> On the Fimbulwinter not being registered in KoS
> other than by Minaryth
> Blue's 'Ashart dies of heat' (IIRC) this can be
> explained by the event being
> so well-known that nobody has to refer directly to
> it in documents written
> by and for people who had lived through it.
I doubt it - some of the documents are histories that attempt to be complete.
> The analogy would be someone from London leaving a
> note saying 'September
> 19th 1940: Jennie killed by bomb'.
I'm afraid it's more like a history of WW2, written in say the '50s, omitting the Battle of Britain.
> Leslie Alcock in Arthur's Britain makes a similar
> point about Gildas's de
> Excidio mentioning the Battle of Badon as happening
> 44 years before but that
> the book never mentions Arthur who is supposed to
> have won the battle and
> been a hugely important figure during Gildas's
> lifetime.
Now that is a very apt analogy, I suspect, but for a rather different reason. Gildas seems to have had something against this chap who seems to have financed his warband by doing what apparently felt like a protection racket on the Church, and was probably responsible for the deaths of two of Gildas' elder brothers :)
> Having the Fimbulwinter missing from the Composite
> History of Dragon Pass is
> slightly more troubling as that is meant to be a
> synoptic history - but it
> is hardly the only gaping hole in CHoDP (what
> really happened to Kallyr is an equivalent one).
It may well be: we figured out what really happened there years ago, but could something similar have happened here?
CHDP was written as a "history" and had to detect as True in front of LM witnesses, but to flatter the ruler to whom it was presented: Argrath. So it skips over little points of regicide and a civil war, re-writes lighting the Flame to seem as if Argath did it... why did it skip the Fimbulwinter, and barely mention Iceland?
If you want the detailed quibbles of other bits of
CHDP that are lying, start here:
http://www.jane-williams.me.uk/glorantha/kallyr/chdp.cfm
and for what may have really happened, try here:
http://www.toppoint.de/~joe/argrath-rebel.html
As I said all that time ago, Denseros only skips major things completely when "Argrath" was present, but his actions were too embarrassing to be mentioned: even more so than a later battle that gets described as "a total disaster for Argrath". So what on earth/the Lozenge can he have done during the Fimbulwinter that stopped Denseros from mentioning it at all? I sense a story here...
Well, where was he, and which one are we talking about? There are multiple Argraths, and while we used to have nice theories that showed that several of them were (or at least, could be) actually the same person (who had had his parents killed when he was still a child, spent some time with foster-parents, and eventually ran away to Pavis where he was known as Garrath Sharp-sword), OiD explicitly separates these people out again.
Garrath Sharp-sword is, in 1621, gallivanting around the oceans with Harrek, having given up on his defence of the Giant Cradle through the Underworld.
Argrath Maniskisson, who claims that ancestry in CHDP at the time he (or someone!) lights the Flame? Unknown.
Argrath Venharlsson, who claimed ancestry from the Karandoli clan of the Colymar "early in his reign"? Unknown.
Now, there are very strong hints that the Karandoli have a home that's in a Short World of their very own, or something a lot like it. (They also have a branch in Pavis: looks like they founded Badside, and fit in there quite well.) If Argrath Venharlsson handled the threat of the Fimbulwinter to Sartar by hiding himself and his clan away from danger, and leaving the rest of the country to starve and freeze, that's a perfectly valid Orlanthi thing to do, but not the way to get a rep. as a potential Prince of Sartar.
Or, could either of these two Argraths have been among the traitors who turned to the Lunar Way? The Argrath who eventually becomes Prince is remarkably adept at forming magical units, and merging different forms of magic - I wonder where he learnt that? He seems to have happily joined in the Tarsh civil wars on the Fazzurite side: I wonder where they had previously met and become allies? And, if either Argrath (I still suspect these two are the same person!) were at Iceland - which side were they on?
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