Interesting new thread:
This goes straight to one of the major problems I always had with the
heroquest-concept. Basically, this is a time warp with the heroquester
changing history at a central place. It seems to be modelled the
"Perception of Time"-Way. This means, only your history is changed,
everybody elses history remains the same (There's a genius short story
about an scientist detecting that his wife has an affair. He wants to
kill her, but since he's a bit weird, he decides to do this by building
a timemachine and changing history. At first he kills her grandparents
in their youth, but when he comes back she still is there. Then he takes
more drastic action and shows Madame Curie how to build an atomic bomb
and makes her setting it off in Paris. Since he and his wife are living
in Paris, he assumes this should be sufficient. But (you won't imagine)
when he comes back, nothing has changed). Practically you can start your
own subcult, who propagates the new truth.
The problem with your new Orlanth-subcult is, that this way probably
chaos wouldn't have infiltrated Glorantha, resulting in a gigantic
change of history. Imagine initiates of this subcult radiating an aura
of the time before the chaos-wars.
With the starting of a new subcult in mind, I asked at Tentacles 98 in
the Heroquest-Panel, what would happen, if a Yelmalion would take an
more intelligent approach to the hill of Gold, avoiding the ambush of
Zorak Zoran and eventually defeating Zorak Zoran. The answer was (as far
as I recall by Nick Brooke, MOB and Sandy) that a devout Yelmalion
wouldn't want to take another course of action, since the traditional
way would emphasize Yelmalios sense of responsibility (the main thing
learned out of this quest for Yelmalions). And what would other
Yelmalions think of an Yelmalion wielding the lost power? So the (for me
unsatisfactory but nethertheless seemingly official) line is, that you
deliberately reenact the mistakes your god made, to represent his
personal development (Some Digests before, I read that Orlanth learned
from this incident, that law shouldn't be applied by the letter, but on
a case-to-case-basis). Everything else would be godlearnerish.
One other thought: Should it be possible, that a non-Heroquester can
profit from a heroquest, in which he has been integrated as the enemy? I
think, only other heroquesters would be suitable opponents and should be
encountered at another plane of existence. If they win, they can
justified demand benefits from excelling at _their_ heroquest, including
the start of the subcult. Non-heroquesters, IMO, shouldn't get the
knowledge necessary to start a new subcult.
Last but not least one question from me: Is rape in Glorantha considered
chaotic or is it "just evil"? I think the first applies and had serious
problems with an adventure in TotRM (first or second Prax Special) whose
story relied upon Praxian Nomads raping an Orlanthi woman. While this is
unfortunately part of real world warfare, I think this shouldn't be true
in Glorantha.
Cheers,
Andreas
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