> > Me:
> >I think that where this is true, it's because you're interacting
> >with the consequences of those past hero's effect on the world.
> >A great Troll hero may have made the Troll people of Dagori Inkarth
> >stronger, and effect that persists to this day. If you quest against
> >them, you may have to overcome the increased power of the trolls,
> >which manifests itself in the form of this hero from long ago.
> >The quester, the questor's deeds, and their long term effects
> >become blurred together at the metaphysical level - we are our
> >actions, and the consequences of what we do define who we are in
> >this sense.
>
> I don't think this is quite right. If I heroquest, an
> opponent can be drawn
> from the past, quite possibly in the manner you describe - I
> like this
> model. But what if there is no suitable opponent from the
> past? Or put
> another way, who does the Troll hero face?
You're fighting against what the hero did, the effect of the hero on the mundane and otherworlds, which manifests itself in the form of the hero. No time travel is required.
> So, I like the model, and think it says something useful, but
> I think the
> ripples can flow both ways. So the great Troll hero of my
> distant past can
> face an opponent that includes the potential effects I will
> have in his
> future on the heroplane.
You can face the resistance of the world to the change you're trying to make, but that resistance exists in the world as it is now. You are fighting to make a different future to the one that would otherwise occur. this might appear to manifest in the form of the other future fighting back, but what's realy happening is that the inertia in the world that would otherwise lead to that future is resistign you. Again, no time travel is required. It might appear to happen, but that's just the resistance of the world wearing the mask of a possible future. In a heroquest impersonal forces can assume personalities in this way.
Suppose there's a rock rolling down a hill towards a stead and I want to stop it, and move it up to the top of the hill. I heroquest to do so (silly example, but never mind), using the "Simon defends the Stead heroquest". I face a demon holding pieces of rubble in it's hands and chewing on the torn thatching of the stead roof "I am the destruction of your Stead - none can defeat me! Bwa, ha, ha...". I fight the demon and defeat it.
Now it appears that I fought something from the future. The stead wasn't yet destroyed, so how can peices of it have been in the hands of the demon? Looks like time travel! In fact all I was doing was fighting against the inertia of the rock rolling down hill. It manifested as a stead-destroying demon because that's what I feared, that's what I was fighting to stop from happening. I imposed that framework on the contest myself, but the actual forces empowering it were the forces of the rock as it hurtled downhill. They merely took a partiocular form in that quest.
It's not always as simple as that, because of course there might be an otherworld entity actualy responsible for sending the rock down the hill in the first place. Often I think it's hard, or impossible, or even meaningless to say which way of looking at it is 'correct'.
> Agreed, but I'm not sure that this answers the question.
> Would you agree
> that anything encountered in the heroplane has its roots in
> the mundane
> world? Or are there beings that have no relationship to the
> mundane at all?
I think most entities in the otherworld represent somethign in the material world (or vice versa), but an object in the mundane world might be a personalised entity in the otherworld, or vice versa. There may be some otherworld entities with tenuous, or indirect connections to the material world.
Simon Hibbs
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