One important thing to understand is that except for the absolutely most commonly undertaken quests, most cults do not know this sort of information in enough detail to be useful. They give you all the myths and all the background stories because they do not know which bits are important and which aren't.
Its also important to realise that its not enough to re-enact a myth from your subjective point of view. There is an objective myth pattern there, and if you get the myth wrong you can mess up badly. The myths of your religion may miss out important information, so may be incomplete. Knowing the myths well enough that you can heroquest with them reliably is more than most cultures can manage (hey, who said heroquesting was easy?), so knowing which bits are important and which are not is usually far more than anyone can hope for.
Eg on his first LBQ, Harmast is using the story of how Mastakos travels to the west for his Westfaring. He has to give a guide through the elf forest the rarest flower. He gives the guide a green rose, IIRC, which is the rarest flower that Harmast or anyone he knows knows about. So subjectively, Harmast has done quite the right thing. Unfortunately, its not what the guide is looking for, and the elves turn on them, shoot most of his party dead, and Harmast is forced to flee and gets lost on the hero plane. In one simple respect, his tribal myth is incomplete, and because of that his quest goes disastrously wrong.
And remember, the only way most people have of discovering things like this is trial and error. A few are sophisticated enough to also allow slow laborious research that might increase your chances a little.
>I'm wondering whether Arkat was so successful, as were the
>God Learners, because they a) could distill it down and
>b) *did* do so?
Arkat had the advantage of seeing some quests from different angles, so probably was able to get some insight others were denied. Its pretty damn difficult to use this technique extensively though - there are big issues involved in trying to experience a quest from the POV of your traditional enemies, for example, which didn't always stop Arkat but would stop most.
The God Learners were probably the only culture to have some real technique for investigating whats important in a quest, though, as they were able to directly ask questions of many mythic entities, with relatively small danger to themselves in the short term. Most of their success at heroquesting, at least in the early parts of period, and probably overall, is probably due simply to having much better info about the details of the heroquest, as a result of interrogating a few of the entities involved beforehand.
Cheers David ------------------------------
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