Strange
Broo -- Part II
This was the tale told by the strange creature that held me captive. It was less intelligible than I am making it, for the broo interrupted itself and sometimes broke off for several minutes to mutter or growl to itself in a medly of voices. Sometimes it seemed to be speaking to me, sometimes debating with itself, and sometimes speaking aloud to the winds. Most of the tale was told by two voices, one a female voice, the other that of a cultivated, if villanous, creature:
"Stranger, I see by your markings that you belong to a cult which fights chaos.
Like all your kind, I am sure you know little of the power of chaos, except that
you fear it and wish to destroy it. That is so even if chaos is the creator of
life, because you see it also as the destroyer of life."
"But there is no way to describe to you what chaos feels like. The power of
chaos, translated into emotion, is both fearsome and wonderful. Know you aught
of how Storm Bulls feel the presence of chaos? "
Cautiously I replied in the affirmative.
"Has it occurred to you that what they feel is how the creatures they seek feel
themselves?"
Actually it had not, and I so replied.
"The Storm Bulls free themselves of the oppressiveness of those feelings by
slaying without stint or respite, and so do many chaotic peoples themselves,
most especially mine own breed. And even your own cult deals with its fears by
exercising violence."
"Thus was I born in the swamps, one of the children of Thed. From the beginning
I felt the power of chaos within me and upon me. And I felt the blessings of
chaos more than its curses, for I was born stronger and smarter than all but the
mightiest of my kind, with the power to avoid spells cast against me by spirits,
and with these formidable horns upon my head." He gestured to the four horns
growing out of his skull.
"Indeed, the only curse of chaos that I felt was that which curses us all, a
burning desire to destroy and hurt all that I came upon, even myself. And, of
course, mine strength in potential at least was so great as to incite the fear
and enmity of the more powerful of my kind, for we are a fickle race, ever
hateful to each other, as the Horned Goddess decrees."
"The Goddess loves rape and rapine equally, and her idea of gifts is anything
that brings pain to others. Our species reproduces by rape, and sex for us
means death to the unfortunate female or even male of any species who bears our
children."
"I managed to survive by serving loyally, as loyally as I could, the strongest
in every group I was in. But although I enjoyed the chaos and destruction we
carried out on other races and even each other, I found that the mindlessness
of Thed and her worshippers did not satisfy me. I did not know what I wanted;
who among us does, but I hoped for some way in which I could use my powers of
mind as well as of body."
"One day I met a broo, Linger, who was different from the rest of our kind. I
could not tell how at first, save that he seemed cleaner and smarter than most
of us. Then I came to realize that Linger actually wanted to talk about
something more than the last raid or the next one. Linger had a view of the
world that I had not heard before, and he seemed interested in me as something
other than food or servant, for he spent many hours asking me questions."
"From him, for the first time, I heard of other Gods than Thed and Malia and the
Gods of our enemies. I heard of the ogre God Cacodemon, the Scorpion God Bagog,
of the Gods of change, Gorpgod and Krjalk, the nameless underground God of the
tunnels, and I heard of the Severed Gods, Tien and Atyar. Finally, I asked
Linger how he knew so much, and he replied, I am illumined, and that means that
I can use the Gods instead of being their pawn."
"I was eager to learn more of this new power, but Linger told me that he had
been trying to make me one of the illuminates, but so far with no success. It
is not a change which can be planned for, Linger said, but one that happens,
like all chaos, on its own whim."
The broo interrupted his story to ask me "What is the difference between chance and predestination?" I feared to reply, for now I thought the creature was illuminated himself, and I knew Riddles to be the Lunar way to corrupt the world. The creature laughed and said, "there is no difference, and if you understood that, you might become as I now am but was not then." I kept silent, for I knew that answering such questions or even thinking too much about them could blast my soul.
The broo continued his story: "Linger's efforts to illuminate me failed, but what I was most interested to learn from him was that there were cults that used intelligence and not just violence to reach their ends. The stories of the Severed God appealed to me, and he finally told me that he would bring me as a candidate to one of their underground temples."
"The test was difficult, but, strong as I was and am, I passed it easily. So
began the second part of my life, as a servant of the Severed God Atyar. Know
you aught of him?" he asked me. "No" I replied. "Perhaps you have heard of
him here as Thanatar." That was a name I had heard, the cult of the head
hunters, and one that inspired fear in me. I wondered if all the creature had
done was to save me as a head for one of its vile rites, and if all his talk of
healing had been simply a way to deceive me, as some of the chaos cults love to
do, before it took my head.
The broo laughed then, and said, "No, I will not take your head. And even when I was a Doomed One, I would not have taken your head, for I was of the cult of Atyar. I would have done even worse, and taken your mind and left you mindless."
"You must understand that for me Atyar was a far step above Thed, for this was a
cult in which my intelligence could not only be valued, but it also opened a
path to more knowledge."
"But understand, stranger, that every one of the jealous Gods lays some
requirement upon its worshippers. Just as Thed requires mindless destruction,
so Thanatar grants powerful gifts but lays great geases upon his followers. For
me, the gift of stealth that I received was not repaid by the geas: I was told
to eat the flesh of every victim of my mind-eating spells, and, more important,
never to use a weapon again. This second geas would have been fatal for most,
and for followers of most cults, but because of the powers I had to resist all
but mine own spells and divine spells, and because of the strength of my body
and my horns, I was capable of surviving even without weapons."
"Early in my experience with Atyar, I used his spell devour book to begin my
education. Soon the world of writing was opened to me. Given my great powers,
I advanced quickly in the cult. Unable to use weapons, I acquired the cult
armor of silver, which tarnished as it always does for us." He gestured at his
armor, whose nature I for the first time understood.
"And soon I was a firm enough ally of both the Horn of Atyar and the High Priest
of Dark Truths that I was allowed to use the cult's mightiest spells. The
mightiest spell of Atyar, my friend, is a spell which allows you to consume the
mind of others. And it was that spell, in the end, which proved my doom."
"The use of such a spell requires a particular relationship with the captive,
who must be prepared for several weeks. The ceremony itself can take place
only upon five days of the year, and so those few enemies who know the Atyar
cult or the combined cult of Thanatar know when the best time to attack us might
be. Few do, however, for our underground temples are fearsome places for the
uninitiated."
I noted that the creature had abandoned the past tense and was starting to refer to his relationship to the Atyar cult in the present tense. Needless to say, I was made uneasy by this change.
"But these spells are used relatively rarely, for the captive must be someone
with skills and spells and knowledge enough to be worth the trouble and the
risk." "Risk?" I broke in. "Yes, not only do these spells take much time and
preparation, but they are dangerous for the caster."
"So we must catch our targets alive, bring them home safely, carry out the
proper rituals to prepare both caster and victim, in my case eat properly of the
flesh of the victim, and then hope that the ritual is correctly performed."
"Three times did I carry out these rituals successfully against creatures that
wanted to slay me. Once on a member of your windy cult, once on a troll of Zorak
Zoran, once on a chaos-fighting Storm Bull. But it was the fourth that caused
my troubles. It was a priestess of Chalana Arroy herself."
I groaned at the horror of it. the creature that was professing to heal me had itself slain a priestess of Chalana Arroy.
"Yes, gaining control of healing powers would have made me mighty in my cult
for few creatures of chaos can heal. Or so I thought."
"But the woman was a problem from the beginning. She was fearless, even in the
face of the awful fate that awaited her. You must know, stranger, that the
rituals of Thanatar are designed at once to separate and to control the souls of
others. While the devotees of Than do separate the heads from the bodies and
lock the souls in their own heads, subject to the mastery of the one that slew
them, those of Atyar leave the body intact, but a mindless thing, while taking
the knowledge held by the victim directly into themselves."
"To carry out the process correctly one must inspire fear in the victim. It is
that fear which feeds the God and makes the soul vulnerable to separation from
its own God and to our taking. All the long rites we carry out are designed to
prepare both the soul of the victim and of the operator for this dreadful task.
I had carried out this task successfully against members of the great
chaos-fighting cults, for in the very violence against us they had revealed the
depths of their fears, fears that our ceremony drew upon successfully."
"But this woman was different." At this point the tale was interrupted, as the
creature looked up suddenly and said, "the spirit is coming."
At this point, I looked around in bewilderment, for I could see nothing, and by now was uncertain whether I was about to be healed or drained. Soon I was to feel a sensation that I had never felt before . . .
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #478
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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