Kallyr Starbrow: death

I'm taking Minaryth Blue's "Events of my life" as the primary reference: Greg has confirmed that these dates are correct. Secondary evidence comes from the Argrath Saga, which seems to be based on various earlier documents now lost to us, and which contradict each other. Tertiary evidence is certain interesting gaps in CHDP!

The relevant bits of Minaryth:
1628 --Jarang Bladesong leads us against wolfpirates in Hendrikiland. No combat. Nice place, but too flat.
1629 -- We kill Dinacoli. Queen Kallyr marries at last. Telmori promise revenge, quarrel with Argrath of Pavis.
1630 -- Wolf Pirates sack Wilmskirk. Kallyr kills Gunda, I lose my three fingers. Harrek follows, kills the good queen and plunders Boldhome, then remains for the winter.
1631 -- Argrath Maniskisson elected Prince of Sartar.

Note to start with that the Jarang Bladesong of the entry for 1628 is mentioned in the RuneQuest 2 rulebook (p.68) as having been initiated into the cult of Orlanth by a priest called Argrath Dragonspear. So he's one of Argrath's followers. And managing to deal with wolf pirates without combat is unusual, to say the least. A more detailed account of this meeting is given in the Saga (KoS26):

"Argrath and Harrek engaged in a grim battle...but neither was able to defeat the other....During a pause in the fight, Harrek swore that he would not be robbed of his rightful plunder in Kathaela, and Argrath promised him something even greater if he would spare Kethaela. Harrek agreed."

So Harrek was bought off. With what? According to the Saga, he "marched first against Black Horse Country", and "plundered great treasures from its bottomless basement. But in the task Harreks' best friend was killed, and so he was very unhappy". According to Minaryth, this "best friend", Gunda, was killed at Wilmskirk by Kallyr.

The Saga then has Harrek stopping off at Boldhome to show his plunder, getting into a quarrel with Argrath, and sacking the city in a fit of temper. "After that, Harrek and the wolf-pirates were no longer welcome in the realm of Argrath": at least, not for another three paragraphs!

In Minaryth's version, the motivation for the attack on Boldhome is revenge for Gunda's death, and Harrek stays for the winter. Argrath becomes king the next year: how he got rid of Harrek is not mentioned.

Now for Argrath to have bought off Harrek with the promise of plunder, he must have done more than just tell him of its existence: the Saga shows him merely admiring the results. But if the places raided were Wilmskirk and then Boldhome, at a time when Argrath was a trusted ally of Sartar, he could certainly have done something to help: supplying passwords and opening gates, for instance. Whether he expected Kallyr to be killed as a result, hoped for it, or planned it, I'm not sure, but I have my suspicions. Gunda's (AD&D) stats are given at the back of Wyrm's Footprints, and make it clear that her combat magic was designed to work against men. Assuming Argrath knew this (he'd been travelling with the wolf pirates for a few years, so he should have), he could have predicted her death at Wilmskirk, and Harrek's likely response.

Finally we look at the version of events given in CHDP. This gives a royal wedding in 1629: that of Argrath and the Feathered Horse Queen. The next events mentioned are the invasions of Tarsh in 1631 and 1632: nothing of importance happened in 1630. I would have thought that if Denseros could have shown Argrath heroically freeing Boldhome from Harrek, he would have done so. He doesn't hesitate to describe later events as "a total disaster for Argrath" (p157), so the fact of Boldhome having been sacked would not have been left out just because of its embarassment. Something more embarrassing than a simple defeat in battle must have happened here, and to my mind regicide by proxy fits the bill nicely.

Incidentally, we possibly have a detailed desciption of that last fight in the Saga. On p27, Harrek and Jareel fight (apparently at Bagnot, which from Minaryth was in 1633), and Harrek kills her and mutilates the body. Yet on p28 she is very much alive and leading armies at Dwernapple (1639). So whoever Harrek killed, it wasn't Jareel. The description could have been Harrek v. Kallyr in 1630, and if so, she did pretty well.

The next line in the Saga is an apparent non-sequitur: "King Argrath would not tolerate the wolf-men's attacks". The Wolfmen are the same Telmori who are sworn to defend the House of Sartar: if he'd just arranged for Kallyr's murder, and they knew it, I wonder why they disliked him??? Back in 1629, Minaryth gives us: "Telmori promise revenge, quarrel with Argrath". A long-standing hostility, then: perhaps they distrusted him from the start. My theories on just how closely Kallyr was linked with the Telmori are a separate problem, but it is worth noticing that they were among her earliest supporters in both 1613 and 1625. For them to be actively hostile to Argrath, if his reign followed on peaceably from hers, seems very strange.



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