> How does this separation of the otherworlds affect who Arkat
> was now?
Little, IMO.
> Originally part of his secret was basically as follows: While
> in the west he went heroquesting.
Yes. His earliest memories would be from his childhood with the elves of Brithos, where his mother - daughter of a Brithini Horal - had conceived, delivered and hidden him during the Sunstop, and/or on the Other Side. His father was a barbarian warlord/wargod and would have chosen the place, we can assume.
> He then joined Humakt and learned how to "forge his own
> path" in the otherworlds because he noticed certain common
> grounds where he could diverge off into another heroquest
> he had already been on. Now we find that the Westerners
> have an entirely different "Other Side" than the theists.
I'm not so sure about this. The place where the Elementals come from has always been pretty abstract and runic, a realm where energies rather than entities count.
Plus, the Adept and Saint Planes have been connected to the Godworld for a long time. Hrestol's node would open into the realm of Seshna Likita, for instance, since that is where some of the most formative events in his vita occurred. Whether through misapplied veneration or worship, or through some transcendent identity, the Godworld and the materialist planes do overlap. Before the Abiding Book, various degrees of interchangeability were commonplace, or the True Hrestoli Way would have been a reforming movement without opponents. Arkat did not experience the Adept plane before coming to Seshnela. However, as a Horal-in-training, I suspect that he visited the Godworld for raids while still Brithini.
I suspect that part of the Return to Rightness activities was to identify such crossover places, and set them Right by closing the connections (to all but the Jrusteli in the Know).
> So, does this mean that there are simliar areas in both the
> Sorcery Planes & the God World?
There are. Thanks to no fixed geography, there is lots of space for manifestations of the one in the other, usually through use of some method on the one place meant for the other.
> Maybe there are now several "base" Arkats (which doesn't
> explain how he gained his Heroquesting secrets)? Maybe he was
> just a really powerful heroquester to begin with and could
> handle the negative modifiers for being in the "wrong" otherside.
I have the distinct impression that he used his "being in the wrong" to his advantage. One thing I like in the KoDP quests is that there is almost no quest where you aren't defeated some way or the other. (The Orlanth quests might be different.)
> Personally, I like the first (well, now that we have the
> separate Other Sides). We know there are places where you
> can reach the Other Side "accidently" from Glorantha proper.
> Why can't there be places where the Other Sides leak into
> each other. I'm sure it's common in the Underworld.
IMO it is common everywhere where there is a similarity. This "getting drawn into someone else's myth/quest" would have to do with that.
> Now Arkat seems to have been a sorceror (Knight of Hrestol),
> Theist (Humakti) and Mystic (his illumination). Did he have
> any animist training? The closest I can see is some from his
> being a troll, although this seems to have been mostly Theist.
Word seems to be that the troll stuff is mostly animist.
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