Kargan Tor. The God of what exactly?

[Darius West]

Does anyone else find Kargan Tor to be a confusing deity?  I mean, he was the god of Death before Humakt.  The problem was, he was a god of death when there sort-of was no death.  I mean, people fought, and I suppose they were knocked out if they were defeated, but got up again after a bit of a sleep or something.  Does that mean Kargan Tor was a god of violence, pain, and sleeping?  What form did death take during the age when Kargan Tor held/was the death rune?  Also, was Kargan Tor the death rune, or was he somehow responsible for hiding the item in the underworld somehow?  At first I thought the whole idea of a Death God in a world without death was somewhat comical.  It is a little hard to reconcile.  If anyone else has had any thoughts on the matter of this obscure piece of Gloranthan lore I'd love to hear about it.  

[Richard S.]

Kargan Tor's role seems to have been to prepare the gods for his inevitable dominance of the later gods war. He seemingly never left the spike or engaged in much proactive action during the golden age, unlike his peers like Larnste, being content to let the gods come to him to learn how to fight. Even then, his power as the separator seems to already have been in effect, since losers of fights seem to get sliced up into multiple pieces; the soul just didn't get separated from the body. Remember that Death is the power of all separation and endings, not just death in the normal sense.

There was a pretty long period after Eurmal tricks/steals/releases Kargan Tor from the Spike where true sent-to-the-underworld death did exist, before Humakt became his wielder. Humakt had to track down all the bits and pieces of death in order to claim that mantle, taking responsibility for Kargan Tor's excesses and introducing honor to the use of death.

[jajagappa]

44 minutes ago, Darius West said:

Does anyone else find Kargan Tor to be a confusing deity?  I mean, he was the god of Death before Humakt.

I think better to see him as the God of Separation, Competition, and Conflict. His home is the Court of Conflict. His Rune/sword divides and separates things.

The sorcerous techniques are a useful principle to look at in his (and perhaps Uleria's) case: there you have the Separate technique (and its opposite Combine). At the center of the Separate technique "rune" is the Rune of Kargan Tor. Without Kargan Tor you cannot divide one thing from another: the distillation of Water from Darkness, the separation of Earth from Water, even the creation of opposite Powers all arise from Kargan Tor. Where Uleria brings together and combines and unifies, Kargan Tor separates and divides.

The separation of one thing from another, often as opposites, also creates competition and conflict, so Kargan Tor comes to be the power that drives those as well. The ultimate separation is Death - and that is something of an endpoint for Kargan Tor as well, and the emergence of Humakt who could wield Death and also inherit the other capacities of Kargan Tor.

[Ali the Helering]

I would see him as Death in potentia as opposed to Humakt in actus.

[EricW]

Is death and war really the same thing? Nowadays sure, but what about in a world without death? Surely Kargan Tor was the god of war, before war meant death? Perhaps one of the reasons he fell is war without death no longer made sense, once death was introduced to the world - he was simply superseded?

[David Scott]

The Prosopadia entry (page 70), says he's the god of God of Conflict and Separation. It makes it clear that his duties are not well understood as Death didn't exist, and that he commanded powers that tear things or people apart.

[Darius West]

Good answers.  As to the other issue.  What do people think about the Death that Trickster and Humakt found in the Underworld?  After a fashion it is part of Kargan Tor.  Did he put it there, to protect the world from the excesses of his power perhaps?  What are the origins of this "new toy"?  Is anything written about that? Opinions?

Edited January 14 by Darius West

[David Scott]

34 minutes ago, Darius West said:

Is anything written about that? 

We know that Kargan Tor deserted his post and allowed the invasion of the Spike by Chaos (Prosopaedia 75). None of the Celestial Court, except Uleria survived the destruction of the Spike, they were all transformed or devolved in some way. In Lightbringers (page 101), we know that Eurmal found the Great Divider which is clearly (to me) is the remainder of Kargan Tor. Eurmal kills Grandfather Mortal, the effect being that the road to hell opens. This witnessed by Humakt (in Mythology this story doesn't involve Eurmal at all, other than he facilitates the use of Death), who takes the Great Divider and forges it into the True Sword, which is now Death itself. So the Great Divider becomes the "new toy" Death. As to what shape the Great Divider, was before it became the True Sword, we'll never know.

[Sir_Godspeed]

2 hours ago, David Scott said:

We know that Kargan Tor deserted his post and allowed the invasion of the Spike by Chaos (Prosopaedia 75). None of the Celestial Court, except Uleria survived the destruction of the Spike, they were all transformed or devolved in some way. In Lightbringers (page 101), we know that Eurmal found the Great Divider which is clearly (to me) is the remainder of Kargan Tor. Eurmal kills Grandfather Mortal, the effect being that the road to hell opens. This witnessed by Humakt (in Mythology this story doesn't involve Eurmal at all, other than he facilitates the use of Death), who takes the Great Divider and forges it into the True Sword, which is now Death itself. So the Great Divider becomes the "new toy" Death. As to what shape the Great Divider, was before it became the True Sword, we'll never know.

Headcanon: he ended up dividing himself to create something new. Philosophers argue whether this was a result of the increased volatility and destructive conflicts in the cosmos getting out of balance, or if it was simply in his nature and therefore and inevitable end result.

[David Scott]

9 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Headcanon: he ended up dividing himself to create something new. Philosophers argue whether this was a result of the increased volatility and destructive conflicts in the cosmos getting out of balance, or if it was simply in his nature and therefore and inevitable end result.

I don't think Kargan Tor did anything to himself, None of the Celestial Court (bar Uleria) survived the cosmic explosion vaporised the Spike and its inhabitants (Mythology 47). The pure powers were left and became part of those who now "own" the runes. In this case it was Humakt who remade the remains into something new. The debris of Larnste  was a secret hidden by Mastakos in the Well of Daliath, and so on.

[EricW]

15 hours ago, Darius West said:

Good answers.  As to the other issue.  What do people think about the Death that Trickster and Humakt found in the Underworld?  After a fashion it is part of Kargan Tor.  Did he put it there, to protect the world from the excesses of his power perhaps?  What are the origins of this "new toy"?  Is anything written about that? Opinions?

I don’t see death as being part of Kargan Tor, because death collapsed the ancient world. If Kargan Tor was flexible enough to accept death he would have put up a much better fight when Wakboth attacked the Spike.

Perhaps Trickster stumbled across death when casing Subere’s endless realm of darkness, looking for stuff to steal. Death attracted Trickster’s attention because this secret was so important and interesting it had a guard.

Edited January 15 by EricW

[Joerg]

Kargan Tor deserting his post on the Spike and Eurmal and Vivamort taking Death from Subere's Vault might be the same thing, framed differently.

[Ynneadwraith]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Kargan Tor deserting his post on the Spike and Eurmal and Vivamort taking Death from Subere's Vault might be the same thing, framed differently.

This.

My interpretation of mythology in Glorantha is that it's a little on the lovecraftian side. Not in terms of tentacles and fish-hybrids (though it's not necessarily averse to those), but in terms of it being the interpretation of events by mortals that simply aren't equipped to comprehend what they're seeing. This is not entirely dissimilar to how real-world polytheism works. Unknowable phenomena like the sun moving across the sky gets interpreted as a dude riding a chariot that's on fire.

Whether these unknowable phenomena are actually 'people' is the dividing line between sorcery and theistic worship, as far as I see it. The evidence we can see suggests that they are, but considering they're people who can be 'edited' (Heroquesting generally, and Godlearnerism overtly), and have been for centuries, who knows what actually happened.

Not that it's not fun to try and unpick. Just that we should be wary of drawing too confident conclusions. We don't even know if there even is one single story of what happened, or whether that's a consequence of Godlearner (or even Theyalan or Dara Happan) monomythism/syncretism, combining multiple completely unrelated stories into one single coherent one.

[Sir_Godspeed]

30 minutes ago, Ynneadwraith said:

This.

My interpretation of mythology in Glorantha is that it's a little on the lovecraftian side. Not in terms of tentacles and fish-hybrids (though it's not necessarily averse to those), but in terms of it being the interpretation of events by mortals that simply aren't equipped to comprehend what they're seeing. This is not entirely dissimilar to how real-world polytheism works. Unknowable phenomena like the sun moving across the sky gets interpreted as a dude riding a chariot that's on fire.

Whether these unknowable phenomena are actually 'people' is the dividing line between sorcery and theistic worship, as far as I see it. The evidence we can see suggests that they are, but considering they're people who can be 'edited' (Heroquesting generally, and Godlearnerism overtly), and have been for centuries, who knows what actually happened.

Not that it's not fun to try and unpick. Just that we should be wary of drawing too confident conclusions. We don't even know if there even is one single story of what happened, or whether that's a consequence of Godlearner (or even Theyalan or Dara Happan) monomythism/syncretism, combining multiple completely unrelated stories into one single coherent one.

Oh, don't worry, Joerg is DEFINITELY aware of this, it's a fun topic to get into, even if there obviously aren't any solid conclusions to make of it.

[Ynneadwraith]

Just now, Sir_Godspeed said:

Oh, don't worry, Joerg is DEFINITELY aware of this, it's a fun topic to get into, even if there obviously aren't any solid conclusions to make of it.

Oh yeah, I didn't doubt that for a second! I mainly thought 'this Joerg guy gets it' 😉

[mfbrandi]

7 hours ago, EricW said:

Death attracted Trickster’s attention because this secret was so important and interesting it had a guard.

Death was given a “guard” only to get Trickster to steal it — wouldn’t even have found it without the person in the hi-vis breastplate holding the glow stick spear posted there.

Who posted that guard? Trickster’s future self playing a long and looping game?

[Ynneadwraith]

23 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Who posted that guard?

Aha! So it was an inside job...

[Joerg]

Guardian and guarded object may have been just masks of the same entity.

[Ynneadwraith]

36 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Guardian and guarded object may have been just masks of the same entity.

Humakt (Death) + Vivamort (Undeath) = Kargan Tor (Death without Death)

Or, rather, the other way around. Both Death and Undeath as fractured, impure fragments of a more basal whole. Since it was split, the concept of what it was before has faded from memory to the point we have difficulty even conceptualising it.

I sense an obscure apocryphal cult rising...

Edited January 15 by Ynneadwraith

[scott-martin]

Along with the original question, who originally acknowledged Kargan Tor as a god? Which civilization(s) interacted with him and his mythology? Where does he come from? Did he preexist the Celestial Court power rune pantheon passed down to us?

[mfbrandi]

3 hours ago, Ynneadwraith said:

Kargan Tor (Death without Death)

minus = zero, the Void, — how could it be otherwise?

If we then take @Joerg’s ideas about Kargan Tor’s desertion and being his own guard, perhaps the Spike/Void switcheroo was KT conspiring at his own full manifestation — no one wants to be the bomb that doesn’t explode. KT then becomes “the second and final death” — not separation, but annihilation. Is there enough truestone to rebuild the Spike, or did most of it just go poof, leaving Nothing in its place?

On the tired principle that things get less impressive with each generation, Humakt might then be “the second-rate, not-so-final death” — mere separation of body and spirit, which each carry on and may even rejoin in odd ways or gain new partners. Humakt as the opener of the way for Vivamort and the sordid practices of afterlife, resurrection, and reincarnation.

But … we should take seriously both the idea that Humakt = (that H is no mere office holder, as Reagan was the president) and the Sword broos’ proclamation of Humakt as the primo Lord of Terror. Humakt = KT = Terminus = the boundary = the end. K–T boundary? K–T extinction event?

So why “Humakt” at all? Well, you can imagine how popular KT was after vaporising the Spike. He was in need of a new career in a new town, so he cooked up the dead-but-not-really schtick and appointed Vivamort as his official nemesis. They meet in Soho’s French House monthly to discuss PR strategy and photo opportunities.

• One of the new wave boys
  Same old thing in brand new drag
  Comes sweeping into view
  As ugly as a teenage millionaire

Everything new is old, again.

As for the names, who knows which came first: did they dream up “Humakt” for New Improved Death, or was “Kargan Tor” retrofitted to allow Death to disown some past deeds when convenient? So if @scott-martin has problems finding the followers of KT …

[This extravagant mess leans shamelessly on the supposed non-sequential nature of Godtime: never let time get in the way of a “good” story.]

[Sir_Godspeed]

2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Along with the original question, who originally acknowledged Kargan Tor as a god? Which civilization(s) interacted with him and his mythology? Where does he come from? Did he preexist the Celestial Court power rune pantheon passed down to us?

The Dara Happans considered "Athletics" to be one of the Glorantay pantheon, which could be a guise of Kargan Tor. Either History of the Heortling Peoples or maybe some Malkioni source mentions Kargan Tor holding contests of physical feats, so that tracks. 

[Ynneadwraith]

@mfbrandi I do enjoy your streams of consciousness!

13 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

minus = zero, the Void, — how could it be otherwise?

Perhaps it was something even stranger, and Chaos broke the maths into what we know now. Not the Void, but Change. Umath was struck down, and rose again in a dozen different lesser forms. Is Kargan Tor the eldest of gods, created in the moment something was shorn from the primordial void and made something else?

Is this why there are greater and lesser spirits? All were once far larger, but through NOTdeath were changed into something new, different and smaller. Is this why the spirits of mortals are so much lesser than Gods (and there's so many more of us)?

If that's the case, can Uleria glue them back together again? Is this how you get Nysalor and the Red Goddess? What if you glue together two bits of different deities (other than getting Godlearnered off the face of the planet)?

13 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

He was in need of a new career in a new town, so he cooked up the dead-but-not-really schtick and appointed Vivamort as his official nemesis. They meet in Soho’s French House monthly to discuss PR strategy and photo opportunities.

Hum...I wonder how many other Celestial Court members are hiding in plain sight, too scared to admit their failings...

12 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

The Dara Happans considered "Athletics" to be one of the Glorantay pantheon, which could be a guise of Kargan Tor. Either History of the Heortling Peoples or maybe some Malkioni source mentions Kargan Tor holding contests of physical feats, so that tracks. 

I like that. Considers that 'war' and 'death' were a sort of sport before death-proper became a thing.

Perhaps Umath was just bitter he lost on penalties. Perhaps Orlanth's 'War Dance' in the Celestial Court was just him standing there shouting 'Who ate all the pies, who ate all the pies, you did you did, you ate all the pies'...

[mfbrandi]

51 minutes ago, Ynneadwraith said:

I do enjoy your streams of consciousness!

Possibly a result of my slow, unreliable fingers moving slightly faster than my even slower, even less reliable brain.

56 minutes ago, Ynneadwraith said:

I like that. Considers that 'war' and 'death' were a sort of sport before death-proper became a thing.

Or …

• death proper precedes cattle raiding;
• cattle raiding gives us sport, making the occasional death “fun”;
• except for the headbangers, war takes all the fun out of it, as the bodies pile up;
• there is a return to “peace” after secession from a culturally different northern power;
• the cattle raiders are now battle-hardened and better armed, still singing the songs of old pre-war grudges.

Can this end well? (Inspired by the second half of this radio show, which even has the sacrifice of a white bull.)

[soltakss]

On 1/13/2024 at 4:52 PM, Darius West said:

Does anyone else find Kargan Tor to be a confusing deity?  I mean, he was the god of Death before Humakt. 

He was the God of War, of Fighting, of Martial endeavours.

Death merely made him less relevant, as anyone could be dangerous.