Good point. Thought the mantra "father's blood is short and weak" applies even here, I betcha; the notional object of worship in each case would be female descendants, particularly any Uzuz daughters and grandaughters of Arkat in the family tree. Obviously they still make it loudly known who the Founder's dad just happened to be, though. In form, I think such worship is Bog Standard KL Stuff, give or take.
Another point someone raised a while ago is this is a potential excuse for the Kitori being a single tribe; it may be that both the human clans and the trollish ones claim descent from Arkat. A common mythic ancestor is usual for troll tribes, but not a requirement for a human one, so how necessary this is is arguable either way.
Peter Metcalfe reckons that:
> The Uz to some extent imitate the Hooman practice of the Secret
> Society IMO. An indication of this is the 'underground city'
> which supposedly runs the cult.
Of course, it may simply be that the 'underground city' is a run-of- the-mill Castle of Lead, cos trolls _like_ it underground, and that it's purpose is just unknown to _humans_. But I suspect that to some extent it is indicative of some degree of the endemic Ralios Secret Society nonsense; as I carefully equivocated earlier, I'm sure at least some of the Ralios Uz do this sorta thing.
> Normally for most Uz cults, the centre of power is well known to Uz [...].
> The only other cult which has an unknown power centre is Zorak Zoran
> and that is associated with Arkat.
But we do know where the power centre is: Guhan. ZZ's surely a different case -- he's too widespread to have a single centre of power, and too unremittingly Disorderly to have any overall power structure beyond a single Death Lord and his gang, in normal structures. (I don't think Lord General of Death is _really_ a permanent position, living in an underground Lead Pentagon of Blood in between manifestations, though I'm always open to wacky elaborations of this or other theories.)
I think the association between ZZ and Arkat is also something that varies tremendously. (Like from about zero, to total.)
["sorcerous" aspect of Arkat is very much like a divine cult]
> Although Greg has said that is what the Cult of Black Arkat is
> like, I'm not sure that he included Arkat Kingtroll in this.
I'm not sure either, though I suspect it's what he intended. Whether Kingtroll is the right epiphet is also questionable; even the TG Arkat rightup gives him three, of which Heroquester is the one most directly related to the sorcerous stuff, though I doubt the cult actually _call_ themselves that. In fact, the accepted terminology for all Arkat cults is probably more the classic Irregular Noun Phrase: "_We're_ the one true Arkat cult; _they_ are all a bunch of traitrous heretics, who'll be first on the spike when He returns."
> Upon reflection, I think that the Uz Arkati of Ralios use human
> style sorcerer whereas the Uz Arkati of elsewhere (save for the
> Mistress Race) use the divinized sorcery.
This may well be true, though in Ralios there's less need for Arkat as a "focus" of a sorcery cult at all, so (human-style) Uz sorcerers in Ralios may pay lip-service to Arkat, or in some cases not even that.
Slainte,
Alex.
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