> Has anyone worked up any notions of what the Hero (and/or God) Plane(s)
> physically look like?
I think the ultimate answer it that one's preception of it is almost entirely subjective, but that's a tad unhelpful, so I'll give some vague generalisations, with this as a suitably big caveat.
> For example [...] would the Gods Plane look like the mundane plane,
> only the gods would have big fortresses and mansions dotting the landscape?
Something like that, except rather: it appears exactly as it's described in the myth you're seeking to enact, which is to say, somewhat like the mundane world, but with places and being appropriate to the Time/Age being visited, and a more "primaeval" (or as Mike Cule might put it, Platonic) feel to it. So if you're an Orlanthi, and you HQ back to the Storm Age, you'll be able to see Umath's Camp on the Spike, and various gods trundling in and out of it. If you go the same place in the Greater Darkness, you'll see an extremely large hole.
> Or, would it appear more as a profile? Darkness
> Gods under the Earth gods under the Storm Gods under the Sky Gods?
This is likely how it appeared the the God Learners.
> What about the Heroplane? I figure the HQs of travel are something like
> being on a road.
I think that's true of all HQs, in the sense you describe, whether on the "God Plane" or the "Hero Plane". They all consist of a number of "stages", each of the form "Go to Place X and do thing Y". If you do so, and succeed, then appropriate mythic/magical effect occurs; if you fail, you likely have to abandon the quest. If you do the "wrong" thing... Who knows what'll happen? It's a bit like getting into an F-18 and pressing buttons at random.
> [On new Quests, for new (sub)cults ...] would I get Breath
> Air/Water by going down to the ocean, beating up the spirits and beings who
> know Breath Air/Water, and forcing them to teach it to me?
That's about it, at bottom. Or befriending them, or whatever. In practice, though, you need a more detailed "plan" than this. The usual method is to adapt some other myth, or some other cult's HeroPath for the same, or some similar, magic effect. For example, some myth where some Air god defeats one or other Merman deity (and there are several of these, as hinted at in KoS), in the case of the Cetoi, forcing them to become air breathing.
The danger is, if you don't have such an adapted Path, and just wander about at semi-random -- "Sea's thataway -- Onward!" -- then you may find yourself unwittingly entering some _other_ myth. Whereupon you might get clobbered by something much nastier, or you didn't expect at a given point, and which almost certainly you haven't prepared for.
Slainte,
Alex.
End of Glorantha Digest V4 #338
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