HQ maps

From: Robert McArthur <mcarthur_at_fit.qut.edu.au>
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 17:08:49 +1000 (EST)

Something I just grasped the other day (perhaps years after everyone else) was how little cults know about other cults mythos. For example, it will be known that for Donadar to be able to tell stories that really make people believe they are part of the action, he had to do X, then Y, then Z. For those in the runepower camp, on the hilltop where rune spells are really minor heroquests, doing this HQ gives you the rune 'spell'. Now, other cults may know that Donadar has this nifty ability, but they don't know how he (?) got it. Maybe they know he bargained with Y to get it, but they don't know exactly what was offered in the bargain, where the bargain was held, stakes, etc.

Of course, the reason this is so important is that you can't make a HQ map of a cult path unless you know many of the waypoints. Knowing only some of the waypoints, or some of the *ways* of getting somewhere, won't help too much. I can see some wonderful intrigue and MGF as someone infiltrates the temple, or gets excomunicated, and must be inhumed to preserve the cult lore. Perhaps a spirit of retribution also makes the character lose every bit of their cult lore skill?

OK, another question while I'm here: in the defunct Trollpack, it says that Eristi met [grandfather mortal] who was the first to die. "The next stranger who came...was Yelm, the second being to die..." Is it generally accepted that Yelm was the second to die? I thought he was a bit further down in the list... In this case, we have death passing (in Orlanthi mythos): Humakt -> Eurmal -> Orlanth -> Eurmal ... pretty much everyone else! So the greater darkness came immediately after Humakt got death (and after he had played around with it for a bit offing Grandad.

Cheers
Robert McArthur

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