Lunar Heroquests

[Bohemond]

I am slowly gearing up to run a Glorantha LARP and one of the things I need to wrestle with is Lunar heroquests. So what do we actually know about Lunar heroquests, apart from the fact that the Lunars are really good at it? I mean, do we know any of the myths they quest? Do they quest incidents in the lives of the Seven Mothers, for example? Or do they mostly do heroquests from the cultures they've conquered, repurposing those stories like the God Learners did? I want to have at least a couple quests available for Lunar PCs. 

[Lordabdul]

32 minutes ago, Bohemond said:

Glorantha LARP

Holy shit... I mean... well, "pics or it didn't happen". If you have players who like cosplaying, I will definitely want to see some photos! (and if it's even half as good as your average WoD or 7th Seas gathering, it will probably be awesome already).

I believe that Lunars have a habit of re-purposing existing myths to assimilate them in the Lunar pantheon, yes, but I'll let the grown up speak about that because I don't know too much yet.

Somewhat related, there's this person running an RQG game who had a Lunar heroquester try to sabotage some Orlanthi festivities. See this post on the RPGnet forums, and start reading at "The climax of the gathering is a Summons of Evil rite"... there's the GM commentary in a follow-up post for some "behind the scenes" info. It might give you some ideas!

[metcalph]

The main quest is the Seven Steps of the Goddess (HeroQuest Glorantha p182).in which the Lunar seeks to emulate the stages of the goddess through life in order to become illuminated.

[Bill the barbarian]

9 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

Holy shit... I mean... well, "pics or it didn't happen". If you have players who like cosplaying, I will definitely want to see some photos! (and if it's even half as good as your average WoD or 7th Seas gathering, it will probably be awesome already).

 

You know, lordabdul, you can ask @Joerg all about playing Gloranthan LARPs,  eh? He’s been doing em forever ( I think or maybe it was forever ago he did a LARP, one of the two). Hell, he might even have pics.

[g33k]

1 hour ago, Bohemond said:

I am slowly gearing up to run a Glorantha LARP and one of the things I need to wrestle with is Lunar heroquests. So what do we actually know about Lunar heroquests, apart from the fact that the Lunars are really good at it? I mean, do we know any of the myths they quest? Do they quest incidents in the lives of the Seven Mothers, for example? Or do they mostly do heroquests from the cultures they've conquered, repurposing those stories like the God Learners did? I want to have at least a couple quests available for Lunar PCs. 

Don't the Lunars still Heroquest to tame the winter every year?

[Bohemond]

34 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

Holy shit... I mean... well, "pics or it didn't happen". If you have players who like cosplaying, I will definitely want to see some photos! (and if it's even half as good as your average WoD or 7th Seas gathering, it will probably be awesome already).

I believe that Lunars have a habit of re-purposing existing myths to assimilate them in the Lunar pantheon, yes, but I'll let the grown up speak about that because I don't know too much yet.

Somewhat related, there's this person running an RQG game who had a Lunar heroquester try to sabotage some Orlanthi festivities. See this post on the RPGnet forums, and start reading at "The climax of the gathering is a Summons of Evil rite"... there's the GM commentary in a follow-up post for some "behind the scenes" info. It might give you some ideas!

I ran a Sartar High Council one-shot a few months ago. Here are a couple pics from that. The duck shaman is my favorite. 

[Bill the barbarian]

I have only three word for those pics... to quote John Belush

Quote

TOGA TOGA TOGA!!!

Nice and yeah, the duck shaman rules!

[Lordabdul]

15 minutes ago, Bohemond said:

The duck shaman is my favorite. 

Awesome, Thanks for that!

[French Desperate WindChild]

RPG is definitively for young people !

[Eff]

12 hours ago, Bohemond said:

I am slowly gearing up to run a Glorantha LARP and one of the things I need to wrestle with is Lunar heroquests. So what do we actually know about Lunar heroquests, apart from the fact that the Lunars are really good at it? I mean, do we know any of the myths they quest? Do they quest incidents in the lives of the Seven Mothers, for example? Or do they mostly do heroquests from the cultures they've conquered, repurposing those stories like the God Learners did? I want to have at least a couple quests available for Lunar PCs. 

Two thoughts:

1) specifically Lunar quests mostly revolve around incidents in the lives of Sedenya's recognized Masks. These are not evenly divided- the Rashorana quests are almost certainly rarer than Orogeria or Lesilla quests. These are also probably fragmentary in many places. 

2) Lunar heroquesting is also said to have been invented by Valare Addi, and what she did was perform a series of quests in different locations in an attempt to reconstruct the connections between them (this is also what the Seven Mothers appear to have done before their main quest to reassemble Sedenya). So the other face of Lunar heroquesting is about the process of discovering the presence of Sedenya in myth. This interweaves with the previous approach- if you want to discover a Verithurusa quest, you might quest to the Ten Tests and then diverge at the Test of the Hungry and follow Verithurusa around and try and discover more myths of her. 

The second one is most similar to Arkati questing, I think, but different in that Arkat more or less wandered to see where things went and Lunars generally have a good idea of where things go, they just have little idea of where to get there. 

And in the broad sense I feel that the second method of Lunar heroquesting is something that you can do for any god, and is an important part of the process of Lunarizing local religions- by proving that your local god has some Lunar connections, it's possible to assimilate them into the Lunar Way. (The most immediate example is the proof that Sedenya tamed the Star Bear, which allowed the Odalya worshippers of Sylila to become Lunar). 

[Bohemond]

32 minutes ago, Eff said:

Two thoughts:

1) specifically Lunar quests mostly revolve around incidents in the lives of Sedenya's recognized Masks. These are not evenly divided- the Rashorana quests are almost certainly rarer than Orogeria or Lesilla quests. These are also probably fragmentary in many places. 

2) Lunar heroquesting is also said to have been invented by Valare Addi, and what she did was perform a series of quests in different locations in an attempt to reconstruct the connections between them (this is also what the Seven Mothers appear to have done before their main quest to reassemble Sedenya). So the other face of Lunar heroquesting is about the process of discovering the presence of Sedenya in myth. This interweaves with the previous approach- if you want to discover a Verithurusa quest, you might quest to the Ten Tests and then diverge at the Test of the Hungry and follow Verithurusa around and try and discover more myths of her. 

The second one is most similar to Arkati questing, I think, but different in that Arkat more or less wandered to see where things went and Lunars generally have a good idea of where things go, they just have little idea of where to get there. 

And in the broad sense I feel that the second method of Lunar heroquesting is something that you can do for any god, and is an important part of the process of Lunarizing local religions- by proving that your local god has some Lunar connections, it's possible to assimilate them into the Lunar Way. (The most immediate example is the proof that Sedenya tamed the Star Bear, which allowed the Odalya worshippers of Sylila to become Lunar). 

Thanks! That really helpful. So you don't think they try to quest the stories of the Seven Mothers? Does the fact that the 7M are Immortals but not exactly gods mean that their stories aren't questable? On the one hand, that makes a bit of sense, but on the other hand, we know that people quest events from the lives of heroes as well as gods. 

[Eff]

1 hour ago, Bohemond said:

Thanks! That really helpful. So you don't think they try to quest the stories of the Seven Mothers? Does the fact that the 7M are Immortals but not exactly gods mean that their stories aren't questable? On the one hand, that makes a bit of sense, but on the other hand, we know that people quest events from the lives of heroes as well as gods. 

I think that when you're dealing with a hero that lived in Time you can only quest to where and how they shaped the Godtime. So you could reenact the quests the 7M did in the way the 7M specifically performed them or visit their moment of achieving immortality, but probably not reenact events before they gathered together as the 7M.

[Joerg]

Each of the ascended human deities has a quest that put them in their place on the Red Moon (after it had been raised from where now the Crater gapes). For the Seven Mothers, the birth of Teelo Estara through the sacrifice of Teelo Norri is a common element. The conspirators tread new paths in Godtime to resurrect Sedenya, and those changes are now established patterns in Godtime and can be used as heroquest paths. If the seven mothers did some creative (myth-altering or myth-defining) heroquesting before joining Deezola's cabal, those paths may be available for followers of that specific mother, too. Yanafal's duel with the wasp-headed Humakt of Carmania may have occurred before he joined the cabal. Danfive Xaron's crimes surely occurred earlier, too, though I have no idea whether creative heroquesting was involved. Jakaleel likely was conversant with the underworld from before her teaming up with Deezola, too.

Valare Addi opened the vast realm of ancient Pelorian myths to Lunar heroquesting. While many of those paths aren't exactly Lunar in nature, they are open to heroquesters trained in Lunar "Traveling and Journeying" and chronoportation (jumping between greater cycles of Godtime on a single quest).

 

[Sir_Godspeed]

I'm inclined to say that pre-divine elements of the Lunar immortals can be included in the Heroquest - provided that they are narratively relevant. At the end of the day, that's what heroquests are: they're stories. I like to think that when ascending, the "puncture" of the apotheosis of a hero drags with it some of the pre-divine events as well, fossilizing them too in God Time. That's just my loose take on it, though. And of course it doesn't mean that other randos or bystanders of those events are suddenly divine as well. I assume they are replaced with a kind of divine/God Time "Greek chorus" kind of thing, as it were.

[Bohemond]

Looking at the Quest of the Red Goddess, something struck me. The goddess isn't just doing great deeds here--she seems to be performing a heroquest. So is she following some earlier mythic sequence? 

[Eff]

1 hour ago, Bohemond said:

Looking at the Quest of the Red Goddess, something struck me. The goddess isn't just doing great deeds here--she seems to be performing a heroquest. So is she following some earlier mythic sequence? 

In the earlier stages, yeah, I think so. I think the later stages diverge very rapidly from any existing myth as she converges with Taraltara at the foot of the Chaosium, though. 

EDIT: More specifically, I think the "Big Guy" in the early parts of her Godquest is Umath and she's reenacting the existence of Verithurusa, but this time she attempts to resist becoming Lesilla and going through the whole cycle again. Which brings her to the moment of truth. 

Edited January 16, 2020 by Eff

[Nick Brooke]

Decades ago, we used to chat about the 7MQ and the RGQ (Seven Mothers’ Quest; Red Goddess’s Quest) on various RuneQuest and Chaosium Dailies and Digests: those might be useful search terms.

My good friend Chris Gidlow ran a freeform called “The Hunt for Red Storm Season” back in the nineties, which was ostensibly about the military-industrial complex’s version of the Kalikos Icebreaker HeroQuest (you can see the amateur version in that gorgeous Guide illustration). The player characters were the rulers of the Lunar Empire.

And our 50-player freeform “Reaching Moon Megacorp’s Life of Moonson” was all about the Lunar New Year Ritual and/or the heroquest undertaken by each Red Emperor, depending on your perspective. Loads more on my website, link in profile (I hope).

[jajagappa]

On 1/14/2020 at 9:59 PM, Bohemond said:

So what do we actually know about Lunar heroquests, apart from the fact that the Lunars are really good at it? I mean, do we know any of the myths they quest?

Don't forget to look through the Entekosiad (which is the text where Valare Addi appears) and provides insight into many of the ancient Pelandan stories. 

Also, the solar myths described in GRoY should be noted.  Very often a "Lunar" heroquest is an intersection with or branch from a solar or celestial myth.  

[soltakss]

On 1/15/2020 at 2:59 AM, Bohemond said:

I am slowly gearing up to run a Glorantha LARP and one of the things I need to wrestle with is Lunar heroquests.

I do like a thread about HeroQuests. I also like Gloranthan LARPs. Hopefully, this will be a great thread.

On 1/15/2020 at 2:59 AM, Bohemond said:

So what do we actually know about Lunar heroquests, apart from the fact that the Lunars are really good at it?

Lunars can do "normal" HeroQuests, whereby they emulate the deeds of their deities and perform reenactment HeroQuests.

They can also perform a kind of GodQuest, where they become a Lunar Hero and then Deity. This is slightly different to how other cultures do it, as the Lunars seem to have a successful formula.

They can also do a form of Inner HeroQuest, I think, where they awaken themselves. The Imperial Lunar Handbooks mention Sevening, where they split their souls into Seven pieces, which is like Illuminatoin with knobs on. 

On 1/15/2020 at 2:59 AM, Bohemond said:

I mean, do we know any of the myths they quest?

They emulate the Path of the Red Goddess, the Seven Mothers' HeroQuest, the Hero Paths of each of their Ascended Deities, for example Etyries, Hon-eel, Hwarin Dalthippa, Yara Aranis and so on. They might also have secret ways to reach into the Myths of other Deities and prove that their Deities are Aspects or Avatars of them. 

Hon Eel performed a HeroQuest where she waited with the Watchers to greet Yelm when he first rose at the Dawn, his light touched her and made her pregnant, so that she had a Hero Child, to prove that she defeated the Reverend Mother of Horses in a contest. She studied the inner knowledge of the Solar Cults to prepare for this. Similarly, she studied the inner knowledge of the Earth Cults to gain access to the innermost mysteries of the Earth Deities and appeared in the Tarsh Sacred Time Ceremonies.

On 1/15/2020 at 2:59 AM, Bohemond said:

Do they quest incidents in the lives of the Seven Mothers, for example? Or do they mostly do heroquests from the cultures they've conquered, repurposing those stories like the God Learners did?

Yes and Yes, I think. Where they absorb other Deities into their Way, they find ways of doing Heroquests from the new Deity's myths but in a Lunar Way. There was a concept of some Lunar Cults being Healed versions of other cults, so Irripi Ontor is Lhankor Mhy Healed, Yanafal Tarnils is Humakt Healed and so on. I am not sure how much of that still applies, but they can certainly use some of the original deity's HeroQuests.

The Red Emperor certainly performed some Reenactment HeroQuests. For example, he played the part of Basko when Sheng Seleris's relatives tried to perform the Tests to become Emperor, so the Red Emperor turns up dressed in fish scales and just kills them all. That means that he did the Basko HeroQuest, but instead of soiling himself in fear and not being noticed by Yelm, he slew the challengers, as he WAS the Emperor.

On 1/15/2020 at 2:59 AM, Bohemond said:

I want to have at least a couple quests available for Lunar PCs. 

The Seven Mothers' Quest is a good one, or at least part of it.

There is a booklet about the Red Goddess, if you can find it, but I can't remember its name. It has a writeup of some of the Red Goddess's HeroQuest, in particular what Yanafal Tarnils did to help her escape from the Underworld. That kind of thing might be useful.

Unfortunately, I don't have any Lunar HeroQuests available. 

On 1/15/2020 at 4:03 AM, g33k said:

Don't the Lunars still Heroquest to tame the winter every year?

Yes, the Kalikos HeroQuest might be a good one to do. You can adapt it to work against Cold or Darkness.

Edited January 17, 2020 by soltakss

[EricW]

My understanding is a major advantage of the lunar way is Lunars get to substitute their "lunar way" skill in place of other magical skills. So its like instant mastery of strange magic systems, as long as they have been integrated with the Lunar pantheon.

What about partially integrated pantheons or systems? Maybe accessible via Lunar Way skill, but you need to perform a heroquest to affirm Lunar supremacy?

Or even foreign gods, worth a hero quest to integrate a truly strange and interesting magic.

How many Lunar heroes perished attempting to integrate Orlanth into their Lunar way? How many succeeded? King of Sartar mentions a "moon wind", is this a partially successful attempt to integrate Orlanth? Orlanth myths are not immune to this kind of tampering, consider what happened in the first age.. 

Or how about even more dangerous powers, imagine applying Lunar way to Thanatari magics. 

Obviously the world would severely resist this experimental hero questing, but Lunars are persistent. Their imperial might is a measure of their success against the old powers.

Edited January 22, 2020 by EricW

[davecake]

On 1/22/2020 at 2:21 PM, EricW said:

My understanding is a major advantage of the lunar way is Lunars get to substitute their "lunar way" skill in place of other magical skills. So its like instant mastery of strange magic systems, as long as they have been integrated with the Lunar pantheon.

I agree. I like the idea from HQG that the Lunars can sometimes substitute their Moon Rune for another Rune, and I'd like to see the same power sometimes in RQG. This is only 'faking' the power, and it should always (for example) follow the Lunar cycle, but still useful because it lets them cast a Lunar version of magic usually associated with other powers. 

I don't think that this is at all easily or convenient for truly foreign magics (I don't think the Lunars can ever integrate Orlanth) but is something they might use to get access to the magic of the many and varied magic that has been integrated, such as all the previous incarnations of the goddess. 

 

[EricW]

4 hours ago, davecake said:

I agree. I like the idea from HQG that the Lunars can sometimes substitute their Moon Rune for another Rune, and I'd like to see the same power sometimes in RQG. This is only 'faking' the power, and it should always (for example) follow the Lunar cycle, but still useful because it lets them cast a Lunar version of magic usually associated with other powers. 

I don't think that this is at all easily or convenient for truly foreign magics (I don't think the Lunars can ever integrate Orlanth) but is something they might use to get access to the magic of the many and varied magic that has been integrated, such as all the previous incarnations of the goddess. 

 

Orlanth myths are vulnerable, Lokamayadon usurped a portion of Orlanth's power in the first age, which allowed him to simultaneously appear in all the Orlanth temples and demand they worship him instead. In the third age, the Lunars caused the windstop with a magical attack on Orlanth. 

[soltakss]

4 hours ago, davecake said:

I don't think the Lunars can ever integrate Orlanth

In my last campaign, I had an idea that the PCs could go back into The Void and find, or make, the Young Elemental of Storm. This would give the Lunars a way into the Orlanthi and the Orlanthi a way into the Lunars. The campaign ended before it could happen, though.

Edited January 25, 2020 by soltakss