> I agree - I just don't think 'mythic significance' is directly
> correlated to how often the quest is performed, or even how successfully.
Without an immediate way to distinguish between the effects of one, and the other, though, it's effectively impossible to say. How many very "mythicly significant" events are never re-enacted, or only re-enacted disasterously? How many "insignificant" events are regularly and successfully re-enacted with great magical benefit? I think the correlation is very high in practice, though it may not be possible to argue that the connection is "direct" or "intrinsic".
My intuition is that if some "unknown" heropath is suspiciously "easy" (that is, yields a similar magical "bang" for the difficulty/hazard "buck" than a known one, corresponding to a common cultic one used in ceremonies, or divine magic quests), then it's for some (unknown, natch) reason. Such it being some sort of "forgotten" mythology, or a Cosmic Secret Truth previously unknown to any cult, or whatever. The whole nature of the Hero/God Plane after all, is that it conforms to the nature of myth -- whatever _that_ really is.
> if you are the first Zorak Zorani or the 100th to attempt to beat up
> Yelmalio, he is just as tough.
I don't agree with this, at least entirely, as it would seem to preclude the possibility that HQing can change the myth, or the HeroPlane -- which is ultimately the whole point.
> Of course, it also helps that the Yelmalions know they are supposed to
> lose (because all the guys that beat ZZ and carried on ended up getting
> eaten by chaos bugs and never came back)
I think that it's certainly possible to "win" the HoG quest, and even that some have done so, and got some or all of their fire powers "back". I'm not sure what the particular mindset of the Quester is, though. I don't think he "tries" to lose; perhaps rather, he just (consciously or otherwise) chooses a path where winning is unlikely, and the most he can do is to survive. So in a way, he's trying for the "best loss" he can achieve. So I don't think that even in this case, are the Questers simply playing a two-handed game of solitaire, which each happy to accept the "status quo" outcome
> but [the HoG HQer] might be an Antirian, who will attempt to win, so
> its not intrinsic to the hero path but a social effect).
Of course, the two paths must not be exactly the same, and equally, can't be entirely distinct, another Tricky Issue, should it ever come up directly.
Slainte,
Alex.
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