>Hi all,
>
>I recently started an HeroQuest game for my fiancee. She's got a good,
>strong feel for what she wants to do and what she wants to explore
>with her character. She's a aged devotee of Chalana Arroy, with an
>interest in Dracons and mystical thought. I'm loving all the options
>this is giving me, for the "everything world" part of the game.
>
>Thing is, I'm struggling for Chalana Arroy based (or even compatible)
>heroquests. CA seems to always be sidelined by the "real" protagonists
>in most quests I've found.
>
>Can anyone help me with some myths, or better, heroquests, suitable
>for a newbie-friendly, Chalana Arroy based campaign.
>
Not really newbie-friendly - but there is the Lightbringers' Quest. That was originally Chalana Arroy's, after all - she just let Orlanth and the others tag along for the ride. :)
As for quest objectives, being goddess of healing, harmony and life offers fairly obvious possibilities. She could be curing someone specific, or ending a plague, or finding a way to identify or treat a particular ailment, or to bring back a source of healing for her people.
Typical quest opponents could be spirits of disease and other personified problems, whose attacks would have to be endured, or be driven away by the CA's healing skills and devotion. Defeat the Daemon of the Red Plague, and you learn the ability to cure Red Plague back in the mundane world.
Other afflictions might not be caused directly by hostile entities, but by some magical curse that the victim - or their ancestors - have incurred. Perhaps Old Grandmother cut reeds from the river without asking permission from its guardian, and now every spring her descendants who live too near the river come down with fever. Solving this would be a bit like a detective puzzle, trying to discover what the ancestors did wrong, and then finding a way to appease the river guardian.
More generally, finding sources of healing could form the subject of heroquests - a magical spring, a mysterious herb, etc - all hidden and/or guarded. (Finding the healing herb on the HeroPlane could give the questor an ability to locate such herbs back in the Middle World, or just symbolically give her an enhanced healing ability)
Typical challenges might involve showing endurance; observing and discovering things ("diagnosing" them, in short...); completing tasks of dexterity or strength (can you staunch this wound before the patient bleeds to death? Can you amputate the rotten stump and cauterise it before three more grow in its place?); or persuading others to a cause of action (Can you convince Alewine to give up drinking before he dies of dropsy and gout? Can you comfort a mother whose child just died?) While healers are meant to be non-violent, you might also use "fighting" a disease on the HeroPlane as a direct metaphor, using her healing skill instead of weapons.
Specific elements of CA's mythos you might use include:
A healer must offer her skills to anyone without favour. So put her in situations where she has to heal an enemy, or choose between two patients because she cannot heal both.
A healer must not use violence even in self-defence, although seeking protection from others is apparently permitted. Perhaps combine this with the point above: if the heroquestor chooses to heal their enemy in one stage of the quest, that enemy will return to protect them in another; if not, the questor must endure the attack unaided.
A healer must not permit mercy killing, even to end unbearable suffering. An ethical dilemma to explore.
Finally, a Malia cultist or broo shaman might make a good ongoing HeroQuest Adversary. More controversially, because of the shades of grey it brings, perhaps the opponent should be an Ernalda healer who believes that the Chalana Arroy cult's refusal to favour kin above strangers, and willingness to heal even Lunars, is unnatural and morally wrong...
Stephen
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