Name of Tekumel Maggot-Deity?

[Griffith Dragonlake]

What was the name of the maggot-deity in the original [OD&D 1975/76] Tekumel game? Something like Sarku, Sarcu, Sarqu, Sar'ku, Sar'cu, Sar'qu?!?

 

[Griffith Dragonlake]

What was the name of the maggot-deity in the original [OD&D 1975/76] Tekumel game? Something like Sarku, Sarcu, Sarqu, Sar'ku, Sar'cu, Sar'qu?!?

After a little digging I found this:

The Gods: The Tlokiriqáluyal
Sárku
the Five-Headed Lord of Worms, Master of the Undead, Guide into Darkness, the Demon-Lord of Decay.

Sárku seeks a slower, colder winding down in Hrü’ü’s final Nullity: the low and certain transition of life and death. To the Worm-Lord, life is but a brief orgasmic spasm before the long, dusty eternity of the tomb. Yet life and death are only two aspects of the same being, and the latter is the more perfect because it endures. The one condition of Sárku’s faith is the survival of the conscious intellect—the ego—which must continue to live and have awareness even in the sepulchre. The other demands of the body do not persist after death, but if the intellect has cognition throughout all eternity, it can witness and savour the final victory of the Dark.


His realm is the necropolis, and there he aids those who serve his undead legions, those who worship the intellect and care little for the needs of the body, and those who send the living down to him in the unutterable stillness of death.

Sárku is represented as a mighty serpentine form having five vermiform heads, each with a gaping, suckered maw. A mass of coiling tentacles hangs beneath each head, and these bear some symbol of the grave: bones, rotted cerements, skulls, and corpse-candles. His emblem is a wavy black or copper line (Sárku loves copper and dislikes iron) with a red circle at one end, signifying the Eternal Victory of the Worm. He has 108 Aspects. His priests and priestesses wear earth-brown robes, whitened armour (females don a bodice of grave-hued cloth), and headdresses of skulls. His clergy (and also his ordinary worshippers on festival days) also paint their faces with white pigment in the form of grinning skulls.

Power Centres
In Tsolyánu, Sárku is almost sole master of the Kraá hills and the City of Sárku. He is also patron deity of the Ito family of the Chakas, and he has lesser centres in Sokátis, Jaikalór, and in Urmish.

Factions
Sárku’s priesthood is split between the Copper Tomb Society, another ally of the Ndálu Clan, and the Brotherhood of the Victory of the Worm, which cares little for this world and devotes itself to the rituals of the catacombs.

Durritlámish, Cohort of Sárku
The Cohort of Sárku is Durritlámish: the Black Angel of the Putrescent Hand, Opener of Catacombs. He marshals the undead, and is depicted as a rotted corpse seated upon a throne of bones, holding a bowl in one hand from which smoke rises. His emblem is a stylised image of this bowl, the Vessel of the Vision of the World in which all the Skeins of Destiny of every creature in the universe may be seen. He has 16 aspects.

I've always thought Sarku is a great undead deity and have shamelessly used him in a couple of campaigns.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Sounds pretty cool.

I'm aware of Tekumel, but never looked into it. I've been thinking about picking it up; I don't really want/need a new setting (I'm running Wilderlands), but I was thinking it would just be cool to read and mine for ideas.

 

[Hypersmurf]

One of the two LARPs I ever attended was a Tékumel game.

The only deity names I can recall are Thumis (since I was playing a priest of Thumis) and Dlamélish (since one woman was playing a priestess of Dlamélish, and that tends to leave an impression...)...

I did try to learn Tsolyani script at one point, but it's... hard.

-Hyp.

 

[Blair Goatsblood]

Sarku replaced Orcus in my Wilderlands campiagn...and Harkmakhis is one of his subdeities

 

[Gentlegamer]

Was Tekumel a setting for D&D, or was it a wholly different game on its own?

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

It was originally a stand-alone game called Empire of the Petal Throne that included the built-in setting. The original game was highly influenced by OD&D, and was published by TSR.

There's a recent discussion about EotPT at the OD&D forums. You can also see the Tekumel site. A reproduction/reprint of the original rules and maps is available. (Actually, I just succumbed to temptation and ordered the reprint...)

 

[thedungeondelver]

Sounds pretty cool.

I'm aware of Tekumel, but never looked into it. I've been thinking about picking it up; I don't really want/need a new setting (I'm running Wilderlands), but I was thinking it would just be cool to read and mine for ideas.

I bought the '77 edition of EMPIRE OF THE PETAL THRONE thinking to incorporate parts of it in to my then-operational D&D game. I found the material unsuited for my needs and was stuck with a rather expensive soon-to-be-eBay'd curiosity :-/

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I bought the '77 edition of EMPIRE OF THE PETAL THRONE thinking to incorporate parts of it in to my then-operational D&D game. I found the material unsuited for my needs and was stuck with a rather expensive soon-to-be-eBay'd curiosity :-/

What was it that you didn't like/didn't fit your game?

 

[thedungeondelver]

What was it that you didn't like/didn't fit your game?

Uh.

Everything. I was running (well technically still am running) a WORLD OF GREYHAWK campaign that was pretty firmly grounded in Greyhawkania; what I thought I'd get (and shame on me, not TEKUMEL, for not looking closer) was a new slew of easily adaptable classes, magic, and so forth.

Flavor wise, though, nothing really fit.

Now with that said, if I was to do it all again, I might go for a more fantastic angle with dimensional hops to the Starship Warden, then to Tekumel itself and so on and just revel in the pulpy weirdness of it all.

But all in all it just didn't suit me.