> Maybe not there - but can't it be fitted in somewhere else? Surely someone,
> somewhere, must have gone to extraordinary lengths to try to get the Pharoah
> back? And failed horribly?
In my game, absolutely. In fact, there's a whole conspiracy of people working on it. Actually, IMG, Owain/Ornegrin (No one has asked his name so I haven't had to remember) *wasn't* trying to bring back Pharaoh. Since the MoLaD tourney failed, he was manipulated into trying to do one better, and *replace* Pharaoh himself. (I haven't decided who put this idea into his head. First dibs always go to the Lunars, but probably something else.)
Most people don't even know this. They just think he took mysteriously ill and died without heir. It is the lack of succession that allows a civil war in Heortland.
> Which is always an interesting background for adventures :)
>
> But that was the Pharoah gone, not Orngerin III gone (really, was the
> repetition of the name necessary?). Orngerin's death without an heir was
> bad, sure, but that wasn't the cause of hell breaking loose etc. Was it? If
> it had been, then the contrast between his utter unmemorability and the
> consequences of his death would be good, but as it is we don't even seem to
> get that.
But I say it was the case here. Pharaoh had rulership over the Holy Country, but each land still had it's own rulers, yes? Fealty was to them, and through them, the God King. So Pharaoh vanishing is a stronger blow to the Holy Country than to Heortland (or any individual kingdom/queendom). Each land has problems when the GodKing goes, but it is the loss of Onegrin without heir that opens up the vacuum for Rikard, which helps provoke Broyan. So even if you go with the idea that he was an utterly unmemorable, boring king who never did anything and died from the flu, his death ends up being a spark of the Hero Wars. Which is an interesting approach, as you say, for the contrast.
LC
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