Re: Practice Heroquests

From: Andrew Solovay <asolovay_at_...>
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 01:50:18 -0000

>
> Rob Davis wrote:
>
> > On a more recent level, King Broyan performs the summons of evil
> > in Orlanth is Dead, which sucks in a whole Lunar (small) army.
> > This is a mundane world quest I believe.
>
> Summons of Evil is the standard rite to start Orlanthi heroquests,
> by cleaning the local area of potential opposition (assuming that
> you can deal with the Evil, of course). This is done first,
> whether doing a small service or a full Lightbringer's Quest. It
> is not a separate Quest.

But as I understand it, a lot of ritual magic *can* be done as a heroquest, and often is when the stakes are high.

e.g. If you're about to go out and fight a single-combat, your clan may hold an "arming of Orlanth" ceremony to give you some helpful magic. But if you're about to go on a major heroquest, you might well run the "arming of Orlanth" as a practice quest--increasing the difficulty (and the consequences if you screw up), but also increasing the reward.

And if you're going on a serious, tough heroquest (like the LBQ), you might run through the entire "Arming of Orlanth" as a full-on heroquest on the hero plane.

So in this case, since Broyan is doing something very difficult, he might well run the Summons of Evil as a heroquest. (Though I say it with the proviso that I don't actually *have* OiD, so I'm kinda talking through my hat here.)