: anyone else have any ideas about the hooded figure in the
: Myth comic standing next to Connacht who is also in
: GURPS as one of the Nine..
: -DS3k
In a previous thread I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that this is Myrdred, the someday Deceiver, and no one had the slightest shred of evidence to put up against my theory... HAH! I think all we managed to prove in that thread was that it didn't look like Myrdred but that he had no good alibi as to where he was when that picture was taken. It's one of those mysteries that will never be truly solved.
Anyway, as to the head: I can't say for certain what, where, when, who or why it was but I think I know where the inspiration for it came from.
The Knight Templars were a bunch of badass warriors during the Crusades and nobody ever thought of impugning their honor. But over time they kind of got rich and sloppy and finally the Spanish Inquisition decided that it wanted their money, so it called 'em all up for questioning (with torture! plenty of... torture!) and made them confess that they were evil beer-swilling satanists who ate babies and had sold out the crusades (everybody was confessing to this back then, it was kind of a fad). Apparently, though, the Templars were so popular that the usual dull confession routine wasn't enough--people wanted details--so the Inquisitors sent out a press release detailing just how the Templars had cooked their babies and swilled their beer and worshipped satan. The last bit is the most interesting: the Templars supposedly claimed that they worshipped a demon called Baphomet who appeared as--yes--an animated severed head. It supposedly advised them and told them where to find all kinds of buried treasure.
A later version of the story, in C.S. Lewis' "That Hideous Strength" might also have influenced Bungie. In that one, a famous killer gets guillotined by the French (this takes place in the early part of the twentieth century). Some English creeps steal his head and reanimate it in their lab out in the English countryside and make it their leader and chief adviser but of course it turns out to be evil, etc. Check this book out, it's a very interesting story (the whole series is fun: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra), though the ending gets very mystical and strange. (Man, I haven't thought about Lewis in years. Next I'll be finding Narnia refs!)
Then again, it might just be a reference to the severed head of the Limper in the Black Company books, but nobody (except Toadkiller Dog, and he changed his mind) ever looked to that thing for advice.
For what it's worth...
