#the corrival of the Madderblade and the warden of the Stone Oaks

[pyrrhiccomedy]

Does Heretic’s Mithra have any relation to Mithra or is the name a coincidence?

Please, there are no coincidences.

Anon is asking about the connection between the real-world cult of Mithraism - a Roman mystery cult centered on a god named 'Mithras,' largely practiced by the Roman military, which was a contemporary religion with early Christianity - and the realm of Mithra as it exists in Heretic: a poisonous realm of watery darkness that connects every place to every other place, outside the skin of the world.

Let's keep clear the distinction between those three terms, so this doesn't get confusing: Mithra is the realm; Mithras is the god; Mithraism is the religion worshipping that god.

Most students of the secret world don't fuck around much with Mithra. Unless you have a deep affinity for Knock lore, or you are - God help you - entertaining some kind of Antelucan heresy, there's no need. You can travel towards the Glory without ever passing through Mithra.

And you should, because Mithra is dangerous. From the moment you step into Mithra until the moment you leave, you risk drawing the attention of Mithra's stalking kings. These are silent, vast, implacable hunters, which float through the prismadic darkness of their realm until they catch a glimpse of some trespasser: and then they follow them, endlessly, through any door, anywhere, and claim them. (If you wear a mask - if you never take it off - they might lose you, when you pass out of their realm. Or they might not.)

There was never any...diplomacy between the Calendar of Hours & the Stalking Kings of Mithra. The Calendar rings the Glory, that light which may well have the power to annihilate any mithraic thing that looks upon it, and the Stalking Kings never made any attempt to leave their realm for longer than it took to claim their victims. There were only three Hours which even had the power to visit that place: the Madrugad, the Stranger, & the Ecdysiast.

And then the Intercalation happened. The Stranger became domiciled - she could no longer set foot anywhere beyond the reaches of the Wood - and the Ecdysiast was slain by his daughter the Madderblade. Which left only the Madrugad: the First Hour, the Locksmith, the Hour of Silence, who tends to the wounds of the Sun-In-Rags from her Throne in Fort Baldomera.

And during the Intercalation, one by one the Hours to the Madrugad's right fell before and were devoured by Mother White, until that inimical Hour reached the walls of the Madrugad's fortress: and the sanctuary of her precious charge. So the Madrugad passed into Mithra, and called before her the greatest of all of the Stalking Kings, the King-of-Kings of the outer darkness, and offered him a doorway to a Throne of his own, if he promised to hunt and kill Mother White.

The King-of-Kings agreed, and came through the wall of the world. He crossed the vault of the heavens, beheld the Glory, and did not die. He bound himself to the 14th Throne, and together with the Madderblade he slew Mother White. His special charge, ever since, has been to keep her dead.

As an Hour, we call him the Black Captain. But on the rare, dread occasions when he directly addresses some pathetic, petrified and awestruck human, he sometimes calls himself Mithras. In the same way that you, projected into some universe of completely alien matter, might refer to yourself as corporeal, if some entity there asked you what you were. He is the glittering darkness. He is the void at the bottom of everything, and the inverse of everywhere. He is what lies on the other side of the closed door.

Mithraism, in the world of Heretic, was a Black Captain cult. And Mithras is still one of the Black Captain's sobriquets.