name. To me the "kt" formation is not right for Sartar. It feels foreign. Apparently others feel the opposite - such is life...

Humath *must* exist. He's the God that is Orlanth's brother. The god "before" the discovery of death. We know some of his myths - mainly via myths of Orlanth's youth. Whether he's worshipped (any more) is another question. At the very least he seems to survive as the Hu subcult.

Psychopomps. The Heortling religion has too many Gods in this role. Issaries, Humakt, Ty Kora Tek (there's another foreign sounding name...). One of them - Humakt - is *the* death god. He has myths about saving the world in the Darkness by seperating the living from the dead. Yet Harmast gives the psychopomp role in the Lightbringer Quest to the merchant...

King of Sartar describes the discovery of Death by Eurmal. Eurmal uses Death to kill Grandfather Mortal. Orlanth borrows Death and uses it to kill Yelm. Not Humakt - Death. That's a strange way to phrase it. Normally the god's name and the name of whatever he's god of are pretty interchangeable. Not here. Here, Death is something seperate that Humakt is merely the keeper of. And this is a version from the 1600s.

Humakti fight honorable duels. Humakti fight in regiments with formal hierarchies. How did that arise in Orlanthi society?

And so on...

Oh, and just because some people seem to be confusing my theory with something else, a quick restatement :

The Dawn Orlanthi knew Humath, a storm god who fought with Swords, and probably had some Honour attributes (at least compared to Orlanth, etc.). Someone else knew Hu'Makt, a god of seperation, death and fighting with swords, again probably with Honour attributes. At the Dawn, the Heortlings discovered the two cults, realised they were the same God, and started to form a unified cult. Lots of foreign oddities still survive, and I doubt that the current importance of the cult was reached until the end of the First Age, or even the Second Age.

Nothing to do with Arkat, Carmanians, or so on...

Cheers,
Graham

1 - Since when do we take Greg's comments as final and definitive, especially if it blocks an interesting idea? Greg never seems to... YGWV.

-- 
Graham Robinson
graham at albionsoft.com

Albion Software Engineering Ltd.