Agreed.
>I disagree on this. I think the history of God-Learnerism (the Malkioni
>Middle Period, if you will) is that Heroquesting for power can be a
>positive-sum game, at least until it stops working.
Certainly, you can sometimes get more out than you put in - for example, no doubt Harrek's skinning and eating of the Polar Bear god did him some good.
And, as you hint, this is not the kind of thing you can run a stable culture on - more a kind of 'burn the furniture to keep warm' measure.
>I disagree on this. Bryon Cloudboy gets together with a few mates and
>does something really really mythically stupid (eg climbs up Stormwalk
>Mountain for a lark, without a map or remembering everything that the
>Storm Voice and/or shaman said about the Mountain's myths). His success
>chance should be a lot lower than if his clan knows and approves (eg
>is supplying POW/MPs in support of the attempt).
A sufficiently clueless heroquester has approximately zero chance of success, with or without support.
I guess enough support might enable Mr Cloudboy to _survive_ the quest, but I doubt he'd actually learn anything from it. (Other than don't go hill-walking on a mythical mountain without a map).
In other words, the devout prayers of his mother and other relatives reaches the sylph mountain rescue service, and he gets delivered back home. He gets sent to his bed without any supper, no doubt.
>
>The more intense quests are more intense ... all climbs into the Hellcrack
>are a Heroquest, but climbing from Light to Shadow to Darkness to Greater
>Darkness to Hell Darkness gets you into a more and more intense, dangerous
>and potentially rewarding HQ (at a minimum, once you have seen the Hell
>Darkness, a shade on the Mundane world is nothing impressive).
OTOH, maybe these kind of more physical heroquests are a Special Case, and different from the kind I'm talking about.
In fact, that must be true - going down a Big Hole is _not_ a magical technique, its just a small matter of climbing.
You may survive, and you may even learn something from it, but I don't think this works in the same kind of way as the things I've been talking about.
In fact, I would suggest:
history : myth of Orlanth killing Yelm :: geography : myth of someone climbing down Hellcrack
>
>I agree that it's a moot distinction, but I think you can directly influence
>the mundane world by heroquesting. I would use as an example some of the
>"backfire" results from experimental heroquesting like the ?Rabbit Curse?
>that hits the Lunar Empire occasionally - if one gained that power as a choice,
>why would one use it ?
>
I guess a lot of the time, the spell-casting ritual and the heroquest happen in parallel (i.e. one in the objective world, one in the mythic). By the time the results of the quest become clear, its too late to stop the ritual.
For an example, see the Argrath's summoning of the dragon in the middle of the lunar ritual in KoS.
>From the lunar POV, definitely an unfavourable HQ result.
Richard
p.s.
How about the following (Lunar?) terms:
_following the path_
Type I HQ, trading POW for magic
_making the path_
Type II HQ, using magic to create new Type I quests
_paving the path_
Type II HQ, using magic to make existing Type I quests easier.
Powered by hypermail