>Is there any other source for the cult of Annilla?
The only other source is the Pelorian Blue Moon Myth in the Troll Gods little yellow booklet.
But since it's clear that you want more detail about the cult as
opposed to having
strange names, I shall attempt to make up some detail.
When the Uz first came to Hurtplace, they were lost and confused. Everything was strange to them and so they took the advice of everything that looked friendly. Sometimes this advice was good such as when Argan Argar told them what to do and sometimes this advice was bad when the Black Sea Monster invited them to march into its stomach. So when the Uz found the Blue Moon Plateau (probably as a part of the Gash/Gore Migration) they were looking for answers.
Let's turn to the origins of the Blue Moon Plateau. Formerly this was the land of Dosvolos ruled by the city of Mernita. The plateau was formed during the flood (ILH-2 p81). We know a little about the deities worshipped there (Lesilla the mother, Cerrulia the ruler, Demiska the archer and Verithurusa/Jernedeus the child). Annilla therefor must have been the Crone goddess, the keeper of wisdom. There's also some bat worship based on conflict with the bird worshippers of Ashril/Rinliddi.
So when the moon feel on top of Mernita, what it left behind was the ghost
of a Dara Happan city that was and is trying to be alive once again. The
uz that settled the plateau listened to the ghosts and adopted their customs.
Where the ghosts were incomplete or confused, the Uz searched their
own lore (fresh from the Underworld) for anything that might fit. In
particular
when they encountered the Crone and found her erratic and impossible
to understand, they connected her with a mysterious deity of secrets they
had known in the underworld. It was then Annila's worship became
transformed from a kindly wise goddess into a malevolent goddess of
assassins and secrets.
We can probably work out the cult structure of Annilla from this. It distinctly parallels the old Yelm cult structure or the modern Grazer cult stratas (it doesn't matter which because Mernita was in a position to be influenced by both Dara and Pent in mythic times).
Scout - sneaks around without being seen.
Assassin - gets to kill people and take their stuff.
Eater of Secrets - originally the station of mother, this station had become perversely transformed by the destruction into something perverse. The Eaters gets to devour secrets and integrate them within the wider consciousness of the Blue Moon. They can use some of the knowledge they devour at the price of removing themselves a fraction further from the known world.
Invisible Elders - When an eater becomes too secretive, he or she becomes totally concealed from mortal sight and only the strongest of scrying magics or the a cultist of (mother) or above can easily communicate with them. Assassins and scouts are aware of their presence. Likewise to affect the mortal world takes great energy which they prefer not to use.
The Elders hang around in the invisible city directing the activities of the local assassins but eventually they go bored and travel to the Blue Moon. Most of the Elders today took part in the Wars against Sheng Seleris. There are perhaps barely a dozen who fought against the EWF. In the Imperial Age, the equivalent battles would be the Gbaji Wars.
The Eaters lead the hunting bands but they are answerable to a Veil at every temple. The Veils are Invisible Elders that have acquired the secret lore of wearing the sacral garments that allow them to affect the known world.
I mentioned the Invisible City. In my opinion, if you look at it magically, you can see trolls acting like Dara Happans with the secrets they have obtained visible as slaves (ie lore from a Pentan would appear as a Pentan slave).
For fun, we could also speculate that the changes in the Dara Happan and Pentan societies over the ages would caused similar echoes in the cult of Annilla. But this is probably only if you want to do an actual campaign on the Blue Moon Plateau.
One last thing - into the Uz Realms had troll Blue Moon Assassins following a moth. This was a toned down colourless version of the original encounter in Trollpak (RQ2) in which the trolls were in a gondola which were attached to the moths. They used the moths for smelling their enemies so they could track them.
Does that help?
--Peter Metcalfe
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