Dumping Argrath

[Nick Brooke]

You mention Gilgamesh, but Harrek could almost be Enkidu to Jar-eel's Ishtar, if you'll pardon the quibble. He is a hairy wild man, while she is smooth and fair, a tamer of brutes.

[Nick Brooke]

1 hour ago, Soccercalle said:

I am toying with the idea of using the text in "King of Sartar" as a prophecy and run a "mini-campaign" in the far future. I can use my players characters and make a large time-jump.

We had the Red Emperor aware of the prophecy of the Monster Empire in Life of Moonson. Fun times!

[Jeff]

1 minute ago, Nick Brooke said:

You mention Gilgamesh, but Harrek could almost be Enkidu to Jar-eel's Ishtar, if you'll pardon the quibble. He is a hairy wild man, while she is smooth and fair, a tamer of brutes.

We (Finn and I) were just reading that (Epic of Gilgamesh) together earlier today (as part his Literature class), and I think perhaps Beat-Pot is a better Enkidu. 

[Nick Brooke]

1 minute ago, Jeff said:

We (Finn and I) were just reading that (Epic of Gilgamesh) together earlier today (as part his Literature class), and I think perhaps Beat-Pot is a better Enkidu. 

Yes, but it's in the nature of the Lunar Cycle to repeat its greatest hits. If she could redeem Aelwrin, then why not shoot for Harrek? Go big or go home.

[Soccercalle]

37 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Your player-characters can have stories that weave around these characters, directly interact with them, ignore them, supplement them, or even replace them (if you want to have one of your player-characters become the next Red Emperor, go for it, although that's not unlikely to be a path in published products). Present these characters as moral exemplars, villains, whatever - I personally view all of them as heroes, in the classical sense. They straddle the world of men and gods, which usually means they do great AND terrible things.  

 

As always good points @Jeff. I think that is the way the official publications should handle the main players. It dont that contradicts the ability of players and GMs to choose their own destiny. 
A side point. It would be very interesting to learn more about Androgeus at some point.

[Nick Brooke]

14 minutes ago, Soccercalle said:

A side point. It would be very interesting to learn more about Androgeus at some point.

There's a song about him in my second Gloranthan Manifesto, qv. And @Michael Cule told a phenomenal short story about her at one of our bygone conventions (more than twenty years ago? blimey!, time flies). Still sends a chill down my spine when I remember how he delivered it. (Michael, not Androgeus)

[DucksMustDie]

Just about to introduce Harrek to our campaign. I´m thinking The Undertaker 😄 

[Nick Brooke]

2 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

There's a song about him in my second Gloranthan Manifesto, qv. And @Michael Cule told a phenomenal short story about her at one of our bygone conventions (more than twenty years ago? blimey!, time flies). Still sends a chill down my spine when I remember how he delivered it. (Michael, not Androgeus)

Here you go: The Story of Aye and Bee.

[Summersong]

On 1/1/2023 at 4:57 AM, Eff said:

text produces player characters who are consistently in contact with Argrath

Does it? You maybe, depending on the dice, start with a minor loyalty to him, IF you choose to follow the lifepath system at the start. That's about it for 'consistently'. The game takes you where it takes you. In the meantime, it'd be rather odd if the character hadn't formed some sort of position on one of the major events of the age and associated personalities that'd been involved in so many major events lately. Even in the pre-dragonrise setting you'd have the same situation, if perhaps with a different NPC. The text doesn't 'implicitly' tell you anything much. YGWV, naturally.

 

[Darius West]

On 1/4/2023 at 12:07 PM, QuestingAce said:

I think he (Argrath) is kinda a boring authoritarian. I haven't liked how the important npcs are presented. Not for any canon reasons, but they lack the style, substance and utility I look for in gaming material.

I don't see Argrath that way at all, and authoritarianism isn't the way Orlanthi govern.  In a land where one of the laws is "nobody can make you do anything", that sort of thing "won't scow".  Chiefs and Kings have a certain amount of authority, but they more than most understand that they rule only with the consent and trust of the governed, which they have to constantly earn by choosing the right thing to do and being better at the job than other candidates.  While the Monarchy of Sartar might be determined by blood, the chiefs of clans and the kings of tribes are substantially meritocratic, because the ring will listen to the people, and if they fail the people, they will vote with their feet.

I see Argrath quite differently.  His early life is one broken by war.  Then he is driven from his home and forced into Praxian slavery.  Eventually he wins freedom and respect from his captors.  Then he becomes a Big Rubble adventurer, sword trainer, and wind lord.  We don't quite know when he becomes an illuminate.  He Hero Quests with Gonn Orta, and is pivotal in the White Bull society of the Praxians before he gets caught up in the Cradle and meets the Wolf Pirates.  

Now Harrek the Berserk is an authoritarian, and when Argrath stands up to him, and argues for why the Cradle needs to be left to go on its way.  Harrek petulantly kills Argrath for his temerity, but accepts his argument.  Argrath gets resurrected, but takes months to recover.

I see Argrath as mercurial, highly intelligent of the lateral thinker variety, and a seeker after the magical secrets of the world.  I see him less as a warrior and more of a "wizard" for this reason.  Argrath is powerful because of what he knows, probably more than he is for how he fights.  I do think Argrath is manipulative, and an intriguer, certainly a great negotiator, but he grew up being hunted for his few drops of Royal blood, so he needed those skills to survive the assassinations (we all know how he hates assassins).  I think Argrath is a military genius, and I think he is a reincarnation of Arkat who was born to be the shadow nemesis of the Red Moon Goddess.  Given his multiple failures, we cannot call him a Mary Sue like Jar Eel, or a brute like Harrek.  He's an interesting character.

Edited January 8, 2023 by Darius West

[Jeff]

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

I don't see Argrath that way at all, and authoritarianism isn't the way Orlanthi govern.  In a land where one of the laws is "nobody can make you do anything", that sort of thing "won't scow".  Chiefs and Kings have a certain amount of authority, but they more than most understand that they rule only with the consent and trust of the governed, which they have to constantly earn by choosing the right thing to do and being better at the job than other candidates.  While the Monarchy of Sartar might be determined by blood, the chiefs of clans and the kings of tribes are substantially meritocratic, because the ring will listen to the people, and if they fail the people, they will vote with their feet.

I see Argrath quite differently.  His early life is one broken by war.  Then he is driven from his home and forced into Praxian slavery.  Eventually he wins freedom and respect from his captors.  Then he becomes a Big Rubble adventurer, sword trainer, and wind lord.  We don't quite know when he becomes an illuminate.  He Hero Quests with Gonn Orta, and is pivotal in the White Bull society of the Praxians before he gets caught up in the Cradle and meets the Wolf Pirates.  

Now Harrek the Berserk is an authoritarian, and when Argrath stands up to him, and argues for why the Cradle needs to be left to go on its way.  Harrek petulantly kills Argrath for his temerity, but accepts his argument.  Argrath gets resurrected, but takes months to recover.

I see Argrath as mercurial, highly intelligent of the lateral thinker variety, and a seeker after the magical secrets of the world.  I see him less as a warrior and more of a "wizard" for this reason.  Argrath is powerful because of what he knows, probably more than he is for how he fights.  I do think Argrath is manipulative, and an intriguer, certainly a great negotiator, but he grew up being hunted for his few drops of Royal blood, so he needed those skills to survive the assassinations (we all know how he hates assassins).  I think Argrath is a military genius, and I think he is a reincarnation of Arkat who was born to be the shadow nemesis of the Red Moon Goddess.  Given his multiple failures, we cannot call him a Mary Sue like Jar Eel, or a brute like Harrek.  He's an interesting character.

I don't view Harrek as being particularly authoritarian at least in the modern sense of things. He leads through raw power and possessed with the divine fury of the White Bear. Bödvar Bjarki, Heracles, Edward Teach, Conan (with Gunda as a Bêlit figure), Gilgamesh, Rostam, etc. He expects to be obeyed by those who follow him, but he hardly has a regime to speak of. The Wolf Pirates are loyal to him because he is the White Bear - he's proven his strength and brings victories, plunder, and wealth. When he announces that he is going to raid, other Wolf Pirates flock to him! This of course is part of the reason that he is such a pillager and plunderer - he generously rewards his followers and allies!

Now Harrek doesn't do diplomacy or negotiation. He's not someone who can hold disparate groups together. But he's likely shrewder than people assume.  

[Nick Brooke]

Harrek mostly respects other people's strength. But Argrath always knows how to make him laugh. Sometimes by telling the moody pirate king the Trickster tales of his various peoples; and sometimes by the amusing way he bounces off the deck and falls overboard when he gets punched. Hilarious!

[Darius West]

On 1/9/2023 at 2:41 AM, Jeff said:

I don't view Harrek as being particularly authoritarian at least in the modern sense of things. He leads through raw power and possessed with the divine fury of the White Bear. Bödvar Bjarki, Heracles, Edward Teach, Conan (with Gunda as a Bêlit figure), Gilgamesh, Rostam, etc. He expects to be obeyed by those who follow him, but he hardly has a regime to speak of. The Wolf Pirates are loyal to him because he is the White Bear - he's proven his strength and brings victories, plunder, and wealth. When he announces that he is going to raid, other Wolf Pirates flock to him! This of course is part of the reason that he is such a pillager and plunderer - he generously rewards his followers and allies!

Now Harrek doesn't do diplomacy or negotiation. He's not someone who can hold disparate groups together. But he's likely shrewder than people assume.  

I beg to disagree.  A person who rules by fear is very authoritarian, perhaps the definition of authoritarianism.  The term "authoritarian" is defined as demanding obedience rather than individual freedom.  I think regardless of who you are, if you don't obey Harrek when he tells you to do something, you'd better get ready to D.I.

True, wolf pirates flock to him because he wins, and he may grant you a share of the plunder when he does.  This sounds like literally every authoritarian strongman who ever declared a war of aggression in history.  The fact that Harrek thrives on a disordered (not chaotic) environment speaks to his personal preference for such things, but if his underlings don't jump to and obey him... SLASHSLASHSHASH at SR1. 

[Martin Dick]

Whether he's authoritarian or not, he's fundamentally an ugly piece of work. While I think there is room to debate the merits and/or otherwise of Jar-Eel or Argrath or many of the participants in the Hero Wars, Harrek seems to have few if any redeeming features and I can't really see where he has had a positive impact on a society (though I guess you could argue making the Wolf Pirates better killers is positive for Wolf Pirate society). 

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, Martin Dick said:

Whether he's authoritarian or not, he's fundamentally an ugly piece of work.

Zorak Zoran without the good looks, boyish charm, and spiritual insight.

It goes against the grain, of course, but I have to agree with Jeff: Harrek doesn’t have to build and operate a(n authoritarian) political machine, because he is a one-man one-monster reign of terror. IRL leaders are just ordinary humans: without the powers of bear gods, they need systems to hold power.

[Eff]

2 hours ago, Martin Dick said:

Whether he's authoritarian or not, he's fundamentally an ugly piece of work. While I think there is room to debate the merits and/or otherwise of Jar-Eel or Argrath or many of the participants in the Hero Wars, Harrek seems to have few if any redeeming features and I can't really see where he has had a positive impact on a society (though I guess you could argue making the Wolf Pirates better killers is positive for Wolf Pirate society). 

I think there's room for a redemptive reading of Harrek, but it's fairly radical and dives into the extent to which Harrek is a sharply critical presentation of the alienated sword-and-sorcery hero. He's Elric seen from the outside- a terrifying killer, equipped with a horrifying, demonic magical object that seems to possess a will of its own, he betrayed his own people, he has only one or two friends at a time and he ends up fighting with most of them- but he's also an anti-Elric, big and muscular and described as animalistic. 

That's not the redemptive reading though, the redemptive reading asks if we should understand Harrek as someone trapped in this inverse Elric shell and struggling to break out, to articulate authentic desires rather than passing performative enactment of whims. 

[Akhôrahil]

19 minutes ago, Eff said:

he has only one or two friends at a time

Although at least he has the occasional friend. Argrath doesn't have friends - he has tools.

[Nick Brooke]

I recently enjoyed Our Flag Means Death, and now have a very different Harrek-and-Argrath relationship in mind. ("In this production, the role of Izzy Hands will be played by Jeff Richard")

I also think there could be mileage in a Dread Pirate Harrek take. ("We draw lots for who has to wear the rug, every raid: it terrifies our enemies, but it's so bloody uncomfortable")

[mfbrandi]

18 minutes ago, Eff said:

That's not the redemptive reading though, the redemptive reading asks if we should understand Harrek as someone trapped in this inverse Elric shell and struggling to break out, to articulate authentic desires rather than passing performative enactment of whims.

Harrek as Jerry Cornelius?

If he wants some authentic desires, I think I have a few left in stock. Only slightly shop-soiled. Almost certainly not stitched together in a sweat shop in the East End last week. Definitely not 3D-printed and artfully patinated.

If he turns out to be all shell and no flesh, do we stuff him with masticated crabsticks and then peel back the armour?

[mfbrandi]

12 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

I recently enjoyed Our Flag Means Death, and now have a very different Harrek-and-Argrath relationship in mind … I also think there could be mileage in a Dread Pirate Harrek take.

I was toying with Julian and Sandy, but I feared that in the end Harrek — the great butch omi — would be more like Robert de Niro in Stardust, and Allah preserve us from that!

[Eff]

29 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Harrek as Jerry Cornelius?

If he wants some authentic desires, I think I have a few left in stock. Only slightly shop-soiled. Almost certainly not stitched together in a sweat shop in the East End last week. Definitely not 3D-printed and artfully patinated.

If he turns out to be all shell and no flesh, do we stuff him with masticated crabsticks and then peel back the armour?

A Cornelius-like entity, certainly. But a different internal tension- Jerry the eternal teddyboy is unreservedly cool, the kind of cool entropy monster you can admire, and Harrek's Condition of Muzak-self doesn't seem to think Harrek's all that cool. But at least there's an Una, though said slightly differently. 

[mfbrandi]

34 minutes ago, Eff said:

Jerry the eternal teddyboy is unreservedly cool, the kind of cool entropy monster you can admire, and Harrek's Condition of Muzak-self doesn't seem to think Harrek's all that cool. But at least there's an Una, though said slightly differently.

Isn’t it Una who is harlequin-cool and Jerry just a washed-up sad clown failing every audition (the Deep Fix shambolic and out of tune)? The admirable monster — isn’t that Jerry’s mum?

Can we see Harrek in his Pierrot outfit sobbing his heart out at the end of Brighton’s West Pier (post-ruin, I think)? Maybe we can get Liz Williams to do a tarot reading for him (although, presumably, she was on the Palace Pier).

If we see Harrek as the self-pitying hero, doesn’t that go all the way back to Achilles, Odysseus, and Gilgamesh? The “hero script” has always been able to absorb that, hasn’t it? Achilles has his little moment of humanity when he gives back Hector’s body, but then he re-dons his polished bronze — which was only ever for show/plot shenanigans, not practical at all — and gets back on with Plan A: live fast and die young. He cannot deviate; no more can he peel off his own skin/psychological armour: it is just too tough.

Gosh, I am a miserable bastard, today!

Do you have a vision of the authentic Harrek trying to get out, or is the point that he wishes he had some authentic desires he could use as levers to prise open his carapace of rote violence but keeps coming up empty?

[mfbrandi]

We seem to have lapsed into even one-note Harrek is more interesting than Argrath. What is going on?

[Jeff]

21 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

We seem to have lapsed into even one-note Harrek is more interesting than Argrath. What is going on?

I enjoy all the main characters in the story and find them all filled with complexities and contradictions - all of these characters are flexible enough to support a variety of interpretations and takes.  

 

[Eff]

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

Isn’t it Una who is harlequin-cool and Jerry just a washed-up sad clown failing every audition (the Deep Fix shambolic and out of tune)? The admirable monster — isn’t that Jerry’s mum?

Can we see Harrek in his Pierrot outfit sobbing his heart out at the end of Brighton’s West Pier (post-ruin, I think)? Maybe we can get Liz Williams to do a tarot reading for him (although, presumably, she was on the Palace Pier).

If we see Harrek as the self-pitying hero, doesn’t that go all the way back to Achilles, Odysseus, and Gilgamesh? The “hero script” has always been able to absorb that, hasn’t it? Achilles has his little moment of humanity when he gives back Hector’s body, but then he re-dons his polished bronze — which was only ever for show/plot shenanigans, not practical at all — and gets back on with Plan A: live fast and die young. He cannot deviate; no more can he peel off his own skin/psychological armour: it is just too tough.

Gosh, I am a miserable bastard, today!

Do you have a vision of the authentic Harrek trying to get out, or is the point that he wishes he had some authentic desires he could use as levers to prise open his carapace of rote violence but keeps coming up empty?

Let me use more precise terminology. The multiversal entropy-eating world-destroying Messiah of the Age of Science Jerry Cornelius that you encounter in Final Programme through English Assassin I will call "the English Assassin" and the one in the "real-world"/mundane sections of The Condition of Muzak I will call "Muzak Jerry" and when referring to the multilayered combination of assorted JCs, I'll say "Jerry Cornelius". So, there is a sense in which the English Assassin is a fantasy that Muzak Jerry is having. This fantasy is something Muzak Jerry believes is cool, supercool, ultracool, especially as opposed to the rather deadbeat teen Muzak Jerry. Over the course of the quartet, the unified Jerry Cornelius as this metafictional entity comes to understand a couple of things, and wrapped up in this is the recognition that Una Persson, who unlike Jerry Cornelius doesn't condition her style on allegiance to a particular moment of mass culture, is cooler. 

So when reading Harrek as a Jerry Cornelius-like entity (to go with Harrek as a partially inverted Elric), we have The Berserk as a fantasy, we have Muzak Harrek as a constructed entity fantasizing, and so on. Now, Muzak Harrek doesn't seem to like The Berserk or think The Berserk is cool. Whereas Muzak Jerry imagines himself having kinky genderbending sex, Muzak Harrek sees The Berserk as only able to sublimate sex into violence (eg the story about Harrek going to a brothel and just tearing the place apart and then paying for all the damages afterwards). Muzak Harrek emphasizes the lonely nature of The Berserk, disconnected from all other human beings except Gunda. 

And then to really throw a curveball here, Muzak Harrek (and Muzak Jerry) aren't inherently metafictional disconnected entities at all, they're interpretable parts of the overall Harrek the Berserk/Jerry Cornelius that are dissociated from the public personae they use, and for Jerry as a combined being, his adoption of Pierrot as an identity is a way of accepting that the world has moved on from the years of his youth without having to abandon the selfhood he likes and enjoys inhabiting. 

Harrek doesn't seem to like the selfhood he inhabits. Maybe he does, maybe you can frame him that way, but as far as getting out of that selfhood, well. I can certainly think of many people of my acquaintance or friendship that had a similar understanding of themselves as necessarily brutish, destructive, violent, and animalistic, as needing to put on a mask of hypermasculinity to distract. But as far as voicing how they got out of it, well... it's pretty radical. 

Edited January 10, 2023 by Eff