JB>>>I'm a bit puzzled about how the God Learners came to learn>>>outside of a specific cult myth", as Greg puts it in the Elder
>>>about the secrets of creative heroquesting ("heroquesting
Me>>Through the conquest of the Dark Empire?
>Would be a nifty explanation. Alas, we know that as early as 573 the God
>Learners were able to rob the secret of Draconic Speech from the
>barbarian cult of Drolgard, a cult they had no mythic relation to.
There's no indication that they did it by creative heroquesting. All it says is that it was accomplished in a spirit raid.
The mythic relation IMO is a red herring here as cultures have always had the power to create new myths in response to new challenges. A hunter who encounters a new beast (ie one which he has no mythic relation to) will almost certainly try a heroquest to get magics to allow him to hunt the beast. Yet would this be considered 'Creative Heroquesting'? No, because the Hunter would still be enacting a myth of his god in Hunt the [New Beast]. The Orlanthi myth of the 'Summons of Evil' is an excellent example of this. It's generic and could be used against anything evil but it is still within a myth and thus not Creative Heroquesting.
Thus the 'God Learners' of Nochet would have had access to a 'myth'/ritual (or whatever the humanist term is) that allowed them to capture spirits. Maybe this had its origins in the Orlanthi 'Summons of Evil' myth or was analogous to it. They would cast horoscopes and utilize sympathetic correspondances. The spirit would occur and they would subject it to a lengthy interrogation/ riddling contest before dispatching it. Even the Orlanth myth has the evil being revealing 'its origins and nature'. Hence it is quite possible to gain the secrets of Drolgard though normal mythic means.
Thus no creative heroquesting Arkat-style is needed.
Likewise when Arkat discovered 'Heroquesting outside a specific cult myth' in ES, it goes onto say that 'He finally established a cult that preserved the secrets of Heroquesting'. So if the Jrusteli were trading with the Dark Empire then they wouldn't have picked up Creative Heroquesting. I don't even believe the Outer Atomic Explorers were Creative Heroquesters.
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