In my opinion, focusing on Arkat as a person is an imperfect approach.
The Deceiver is a cosmological constant of Glorantha very much like the Sun and the Sea. His relationship with Chaos or the Trickster or the reasons he became potent during the Gbaji Wars are interesting questions but not material here.
There are five absolute positions involving the rejection of Deceiver: the Malkioni Position, the Humakti Position, the Uz Position, the Chaotic Position and the Traitor's Position. This last is really a twisting and cursed path that moves through and unites the other four positions. Most Arkati follow one positions or two positions. Following more runs the risk of being drawn onto the Loser's Path. Arkat's agony was that he was the first to find this Path and experience it perfectly.
Arkat was marked in some way by the Sunstop but then so were many other gloranthans. What distinguished Arkat from the others was that he was forced by circumstances of the war onto the Loser's Path. Originally he was a Brithini fighting the war. Then he was expelled and became a Seshnegi knight. Although he was still a Malkioni, his two experiences of the same place on the Heroplanes gave him the first inklings of the Path.
Questing along the Path helped him greatly in Ralios but gradually alienated him from the Seshnegi. When he was killed and brought back to life, he had acquired sufficient insight of the Path to join Humakt. Several other factors may have driven him to this point; he might have acquired the Relife Sickness or his resurrection may have awakened a long forgotten memory of his father.
But the pyschic momentum he acquired from this shift forced him onwards along the path and far from finding peace, he felt impelled to reach the next position - the Uz.
Obscuring this is this is just the history of _the_ Arkat. There were several other gloranthan heroes with the same uncompromising stance against the Deceiver; they were lesser Arkats so to speak. Over time they became conflated with the Arkat and so it is you find tales of Arkat acting like a Humakti in Peloria or as an Uz in Ralios or a Knight in Maniria. What they didn't have was Arkat's slavery to the Path.
--Peter Metcalfe
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