Argan Argar Holiest Place?

[kr0p0s]

In the organisation section of the cult writeup in Cult Compendium it mentions:

The holiest place is Morbode, the site where Argan Argar destroyed Braznofstel, an important chaos demon.

I can find no further information on this in the Well or wiki. This seems like quite a black hole (pun intended) in the cult history. Is there any info out there?

 

[jajagappa]

47 minutes ago, kr0p0s said:

I can find no further information on this in the Well or wiki.

There's a few references mostly made by Terra Incognita in the old Glorantha digest (follow the link on the Well).

https://glorantha.steff.in/digests/GloranthaDigest/vol09/0302.html - it puts the site in the Blue Moon Plateau

https://glorantha.steff.in/digests/GloranthaDigest/vol08/1431.html - more about Blue Moon Plateau

https://glorantha.steff.in/digests/GloranthaDigest/vol07/3314.html - brief reference at start

https://glorantha.steff.in/digests/GloranthaDigest/vol07/2630.html - brief suggestion related to Old Rinliddi

https://glorantha.steff.in/digests/GloranthaDigest/vol07/2556.html - Rinliddi suggestion seems to have been used in a personal campaign

Possibly there's something in the Book of Drastic Resolutions: Darkness, but unfortunately there is no index or pdf for that so would require meticulous reading to see if there is anything there.

 

[kr0p0s]

It all seems a bit speculative and non-canonical.  Given that this is THE Holy site of a troll God that humans can interact with. We have the Kitori people and the Torkani tribe in Sartar that have him as patron god. Yet no info on this important site. Is there anything in the pipeline @Jeff?

[scott-martin]

21 minutes ago, kr0p0s said:

It all seems a bit speculative and non-canonical.  Given that this is THE Holy site of a troll God that humans can interact with. We have the Kitori people and the Torkani tribe in Sartar that have him as patron god. Yet no info on this important site. Is there anything in the pipeline?

Shannon "with help from Greg" claimed in Tradetalk 4 that Morbode was located in Old Rinliddi but ambitious Kethaelan darkness worshippers are unlikely to be able to access this information . . . for a few years now I've just assumed that the site's whereabouts became a state secret in the Holy Country after the general suppression of OOO heroform paths and so is carefully expunged from all available texts.

They probably know more about it in Halikiv (and IMG ancestral Spol) but for some reason people rarely go there. Either way, AA's primeval wandering may conceal a secret of Gloranthan prehistory. Or not!

[g33k]

31 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

 . . . for a few years now I've just assumed that the site's whereabouts became a state secret in the Holy Country after the general suppression of OOO heroform paths and so is carefully expunged from all available texts ...

I think your idea has some merit, but Holy Country isn't all of Glorantha.

Troll culture is ubiquitous, and presumably preserves the info.

Some humans worship AA, and likely do so near many troll lands, not just the ones in Holy Country.

AA was Ernalda's Darkness-Spouse, so I suspect the info would have survived in Esrolia even in the face of Belintar's disapproval; occult knowledge... but then, Dark is ok with secrets!

 

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

I've just assumed that the site's whereabouts became a state secret in the Holy Country after the general suppression of OOO heroform paths and so is carefully expunged from all available texts.

Well, they would like you to think that they knew but aren’t telling (and maybe no longer can, having expunged so diligently), but perhaps the truth is slightly stranger: Braznofstel was sufficiently chaotic that localising it was a fool’s game; despite its spatiotemporal slipperiness, Argan Argar destroyed it.

Morbode may manifest any time at any place. Spotting Morbode is an AA cult secret; the Holy Country Religious Police haven’t been able to stamp it out — they haven’t even been able to understand it.

AA deep cultists argue over whether Spotting Morbode is detection of a manifestation of the holy place, or whether successful use of the ritual makes it manifest.

[Qizilbashwoman]

4 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Well, they would like you to think that they knew but aren’t telling (and maybe no longer can, having expunged so diligently), but perhaps the truth is slightly stranger: Braznofstel was sufficiently chaotic that localising it was a fool’s game; despite its spatiotemporal slipperiness, Argan Argar destroyed it.

Morbode may manifest any time at any place. Spotting Morbode is an AA cult secret; the Holy Country Religious Police haven’t been able to stamp it out — they haven’t even been able to understand it.

AA deep cultists argue over whether Spotting Morbode is detection of a manifestation of the holy place, or whether successful use of the ritual makes it manifest.

Oh my god it's Danny the Street (first appearing in Doom Patrol #35, August 1990)

Edited February 14 by Qizilbashwoman

[mfbrandi]

7 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Oh my god it's Danny the Street (first appearing in Doom Patrol #35, August 1990)

At the time, I wondered whether Americans — the presumed primary readership — even knew who Danny La Rue was? Do any of you know whether they did?

[Qizilbashwoman]

3 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

At the time, I wondered whether Americans — the presumed primary readership — even knew who Danny La Rue was? Do any of you know whether they did?

they did not

[Brian Duguid]

19 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Possibly there's something in the Book of Drastic Resolutions: Darkness, but unfortunately there is no index or pdf for that so would require meticulous reading to see if there is anything there.

Page 76, regarding Koth, the son of Argan Argar who became the cult's spirit of reprisal:

Quote

"He was slain by chaos, but his father traveled to Morbode (far to the north of Kethaela) and rescued his soul, then slew foul Braznofstel".

[scott-martin]

4 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

At the time, I wondered whether Americans — the presumed primary readership — even knew who Danny La Rue was? Do any of you know whether they did?

I have a vague memory of a UK fan or three spotting the polari and spilling over into the letters column to educate the rest of us. Of course this would be completely lost in the collection. But this is not necessarily a street with a little bit extra podcast . . . Morbode as literally "fading land" liberated from geography is brilliant. Maybe a lot of AA worship in the north has "faded" or taken on different masks, hiding in something like plain sight.

Hey, there's actually an issue of BDR:D on the Amazon right now for less than the cost of a racing bicycle!

[mfbrandi]

3 hours ago, scott-martin said:

I have a vague memory of a UK fan or three spotting the polari and spilling over into the letters column to educate the rest of us.

I used to work with a guy whose hobby was writing scripts — Python? PERL? I can’t remember — to translate the bible into Polari.

[Qizilbashwoman]

2 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

I used to work with a guy whose hobby was writing scripts — Python? PERL? I can’t remember — to translate the bible into Polari.

i know this is getting off-topic but I'm reading a targum (translation) of the Torah in Yiddish class and let me tell you the absolute TEA that is Genesis... if you are curious, a many-colored garment is "a filfarbige kleyd"

[mfbrandi]

24 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

if you are curious, a many-colored garment is "a filfarbige kleyd"

Always. In this case — as often? — pretty straight German (according to my dimly remembered high school Deutsch) with variant spelling. Another job had me above a Hasidic study group … because the immanence of the Lord follows me around, I guess.

[Joerg]

34 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Always. In this case — as often? — pretty straight German (according to my dimly remembered high school Deutsch) with variant spelling. Another job had me above a Hasidic study group … because the immanence of the Lord follows me around, I guess.

Same to my native speaker eye/ear: Vielfarbiges Kleid in modern High German.

[Qizilbashwoman]

4 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Always. In this case — as often? — pretty straight German (according to my dimly remembered high school Deutsch) with variant spelling. Another job had me above a Hasidic study group … because the immanence of the Lord follows me around, I guess.

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

Same to my native speaker eye/ear: Vielfarbiges Kleid in modern High German.

I mean, Yiddish is a western variety of High German, it's only difficult to outsiders because it is written in a different script and it has different loanwords: Aramaic and Hebrew versus Latin for theological terms, with a decent amount of day to day words like animal names in Ukrainian, plus what it borrowed from French was via Ukrainian doesn't always overlap with what Standard High German borrowed from French - they are more in line with what Polish, Ukrainian-Byelorussian and Russian borrowed from French.

for example, i live on the dritn etazh (< Fr. étage), and a beetle isn't ein Käfer, it's a zhug

Galician Yiddish is the variety that most Hosidim speak (and therefore most Yiddish speakers), and I have to say, their accent is basically the Appalachian one to my ear. They don't say ays "ice", they say aas ([a:s]), they don't say kleyd, they say klayd, they don't say zhug but zhig, and their o turns into u (a kholem "dream" is a khulem).

Edited February 15 by Qizilbashwoman

[mfbrandi]

7 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

I mean, Yiddish is a western variety of High German

Yeah, sorry if I came off a bit jaded. It is a London thing (or that’s my story and I’m sticking to it). And I always wonder where and why one draws lines between languages: Scots vs. English (perhaps we should just call them both “broken German”); one seldom says “Serbo-Croat” these days, which seems a shame. Draw the lines differently for different occasions and purposes is the sensible answer, I guess — but we don’t seem to be living in a time of sensible answers.

Now we must frantically claim that communication is a very Argan Argar topic and not radically OT, at all! 😉

[scott-martin]

On 2/15/2023 at 4:58 AM, mfbrandi said:

Now we must frantically claim that communication is a very Argan Argar topic and not radically OT, at all! 😉

IMG Issaries implicitly carves out the languages of "undercommunities" -- the poor, sexual and religious nonconformists, unassimilables, alternative markets, outlaws, surrealists, criminals and other refuseniks -- as AA's specialist domain. This reflects the bolg god's role as patron of Darktongue (especially in visually written form) in societies that have pushed their uz / tamalite components below the surface. But YGWV and the thread probably deserves less esoteric response.

[kr0p0s]

On 2/14/2023 at 1:58 PM, Brian Duguid said:

Page 76, regarding Koth, the son of Argan Argar who became the cult's spirit of reprisal:

Quote

"He was slain by chaos, but his father traveled to Morbode (far to the north of Kethaela) and rescued his soul, then slew foul Braznofstel".

Given the hints towards Old Rindilli earlier, could the site of this battle be on or underneath the Blue Moon Plateau? Given the secretive nature of the Trolls there, this would explain the lack of general knowledge.

[Bohemond]

On 2/13/2023 at 2:37 PM, g33k said:

I think your idea has some merit, but Holy Country isn't all of Glorantha.

Troll culture is ubiquitous, and presumably preserves the info.

Some humans worship AA, and likely do so near many troll lands, not just the ones in Holy Country.

AA was Ernalda's Darkness-Spouse, so I suspect the info would have survived in Esrolia even in the face of Belintar's disapproval; occult knowledge... but then, Dark is ok with secrets!

 

The Pharaoh's magic was so power in doing this that it apparently extended into our world...