Lunar heroquests

[theconfusingeel]

NowI'm gionna start this thread with something kinda funny, I thought about asking this earlier today but the forum was down, and while I was waiting I read some things about Sheng seleris, and at some point i went on some forum and midway through reading some thread I realised it was this place so I was like"oh, this is BRP".

Anyways, I wanted to ask if people can go on heroquests for lunar new gods? For example, is it possible to do a heroquest about something one of the seven mothers or Hon-eel did?
I'm asking mostly because I don't know how heroquests about things that happened in time work(and as a additional thing that just popped into my mind right now, could I heroquest Arkat fighting Nysalor?)

Edited April 27 by theconfusingeel

[mfbrandi]

Not necessarily canon alert!

Things that a person does before their apotheosis don’t necessarily happen in time. I might be born, perform a bunch of otherworld heroquests to “timeless” realms, then die and become a god. If something I do has as-above-so-below magical ripples, it may be deemed to have taken place at least partly in some otherworld, even if no one can say quite when and to what degree I crossed over. Arkat’s final dust-up with Nysalor might be like that. So doing an otherworld heroquest to that fight might be possible … but extremely dangerous — no one knows who won.

If the Seven Mothers rite to recreate the Goddess was a heroquest, surely one can revisit that in a heroquest of one’s own, and it is something they did “before” their own apotheoses, right? Even if they had to “step outside of time” to do it. However, Irrippi Ontor does some shopping and returns his library books (pre-apotheosis, no weird shenanigans) doesn’t sound — to me — like something one could recapitulate in a heroquest, as it lacks the requisite importance. I may be wrong. I wouldn’t mind being wrong. I kinda want to be wrong about this one.

(Sometimes heroquest is a state of mind: someone might heroquest without leaving this world, so far as anyone around them can tell. But that is for a different question, right?)

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, theconfusingeel said:

Anyways, I wanted to ask if people can go on heroquests for lunar new gods? For example, is it possible to do a heroquest about something one of the seven mothers or Hon-eel did?

Yes. And yes.

But... this

41 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Things that a person does before their apotheosis don’t necessarily happen in time. I might be born, perform a bunch of otherworld heroquests to “timeless” realms, then die and become a god.

You can retrace their mortal paths - think of these as pilgrimages such as visiting Blessed Torang or Glamour - but they will not yield magic/power.

You can perform their ceremonies and quests. If they take place in this-world, they will attract foes of the right sort, but those are this-world foes (e.g. a YT warrior fighting a Humakti warrior - you might gain their iron sword, but you won't gain anything Otherworldly).

But the powerful quests that the Lunar deities undertook all entered the Otherworld. And you can too, just like with any other deity's tales/quests. These are often where the Ancient Lunar deities (God Time deities such as Orogeria, Gerra, Natha...) and there tales come into play.

1 hour ago, theconfusingeel said:

could I heroquest Arkat fighting Nysalor?

Yes... but you will not be in time (i.e. not in a 1st Age battle). Arkat vs. Nysalor is the battle of Darkness and Light, or Storm vs. Sun, or whichever dichotomy of Arkat and Nysalor you have invoked, and it is in the God Time/Otherworld.

Edited April 27 by jajagappa

[theconfusingeel]

so events in time don't have any reflection on the hero plane?
also knda dissapointing on the Arkat-nysalor thing, Orlanth-Yelm isn't as cool 😥

Edited April 27 by theconfusingeel

[soltakss]

2 hours ago, theconfusingeel said:

Anyways, I wanted to ask if people can go on heroquests for lunar new gods? For example, is it possible to do a heroquest about something one of the seven mothers or Hon-eel did?

In my Glorantha they can, simply because the God Quests of those deities become part of the God Plane, or God Time, so can be accessed through heroQuesting.

2 hours ago, theconfusingeel said:

I'm asking mostly because I don't know how heroquests about things that happened in time work(and as a additional thing that just popped into my mind right now, could I heroquest Arkat fighting Nysalor?)

Again, in my Glorantha you can, because that is a God-Time node with mythical significance when Arkat proved his right to become a Demigod.

 

[Eff]

2 hours ago, theconfusingeel said:

NowI'm gionna start this thread with something kinda funny, I thought about asking this earlier today but the forum was down, and while I was waiting I read some things about Sheng seleris, and at some point i went on some forum and midway through reading some thread I realised it was this place so I was like"oh, this is BRP".

Anyways, I wanted to ask if people can go on heroquests for lunar new gods? For example, is it possible to do a heroquest about something one of the seven mothers or Hon-eel did?
I'm asking mostly because I don't know how heroquests about things that happened in time work(and as a additional thing that just popped into my mind right now, could I heroquest Arkat fighting Nysalor?)

The only honest answer is "it depends based on which book you're reading", and flowing from that, based on what you choose to make use of. There are really three different related concepts here- "Can events in time become outright new myths that you can interact with in godtime?", "When people from time interact with godtime in experimental ways, does that then open a stable pathway for other people to follow them and improvise off of?", and "Is it possible to follow the pathway of a previous Heroquester and repeat what they did?" 

The first is the most controversial- the official position is "no, absolutely not!" But once it was "yeah, duh, you can go back to the moments when Godtime and Time made out sloppy style like the First Battle of Chaos or when Arkat quintuple suplexed Nysalor, because the people involved are full-on gods now." And on top of all this, those pesky wizards out west are able to get magic from people who lived and died within regular time, as if they managed to change the godtime and create new myths, so even within the new official sources, there are still big holes you can jump back to. 

What does that "within-time" Heroquesting look like? That's a completely different question that requires a forum for discussion where you won't have to deal with people coming in to deny the premise. I do think that whatever it is, it isn't time travel. 

The second is underarticulated and thus difficult to talk about without explaining its premises in more detail. The third is pretty uncontroversially "yes" among the majority of participants, so there is that at least.

[theconfusingeel]

If events in time don't translate to myth, In what way can you interact with these gods on heroquests? Is it that you can interact with the mythich reflection of them doing heroquests?
Reading other sources apperantly if somebody has a hero soul you can meet them on the hero plane, and Arkat encountered himself.
Edit:sorry if I'm asking a lot of question, I'm just curious about this stuff. It helps that I don't exactly know the limitations of heroquesting

Edited April 27 by theconfusingeel

[Eff]

26 minutes ago, theconfusingeel said:

If events in time don't translate to myth, In what way can you interact with these gods on heroquests? Is it that you can interact with the mythich reflection of them doing heroquests?
Reading other sources apperantly if somebody has a hero soul you can meet them on the hero plane, and Arkat encountered himself.
Edit:sorry if I'm asking a lot of question, I'm just curious about this stuff. It helps that I don't exactly know the limitations of heroquesting

That is a very good question, and it's one that probably has to be answered through play if you take the official story as definitive.

[theconfusingeel]

5 minutes ago, Eff said:

That is a very good question, and it's one that probably has to be answered through play if you take the official story as definitive.

And what is the official story exactly?

[Eff]

2 minutes ago, theconfusingeel said:

And what is the official story exactly?

On that specific question, absolutely nothing.

[mfbrandi]

38 minutes ago, theconfusingeel said:

If events in time don’t translate to myth …

Don’t sweat it. Turn it on its head. If you are GM and you think that an event has sufficient mythic resonance that your players ought to be able to recapitulate it in heroquest, just rule that the event occurred in whole or in part in the otherworld.

At its most sketchy the quest pattern goes: mundane world -> otherworld -> mundane world.

• The two balloon modellers square off for a duel in the mundane world, talking trash and stretching rubber.
• They stuff and weave, making crazy air-and-rubber shapes in the otherworld till one battler bursts her own models and admits defeat.
• The victrix returns to the mundane world with glory and the knack for twisting the perfect two-headed dragonsnail.

Now others can heroquest the Great Balloon Animal Battle if they learn the squaring off ritual and get some blessed rubber. Sure the original started and ended in 1605, but you can just stipulate that the middle bit of the original GBAB happened outside time — in the or a designated otherworld — if you feel you need to.

It is your Glorantha, so you get to say which events are heroquestable and burst the bounds of time. If you are a player rather than a GM, work on your patter for building up the magical and mythic significance of events you want to heroquest — persuade the rest of the table that the event was too fabulous to be contained wholly within the drab mundane world. (The event you are going to heroquest may itself be a recapitulation of an earlier heroquest, but it need not be.)

Is that any help at all?

[Nick Brooke]

Let’s quote something I wrote that made it into Cults of Glorantha: The Lunar Way.

“Some cultists compare the Red Goddess to Arachne Solara, who she met during her godquest. The Red Goddess is like a spider on the Cosmic Net, scuttling across a web of myths that binds everyone else, picking and choosing how and where and when she inserts herself into the existing matrices of stories…”

(p.120)

You can’t encounter the Red Goddess on Godtime heroquests: you can only meet her shards, masks, fragments and precursors. And of course the Red Moon itself does not exist in Godtime: it’s far too important to let itself be constrained like that. It works within the mundane Middle World, transforming and regulating, gradually expanding its magic to cover all Glorantha, and it does it wondrously well.

[theconfusingeel]

So what are lunar heroquests anyways? I remember reading somewhere that lunars tend to do new heroquests, but I don't really understand what that means.
Plus are there non-godtime heroquests? Or is that just the mortal world type?
 

Edited April 27 by theconfusingeel

[jajagappa]

4 hours ago, theconfusingeel said:

so events in time don't have any reflection on the hero plane?

That depends. What you don't have is time travel. But the significant events and actors have established a presence in the Godtime / Heroplane / Otherworld.

As Nick notes, what you encounter may be masks, fragments, precursors. The battle between Arkat and Gbaji is the battle at the End of the World. Which are you (or which do you think you are)? Are you Arkat looking into the face of the Devil, fighting again at I Fought, We Won? Or are you Nysalor looking into the face of the Devil? 

4 hours ago, theconfusingeel said:

also knda dissapointing on the Arkat-nysalor thing, Orlanth-Yelm isn't as cool

That End of the World thing is coming again, too! Lots of opportunity to battle the Devil, and hope you are destroyed in the process.

3 hours ago, theconfusingeel said:

If events in time don't translate to myth, In what way can you interact with these gods on heroquests?

Epic events can translate into myths, but they will have some place in the God Time framework if they do. Arkat's battles with the Bright Empire are also Vingkot's battles with the Dara Happan Empire. You can find Arkat there, and Nysalor.

[theconfusingeel]

6 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

That depends. What you don't have is time travel. But the significant events and actors have established a presence in the Godtime / Heroplane / Otherworld.

As Nick notes, what you encounter may be masks, fragments, precursors. The battle between Arkat and Gbaji is the battle at the End of the World. Which are you (or which do you think you are)? Are you Arkat looking into the face of the Devil, fighting again at I Fought, We Won? Or are you Nysalor looking into the face of the Devil? 

That End of the World thing is coming again, too! Lots of opportunity to battle the Devil, and hope you are destroyed in the process.

Epic events can translate into myths, but they will have some place in the God Time framework if they do. Arkat's battles with the Bright Empire are also Vingkot's battles with the Dara Happan Empire. You can find Arkat there, and Nysalor.

I allready know that stuff, but my question was about a specific manifestation(Arkat vs Nysalor).
In a way I was asking about the opposite situation, time influencing myth, which apperantly can't happen without heroquesting

[Eff]

31 minutes ago, theconfusingeel said:

So what are lunar heroquests anyways? I remember reading somewhere that lunars tend to do new heroquests, but I don't really understand what that means.
Plus are there non-godtime heroquests? Or is that just the mortal world type?
 

One thing that Greg Stafford put out there is Lunars finding ways to move through lost areas of myths or leap between seemingly different mythical events as if they were connected, allowing them to trace new heroquests above, within, and between the old ones. 

For an example of this, you can look at the Entekosiad if you happen to have it, or The Life of Sedenya, Part 3, which is freely available online. 

[jajagappa]

17 minutes ago, theconfusingeel said:

time influencing myth, which apperantly can't happen without heroquesting

I think it will depend on circumstances. Remember that every holy day you enter the God World! You participate in the myths even though you are within Time. Generally the worship ceremonies follow ancient paths laid down over Time because they worked. At least until they don't, and then someone heroquests to alter them. Maybe Arkat did that, and he taught the ancestors of your clan how to do that, and you still do. So what he did in a heroquest in Time becomes part of the subsequent myth.

43 minutes ago, theconfusingeel said:

So what are lunar heroquests anyways? I remember reading somewhere that lunars tend to do new heroquests, but I don't really understand what that means.

If you have the Glorantha Sourcebook, look at the Redline History for the 5th Wane for Hon-eel's quests where she competes with the Pentan Horse Mother to prove who was worthy to be the bride of the Sun. That's one example. 

Or the Red Emperor in the 3rd Wane courted Gorgorma in Hell in order to have a daughter (Yara Aranis) who could terrify and devour the horses of the Pentans.

[Brian Duguid]

Your framework for heroquesting arises out of your understanding of the metaphysics of the setting.

Vs

Your framework for heroquesting attempts to describe what arises from the story you are telling or experiencing.

Vs

You cannot ever define how heroquesting works because its power is in the mystery, and if it is not mysterious, it is no longer heroquesting. Add words here like "numinous", "liminal" etc to justify whatever bullshit you want to get away with. 

All of the above, but I prioritise them in reverse order. But nor would I allow time travel. 

[John Biles]

8 hours ago, theconfusingeel said:

So what are lunar heroquests anyways? I remember reading somewhere that lunars tend to do new heroquests, but I don't really understand what that means.
Plus are there non-godtime heroquests? Or is that just the mortal world type?
 

Lunar Heroquests exploit the overlapping of myths and the geography of myth to basically construct new Heroquests they can then do over and over and make it easier for others to do them.

So let's say the original Heroquest is 'Eurmal Steals Orlanth's Sandwich'

In the original Heroquest, Eurmal lusts for the perfect sandiwich Ernalda made for Orlanth.  So he tells Orlanth that Yelmalio has kidnapped Ernalda to marry her and has taken her to the Tulgey Wood.  So Orlanth runs off, leaving the sandwich behind and dragging Eurmal to back him up.  Eurmal betrays Orlanth to the Tulgey Beast, but Orlanth kills it anyway, but gets distracted trying to find Ernalda and Eurmal runs back to the Stead, only to find Humakt eating the sandwich and he feels betrayed, just like when Humakt stole Death from him!  He tries to steal Death back, fails, gets rolled into the woods in a barrel and accidentally runs over Yelmalio, who is trying to rescue Ernalda because he heard vaguely she got kidnapped.  They both fall in the river and Orlanth pulls them both out before they go over a fall and Eurmal confesses that he made the story up because he wanted an adventure with Orlanth, and by the way, Humakt stole the sandwich.

And that's how Eurmal slept with your mother.  (part of this myth is now missing or unclear)

A Lunar comes in as Eurmal, follows the script up to where Eurmal betrays Orlanth by plotting with the beast and instead, the Lunar whacks the beast on the nose and it chases him to Yelmalio's camp, where in the confusion, he steals Yelmalio's Perfect Solar Sandwich Basket, made for him by Dendara for his adventure.  He needs THAT for the Quest 'Irripi Ontor would do anything for a sandwich'.

A second Lunar steals the original sandwich just to spite Humakt because he is a follower of Yanifal.

 

 

 

[EricW]

I can think of 4 feats:

1. Seven Mothers visit the halls of death and return with a new goddess Sedenya (nothing like the LBQ at all guv, honest!)

2. Sedenya finds Nysalor/Gbaji on the heroplane, and rescues Nysalor by separating him from the clutches of Gbaji and defeating Gbaji. 

3. The battle of Castle Blue - Sedenya proves her right to godhood, by defeating the Lightbringers and many other opponents. 

4. First battle of chaos, Sedenya returns from her goddess quest riding the crimson bat. 

Problem is figuring out PC size versions of those feats, and relevant rewards.

Maybe:

1. Return as a priest of a new hero cult. This isn't necessarily going to meet with approval from Lunar authorities, who may view the new cult as occluded, especially if the cult is overtly chaotic, unless you set your game in the monster empire period in which case any new powers are fine, the more hideous the better. 

2. New insight into illumination - help a friend who is struggling to achieve sevening, automatic advancement in the mysteries, a bonus when persuading barbarians to join the Lunar Way. 

3. Automatic elevation to priesthood, establish a new shrine, force the local gods to accept that shrine as a legitimate part of the local spiritual landscape. 

4. A bond established with a powerful chaos monster or spirit, who can be summoned at need to defend the hero.