Time Travel via HeroQuesting

From: Mike Cule <mikec_at_room3b.demon.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 11:12:48 GMT


I have been working on a version of HeroQuest and have been forced reluctantly to the conclusion that altering the past is in fact possible in Glorantha. Not easy, but possible.

I'm forced to this by the fact that Greg somewhere or other remarks that a group of strange looking figures appearing at a critical battle were HeroQuesters from the future come back to change reality. (And that they may have in fact succeeded: I don't have the reference to hand at this instant, can anyone dig it up for me?)

Also I suspect that the Pharoah was just such a time traveller.

The circumstances under which you can do this (All the following is very much In My Opinion) are limited. You must be going back to a point after Time. There are different effects if you alter an event from the primordial GodTime. Only going back and changing a key event in Time will result in the transformation of the whole universe.

To do this you must find one of the places where the Mundane Plane and the God Time draw closely together. This is easiest if you find a ritual that is still going on in your time and then sidestep back to one of its previous iterations. I believe that in Belintar's original future the old Esrolian year king ceremony was still being held. He discovered how to go back to one of the previous occasions it was held and using his future knowledge altered the ceremony to something more to his own liking.

However, there is one major difficulty. In HeroQuesting (according to how I'm writing it up) you will usually rely enormously on the support of the people back home. You form a HeroQuesting Ring which allows the priests and people back at home base to channel their Will to the person who is the focus of the Ring. As soon as you begin to make a change in the past your future help is destroyed and you must continue with what personal Will you have.

Also you may have some difficulty recruiting people to support a project which will mean they have never been born.

This leaves you with the alternatives of doing it all on your own (not really practicable), taking your entire Ring with you (you're sure to loose a few on the way) and lying to the people supporting you (easiest if you're an Illuminate: I'm sure this was what Belintar did).

I envisage the actual manouvere as taking a step in a direction mortals can't normally see (you'd have to HeroQuest to discover this secret of Time first) and then climbing something like a huge spiral staircase against a howling gale trying to force you back. And you may have difficulty finding the right 'floor' to get off at. Those ceremonies repeated time after time all look very much alike on the GodPlane.  

> From: SimonPhipp_at_aol.com
> Somebody once asked in my campaign what would happen if he tried to prove
> that the humans cheated in the Waha Covenant contests and how would he do it.
> The how was very difficult, so he gavce up, but the what is interesting. I
> think that the Quest would have to be performed for each nation involved in
> the Covenant. Any victorious quest would mean that animals from those nations
> could raise herd men in the same way that morokanth do. It would then create
> two forms of each nation, one animals herding men, the other men herding
> animals. It would not turn all praxian men into herd men and vice versa.

This is true under my system for normal HeroQuests. A Hero would return from his journey with a new way of doing things and a small potential change in reality. He would need to teach his new secret and spread it, gradually turning his HeroQuest Ring into a cult in the world. Most important of all he would need to devise a Sacred Time ritual to weave his new reality into the web of Arachne Solara as a permanent part of the world.

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 V2 #659


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

Powered by hypermail