Dante's HeroQuest. from Mike Cule on 1995-06-25 (Glorantha Digest Vol 01)

From: Mike Cule <mikec_at_room3b.demon.co.uk>
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 1995 00:24:24 GMT

I've just finished watching the last episode of a program about the Middle Ages, particularly the world-view of the Middle Ages on BBC 2, called STRANGE LANDSCAPE. It's been very entertaining and enlightening and the final programme was about Dante and featured a dramatisation of the journey he undergoes in THE DIVINE COMEDY with all the bells and whistles of a modern television dramatisation. (The bit with two people in hell, one of whom was condemned to eat the other's brain for all eternity will stick with me. Gah!)

And it struck me that his quest from the lowest point to the highest in his world (as he conceived it to be) was very like a HeroQuest.

And I wondered if we could find a similar document for Glorantha. Only of course the journey would have been literally true. Who could have done the whole journey from the deepest pit of hell to the throne of Yelm? Arkat perhaps? Or one of the God-Learners? (Finding an unsuppressed document from either would be both interesting and dangerous to your health.)

Who would be the Virgil to guide our wanderer on his way? What would be their route?

-- Mike Cule

Actor and Genius.
AKA Theophilus, Prince-Archbishop of the Far Isles (Arms: Purpure, an open book proper, without clasps. On the dexter page the Greek letter Alpha or. On the sinister page the letter Omega of the same. Motto: nulla spes sit in resistendo.)

Ask me about the Far Isles Medieval Society: Better living through pan-medieval anachronisms.

End of Glorantha Digest V1 #328

WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html