Glorantha: Cult of Magasta 
Cult of Magasta
originally published in Tales of the Reaching Moon #10

This document is Copyright © 1998 Issaries, Inc. It may be freely linked to, and 
one copy may be printed for personal use, but any other reproduction by 
photographic, electronic, or other methods of retrieval, is prohibited.
Mythos and History
One of the hundreds of beings in the formless dark said to herself, "I am Me, 
and everyone should know that I differ." She sent that fact to everyone, and 
afterwards everyone oriented themselves by her location. She became known as the 
Last Silence, and all her descendants were different from others in the Shadow 
Times.
From the Last Silence came the First Drop, the inky underworld ocean called Styx 
which was both motionless and ever changing at once. From her, Ever-flowing 
Mother of Water, sprang all wells and streams.
Mighty rivers roared from her womb, swirling and expanding to fill the void. 
From that Secret Power Zaramaka created himself, Great Elder, Keeper of the 
Source, Father and Mother of the Elder Three.
From the deep three rivers sprang separate and clear. Those Three met and 
mingled, the way the waters of a river mingle with those of the sea, sometimes 
washing salty far up the river mouth, other times sending dark brown mud far to 
sea. Within the surge and turbulence, that never-ending ebb and flow, the gods 
who made the seas we know, grew up and dwelt in fluid life.
The seas spread outward across the broad bosom of the Dark, flowing outward from 
the center, the unknown Deep.
The Three Children of Zaramaka are Daliath, Framanthe, and Sramak. They 
represent, respectively, Mind, Soul, and Body. Each had children by both 
siblings, and all were different. Magasta was a child of Daliath and Framanthe.
Magasta is a mighty and terrible god, born of eminent divine parents and imbued 
with great power. When he was born he disappeared from his nurses for three 
days, and became visible again only when lured by the music of the liquid 
syrinx.
One day, after the world was made, Daliath, Keeper of the Deep, divided the 
known world among the heirs of Zaramaka. He gave great things to his own 
children, but ignored the idiot brood of Framanthe and Sramak. Framanthe then 
ordered her own children (by Daliath) to tend the safety and well-being of her 
other children (by Sramak), whom she loved no less because Daliath did not 
understand them. But Daliath countermanded her, decreeing that Magasta would 
remain separate, to wait for the "Waters to Come." Some saw this as a curse upon 
the head of Magasta, for the Manthie, Magasta's siblings, became regal lords of 
the oceans and seas.
Magasta became the messenger for Daliath, carrying the deep tales of wisdom from 
the ancient god to the lesser races of Triolini. Magasta became well known to 
the peoples then, and the god moved through the secrets of all the worlds. He 
met and befriended Mastakos Mover in those days.
When the War of the Gods began Magasta became a mighty protector of the 
Triolini. Some early Brithini records state that an army was destroyed by "a 
hideous monster rising from the sea, whose glance destroyed ranks of soldiers, 
and whose maw's tentacles dragged the solid earth into its wicked toothed 
abyss." This monster was probably Magasta manifest on the physical plane.
Magasta confronted many powerful enemy gods. The awesome Storm Gods time and 
again destroyed the powers of the sea, and kidnapped the best as slaves, 
including even Mastakos Mover. Only Magasta could withstand them. In an epic 
struggle which caused the Raging Sea to climb and flood the Spike, the Terror of 
the Deep drove off the storm gods, and held Vadrus underwater so long that he 
gave up his niece in tribute. When the Storm Gods sought to break Brastalos free 
Magasta again defeated them, and subdued Brastalos to be his obedient wife.
Another time a worse monster, invisible even to most creatures of the Deep, 
stalked the worlds, wrenching beings from their lives into painful confusion. 
Like stagnant pools they stood, bewildered and unhappy.
Magasta took those lost souls of the sea, and sent, led, and carried them 
through the Hidden Stream back into the First Drop, a mystery beyond the 
understanding of all but those gods who have drunk of Daliath's Well.
Magasta then sought and confronted a terrible creature which wielded Death. He 
defeated it, and made the thing his slave. It became Magasta's invisible Net of 
the Sea which drags all eventually into death. The new slave was renamed Robber, 
and rules over the lost souls which live in the sea but are not in its flow.
The powers of death and darkness were inherited by the son of Robber and 
Magasta. When Wachaza first came to his father to claim a share of the world 
Magasta asked proof of worthiness. Wachaza sent Magasta to visit Daliath, and 
ruled in the Throne of the Deep until Magasta returned. Magasta recognized his 
son's rights and placed him in his household. Wachaza lives in a hidden ocean 
called Eat-Shark, with Varchulanga, Mother of Monsters, and Drospoly, the Cold 
Death.
A greater foe came when Chaos marched and slithered through it, moving 
inexorably towards the Spike, Sea-Heart. The forces of the Celestial Court did 
not muster to meet them, and the Spike collapsed, leaving an empty void where 
before had stood the Center of the World.
Magasta feared nothing. He armed with his best weapons and called his trusty 
allies. The armies of the seas marshaled behind the gods. Roaring out their 
death chant, all conscious life of the sea launched itself against Nothing. The 
Nothing, the Void, was manifest as Stagnation, absorbing all the seas and 
energies, stilling its movement, leaving it lifeless. Magasta saw this, and 
leapt forward into the midst of the dead meaninglessness whence had flowed his 
armies and heroes.
"Come, triumphant, into the Arms of Magasta!" he cried, "Flow, ever changing, 
into my Arms. The Times cannot have you, the Stagnation cannot touch you, if you 
hold to me, and follow me."
Then Magasta displayed his inside-out dance, the secret way to find the First 
Drop. The seas followed suit and washed the Nothingness along with them, inside 
out and back through into the realm of Time. The emptiness remained, but not at 
all times and not at all places, thanks to Magasta. The sea was saved from 
stagnation, and he and his minions remained to show the ancient way which fills 
the World's Center.
Magasta has remained the most important sea deity since the dawn of Time. All 
tribes of mermen worship him, as do a few sailor-folk. In the first and second 
ages, the mightiest sailors of the oceans were the Waertagi, half-breeds who 
tended physically toward their human part, and mentally toward their merman 
part.
The Waertagi dragonships dominated all overseas shipping for centuries. They met 
their doom in the Second Age, at the hands of the Middle Sea Empire. In a mighty 
battle, the God-Learners caused the water itself to burn and destroyed the 
Waertagi in the Battle of Tanian's Victory in 718. The Waertagi remained an 
obscure pirate race until 947, when they returned with gathered strength and 
managed to defeat the God-Learners and sink their island of Jrustela beneath the 
waves of death.
At the beginning of the Second Age, Zzabur, the First Wizard, wrought great 
curses and by many simultaneous means cleared the oceans of all surface traffic. 
This wrought the ruin of the Waertagi, but mermen in general were unharmed by 
the sudden cessation of ship travel.
Now the Closing has ended, and humans once more sail the seas. The mermen, 
unused to such activity, have caused trouble in some areas. In other areas, they 
have eagerly allied with humans. Violent underwater battles have been fought 
between rival merman tribes, and the water flows red. In some areas, the mermen 
have realized their own potential and begun to raid, compete with, or tax 
surface traffic.
Magasta teaches that only the sea is eternal. After death, all personality and 
knowledge is lost and the individual becomes part of the oceans. Each person is 
like a current in the ever-flowing mass of the sea. Some are large and strong, 
some weak, but all have a beginning, and all ultimately end. Through death, new 
life is brought about. The seas themselves continually die, swept through 
Magasta's Pool to the underworld. But new seas always return from the edge of 
the world.
Merman dead are taken to the deep sea and allowed to drop softly into an abyss. 
Weights are sometimes attached, and these may be made of gold, seametal, or 
other precious substances in the case of the important dead.
Magasta is the Source of the Ocean Rune. His other Runes are those of Change and 
Death.


See also:
Inner Knowledge of the Sea Gods
Non-Human Races: Merfolk


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