I'm not a big fan of the darker readings Humakt (ie the kind in which he goes on a heroquest against Chalana Arroy). Besides being evil, death's for death's sake doesn't have any complexity to it: it is a dead end (apologies, but it fits). Also, it isn't clear to me how that attitude is different from the outlook of the chaotics who want to destroy the world. If Humakt is the god of Death as Oblivion then wouldn't he also want to still Orlanth's winds?
The reading I get from the material at hand is of a "Humakt who wields death so that the clan may live" (justifying his presence within the clan) or one who reasons that "Only by embracing death can life be lived fully" (justifying the choice to become a warrior) or that "Life has no meaning without Death" (drawing on the truth rune affinity). This shows Humakt an agent of change, which appears to be a core value of the storm pantheon, and it also makes him a servant of life, or at least of the cycle of life and death. Of course, individual Humakti could still be murderous psychopaths. It could even require successful participation in the Chalana Arroy Heals the Scars heroquest, in which Humakt loses his scar of certitude (KoDP), for Humakti to understand the paradoxical identity of life and death.
Does this reading of Humakt fit Gloranthan cosmology? Can anyone point me to any Humakti myths besides the cult writeups and the myth of Humakt the Champion? How, for example, did he acquire his affinity with the truth rune? Also, in the "secret" version of the KoDP myth available only to Humakti devotees, the severing of kinship ties is denied as a lie told by the other clansmen? What's the "real" story?
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