[Glorantha] Call for Papers: First Digestive Symposium

The following was collected by the secret agents of the Instrumentalities of Mandate (no more specific information is known, and enquiries as to such distinctly unadvised), and provides some useful and intriguing information as to the place of the beard in Unincluded myth, particularly at the interface of monotheism and pagan savagery.

A SERMON, read in the Vault of Saint Veracan of the Four Hilts by Rambault duQuincey*, the Slontan bishop of Bath in Ditaliland.

"Woe betide you and your kin, ye blasphemous and debased multitude! Repent
of thine iniquities, sinner, for I see thee in my stalls, cowering as a lowly thrall, thy beard unkempt and harbourous of such ill and pagan wiles; cast down thine eyes in due obeisance to Him, for who art thou to gaze upon the gilded pillars of Suli, or upon the mirrored spires of perfection of Vani? I thou thee, thou backslider! Whom among ye here would claim that intemperance of beard is not sinful in the eyes of the Prophet (blessed indeed is his eternal legacy and Solace be'eth with him)? Begone back to your lice-infested halls and dens of iniquity, ye modern-day scions of Sunken Endernef that label yourselves faithful!

"Were ye, as children, born bearded? Nay! For the beard grew upon you as did
the sins of your miserable and debased lives, in corruption of the purity of essence that giveth life! To be bearded is a reminder of the imperfections of
being, the sins of those that shattered Zerendel; of the vice that groweth like wiry hairs beneath the flesh, to sprout malignancies of word and deed cursed of the schemes of the Evil One. To the pious man a beard might be suffered to grow, in rememberance of his mortality; but tempt ye not the Grace of God, or the maledictions of the Devil's villeins by allowing its unchecked growth, for therein lies the path of damnation, you deceitful and diabolic idolators; you whorespun descendents of Chir!

"It is true that I, your superior, wear a beard, but I am scion of the
scions of the Prophet, a properly consecrated episcopal, secure in the Grace of Joy. It is thus well that I know of the Four Foul Humours of the Evil One that plague all beings, and reside within their own unholy reliquaries, hosts of sin! Must I remind you, wicked sinners, of their nature? For there is
the foul humour of the beard, rife with the sins of apostasy, disobedience and false worship; then there is the foul humour of the bile, cause of the sins of murder, theft and rebellion; followed by the foul humour of the breast of wicked women and bad nuns, which doth incite the sins of adultery and lust; and finally the foul humour of the belly, replete with the gluttonous sin of
food hoarding.

"Tell us, Atheism, how wouldst thou have reigned over Zzabur if you hadst
not sown pride and apostasy in his beard so? Tell us, hateful Devil, how wouldst thou have driven Malkion out of Brithos if thou hadst not sundered the
faithful from his gospel by the wickedness of women and bad nuns? Tell us, Vice, how wouldst thou have conquered Talarwal, if thou hadst not shattered Zerendel with the bile that fuelled thy Legions? Tell us, Whore Darkness, how wouldst thou have enraptured Arkat in thy base Stygian gluttony, if thou hadst not sown the pangs of greed in his stomach?

"Ye all know well that foul humour of the bile, for it burneth with the
pagan cholera that doth infuse the Ladaralite savages upon our borders, and ye also, ye contumacious Chirite backsliders; and for repentence of which so many of ye wicked folk must give benefice to your bishop, who provides a psalter of the blessed waters of his diocese to calm your sins. Ye also know the foul humour of the breast, as cultivated by the wicked witches of Esrolia, who used their Devil-spawned and ever-damned seductions to overthrow their pagan masters and forge that Realm of Harlotry, fawning at the open skirts of the Trull of Rhigos! But, greatest of all, ye know of the foul humour of the beard, which doth sit and fester upon your countenances, and those of all barbarians, ye traitorous and pernicious villeins, so desirous of the mighty grace of redemption!

"But ye are not alone in your sin! Hark ye, servants of Malkion, to the
clamourings that splutter forth from those slovenly denizens of the world's underbelly, the pagan Sartari; of whom like the unwashed corpulence of an indolent sow it is proven are wont to be soiled in their own filth and gluttonous vice. Look ye upon the wild-bearded dwarves, stunted in their growth by the sins of fidgetry and self-abuse, and whose heresy of materialism deprives them forever of Solace; or gaze in fear at the ostentatiously haberdasheried and monstrously-bearded heathens of far southern shores, sworn to the vile iniquities of Bamat!

"Doth not the Church speak of such perils as an unkempt beard? That it
obscureth the mouth so that it would not be witnessed that the Devil's word spouted forth from such sinners, in grotesque perversion of the movement of the lips? That it harboureth the vomit of Soruve, and is sodden with the sin of intoxication? What of canon four-and-four of the Second Ecclesiastical Council, in the reign of the blessed King Lofting, may he truly be in Solace, where the Seshnegi decreed that the faithful must not suffer beard nor hair to grow long? Your own King Elnor, a pagan lord who repented as did Fraolor, cried 'Let no man keepeth his beard long for any time, if he will haveth God's blessing and the Prophet's and ours!'

"Was it not ordained at the Second Ecclesiastical Council, in all holy
rightitude, that those unkempt of beard should be most justly threatened with excommunication? Did not the Fifth Ecclesiastical Council, convened as that glorious zealot King-Emperor Miglos sought to cast down the beardite Atheists of the Zzaburite peril, state that those who would nourish their beard as those pernicious sorcerers did, and follow their vice, would be shorn, by force if required? Indeed, that most blessed of clerics of Law, Gillam duRandus, in his Rationale of the Fourth Action (Book II, libram XXXII), wisely stated:

"...length of hair is symbolical of the multitude of sins. Hence all are
directed to cut their beards close; for the cutting of the hair of the beard, which is said to be nourished by the superfluous humours thereof, and also of the stomach, denotes that we ought to cut away the vices and sins which are a superfluous growth in us. Hence we cut our beards that we may seem purified by innocence and humility and that we may be like the Saints and Divine
Essences who remain always in the bloom of youth."

"But who am I to chastise thee, heathen charlatan, when thy wickedness is
nourished by that of he that claims glory over all the Slontan creed: that false prelate drunk upon the vices of Ilotos, that false and schismatic Heresiarch of Kaxtorplose who suckles on the teat of the Urgkronikan Whore like the pestilential host of Datita, hungry for sin! For he, too, groweth his beard long like yon usurious Chirite potentates, oiled with the grease of prurience, scented with the fragrance of vice; and from his throne of False Kaxtor he dispatcheth his lemures to perpetrate scandalous assaults against mine auhority, calling I, your humble bishop, a non-juring schismatic!

"They claim, those whore-breached Legions of Damdamus, those perverse
procurators of Strange Flesh who, in their multitudinous contumacies clamour to be simoniacal adherents of the Heresiarch of False Kaxtor, that I am a heretic; a non-jurant of the ways of the Prophet (blessed indeed is his eternal legacy and Solace be'eth with him) and the true ecclesiarch of my church. But these are lies! False slanders and libels replete with venal and affected arrogance, and washed in sin! Who art thou, False Kaxtor, to impugn mine illness, which requireth me to eat of the powdered pearl of the dawn seas? For He hath blessedly given a balm to His humble servant's pain, and I shall partake!

"Who art thou, False Kaxtor, to castigate my pious proselytisation of the
savage with the sin of Adventurism? Who art thou, False Kaxtor, to claim dominion over all? For we are as cattle in the pastures of Grace, yet driven to spiritual starvation by the vices of a morally-bankrupt cowherd, who driveth his herd as stones from a cliff and lies drunken and insensate while newly born calves have their flesh devoured by the excreted servitors of Soruve. The herd must have its cowherd, with a stick strong and true to beat the stubborn, and who can in all justice query the young herder, who on seeing such iniquities seeketh to provide a more fitting protector of his charge?

"Thou, indeed, oh envy, False Kaxtor, with impious wickedness, spued with
the
ancient poison against mine episcopate which is fortified by the Prophet, like unto to the holy and indivisible trigram of Law, with the ecclesiastic virtues of strength, obedience, and justice, whose foundation is happily established above in the very kingdom of Malkion. Thou hast done this, like a serpent, against the
branches of the mine episcopate and its communion, so glance now upon thy sin! For the Devil hath often spread discord among the Seven Bishops of the Slontan Church, through whom, as through seven candlesticks throwing light in the unity of a septiform essence, the world ought to be illuminated!"

"Thus I say to False Kaxtor and bearded pagan alike, Repent! thou malicious
mongerer of rebellion and infamy, thou basest sloven of ill-begotten and sinful artifice, awash in essential desolation; for the ill humour of the beard marketh thee as the union of the Three Soruvian Effusions, festering in turpitude. It is thou that art Enemy, for our Prophet (blessed indeed is his eternal legacy and Solace be'eth with him) did say: 'Beware the minion of the Evil One, for thou shalt know him by his lice-ridden beard, curled as it is in the egregious blasphemous
symbols of a Stygian Archon, stained with the blood of children sacrificed on his
altars to Bamat; beware the minion of the Evil One, for he is a monstrous child of the Datitan Whore and the loins of Soruve, cursed with two heads, with a second bestial face that hides beneath his sickly perfumed beard.'

"Thus endeth the sermon. Look ye to your hymns, and sing number sixteen:
'Come by Arkat, My Lord (and smite his Stygian apostasy down with righteous vengeance)."

*More properly His Essential Munificence Rambault duQuincey the Venerant Bishop of Bath, Rector of its Springs and Wells, Lord of all Parishes Intendant and Extendant, Supreme Jurisdictor in Law, Bearer of the Holy Censer, Blessed of the Waters, Chancellor to the Archduchy of Slontos, Defender of Pilgrims, Reliever of Mendicants, Master of Posts and Roads, Malleator of the Heathen and his Iniquitous Wiles, Castigator of the Pagan and his Innumerable Sins, Scion of the Scions of the Prophet Ivine (blessed indeed is his eternal legacy and Solace be with him), Vicar-General of the Divine Ineffable, and Prime and Archiepiscopal Ecclesiarch of the True Slontan Church. Received on Thu 13 Apr 2006 - 10:28:09 EEST