Argrath and other Princes

From: Jane Williams <jane_at_williams.nildram.co.uk>
Date: Sat, 18 Apr 1998 16:49:12 +0000


On the killing of Telmori, Peter asks:
> How do you get the similarity? Argrath uses magicians and priests to
> hunt down the Telmori whereas Jomes uses Peltasts to fight them.
Argrath used priests as back-up to his warriors, which was certainly a useful innovation. But the actual fighting was done by warriors (type unknown), who wore wolfskins afterwards and took wolf-related nicknames.

and then gets mixed up over the Karandoli importation:
> The event is said to have occured early in his reign (KoS p213) and
> Minaryth Blue confirms this by stating Argrath's election as having
> occured in 1631 and his acceptance into the Colymar in 1632. Thus I
> think the 1627 date implausible.

He was given five years to bring them in, with his acceptance dependant on success, remember? So he asked permission in 1627, and five years later is 1632. You could say 1627 is early in his reign _in_Aldachur_ if you wanted to quibble.

Jeff Richard:
> More importantly, I am discovering that as a Kheldon tribal king, many
> folk from other tribes didn't trust Kallyr.
Sounds interesting. What's your source? (Mind you, distrusting the king of another tribe sounds perfectly normal to me!)

> To be honest, many Sartarites who participated in Starbrow's Rebellion
> were more willing to accept Temertain as Prince than Kallyr.
By the time he turned up, the choice was Temertain as Prince or total defeat and no Prince at all. (And the WFP write-up emphasizes the bias against female leaders rather more than I think a modern Gloranthan writer would. Those were the D&D days, after all).

> Granted he later turned out to be a rather big disappointment, but at
> the time, he was viewed by some to be Sartar returned.
"Sartar the Peacemaker" - yes, why not? He may even have been a worthy candidate before he got Tapped out of his senses.

> Kallyr is a tribal king in her own right - which is definitely against
> the traditions of the House of Sartar and with good reason.
Actually, you know, she isn't. More closely tied to one tribe that is normal, I agree, but if you look carefully at WFP, she was only a chieftain, expected to be king when the current king died. It looks like he did die during the rebellion, and she may have been acting king for a few weeks, but there wasn't time for a proper election. Yet another case where what "everyone knows" is false.

>>What other warlords do you propose, Jeff? More Argraths? Including
>>Harvar Ironfist? Or other players?

> Yep, yep and definitely yep. Player character warleaders, too, I
> hope! Player-character Argraths with any luck.
Don't forget Argrath White Bull (allied to Kallyr, arguably controlling the Praxians), Argrath of Pavis (taken seriously by no-one but himself), a possible ressurrected Broyan, the Fazzurites, the Grazers... MGF time!

Joerg refuses to be drawn into battle:
> I wasn't aware that I would appear as attacking Kallyr or defending
> Argrath. She is fairly incompetent as commander-in-chief, and he is a
> ruthless bastard - these are the facts.
Yes, and in previous discussions you've concluded from them that he is a more deserving and useful leader than she is. I still think there is a great deal more to rulership than simply being a warlord (ask Sartar), and that in any case we have next to no unbiased accounts of her battles to go on. She spent a lot of time fighting alongside Broyan, and at the end of that time had no trouble gathering troops for a fight in which she was known to be outnumbered. Either all Sartarites are idiots, or she'd acquired a reputation that CHDP doesn't bother to mention (I wonder why?)

>>I suspect those oaths are taken right back at initiation into the 
>>ancestor section of the Cult of Sartar.

> Maybe - but,.... some of the oaths may have meanings which don't become
> evident before a certain trigger (like taking the crown) is pulled. If
> the ancestral initiation includes "uphold the oaths of the Jonstown
> confederation", who would think that this includes a promise to the
> Telmori?

Good point. Kallyr would have taken the oaths originally knowing that any required action would be taken by senior members of what was then a large royal family, and she could ignore it. In 1602 this suddenly ceased to be the case, and it would all have come home to her in 1607. ("Of course, if the royal house were still around, they wouldn't let the Telmori get beaten up..." oops!)

*IF* Garrath ever took those oaths, I bet he read all the small print first! The promise to the Telmori was to help free them of their curse, wasn't it? Well, he did. Dead wolves aren't cursed.

> I always liked the Viking Box "Gods witout Godar" section and state
> that a deeper initiation without priests meddling is possible. It's the
> hard, heroquesty way, with real opposition rather than token
> opposition, but it's possible, even with a dormant deity.
Sounds like a good idea to me. I'll have to re-read Vikings. After all, one junior initiate does not make a religion. Kallyr would have had to boot-strap herself up to priest level for Flame purposes, surely?

>> Keeping her word would over-ride politics and strategy. 

> And she lacks the sense of legalism displayed by Argrath in the
> Mularik fragment...

Quite! See what I mean about her ability to do all that he did? Not "couldn't", but "wouldn't".

Dangerford:

>>.. and to start with Fazzur himself was present.

> To start with.... So, what's left is a deplenished Lunar battle line
> led by uninspired officers thrust into charge by Lunar treachery.
Could be: it all depends on when you see Fazzur as leaving. Denseros seems to imply it was after the battle (and I would have expected him to report along the lines of "since Fazzur wasn't there..." given his biases). What other sources do you have?

>>Battle of Queens
> Until she died, the battle had a definite sense of doom, didn't it?
"Disheartened Sartarites.... outnumbered but held a good position..." - still, they held out until noon! And since Leika had some troops left to lead in a charge, they can't have been doing *too* badly.

> (where she seems to have participated at Pennel Ford, judging from
> Tamera Threeslice's report in Questlines 2).
Just re-read the version on MOB's web page (my QL2 being out on loan), and I don't spot the reference.

Jane Williams jane_at_williams.nildram.co.uk http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~janewill/gloranth/


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