Heroquests

[Martin]

Is it possible to Heroquest within the era of time? or can heroes only heroquest to the God's Age?

Or is this a violation of the Comprimise of Time?

More specifically, can you go to Orlanth's Hall in the God Plane then leave a door to the Hero Plane of the Dawn Age?

Edited November 18, 2016 by Martin

[jajagappa]

2 hours ago, Martin said:

Is it possible to Heroquest within the era of time? or can heroes only heroquest to the God's Age?

You can HeroQuest within time by going to the 'outer world', i.e. you can go to the Underworld, the Sky World, sail Sramak's River, etc.  Many of those are coterminous with the God's World, though.

What you cannot do is HeroQuest back in time.  You can't quest to join Arkat's fight in Slontos for instance.  Consider anything after the Dawn to be in something of a time lock.

 

[David Scott]

In answer to the above, the answer is sort of. If the event in time was a version of God time event then yes. Imagine storm Khan fighting a powerful thed shaman, this has echoes of storm bull and thed in the Great darkness. In my Glorantha, the storm bull will try and pull the fight into the great darkness as storm bull won. The echo of the event in time will influence the darkness event, subsequent real world versions may draw upon the mythic event although it happened within time. So not quite what you asked. 

[Evilroddy]

Please pardon my God Learner tendencies and curiosity, but could you HeroQuest to just before the dawn of time, wait about a bit and then after the start of time HeroQuest forward in time back to the present? If so, could you map this and use it to circumvent the Covenant of Time? Would Arachne Solara personally spank you for even suggesting such an approach? Well I have to live up to my moniker now and then, don't I, so don't roll your eyes at me like that!

Cheers and good gaming.

Evilroddy.

[jajagappa]

5 hours ago, Evilroddy said:

but could you HeroQuest to just before the dawn of time

You can quest to the Silver Age.  You could join Heort, or Vogarth Strongman, or Queen Merngala.

But think about what the ultimate Silver Age quest is.  It's the quest to open the Dawn Gates.  If you succeed, the children of Time are freed, Yelm emerges, and you find yourself back at your temple from your quest as day breaks in the normal flow of time.  And I'm sure trying to break free of Arachne Solara's weave to do anything different is almost overwhelmingly impossible.  And even if you do break a thread, what you'll find is that day breaks in the normal flow of time and you are under assault by demons of chaos, etc. who have been freed from their imprisonment.

[Patrick]

Godtime doesn't "flow" effortlessly, you go to events rather than moments.

IIRC you can only quest to historical events, in so far as they are part of God time i.e. when the Compromise was broken.

So, you may quest to the Battle of Night and Day (Uz certainly keep trying to change its outcome), or the Battle of Castle Blue, because these are moments when Gods were back, and Time wasn't constraining things any more.

Could you "stay there" and start a new life in a different period? I don't know. Maybe...

 

Another interesting phenomenon is the synchronicity in Godtime.

Questers from different places and historical periods may meet in the same Godtime Quest.

Heck, Arkat met his future/past self sometimes, and even wounded "himself". Probably the "ZZ Arkat" inflicting incurable wound on the "Humakti Arkat"...

That's the occupational hazard of taking different mythic roles in turn, I guess...!

[Jeff]

Heroquesting is not "time travel". Think about it this way - there are two types of Time:

Time: This is the time we experience. Temporal, changing, ending, and finite. This is the world mortals experience since the Dawn. You didn't exist at one point in time, and at some point won't exist anymore.

God Time: Eternal, endless, and always. The God Time always is and always will be. Yelm always exists. He is always the Emperor. He is always killed by Orlanth. He is always in the Underworld. Always.

Heroquesting is when a mortal directly interacts with the God Time. The God Time event always is. If I fight Zorak Zoran on the Hill of Gold (acting as Orlanth), there's a part of me that is always there. I might even at some later date go back to the Hill of Gold (as Yelmalio) and fight Orlanth - who is me! 

This is the result of the Cosmic Compromise where all of the God Time simultaneously always is.

[Pentallion]

Then what about Lunar Chronomancers?  Didn't they drop into the Night of Horrors out of the sky and fail to save Hon-Eel?  In fact, all that happened is they found themselves in the role of something that had already happened?

(Which I believe means they changed time but from the current times perspective, what they did "already happened")

[jajagappa]

15 hours ago, Pentallion said:

Then what about Lunar Chronomancers?  Didn't they drop into the Night of Horrors out of the sky and fail to save Hon-Eel? 

Not sure where you find reference to any Chronomancers?  The available text simply suggests that they breached the divide into the Gods War.

From the Redline History: "the Emperor grew desperate and summoned his powers of Chaos to aid him. The Orathorn sorcerers summoned their own secret powers and this combat with the Lunar Chaos suddenly loosed alien worlds upon the battlefield. All mortals turned and fled, fighting wherever they had to against the inhuman foes which dropped from the burning scarlet and yellow skies. Hon-eel herself died there, fighting desperately and successfully to save the Emperor’s favorite children from furry, many-legged things, which scuttled about and waved shrunken heads that bobbed about on scrawny antennae."

[Pentallion]

Quote

 

I have intended Chronomancy, in Entekosiad (and the Lunar Way) to be the ability of the Lunars to sit in one place and to move themselves (and their party) ahead "in time" through the mythic ages while HeroQuesting. At the moment they can not move backward, though they are going to have the chance to learn this in the Hero Wars whe many new methodologies become possible.

Sincerely,
Greg Stafford

 

http://glorantha.temppeli.org/digest/gd10/2004.01/0025.html

That was from 2004  Later in that thread Greg replied to the following question:
 

Quote

 

>I wonder just what you could achieve with that?

The end of the world, in fact, which is actually not going to be welcomed by most living beings. Like several of the wonderful tools that are going to be offered to the player characters in the Hero Wars yet to come, this one provides opportunities and vast powers whose use will be more than just questionable.

Sincerely,
Greg Stafford

 

And somewhere, which I can't find yet, but I read some years back, they discuss how Chronomancers jumped back in time to save Hon-Eel from the night of Horrors but found that all they could do was partake of the event just as it happened originally.  However, this could be a mistaken perspective.  Afterall, if I jump back in time, stop the Titanic from sinking, when I return, we all remember that the Titanic never sank to begin with and all I did was reenact the saving of the Titanic.

Edited November 20, 2016 by Pentallion

[Jeff]

Greg toyed around with that approach for a few years, but ultimately we rejected it. That's why I can say without hesitation Lunar Chronomancers are not time travelers. Nor will you see any publication that suggests they are.

[Darius West]

Glorantha definitely doesn't need time travel.  It benefits from time being a mystery and makes prophecy a truly weird and mysterious gift.

[soltakss]

On 11/18/2016 at 9:49 AM, Martin said:

Is it possible to Heroquest within the era of time? or can heroes only heroquest to the God's Age?

In my opinion, it is possible to HeroQuest in Time to those places/time that have a God Time component. 

So, for example, the Curse of Kin happened within Time, but troll heroQuestors can visit that point as it affected the God Time. 

The Dragonkill happened within time yet HeroQuestors can travel there.

The Battle of Castle Blue happened within time and HeroQuestors can travel there.

What you cannot do, however, is change history.

You can change the God Time event, of you are powerful enough. So, the God Learners cut off all the paths to Arkat's place on the Hero Plane, stopping anyone from reaching Arkat, but they didn't stop Arkat from existing.

If a troll cured the Curse of Kin through a massive HeroQuest, the trollkin that exist would still be alive, but any future Trolls born would be Dark Trolls. 

You couldn't drop out of the HeroQuest in the other time, as you are effectively only travelling to the God Time portion of the historical event.

 

Or is this a violation of the Comprimise of Time?

Not really, as you are travelling to the God Time portion of the historical event. 

 

More specifically, can you go to Orlanth's Hall in the God Plane then leave a door to the Hero Plane of the Dawn Age?

Probably not. However, you could travel to the Battle of Night and Day, Birth of Nysalor, Sunstop, Apotheosis of the Red Goddess or any of the other mythical events that happened since the Dawn. You just couldn't then leave as you are limited to those God Time events.

 

 

[jajagappa]

2 hours ago, soltakss said:

So, for example, the Curse of Kin happened within Time, but troll heroQuestors can visit that point as it affected the God Time. 

The Dragonkill happened within time yet HeroQuestors can travel there.

The Battle of Castle Blue happened within time and HeroQuestors can travel there.

What I'd actually say is that the Curse of Kin occurred at that point when at the Battle of Night and Day the Great Compromise broke - i.e. it opened back into the God Time and that's where the event occurred.  Troll HeroQuesters can go to the Curse of Kin not within Time but the place in the God Time where it occurs.

I've never heard of anyone travelling to the Dragonkill and would argue against it.

Castle Blue is like the Hidden Greens.  It's a piece of the God Time that can be directly accessed in the Mortal World.  As with the Battle of Night and Day, it broke the Great Compromise and brought the participants into the God Time (i.e. not just participants but the place are effectively in a massive heroquest).

[David Weihe]

4 hours ago, jajagappa said:

I've never heard of anyone travelling to the Dragonkill and would argue against it.

Well, all the dragons supposedly traveled to it.  Of course, the relationship between Time and dragons is a bit hinky at best.

[JonL]

Hmm. It strikes me that thanks to Orlanth having intervened (and thus overlapped God Time & Time) to strike down Zistor, the siege of The Clanking City would be a potential HeroQuest destination. God Learner magitech, anyone?

[Bohemond]

This raises a question for me about the Hero and the Grove quest, which is written to have three levels: Orlanth, Heart, and Colymar. If PCs choose to do the Colymar/Easy Difficulty level, aren't they Heroquesting in Time? I thought it was possible to quest to replicate historical events as a way to strengthen one's chance of accomplishing something similar. 

Edited December 6, 2016 by Bohemond

[JonL]

Reading through Pavis: Gateway to Adventure, Waha sure seemed to get into a lot of tussles within Time during the 2nd Age. If the stories are to be taken literally, is that any different than when Orlanth steps into Time?. Surviving throughout the Great Darkness, Waha wasn't directly a party to the Great Compromise the way that that Yelm's Court and the Lightbringers were, though he somehow did team up with Arachne Solara/Grandmother Spider in drawing the world together in his-net/her-web (if that's not to much of a God-Learner syncreticism).

Apart from putting the Waha vs Pavis conflict on the table for HeroQuesters, I see something of a parallel between Arkat's victory at the Tower of Dreams, Sedenya's at Castle Blue, and Pavis's at the Too-Tall Battle. The upstart overcomes the established deity incarnate within Time en route to apotheosis. Perhaps there is little or no ongoing Zistorite spiritual presence in part because Zistor failed to overcome Orlanth, and thus not establishing its rightful place among the divine peerage. (I will hide from the Gift Carriers now.)

Edited December 6, 2016 by JonL

[JonL]

Hmm. I'm now imagining a Lunar expedition to the siege of the Clanking City to help Zistor defeat Orlanth in hopes of gaining Ziztorite/anti-Orlanthi powers for their associated Lunar Immortal cult. Orlanthi trying to stop them would find themselves in the awkward position of taking on the roles of EWF demigods & heroes in order to oppose the Lunars playing Zirtorites.

Edited December 6, 2016 by JonL

[jajagappa]

On 12/6/2016 at 0:08 PM, JonL said:

Waha sure seemed to get into a lot of tussles within Time during the 2nd Age. If the stories are to be taken literally, is that any different than when Orlanth steps into Time?.

I'd interpret those events as khans going on significant quests in the role of Waha, just as Orlanthi chieftains take on the role of Orlanth in theirs.  What they do in those quests changes the abilities of the god in the God Time.

[JonL]

When the text talks about Waha battling Pavis & being wounded, I did wonder whether it was Waha personally present, Waha incarnate within a mortal (not unlike Sedenya and Jar-Eel), a follower heroforming Waha, or simply a great Praxian metaphorically referred to as Waha.  The text in P:GtA just says "Waha" every time.  

Given Pavis's road to divinity, I'm inclined to believe it's one of the first two. 

[Noita]

5 minutes ago, JonL said:

When the text talks about Waha battling Pavis & being wounded, I did wonder whether it was Waha personally present, Waha incarnate within a mortal (not unlike Sedenya and Jar-Eel), a follower heroforming Waha, or simply a great Praxian metaphorically referred to as Waha.  The text in P:GtA just says "Waha" every time.  

Given Pavis's road to divinity, I'm inclined to believe it's one of the first two. 

I think it was a Khan hero forming myself.

[David Scott]

On 12/6/2016 at 5:08 PM, JonL said:

Reading through Pavis: Gateway to Adventure, Waha sure seemed to get into a lot of tussles within Time during the 2nd Age. If the stories are to be taken literally, is that any different than when Orlanth steps into Time?.

Adding to this Waha is also a title (as is Tada). The Paps Khan is effectively Waha as well. All of those events were Khan(s) hero forming (as @Iskallor said). Look at HeroQuest Glorantha for the example on page 98 with Vargast becoming Orlanth and the comic on the opposite page. In many cases the Tasks of Waha were discovered by khans acting as Waha.

On 12/6/2016 at 5:08 PM, JonL said:

Surviving throughout the Great Darkness, Waha wasn't directly a party to the Great Compromise the way that that Yelm's Court and the Lightbringers were, though he somehow did team up with Arachne Solara/Grandmother Spider in drawing the world together in his-net/her-web (if that's not to much of a God-Learner syncreticism).

Although active in the Great Darkness, Waha did eventually die and go to the Underworld for the big finale. He gave the ends of the bag to Spider Grandmother and she became the bead that closed the bag. The Great Compromise was forged by all those present, the version we know is mostly from an Orlanthi view. The Praxians are very connected with the Orlanthi of Dragon Pass, Orlanth is Waha's uncle and Orlanth is worshipped by Praxians. Waha was certainly there to do his part in saving the world.

[JonL]

How/when did Waha die during the Great Darkness?

[David Scott]

4 hours ago, JonL said:

How/when did Waha die during the Great Darkness?

It's not a key part of his mythology, so glossed over. Most gods succumbed to death at some point or chose to enter the underworld voluntarily to aid in the final battle. I think it's most likely he followed his father Storm Bull to be at his side when the Devil arrived.  There is certainly a Task called Waha and the Net that enables khans to attach thinks to the Wasrelands. Early in the First Age, lots of Hidden Greens were added back. Clearly you have to take the strings to the Underworld to do this. 

Edited December 9, 2016 by David Scott