Troll Gods. Annilla Cult Writeup and the Regional Cult Table gives a figure of 28% of the population being initiates.
Anilha is also mentioned on the Gods Wall in the Glorious ReAscent as a Sister of Lokarnos. "For her part in destroying the world, Night Eagle cast her down from the sky of eternal night into the maws of the hole that she made. Mystics can see her Blue Streak far to the south."
The relation to Lokarnos probably needs some explanation. During the Storm Age after the Sun set/vanished, there were three planets in they sky which were a cause of fear. The Pamaltelans called them the Sky Witches while the Orlanthi probably knew them as the Unholy Trio (yes, that Unholy Trio - Thed, Ragnaglar and Malia).
One of the planets was Lokarnos's Planet, known as Derdo to the Pelandans and Chermata to the Agimori/Artmali. The Blue Moon was the second planet, originally known as Falsoretus to the Dara Happans, Vendara to the Pelandans and Veldara to the Artmali. These two planets were widely acknowledged as being the children of the third planet which was black and known as Black Dendara (Gorgorma?), KataMoripi to the Pelandans and Enjata Mo to the Pamaltelans.
Since Lokarnos/Derdo and Falsoretus/Anilha were the children of Black Dendara, Anilha was Lokarnos's sister (and both presumably were fathered from the dead sun).
This doesn't actually mean that Lokarnos and the Blue Moon didn't exist before the Storm Age as the Dara Happans show Falsoretus's Planet/Blue Moon up in the Sky during the Golden Age. Lokarnos's planet was probably up there also but I haven't quite worked out which name it was called then. What it's indicative of is the faces or masks each planet presented to Glorantha during the Storm Age and the Great Darkness. For example Verithurusa's Red Planet had become Lesilla's Blue Planet and would become a Black Planet.
For example in the Golden Age, the White Planet was worshipped as Dendara, the Emperor's Wife, all sweetness and light. Before then she was Entekos. In the Great Darkness, she became a horrible figure that scared even her worshippers to death. I'm also tempted to associate her with Thed in the Unholy Trio.
Annilla's prior face was Falsoretus, the Master of Transformation. The Dara Happan cult is little explained and I presume consists of perfunctory worship of a obscure deity. In the Storm Age, the planet was the ancestress of the Artmali Empires while when the Uz came along, they worshipped an even more deadly face, the mistress of secrets. I would also associate her with Malia given that both strike people dead with invisible weapons.
All this makes Lokarnos's planet very interesting. Lokarnos is quite a boring cult and even to the Dara Happans in the Great Darkness, he's presented as "ever reliable". Revealed Mythologies describes him as a fat god and tentatively suggests that he might be associated with Nyanka, a solution I find ludicrious. I'm tempted instead to see him as a face of parasites, something that grows healthy on the misery of others which is an ample description of the Dara Happan Empire at the time (although they would not recognize it) and also has some association with Ragnaglar.
--Peter Metcalfe
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