James Frusetta <gerakkag_at_wam.umd.edu> wrote:
>
As I see it, Kyger Litor is (or "represents", if you insist) the union of the Man-form with the Darkness-element. Both "man" and "darkness" exist independently, and also exist in combination with other runes--but the only *union* between the two is Kyger Litor. Thus, if a troll moves away from Kyger Litor, the troll will have difficulty in maintaining the union between the two archetypes. The most obvious result is the troll loses fertility--she finds it harder to create a new life which combines the two runes (that is, to get pregnant). But a possible alternative is that the troll keeps the tie to one of the two runes, and loses the other. A creature that is all-Man and no Darkness is precisely as alien to Kyger Litor as a creature that is all-Darkness and no Man.
So... stop doing the Kyger Litor rituals, and you become less fertile. Find an alternate way to become fertile (an alien god's rituals, say, or some roll-your-own shamanism), and you can have children, but they will lose either Dark or Man. (Gradually, gradually, of course...) It all boils down to the same thing: Being a Troll means being a daughter of Kyger Litor means being the union of Dark with Man. Those are all synonymous expressions.
Now, if I'm not completely off-base with this, it might have some interesting consequences. Vampires, for example, are another (and much later) combination of Dark with Man; Thanatar has similar connotations. Could there be some hidden connection with Kyger Litor? For example, I think all we know about Vivamort's origins is that he was a "darkness spirit in the underworld", in charge of guarding Death (presumably, connected with Subere somehow). Could he have been a child of Kyger Litor, or her kin (Zorak Zoran's no-good kid brother)? Did Thanatar steal the Man-rune from Kyger Litor as he stole so much else from one god or another? In either case, we could expect trolls to deeply hate vampires and headhunters, but not for the same reasons humans do. Humans hate vampires because they're monsters from the dark. Trolls hate vampires because they're the *wrong kind* of monsters from the dark--they're perversions of the Trollish form.
(I also suspect that to the typical human, there isn't much difference between "troll" and "vampire". Man-shaped, hates daylight and fire, check. Zombie & skeleton servants, check. Vampires drink your blood, trolls eat the rest of you--just a matter of taste, really. And, say, didn't the trolls turn Arkat into one of them, just the way vampires can do? And it's not like a typical human ever gets a good look at either one. "I say it's krjalki, and I say the hell with it!")
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End of Glorantha Digest
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