Yeah, I knew someone was going to bring this up. My take on Uleria is that she's fairly close to Innana/Ishtar. That's what inspired my idea about her connection to Flamal and her descent into the Underworld to recover him. Innana/Ishtar is associated with love, but also to some extent with war. So IMG Uleria has a martial aspect which is generally neglected in most areas because there are other dieties who perform that role much more effectively. Remember, her rune is Fertility, not Harmony. Love sometimes is discordant and sometimes violent, so it seems reasonable that she might have this as a commonly overlooked aspect. That's one reason why this heroquest, which is a relatively powerful one mythically, isn't commonly performed. Most Ulerians lack the training to get past the encounter with ZZ.
Another aspect of my thinking here is that recovering Flamal is about overcoming what ZZ did. This means that the quest's theme is the overcoming of separation and hatred. Thus at some point, Uleria has to defeat ZZ.
>I agree that he should be defeated, but not directly. I would go for
>soemthing like "they get ambushed by ZZ, he beats the crap out of them and
>leaves them for dead. Xiola Umbar shows up, heals the questers, and gives
>them a secret that allows them to defeat ZZ." This should probably take the
>form of Uleria attemting to seduce ZZ and failing (he is the god of Hate,
>after all), then XU telling her about his impotence, and her using that to
>defeat him later...
>
>ZZ - XU are in many ways just opposing aspects of the same power (like
>grower and maker) and will often appear in the same myths. According to
>Drastic Darkness, they have a heropath together that can be used for
>ressurrection, so I like the idea that they both appear in Uleria's myth for
>the same thing.
I like what you say about ZZ and XU. I'll have to figure out a way to work XU into this quest somewhere. Not that I'm likely to run it again in the near future. So are people comfortable with the idea that ZZ is impotent?
Andrew E. Larsen
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