The common link between the two is their use of violence to fuel their powers. Its often been said that Harrek doesn't fit into the normal mode of hero simply because he has no social group to back him. As the archetypal "man alone" this has not fitted the general concept of the Heroplane, heroes and the way it all works and thus it has caused some problems to several people, even Greg who has commented on the "Selfish hero"/"Society hero".
I think this concept is wrong.
It presumes a deliberate effort on the part of a social group to support a hero but I don't think its _always_ a conscious thing, I don't think its always a social thing, I think its a question of what is intrinsic to the nature of the hero and the race they represent in some way.
Harreks social group is the rapacity and aggression of the _whole_ human race. This goes a large part of the way to explaining his power. For Harrek this power is not a consciously focused thing and he'd probably laugh at you if you said otherwise, it simply comes to him because he started the process by becoming the meanest bastard around. The Hero Wars period at the end of the Third age is a time of great strife - Harrek merely serves as a focus - if it hadn't been him, it would have been someone else.
The difference between him and Sheng was that Sheng consciously courted the power of suffering and destruction to fuel his own rise to Godhood. Sheng though was a less elemental person than Harrek and while Harrek could never really build any solid social structures, Sheng could have for he sought always to use the structures of the societies he conquered to his own advantage and to integrate them into his power base - hence his attempt at putting his son through the Ten Tests to make him Emperor.
So for me the "Selfish" and "Selfless" hero has no meaning - I think "Conscious" and "Unconscious" is more apt.
CONSCIOUS HEROES would be:
Arkat
Argrath
Jar-eel (though a lot of her power is derived from her postion so that is
unconscious)
Sir Meriatan
Sheng Seleris
Sir Ethilrist
Lokamayadon
UNCONSCIOUS HEROES
Harrek
Jaldon
Harmast (because he saw a job that had to be done and did it, without thinking
of his personal power)
Talor
Any comments?
Martin Laurie
End of Glorantha Digest V4 #73
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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