> > (In the Swords universe we're playing with this a
> LOT,
> > but we're also diverging a lot from standard
> > Glorantha. I have a nasty suspicion we're going to
> > find that Arkat was several PCs, despite us gaming
> in 1621.)
> Do you really mean Arkat? (not Argrath). if so, you
> *have* to explain.
Yes, I do. So far this is only a vague idea, and it depends on some serious divergence from anyone else's Glorantha, never mind whether it's core Glorantha, GaG, Greg's Glorantha or what. Hence the mental health warning, and new subject line. But you asked....
The Swords campaign is about the adventures of a Humakti mercenary band. It has its own little subcult/herocult of Humakt (possibly also available as stand-alone hero-cult depending on game needs). Hereward Truewind was, like so many other Humakti subcults, one of Arkat's followers. We're learning various things about him, he's still under development. But he's completely "ours", he doesn't exist in anyone else's Glorantha, we made him up from scratch.
In our Glorantha, Arkat did do system-level editing on the cult of Humakt/Humath. Don't bother telling me how this contradicts known history. I know. See above comments about non-standard Glorantha and mental health warnings. Quite what these edits consisted of is something we're still exploring in-game, but it looks like chopping off Humakt's Wind affinity was his work. What gets really interesting is that it looks as if it was Hereward who taught Arkat how to do this. How he found out himself, we have no idea. The subcult has shrunk down to less than 30 initiates and about 2 devotees before the PCs became PCs, so a lot of knowledge had been "lost" and is being "rediscovered" by heroquesting. Then there's the Jalmar sub-cult mixed up in it, the one that's Illuminated (RQ definition) and specialises in spotting Chaotic Dark Side Illuminates. (Yes, Jedi jokes do come in here). Sending a Jalmari down a Herewardi heroquest and discovering that Hereward was illuminated too adds more complication.
So, what of Arkat's deeds did he do, and what did his followers do? And at what point did each of them decide he'd gone too far, and leave him to it? Original idea was that Hereward left him at the "turn into a troll" point. We're starting to think that if so, he came back later. We know for certain that it was Jalmar who taught Arkat how to use the powers of the Unbreakable Sword, and Hereward ended up owning it (it's now the Legion's wyter, for one thing - no, not a copy, the actual sword). We just came up with an idea that in that final battle against Gbaji, it was Jalmar who was meant to work out which target was Gbaji not Nysalor or Arkat, and then Hereward and the Sword was meant to deal with them once identified. Arkat himself was by now a troll, holding a club. But something went wrong - Jalmar wasn't there, perhaps. Hereward killed - someone. He isn't quite sure who. So that's the question of which of those three survived settled: only one person can possibly know, and he doesn't.
So far, so insane. But your comment above made me see how I can make it worse. The players had already decided that "fixing" Arkat's meddling might be a good idea. Or not. But getting up to the level of system-level editing mythology is certainly something they aim at, long term. One of them wants to remove Vivamort, for instance. It now occurs to me that system-level editing their own, much smaller, cults, would be comparatively easy. So, if the actions of Hereward and Jalmar, later attributed to Arkat, are actually being determined by PCs....?
Someone's going to mention "hero-questing with respect and humility", aren't they? Please don't. This seems to be more like "mistakes are made (by others) and fixed (by us)".
You asked. Do you now regret it?
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