re: heroquest focus

From: David Dunham <dunham_at_pensee.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 1997 00:07:37 -0700


Alex answered me

> > But I don't think Harmast went after the sun.
>
> I'm not for a moment suggesting he did. My point is that prior to that
> point, there had been one (1) Lightbringer's Quest, and it _had_ brought
> back the sun. So to the extent that Harmast's LBQ was a re-enactment,
> Arkat was placed in the "Sun's role". To the extent that he wasn't,
> the Quest is Extrapolative.

I think an important part of heroquesting is deciding why you're questing. Let's take a well-known example, Orlanth and Aroka. You can perform this myth to kill a dragon. You can perform this myth to end drought. You can perform it to find a new friend (or a new weapon, if you view Heler as a weapon against drought). You can perform this myth to free a captive. (My character, Korol Sure-Strike, wanted to perform the myth to lie with the Dark Woman, but that's really not the goal of the myth.) I think you choose ahead of time how you want to interpret the myth (and by interpret I mean any bogus post-modern or other way of looking at the story), and that more or less defines the outcome you get. (In Jeff Richard's Taming of Dragon Pass campaign, King Erland showed up, and we scrambled to change our focus from dragon killing to friend finding; it seems to have worked, to some extent.) The other results may well occur, but as side effects; they'd probably be less predictable.

>From what I know of Harmast's Saga, his actual motivation was to seek
redemption. The saga is woefully incomplete, and there may be a more important motivation, but this personal one is a perfectly valid interpretation of the Lightbringers Quest. Historians seem more interested by side effects like returning with Arkat the Conqueror, but this may not have been what Harmast was interested in. And Harmast may have cast Arkat as Lord of the Dead, or Evil Emperor, not as the Sun.

David Dunham <mailto:dunham_at_pensee.com> Glorantha/RQ page: <http://www.pensee.com/dunham/glorantha.html> Imagination is more important than knowledge. -- Albert Einstein


Powered by hypermail