>David Cake says: [about Illumination]
>>We know that the mystics of Kralorela know of it.
Which is IMO a feature of Metsyla's reign, definitely pre-Daruda.
>>And Arkat was of
>>course Illuminated while still a Malkioni. And Illumination is the central
>>mystery of the Nysalor cult - if Illumination had no attraction to the
>>Malkioni, would it have spread throughout Ralios, so tenaciously it needed
>>a brutal civil war to remove?
>As far as I know, Ralios was peopled by a bunch of Storm worshippers and
>quickly evolving Hsunchen when Nysalor arrived.
The Storm worshippers were one of these "quickly evolving Hsunchen" peoples...
There were no Malkioni in Ralios proper at the time Arkat arrived there. There were converted Enerali who worshipped Malkion in Tanisor, and possibly Fornoar.
>You may confuse it with
>Tanisor, where somehow (Malkioni disinterest perhaps?) Illumination did not
>prosper, so you have all that plague and healing business, that brings up
>quickly to Arkat.
IMO Tanisor had embraced first Malkionism, then Illumination. Neither to their full extent, as the subsequent developments seem to imply - their kings becoming the Vampire Kings. (And likely the source for the Vivamort-Humakt enmity myth...) The plague&healing trick IMO was played around Laurmal.
>Arkat conquered all of it (in a quite bloody way) and then made henotheism,
>with respect to the beliefs of the constituting parts, the state religion.
I tend to differentiate Henotheism from Arkat's Stygianism proper. Henotheism seems to be older than Arkat's state-religion for his Dark Empire, and was IMO a side-development of Malkionism in the regions where Malkionism and Lightbringer missionaries met and mingled, i.e. in Slontos and Tanisor, keeping traces from 1st century Malkionism (Serpent Kings' era).
Arkat's Stygianism built upon this older Henotheism rather than the purer New Hrestoli Way, which made up a lot of the religious differences Gerlant's kingdom had with the Stygian Empire after 450.
>The Return to Rightness crusaders smashed all this and forced everybody to
>follow the jrusteli way. And after the fall of the Jrusteli Empire, each
>small town in Ralios tried to return to their original beliefs.
Ingo and I are currently trying to figure out some of the details of this process. IMO the three rivals are a leaders from this era, and I have the suspicion that at least one of them is from a God Learner tradition...
>>Among other things, [Illumination] might allow Malkioni to access some
>>deist magic without ceasing to be Malkioni believers (in a frightfully
>>heretical manner).
>You already have that, more or less, and it is Arkat's legacy, now lost.
>Illumination is certainly possible for the Malkioni, but they are not dawn
>to it.
So you claim that Henotheism is sort of a very weak Illumination effect?
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