Below you find a fragment from a Fifth Age document, which I've had sitting on my disk for quite a while now. While working my way through a three week backlog I saw a lot of things in the discussion which reminded me of this, so I thought I might as well post it.
I won't pester you with the complete document. It's a series of instructions from someone to a follower. I'm not quite sure the someone even believes what he is saying himself. He might just be a con-man setting somebody up. Anyway, it's an almost consistent conspiracy theory. Enjoy!
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It is time to tell you more about who we follow. Read on and learn, but learn not only the facts but also the techniques visible in the stories. So far you know we try to emulate Argrath, who spent his life to keep the Red Empire from destroying the world. Argrath, the man. Some say Argrath, the god. Know then that Argrath was more than a man and more than a god. Know that Argrath was not Argrath as he is known, born to human parents in the age leading to the Hero Wars. Know that Argrath was a guise of the Living Trickster, just one of many guises, some well known but most hidden.
Before I can tell you the story of the Living Trickster I must first explain something about the world. You have been taught that Glorantha is a bubble of Order in a sea of Chaos, that Chaos is doing all it can to destroy this bubble and that we must do all we can to destroy the Chaos that invades the world. This is only partly true. Obviously, Chaos cannot be allowed to completely obliterate the world. But that is not the only way the world can come to an end. The opposite can also happen. The world can be reduced to absolute Order. It would be safe from Chaos, but nothing we know and value would or could exist anymore. A Glorantha where it is possible for us to live must be an equilibrium between Order and Chaos, and containing both.
Now let's try to make some sense of those overly philosophical words "Order" and "Chaos", so that we can interpret this fancy cosmological doctrine and understand we we have to do. Order is mindless stability. Chaos is mindless change. If there is too much stability there can be no more change. If there is too much change there can be no more stability. The world needs both to survive. If we fear that change is getting too strong we must fight it and encourage stability. Chaos, being very strong change, is especially dangerous and must be held at bay as much as possible. Most sane people in the world agree with us here. But in the other half of our task we are usually joined only by lunatics: if we fear that stability is growing too strong we must introduce change. We fight both sides. And more, for if either or both sides gain strong proponents we must fight for the balance.
The only god that understood this was Trickster. He gave us the best example yet of what we have to do. When he recognized that Yelm's Golden Age would lead only to stagnation he introduced Death and tricked Orlanth into killing Yelm. Orlanth was the perfect choice, for his sense of honor was certain to force him to try and correct the rather drastic results afterwards. Of course Trickster went along on the Lightbringers' Quest and took care that all went as planned. In the end he tricked the gods into the Compromise, limiting their powers and reducing further risk from their side.
However, he had to be very careful here. He had to take care that he wouldn't be bound himself. He convinced Arachne Solara that she should protect the Web from the inside and that he would do it from the outside. The trickster gods everybody knows of are but shadows of the real Trickster, shadows he left behind so that nobody would suspect what he had done. As an additional touch, the shadows were such that Trickster became known everywhere as an annoying but basically harmless pest. Trickster himself, however, tricked Arachne Solara in giving him all the Free Will taken from the gods, except that which was needed for making the Web, and went out into our own world. Trickster became the Living Trickster.
In the beginning he had some trouble adapting. Things are different out here and he had to learn how to regain the powers he lost in the transition to his new body. Before he was ready a new god was created, called Nysalor. Trickster, now known as Arkat by the people he lived with, immediately recognized this new god as a threat. Nysalor preached what is known today as Illumination, a special way of looking at the world. Illumination is dangerous enough if found in a few people, but overwhelmingly so if it spreads throughout a complete empire. The insight that comes with Illumination may lead to indiscriminate use of Chaos, but may equally well lead to all-encompassing peace and hence strong stability. Either outcome endangered the world. Controlling this danger would be practically impossible, so the only option was the destruction of Nysalor and his empire. Arkat started a crusade against Nysalor, coining the more ominous name Gbaji for his enemy for propaganda reasons. In the course of his crusade Arkat managed to develop new powers by tapping into what was known as the Hero Plane. You know about this Plane from your Lhankor Mhy task. His enormous amounts of free will let him carve out new paths there. This gave him the opportunity to defeat Gbaji, but also brought new dangers to the world, since people now also learned how to abuse the Hero Plane. The need for new powers also meant that Arkat had to betray his friends and allies time and time again. He switched to new allies whenever it was opportune. He even switched to new bodies whenever the need arose. All, however, was for the greater good as he saw it and in the end he defeated his enemy. He cried as he did it for he had to destroy the person in the world most likely to understand and help him: in the meeting during the final battle he found Nysalor to be a kindred soul and he would have liked to spare him, but the risk was just too great. He destroyed Nysalor's body and bound his spirit in a special portion of the Web.
Afterwards Trickster kept the identity of Arkat for a while, but he soon found that it restrained his actions too much. He staged an apotheosis and went back to wandering in ever changing guises. There is no place here to tell you of all the little things he did and I will limit myself to the major actions, against the major threats to Glorantha.
The next really important threat was inadvertently started by Trickster himself. As Arkat he had forged new paths on the Hero Plane and people had watched and learned. A whole school formed, the members of which all set about using and abusing the Hero Plane. They were called the God Learners. Trickster wanted to organize a campaign against them but found he did not have the opportunity. He was still identifiable as Arkat and the God Learners were hunting for Arkat on the Hero Plane. Instead of the hunter the Trickster became the hunted. Maybe they just wanted to learn from Arkat himself, but it was equally possible that the God Learners had deduced Arkat's true nature and wanted to capture and use him. After all, his use of inhuman amounts of Free Will on the Hero Plane had made his endeavours much more effective than what the God Learners themselves were capable of. Trickster decided that the God Learner risk was too great and had to betray his older self. He attacked his enemies by shaking the battlefield: he cut a major strand of the Web. The ripples this caused in Glorantha's reality eliminated all who knew the God Learners' techniques. The new enemy was defeated. On the other hand the Web was weakened and an old enemy was freed. Gbaji esacaped and would have to be fought all over again.
Before the new battle with Gbaji could be joined, however, there was yet another threat to be dealt with. An empire had formed that strove for peace and harmony by using Dragon knowledge and Dragon thought, called the EWF. There was no time left to stimulate normal resistance and Trickster for the first time had to call on external help, namely that of the Dragons. Full-grown Dragons can fly the void between the worlds, but they can only hatch and grow up on worlds like Glorantha. Those born on Glorantha were, in a way, bound by the Web and only Arachne Solara and the Living Trickster could free them. It is not clear if the promise of this freedom would have been sufficient to make the Dragons betray their friends of the EWF. What certainly convinced them was Trickster's explanation of what would happen once the EWF spanned the world: due to the overpowering Order no new Dragons would no longer be able to hatch and the Dragons already on Glorantha would no longer be able to move out into the void. The Dragons understood and they themselves destroyed what they had helped to build.
With the EWF's threat removed, Trickster could start working on the second defeat of Gbaji. The first step in this was binding Gbaji to an entity that would be easier to attack. Even before his action against the EWF he had planted the thought of creation of another new God in the minds of important people in Peloria. He watched and waited for the right time for a successful ritual. When the time came he made sure that he was present, for this occasion in the guise of a lady in waiting. Since the creation of the goddess was to be accomplished by way of an adapted Lightbringers' Quest, he knew they would need a seventh and in this way made sure he was conveniently present and would be taken along. It was his knowledge of the Quest that made the creation of the Red Goddess successful and it was his planning and power that let her bind Gbaji. The task was accomplished with an impressive subtlety: neither his fellow questers nor Gbaji recognized who he was and what he was doing. After the quest, he disappeared again and went back to waiting, now for the right time for the destruction of the Red Goddess and, with her, Gbaji.
We don't know where he went during that time. Even we don't get to learn all Trickster's secrets. My teacher once suggested that the Pharaoh of the Holy Country was the Trickster's main guise during his wait. We'll never be sure.
We do know that for the second part of the plan he took the guise of Argrath. You know what he did and how he defeated the Red Goddess. This time he did free the Dragons that helped him. But he did more than just eliminate the Red Goddess and Gbaji. When he stood with the Gods against the Devil, he tricked them yet again. He reinforced the Web and pulled it even tighter. The control the Gods still had over their people practically disappeared. The Hero Plane became much harder to reach and was all but forgotten. Also, this time he did not take the absorbed Free Will for himself. Instead he distributed it among his allies. He decided it was time for the people to get the more opportunity to control their own destiny, and the corresponding responsibility. Even so, he singled out some of his allies and taught them some of his secrets. This group grew to be the Cult of Argrath the Living Trickster, us. Whenever there is someone with significantly more Free Will than others we try to recruit him to our battle to keep the world safe. Trickster is still out there and may call upon us for help at any time.
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