from Kallyr's Dragonrise heroquest
I'm unconvinced that Argrath is any more an asshole than other contemporaneous figures.
I suspect that the animosity is generated from two things:
- He succeeded where Kallyr failed. He may have taken credit for some of her achievements, however it's more than possible that some of his fan-bois / sycophants may have tried to credit him without his active encouragement. And Kallyr was not without her own flaws. She had many enemies, some ancestral / political, some from prejudice against a extremely powerful woman worshipper of Orlanth, and some resulting from her own actions / betrayals. Possibly non-canon now, she started out her adult life treating the gods as mere ciphers to gain her powers (do x to achieve power y, with no love, belief, or humility), and then got burned by those gods being reachable entities with some level of agency and personality. And she may even have had a child by Pole-Star only as a path to power, and then abandoned the boy.
- With his trickster, he killed the gods, including Orlanth. I'm extremely dubious about this part of his 'history'. The section's breathless style seems reminiscent of the wildest conspiracy theories that we see too much of on social media. It indicates that afterwards there's no magic, however in various places in King of Sartar, the researcher indicates that there is still magic around as if it were completely normal.
What do you think?