From Guide to Glorantha Page 385:
QuoteRALIOS: Arkat Returns
Five times! The ways of Heroquesting are abruptly opened, and it isn’t what everyone expected. One is a troll, one is a Chaos monster, and no one is quite sure which incarnation the other three are. The resulting Heroquesting provides awesome weapons of destruction to the leaders vying for power.
From this, I do not believe that this means that Arkat himself has actually returned (as so many people have seemed to assume in other threads), but maybe I am missing something from an ancilliary source.
This seems to mean that the HeroQuest paths for Arkat offer five distinct versions of him and at least some of them seem to not clearly correlate with people's vision of him.
Here are seven of the venerations of Arkat as listed in Guide to Glorantha Page 376:
QuoteArkat Cults
An ancient Hero named Arkat once benevolently ruled this region. His long and complex history provides a fascinating and confusing story whose truth has been lost among the propaganda and lies of many centuries of oppression. Several philosophers and historians believe that more than one person named Arkat lived and were compressed by faulty memory into one character. Now, several fragments of the old hero cult of Arkat exist, most of them exclusive of each other, all of them claiming to be the genuine heir to the ancient secrets. Among them are:
GREAT ARKAT – Arkat in his aspect of Founder of the ancient peaceful kingdom.
ARKAT LIBERATOR – Arkat as the Hrestoli Man-of- All who liberated the region from an army of monsters and an army of Chaos creatures.
ARKAT THE SAVIOR – Arkat as the bringer of truth to destroy the lies of Gbaji, the evil Deceiver who oppressed Ralios and Tanisor.
ARKAT CHAOSBANE – Arkat as the destroyer of Chaos in all its forms. Stories are told that Arkat was responsible for destroying Wakboth and Krjalk in the God Time.
ARKAT PEACEMAKER – Arkat as the bringer of peace between species, commemorating the friendships he forged between humans, elves, and trolls.
ARKAT DESTROYER – Arkat as the incarnation of Destruction, whose worshipers believe that he came, and is coming back, to destroy the world.
ARKAT THE DECEIVER – This cult believes that Arkat was, in fact, Gbaji and/or Nysalor either before or after his fight in Dorastor.
And here is the description of the Arkat art from Guide to Glorantha Page 376:
QuoteSeven-Headed God
The seven-headed and fourteen-armed god Arkat, the Dark Emperor, is an important and contradictory hero-god-demon. Each of his different heads is associated with a right and left arm carrying or conveying the symbols of that aspect.
Peacemaker: This head represents Arkat as the bringer of peace between species, commemorating the friendships he forged between humans, elves, and trolls. His right hand is outstretched with an open palm in a gesture of fearless peace; his left hand is held out, palm uppermost, the fingers pointing downwards as a sign of balance.
Chaosbane: Arkat as the destroyer of Chaos in all its forms, bearing in his right hand a long leaf-shaped sword and in his left a thunderbolt.
Savior: Arkat as the bringer of Truth against the lies of Gbaji. In his right hand he carries a small bronze axe and on his left arm has a small round shield.
Great Arkat: Arkat as the founder of a great kingdom after the defeat of Gbaji, holding in his right hand a serpentheaded scepter, and in his left a rod and ring symbolizing his kingship.
Liberator: Arkat as the historical Western Man-of-All who liberated the land from Gbaji, carrying a spear in his right hand and holding a Law Rune wreathed in flames in his left
Destroyer: Arkat as a monstrous incarnation of Destruction, bearing in his right hand a flanged mace and in his left a black sphere.
Deceiver: Arkat as the Demon Gbaji, his evil nature betrayed by his taloned hands. He makes an esoteric occult sign with the fingers of his right hand and in his left clutches a flaming spear.
So we have two Arkats that we know of:
- Chaosmonster / Deceiver - Worshipped by the Guild of Chaos Monks.
- Troll / Destroyer - Worshipped in Naskorion and by Uz.
Notably these correspond quite specifically to two different times in Arkat's life.
So the question becomes:
Do these incarnations correlate to times in Arkat's life, to aspects he displayed of himself or to a combination of these? Depending on the answer to these, what are the three other Arkats?
I believe that there is Arkat the Hero in the Gods of Glorantha book and I would be happily spoiled on this. In fact, if Chaosium wants to send me an advance copy...