Peter Metcalfe :
>Only the Nights of Horrors had strange alien beings
>whom Greg said were future Heroquesters. I don't believe this is the
>case and have explained why in a previous digest
Peter is trying hard to avoid the possibility of temporal paradoxes in Glorantha, but I think it is a losing battle. Apparent paradoxes are an inevitable consequence of heroquesting. For example - Joe Heroquester dies and goes to Hell, finds the secret exit (which he learned about in a previous quest) and comes back, meanwhile his family bury the body. Now Joe has two bodies, the one that is dead and buried and the one he came back in.
Personaly, I don't have a problem with this. The GL techniques for mass producing magic items probably used a variant of this principle. You create the item, make a myth of it on the heroplane, then repeatedly quest to that part of the heroplane and bring it back as many times as you like.
(I'm getting on to shaky ground from here on, but I'm going to take a stab at it anyway)
Temporal paradoxes are just another wird side-effect of heroquesting, but there are limitations on what can be done by heroquesting that ameliorate the problem.
Greg has said that heroquesting is a process of transformation, the heroquester changes himself and gains power by doing so. Heroquests can also change a cult, or even a whole society. I believe heroquests can change Glorantha too, in a sense the world can re-shape itself into a new form, and this is what happens at the changeover between ages. The world becomes a different place.
It is possible to explain the Nights of Horror incident by saying that the battle actualy took place on the hero plane, so the 'heroquesters from the future' were arriving at the heroplane, not at the mundane site of the battle. Barntar is a different kettle of fish, if he is from a future age then the obvious conclusion is that the 'current' age is part of the heroplane so far as Barntar is concerned.
This leads me to suspect that the rules of time travel in Glorantha are somewhat skewed. For example, it is not possible to heroquest from the current age into a future age because it does not exist yet. Past ages, on the other hand, have already happened, so they already exist and can be quested to. Thus it is only possible to time-travel _backwards_ in time. Travelling forward in time would then be restricted to the pedestrian route, i.e. staying alive long enough.
Simon
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