>Second, Dorastor: Land of Doom and Lords of Terror taught us why Arkat could
>(relatively easily) switch his cult and drive agents of reprisal through the
>"philosophy" illumination. Peter Metcalph taught me it is connected to
>Eastern Philosophy and Mysticism.
>http://www.btinternet.com/~Nick_Brooke/moonie/illumination.htm
I should to point out that I don't believe Arkat was illuminated as defined by the terminology in that article. The motivations of Arkat are much different than an Illuminate. That Arkat is illuminated is a _guess_ made by some gloranthans.
>Fourth, I should confess I don't know precisely who began to call Arkati
>Empire as "Autarchy". But if I can guess the origin of this term, Gene
>Wolf's "The Book of the New Sun".
The suggestion was Nick Brooke's.
>But I don't know how [Arkati philosophy] can be linked to Trollish pragmatic,
>materialistic attitude toward metaphysical philosophy (except few exception).
>And there is difficulty why Arkat switched fluently his cult in the
>limitation of Hero Wars rule...
AFAIK he didn't switch fluently. He made irreversible decisions to abandon his old religion and join a new one. But he still retained his old experiences in the Heroplanes and Otherworlds and used it to gain new insights into his current journeys in the same planes.
There is a difficulty that if he were a fanatic of a religion (which implies learning a secret considering his power), then he shouldn't have been able to join another religion.
>(I still think Arkat could use "Death=Severspirit" as Humaktson,,,though both
>HW 1st Rule and Peter Metcalph's memo denied the man who achieves more
>than one Secret.)
Arkat may have been able to use the Sever Spirit after he quit Humakt. Hero Wars 1st edition does allows people to learn more than one secret in limited circumstances (Asrelia and Ty Kora Tek for example). My particular comment about Illuminates being unable to learn any secrets was more along the lines that they have already learned one "incomplete" secret (this relies on the assumption that a mystics strikes and counter is their secret) that prevents them from learning any other save the other Nysaloran doctrines which are now lost.
--Peter Metcalfe
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