I remember vividly when I first bought RQ, back in 1981, sitting on a bus going back across town to uni, reading with growing awe and wonder about Argrath, the temple to the Reaching Moon, and the dragons unleashed beneath it. There were just a few short tantalising sentences, but they converted me. Here was an rpg where storytelling mattered and myth was taken seriously. That was twenty years ago. Since then I've patrolled the borderlands of Prax, hijinxed in Pavis, created and destroyed a Sartarite king, saved Ironspike from a chaos army, discovered an enormous EWFish Maw beneath Dagori Inkarth, and spent several happy though rain-soaked years puttering around the wilder uplands of the Far Place, vaguely aware yet trying to deny that the Hurricane was soon upon us.
Over the years, my knowledge of the coming Hero Wars has increased. Another vivid memory is from October 1992, in the middle of a roleplaying convention I was running, curled up in my sleeping bag at 4 am, totally exhausted but breathless devouring the drafts of King of Sartar. Here was that Temple again, and Argrath, and the dragon. And here again was that sense of wonder and awe, events that I'd anticipated (another dragon) and things that completely took me by surprise (Sheng!). And at the end of the book, a vision of a completely transformed and almost unrecognisable Glorantha that I still don't think any of us really understand.
Any transforming experience - be it a story, a world, a life - must begin with tearing down your expectations and previous understandings. We enter the Wasteland, the dark night, we shed our skin, we enter the belly of the whale. Old understandings are no longer adequate, we seek for new answers and new meanings, new ways of understanding a greater whole. This process can be painful, profoundly disorientating, destructive. From it comes a new vision and a new wholeness.
I expect, as a Gloranthan scholar, as a player, as a fellow journeyman, to be challenged and confounded and frustrated by the unfolding Hero Wars. In fact, I demand it. :) I expect (on every level) that obvious and long-held truths will be shown to be false, expected progressions to be subverted, and new mysteries and quandries to be presented with no immediate answers. My 'gods' will die, and new gods in forms undreamt of will rise to replace them. A new world, a new sun, a new understanding is my hope for the journey's end, even it it take another decade or two. Through it all, my only point of reference and trust is the story and the storyteller.
Cheers
John
We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!
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