#humakt

A commission I did for a Glorantha book, part of the Jonstown Compendium of fan work.

For those not familiar with Glorantha (you might know it as the setting for King of Dragon Pass), it's a bronze-age fantasy setting written by Greg Stafford, an anthropologist. There's some bits that are a bit 'hmmm', but overall - it's a fresh and enthralling take on the fantasy genre, driven by a genuine interest in how ritual works in Bronze Age societies (I've heard it described as 'as Tolkien was to linguistics, Stafford was to mythology).

The paintings here intend to showcase one of the rituals in question, with a hero being anointed and girded to assume a mythic role (specifically Humakt, deity of swords and truth and death!)- around her, her masked clan-members prepare her for her transit into the mythic realm, while above her, Humakt himself wields/blesses the blade that she takes up. The second painting was for the back cover - it shows a devotee of Eurmal, trickster and storyteller, entertaining a couple of children and inducting them into the clan's mythic cycle, while their hunting cat (an alynx - Gloranthan cultures tend to favour cats where Earth ones would dogs) looks on.

So I wanted to talk about Ducks in Glorantha a little. I have a dumb soft spot for them because a: They make people -almost- as angry as that one paragraph about dudes riding side saddle in Reign.  (Often because they think duck-people don't fit into a serious mythic setting like Glorantha.) And B: Just look at them! They are a grim warrior race that looks like that.  And that is fantastic.

See, Ducks got started in Glorantha because the creator  or possibly someone else in his circle of friends, loved  Carl Barks and Don Rosa's Disney comics. (Which mostly proves that whoever it was had excellent goddamn taste). So the tale was spun that Ducks (Or Durulz as they're called these days) were originally flying birds, servants of the lords of the sky, but turned their back on the sky/solar divinities to serve the lords of the air and storm and got cursed to walk and talk like men and be unable to fly. (A side effect of the curse was that they now live as long as men do, which was not actually intended. )

As a knockon effect of this ancient curse, Ducks are possibly the most shit on race of sapient beings in the setting. Terrible things happen to them all the time,  everyone treats them like a bad joke, and they bear up under it with stoicism or, sometimes, berserk fury. Which is why so many of the Ducks are followers of the gods of death and war.

For example, in the current Hero Wars time frame, Ducks were basically made into the scapegoats of a failed rebellion against the Lunar Empire- despite none of the leadership of that rebellion being ducks- the empire has outlawed their race and they've fled to safety in places like the upland Marsh...which as it turns out is home to an ancient necromancer from the previous age.

Ducks worship the gods of death and war- in particular, Humakt, enemy of all undead. So once they ran into the forces of the Necromancer (Whose name is Delecti, by the way: People who hate the ducks because they are not serious enough usually don't say anything about the evil swamp wizard whose name is literally just a terrible legal term pun) the ducks realized they were the ones best fit to fight undead armies in a swamp, and became self-appointed guardians of the area. The first line of defense.

And the humans in the area -still- make fun of them.