"I Fought, We Won"

Gloranthan Folk Tales

Gloranthan Songbook

Moonie Madness

Carmanian Sources

Malkioni Scriptures

While the world was fragmenting under the onslaught of Chaos in the Great Darkness, Malkion kept his people devoted to God the Creator alone. Their single-minded dedication gave him the strength to fight the "I Fought We Won" battle on behalf of the whole world, pulling everything back together. All the Malkioni experienced what their Prophet had gone through:

"The tattered remains of the world seemed to have no chance for unified action against the forces of chaos. They were isolated by unbridgeable gaps ... There was a unity between them in their wish for survival, and this unquenchable desire brought individuals across time and space, order and chaos to confront the final dissolution of the world. It did not matter from whence they were drawn or where it occurred. They fought their last desperate fight against overwhelming odds, motivated by their survival and determined to do their utmost. In this way they combined forces and unconsciously aided each other against their own fears. They were alone, yet they found themselves with others like themselves and gained strength."

- "The Final Battle of Mortality", Cults of Terror.

At the moment the Universe failed, Malkion was absorbed into the Invisible God, and together they recreated the Universe and inspired its inhabitants. Although the world was almost destroyed, Malkion single-handedly saved it, but went to Solace himself in the process. The Holy City faded from the world with all of his most faithful followers in residence; it is now a Hidden Castle of no fixed abode. [1]

In a sense, this was the Malkioni Compromise, and it was also what derailed their religion without the Prophet present to guide them. Because, you see, his Old Way had stressed how devotion to God Alone was necessary, that the Malkioni were unique in being survivors from the Old World. This became part of the "unbridgeable gap" between the Malkioni and the rest of the failing world.

When Malkion saved Creation, however, the experience brought Malkion and his followers together with everything else that was now a rightful part of Glorantha. "They found themselves with others like themselves" - and accepted them! So a whole new can of moral worms opened in the Grey Age (there are acceptable "pagan" gods!), just when the Prophet was no longer around to guide the faithful through it. [2]

[1] Paul Reilly, a God Learner apologist ("Burn him!"), has described the "I Fought We Won" as Malkion's Utuma sacrifice. I think this kind of Gloranthan coherence is a great asset, especially if we let it lie tacit in the final writeup. Like the Red Moon going down in an Utuma ritual: transformative self-sacrifice to re-create the cosmos isn't how Argrath usually tells the tale...

[2] Compare to Orlanth and Yelm recognising each other's rights in Hell: a painful transformation for both religions to undergo, and one which is usually ignored by their followers in the real world. This is the kind of thing necessary in the Darkness: that Survival/Compromise moment when "the gods of Glorantha erase their old differences and stand united against their foe of Chaos" -- "Monomyth", GoG Cults Book p.11.