RE: Exploration HQs

From: Nikk Effingham <nikk_at_MailAndNews.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 18:50:14 -0500

Me:
>> I think there are many Quests you could never enact. So you can’t have a
>> Humakti who resurrects the dead, it’s integral to the existence of Humakt
that
>> this is not how he works.
>
>This is the second time that I have seen this example. It seems to me
>that this is exactly what Yanfal Tar'nilis (sp?) did when he fought Humakt
>and "cheated" to win the bought. Granted, this was so different that it
>started a whole new cult. On the other hand, this new cult has supplanted
>the old one, nearly replacing Humakt for the Lunars in the same social role,
>making it the same as the original (for the correct value of "same").

I don’t think that this is the correct interpretation. Humakt was not integrally changed by Yanafal’s actions. Indeed, Yanafal became worshipped for his actions as a god in his own right, not as a Hero who was _part_ of Humakt’s cult for the very simple reason that Humakti cults, in any form, are unable to absorb resurrection into their ideology. There are, simply, things that certain gods just won’t do. No variant of Storm Bull will allow chaos worshippers into their ranks (we’ll forget about funky illuminates abusing the rules for now). I think it was at a Lore Auction where Greg talks about the worship or Ernalda – you can worship the goddess, and see the goddess in many ways, but there are certain faces/aspects which she plainly cannot be i.e. evil chaotic Ernalda. In Yanafal’s case he enacted something so radical that he just couldn’t be Humakti, and the reason that he was capable of it was that he had been exposed to the one true way of Rufelza, the Red Goddess, who showed him the folly of Humakti constraints.

>So, my point is that any HeroQuest/myth creation is possible, though
>some things may be arbitrarily difficult (and require some sort of
>transcendence to reconcile the paradox implicit in the union of opposites).

Illuminated deities aside, the gods have things about them that never change. You will not find Chalana Arroy worshippers anywhere who wield bloody great axes and are brought out in times of war to cleave the enemy to bits. It simply doesn’t happen. There may be gods with both a healing and a war aspect (say, frex, Xiola Umbar is a more militant healing deity, if not specifically a god of battle or war) but they just ain’t Chalana Arroy. In RQ terms this means no reusable Ressurection, no Sleep spell etc…

NB When I say Chalana Arroy I, of course, mean her in all her aspects, such as Erissa etc…

All IMHO,

Nikk

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