> Anyone care to suggest how much direct worship Shargash gets in Dara Happa?
Tricky question. Shargash is the wargod of Alkoth, chief god of that city, which is one of the three which make up the ancient Dara Happan Tripolis. This suggests he'd get a *lot* of direct worship. On the other hand, folk like John Medway and myself have speculated that maybe the Lunars now keep a lid on the more fanatically destructive aspects of his worship: the god chained in his temple, fed on deaths in the arena, not unleashed upon the land like back in the Good Old Days.
I don't think Shargash is primarily worshipped as a "storm god." My belief is that he's worshipped as the Destroyer, who happens to wield thunderbolts etc. The atmospheric phenomena surrounding him are kinda like "special effects," not his raison d'etre: you would NEVER ask Shargash for good weather.
> This would seem to imply that the hypothetical "Troll raised by Humans"
> would be able to speak fluent darktongue, something I'm not quite ready
> to accept.
Herodotus records in his "Histories" an experiment to find out what was the oldest human language:
"The Egyptians before the reign of Psammetichus used to think that of all races in the world they were the most ancient; Psammetichus, however, when he came to the throne, took it into his head to settle this question of priority, and ever since his time the Egyptians have believed that the Phrygians surpass them in antiquity and that they themselves come second. Psammetichus, finding that mere inquiry failed to reveal which was the original race of mankind, devised an ingenious method of determining the matter. He took at random, from an ordinary family, two newly born infants and gave them to a shepherd to be brought up among his flocks, under strict orders that no one should utter a word in their presence. They were to be kept by themselves in a lonely cottage, and the shepherd was to bring in goats from time to time, to see that the babies had enough milk to drink, and to look after them in any other way that was necessary. All these arrangements were made by Psammetichus because he wished to find out what word the children would first utter, once they had grown out of their meaningless baby-talk. The plan succeeded; two years later the shephers, who during that time had done everything he had been told to, happened one day to open the door of the cottage and go in, when both children, running up to him with hands outstretched, pronounced the word 'becos'. The first time this occurred the shepherd made no mention of it; but later, when he found that every time he visited the children to attend to their needs the same word was constantly repeated by them, he informed his master. Psammetichus ordered the children to be brought to him, and when he himself heard them say 'becos' he determined to find out to what language the word belonged. His inquiries revealed that it was the Phrygian for 'bread', and in consideration of this the Egyptians yielded their claims and admitted the superior antiquity of the Phrygians. That this was what really happened I myself learned from the priests of Hephaestus at Memphis -- though the Greeks have various improbable versions of the story, such as that Psammetichus had the children brought up by women whose tongues he had cut out. The version of the priests, however, is the one I have given."
If it works in our world, why not in Glorantha? ;-)
Vive la Resistance!
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