Any good chaos heroquests out there?

[Pentallion]

I'm getting way, way ahead of my group here, but probably late next year we should go back to our Lunar campaign and the crazy, dysfunctional party I detailed in "Lunar Diaries".  I intend to send them on some horrifying chaos heroquests.  They are going to bring the white moon by destroying the world and while some of them are guaranteed to get carried away, others will be there working for Arachne Solara to ensure there's something left when it's all over.  One must destroy to create.  Or, as a better analogy, there needs to be a "controlled burn" and that requires someone to be the fire.

But where to find epic chaos heroquests?  Which gods don't necessarily matter.  They'll be "arkating" their way through the chaos gods.

[David Scott]

Although subtle chaos quest likely exist, they likely all follow this format

Burst in to Glorantha through crack in the world / Born/burst into the world from already corrupted (god/hero/creation/unsuspecting thing)

single out a /gang up with your mates on a  (god/hero/creation/unsuspecting thing)

Corrupt / slaughter / burn / poison / wither (god/hero/creation/unsuspecting thing)

loose limb / item / concept / mates in the process that may or may not become something else

try harder and overcome / kill / annihilate (god/hero/creation/unsuspecting thing)

completely / bits escape / concept escapes / name escapes

repeat until thwarted / become part of time

 

[Pentallion]

While that's really useful - and I thank you for it - I think there are other forms of chaos heroquests that might prove more meaningful.  Thed, for example, doesn't start her heroquests by bursting into the world, though many of her broos do.  If we are on a Thed myth, however, it won't follow that pattern.  There's probably plenty of variations of Thed being abused, however.   I've read the wonderful work on Thed being the victim of Orlanth's injustice, so I know there's good dramatic stuff out there to be found.  Vivamort was the brother to the river Styx.  Certainly there's a really good story to be told there.  After all, Styx marks the line between life and death and Vivamort won't cross that line to either side, neither living nor dead, yet the Styx annihilates  him.  That's got to have a mythtastic story going on there told from the other side.  And then there's Tien.  That heroquester is obviously trying to destroy some crucial information, not trying to prove he belongs in time.

I'm just hoping other folks out there have dabbled enough with Chaos to have some good myths to reimagine.

[jajagappa]

2 hours ago, Pentallion said:

That heroquester is obviously trying to destroy some crucial information, not trying to prove he belongs in time.

I think he's more about consuming all knowledge for himself.  The destruction of that knowledge is just a consequence of his action.

You can probably align most chaos quests along an axis that starts with some core vice that corrupts the figure and leads to an all-consuming passion that leaves obliteration and destruction in its wake.

Ragnaglar, Thed, and Mallia all have ties to Lust; Tien to Greed for Knowledge; Pocharngo to Gluttony/Consumption (of the world); the Devil and Cacodemon to Hatred/Power; Krarsht to Hunger/Power; Vivamort is the desire to Never Die; Gbaji is the amorality that you can do anything and nothing can/will stop you.

[davecake]

I suspect a lot of Chaos heroquesting consists of charging into other people’s heroquests and messing things up. In particular, chaos heroquesters are often the subject of the Summons of Evil. What that experience is like from the other side may be the core of chaos heroquesting. 

[Pentallion]

15 hours ago, jajagappa said:

I think he's more about consuming all knowledge for himself.  The destruction of that knowledge is just a consequence of his action.

You can probably align most chaos quests along an axis that starts with some core vice that corrupts the figure and leads to an all-consuming passion that leaves obliteration and destruction in its wake.

Ragnaglar, Thed, and Mallia all have ties to Lust; Tien to Greed for Knowledge; Pocharngo to Gluttony/Consumption (of the world); the Devil and Cacodemon to Hatred/Power; Krarsht to Hunger/Power; Vivamort is the desire to Never Die; Gbaji is the amorality that you can do anything and nothing can/will stop you.

Thanks, these Lusts are like addictions and just like a real life addict, they leave nothing but a trail of destruction in their wakes.  I like that.  The Lunar group is already so into that sort of dysfunctional mindset.  The merchant who suffers from traumatic bonding and is now caught a twisted hate/love relationship.  The healer whose violent instincts led to self mutilation and a split personality.  And of course, the assassin who just kills because he gets off on it.  The merchant can relate to Thed, who was abused and filled with vengeance.  The assassin filled with a kind of lust and amorality.  The healer, well, she's just nuts, no telling what might drive her to do something.  But they all share something with the Chaos gods:  their personal "addictions" leave nothing but death and destruction in their wakes.

That seems an interesting theme to explore.  How does an addict find redemption?  Do these PCs find redemption?  Not the assassin.  He would never even seek it, nor acknowledge he has a need for it.  But that makes the merchants story more compelling.  She's been dragged into it.  And the healer is already in a battle with herself and that can play out nicely.

 

But still looking for anyone's actual myths they might know about or heroquests they might have had/heard of.

Edited May 11, 2018 by Pentallion

[Pentallion]

11 hours ago, davecake said:

I suspect a lot of Chaos heroquesting consists of charging into other people’s heroquests and messing things up. In particular, chaos heroquesters are often the subject of the Summons of Evil. What that experience is like from the other side may be the core of chaos heroquesting. 

From the chaos being's perspective, it would seem that the "orderium" is the one doing all the destruction.  Here we were, just hanging out, doing our own thing, when suddenly these aholes summon us into a battle and wipe our people out.  Racist bastard Orlanthi!  Why don't they just leave us alone?  Killed my family they did.  I'll kill them all!

I can see hatred breeding hatred.

[jajagappa]

6 hours ago, Pentallion said:

The healer, well, she's just nuts, no telling what might drive her to do something. 

Mallia was originally a fertility/healing goddess too.  Think about cancer - mindless, mutated growth.  But if you can't attack it... it just grows and warps and destroys everything else.  

6 hours ago, Pentallion said:

But they all share something with the Chaos gods:  their personal "addictions" leave nothing but death and destruction in their wakes.

Yes, plenty to work on there.

[soltakss]

 

On 5/10/2018 at 8:36 PM, Pentallion said:

I'm getting way, way ahead of my group here, but probably late next year we should go back to our Lunar campaign and the crazy, dysfunctional party I detailed in "Lunar Diaries".  I intend to send them on some horrifying chaos heroquests.  They are going to bring the white moon by destroying the world and while some of them are guaranteed to get carried away, others will be there working for Arachne Solara to ensure there's something left when it's all over.  One must destroy to create.  Or, as a better analogy, there needs to be a "controlled burn" and that requires someone to be the fire.

Sounds like an interesting campaign. I might use some of the ideas as fuel for my current campaign.

But where to find epic chaos heroquests?  Which gods don't necessarily matter.  They'll be "arkating" their way through the chaos gods.

Chaos HeroQuests tend not to be written up, as mostly PCs are the enemies of Chaos and so you just see the bits where Chaos meets and is defeated by the PCs.

Generally, what I do when writing a HeroQuest is to start from the Myth, what is the intended result of the HeroQuest and  what the participants want to get from the HeroQuest.

For Myths, have a look at Cults of Prax and Cults of Terror, or the Cult Compendium as that combines both. Gods of Glorantha should have long-form cults but does not include Chaos Cults, so you'd have to wait for the companion supplement. Even non-Chaotic cults have some Myths that describe what happened when their deities met/fought/interacted with Chaos and some HeroQuests can be eked out. King of Sartar has a lot of myths including Chaos. 

So, looking at Cults of Compendium, we have:

Primal Chaos - No Myths, so probably just the entering of Chaos into the world and the corruption of the world, not very useful

Mallia - Gaining of Death (Feeding on the blood of the fallen, gaining Death, Lightning Plagues, Festering Disease), Mistress of Ragnaglar (Why, how, partnership with Broos), Propitiation (People worship Mallia to stop her afflicting them with disease, creeping Chaos, corruption of the innocent), Spreading Disease (Mallians can infect wells etc with disease, why not have this as a HeroQuest), Unholy Trinity (Killing Rashoran, Birth of Devil)

Bagog - Gaining of Chaos (Escaping Darkness, Joining the Devil), Mother of Many (Eating victims, laying eggs, birthing new versions)

Thed - Mother of Broos (Wife of Ragnaglar, mother of broos). Unholy Trinity (Killing Rashoran, Embodying Chaos, Mother of the Devil, Distorted in childbirth), Kyger Litor (Killed, skilled and became discorporate), Chaos Void (Thed grants the Chaos Spawn spell that summons a wailing chaos void, where did she get this), Rebirth (Thed has the Ritual of Rebirth spell, was she ritually reborn of Chaos, this becomes a HeroQuest in itself) also from elsewhere Rape (Raped by Ragnaglar, Orlanth's Justice, Goddess of Rape, Wife of Ragnaglar)

Vivamort - Story of Death (Guardian of Secrets, Eurmal's Trick, Theft of Death, Grandfather Mortal, Burnign Sun), Surface World (Flee from Yelm, Yelm's Curse, Mallia, Secrets of Death), The Devil (Wounded by the Devil, Terrible Wound, Pact with Chaos, First Vampire), Rampage (Attacking gods, Could not kill Arroin, Curse of the Sun, Curse of the Earth, Curse of the Waters, Create Basilisk/Zombie/Ghoul), from Plunder, Mazoo's Challenge (Second Vampire, Challenge, Destroyed)

Thanatar - General (Servant of the Devil, Victorious, Killed Genert, Outwitted by Lhankor Mhy), Lhankor Mhy (Outwitted and defeated, Search for Revenge, Dreadful Trap, Knowledge Drain, Outwitted Again), Victory (Stalked the Greater Darkness, Followed the Devil, Beheaded the Mistress of Light and Knowledge), Descent to Hell (Pursued by Hrothmir, Fleeing into Hell, Dazzled by the Sun, Beheaded, Mistress of Light and Knowledge Freed, Beheading of Hrothmir, Final Victory), Divided (Headhunter, Living Skull, Cast into the Ocean, Reunion), Doom Seeker (Initiation HeroQuest, Beheading of an Enemy, Setting fire to a building, Throwing the head into the fire)

Crimson Bat - Mutation (Mutated by Chaos, Immense Appetite), First Age (Banished by Arkat), Moon (Befriended by Red Goddess, Steed of the Red Goddess)

Krarsht - Lesser Darkness (Entered the World, Feeding on many, Battle with Larnste), Storm Bull (Many Battles and Defeats, Stole Storm Bull's Powers, Banished from the surface world)

Nysalor/Gbaji - Rashoran (Secret Knowledge, Stregthened Gods and Goddesses, Taught and Slain by Unholy Trinity), Nysalor (Rebirth, Bright Empire), Gbaji (Curse of Kin, Enslavement of Dragonewts, Battles with Arkat, Destruction), Red Goddess (Reawakened, Allowed her to seek deeper and retuirn with Crimson Bat)

Cacodemon - Son of the Devil (Born from Corpse, Master of the Ogres, Ruler of Great Lands, Driven Out by Trolls)

 

 

[Joerg]

Chaos is ever jealous of the non-chaotic entities inside Creation. Their ability to be complete and at ease with their environment is something they covet but rarely achieve. Full illumination might grant them that wish, but will at the same time make that achievement meaningless in the face of the Ultimate. Whatever Chaos does, it won't achieve unity with Creation.

The Lunar Way might be something exceptional from the view of Chaotics. It promises almost this unity with the world. We All Are One, what a great promise. And that might be why some Chaotics are willing to attempt suppressing some of their basic impulses in order to partake in this Lunar unity. Attempt to... not necessarily completely succeeding.

I see a possibility that a few Chaotics may achieve momentary bliss in performing their defining vice - a broo in the act of reproductive rape, an ogre taking in the life of a human victim, a Thanatari consuming a tome of knowledge. That could be their overriding motivation.

 

Gloranthan Chaos doesn't really have heroes, but it does know avatars and demigods.

How would a Krarsht heroquest look? Sqirm in a crevice, be observed by Larnste, dodge the stomp and bite the offending foot, seed another Chaos Forest?

Not much to that, really. Dodge subsequent countermeasures (all those Stone Forest Creation feats) and undermine country and society?

Should there be heroes of Krarsht?

 

Thanatar has a hero cult. Treack Markhor is an apostate LM who succumbed to the severed head Atyar. But then Tien was a highly atypical Chaos deity.

 

 

As a rule, Chaos quests can be derived from anti-Chaos quests. Whenever there is some identifiable chaos opponent (as opposed to the rather random Chaos encounter that King of Dragon Pass put into the intertwined Issaries/Lhankor Mhy quests), work out where that opponent came from, and how it may have carried on after suffering a defeat or a setback as part of that quest, or how the opponent would benefit from heroes failing that quest. Voila, a Chaos quest.

 

[Pentallion]

This is all really good stuff.  Thank you everyone. 

Off tracking greatly, I was talking last night to the player who played Nymphia/Razza and we came up with how it all begins.  For those who never read Lunar Diaries, a quick background.  Nymphia's player thought he rolled up two sisters, Nymphia and Razza.  Razza was a Jakaleel Witch.  Nymphia a Deezola Priestess.   But all of us except the player knew the truth:  There was no Razza, Nymphia had a split personality and her sister wasn't real.  But she believed it so fully that when Nymphia died she believed Razza would resurrect her and so she rose from the dead.  The Jakaleel and the Blue Moon trolls all said she was holy.  At the end of the campaign came the big reveal and the player learned the truth.  There was only Nymphia and finally, Deezola had reunited her and made her whole again.

But along the way Razza had become a Spindle Hag and acquired an allied spirit which manifested as a split personality named Azzar.  A male.  He went the chaotic route.

So our new premise is that Azzar, being an allied spirit, wasn't really gotten rid of.  And one day he banishes Nymphia.  In Azzar's mind, he is real and so is Nymphia.  None of the personalities think they share the same body, they all perceive themselves as separate individuals.  So he believes he trapped Nymphia in Hell.  Razza then wakes up and where is her sister?  So Nymphia is gone.  Razza is seeking her and Azzar is deliberately leading her astray down the path of chaos.

And that's how our campaign will get started.  Madness.  But that's all at least a year from now.  So I've got heroquests to figure out and I've got to figure out the why of them.  As in why does the end of the world require this or that heroquest to be completed?  These characters are all rune lord level. I'm thinking Hero level stuff.  Arkatting through the chaos cults to bring about the end. 

[soltakss]

That sounds really good. Love the idea of the split personality that the player didn't know about.

As for the why of HeroQuests - Because they are there! 

Madness is a good start, as you can always suggest a HeroQuest course to achieve some end, starting on a minor.mild HeroQuest, then suck them in deeper and deeper. They could gain opponents on a HeroQuest and then find themselves drawn in as their opponents' opponents. So, if they did a Thed HeroQuest, perhaps Thed Demands Justice, then an NPC Orlanthi could become their Orlanth on HeroQuests, if that NPC did an Orlanthi HeroQuest where Orlanth met Thed, then they might be sucked into his HeroQuest and forced to do another Thed HeroQuest. If the PCs get sucked in as various different roles, they could be forced to do more and more Chaotic HeroQuests until they decide to do them themselves, from choice, rather than be sucked into them. 

[The God Learner]

When acting as opponents, successful Lesser chaos heroquests prove that the meaning of the heroquest was not what the hero intended. Greater chaos heroquests instead prove that it was all meaningless.

The easiest proactive chaos heroquests would be rampaging through the Greater Darkness in various capacities. Worshipping ostensibly destroyed entities like Kajabor or Wakboth would provide some interesting heroquests that you are expected to win. (It should be no surprise that Kajabor still dwells within Arachne Solara; some particularly reckless Atomic Explorers proposed to use this connection as a channel Outwards bound. That was an interesting workshop.)

Though I'm also informed true chaos purists sneer at working inside the system, like going on lame heroquests like a good boy.

 

Edited May 13, 2018 by The God Learner
Explanatory

[soltakss]

 

3 hours ago, The God Learner said:

When acting as opponents, successful Lesser chaos heroquests prove that the meaning of the heroquest was not what the hero intended. Greater chaos heroquests instead prove that it was all meaningless.

True, if you subscribe to the "All Chaos wants is the destruction of the world". I am not entirely convinced that is the case, however.

Many Chaos Cults specifically don't want the world to end, but want to rule the world. Certainly many chaotic cultists want this.

 

Though I'm also informed true chaos purists sneer at working inside the system, like going on lame heroquests like a good boy.

Chaos HeroQuests can be done to improve personal power or abilities, or even to oppose an enemy, defeat an enemy or cause an effect. Emulating Tien killing Genert is a good way for a Chaos HeroQuestor to kill an Earth King, or just any old Earth Priestess. There are enough victories of Chaos over everyone else to be able to pick and choose your HeroQuest.

 

 

[Darius West]

On 5/11/2018 at 7:50 AM, Pentallion said:

   I've read the wonderful work on Thed being the victim of Orlanth's injustice, so I know there's good dramatic stuff out there to be found. 

LOL Orlanth's injustice?  The way I heard it Thed used a sleazy trick to try to impersonate Ernalda and sneak into Orlanth's bed so Orlanth recruited trickster to dress Urox up as Orlanth and do the deed.  And how did Thed react?  "I'ma gonna raise ma boys to rape everyone in the whole world!"

[The God Learner]

2 hours ago, soltakss said:

True, if you subscribe to the "All Chaos wants is the destruction of the world". I am not entirely convinced that is the case, however.

Many Chaos Cults specifically don't want the world to end, but want to rule the world. Certainly many chaotic cultists want this.

 

Quite so -- the Lunar Empire is probably the most benign example -- though one might argue that all these fellows are bargaining with a force they do not understand. Some theorists consider Glorantha a cyst of Order bobbing on a sea of Chaos and know that when Chaos enters it and interacts with us comparatively Order-ly beings, the results are seldom pleasant, either materially, bodily, or spiritually. While it is difficult to be particular, in general there is some form of entropic destruction even if it also provides localized 'power'. 

Yet one might still, following this theory, observe that Chaos itself is unlikely to care either way, much like the acid does not care whether it is in the bottle or spilled on one's hands.

[jajagappa]

14 hours ago, Pentallion said:

So I've got heroquests to figure out and I've got to figure out the why of them. 

I was looking through the Eleven Lights earlier today and it occurred to me that there are some interesting concepts based on the Green Age myths (p.128 - section on the Awakening).

The two "classic" Orlanth and Ernalda paths are the Full Bowl and Spoon and the Rich Swan.

Full Dish and Spoon myth:  "The PCs find they are suffocating, unable to breathe and confined, trapped, and unable to move. A sense of panic, a need to escape overwhelms them: a desire to be born from the womb of the mother and into the world. The PC must tear a place for himself or herself in existence or risk being imprisoned."

This one is not that far off from the larval broo story.  Just change the story to be one where you must eat your way out of the womb.

Rich Swan myth:  "The PC begins to experience a terrible gnawing in their belly, an intense pain, which is accompanied by feelings of weakness and tiredness. The PC is experiencing hunger for the first time. Feeding means the PC must recognize their difference from the plants and animals around them, and even the parts of those plants and animals."

This could be the starting point for a Krarsht quest.  Except that you recognize the difference between you and stone, and that you can not only eat the stone, but convert its entire self into you, leaving nothing behind.

But this point of recognizing your distinctness and separateness from the One seems like a natural point for Chaos to depart.  You aren't part of the One.  Maybe it leads you to a primal rage.  Or it makes you jealous that there are Others and they have things you don't - and you want those.  Or you discover that things can now Die, and won't return, and it creates a Fear of Death so powerful that you want to consume so much Life that you never Die.

 

Edited May 13, 2018 by jajagappa

[Pentallion]

7 hours ago, soltakss said:

 

True, if you subscribe to the "All Chaos wants is the destruction of the world". I am not entirely convinced that is the case, however.

Many Chaos Cults specifically don't want the world to end, but want to rule the world. Certainly many chaotic cultists want this.

 

 

 

 

I agree.  I think the "chaos is only about destruction" boat left and I missed it.  Chaos isn't "about" anything.  Chaos embodies everything even Law.  All the runes, after all, come from chaos. Law sprang from the Chaos and tried to impose Order on it.   I think people try to hard to find a place for Chaos ever since.  Law imposes order but the Disorder rune fights it and people think that is chaos, but it's only a form of chaos.  Movement causes change and that upsets Law too.  Again, sort of Chaos, but not Chaos.  So then they want to put Chaos in a nice, orderly place, and say "well, Chaos is about the destruction of everything", but Chaos isn't going to submit to Law that way. 

Vivamortists don't want to be destroyed.  They are diametrically opposed to the destruction of the world.  They want it to last for eternity. 

Malia wants her diseases to live and flourish, not be destroyed.  And they wouldn't destroy things if everything worshipped Malia, they'd be immune.

If everything were destroyed, Thed couldn't have her justice.  There'd be no one to rape.  How could the world know the pain she'd suffered if the was no more world?  And she brought Wakboth into the world to be the Lord of Pain.  To make the world suffer.

But some parts of it are only destructive.  Because Chaos embodies everything.  Chaos doesn't obey the rules. Change obeys rules, disorder obeys rules. Chaos won't fit in a tidy little box so you can say "this is what Chaos is."

 

Edited May 13, 2018 by Pentallion

[Joerg]

Some "Chaos deities" are evil or bad deities lumped in with Chaos, really.

I agree that both Malia and Vivamort are "conservative" in their approach to existence and Glorantha, and so are Gark, Ikadz and Ompalam. They stand for a status quo in corruption. In a way, this goes for chaotic aspects of the Lunar Empire, too.

Most chaos baddies promote a very specific angle of destruction and corruption.

[davecake]

A specific Chaos heroquest that was written up way way back was The Temptation of Black Fang, by Steve Maurer. Though it is written up as a Black Fang quest, its pretty much Black Fang falling into a Krarsht heroquest path. Its based on ideas about how to run heroquests from the 1980s, so its very different to how we would do things today, but still kind of a fun read. 

http://glorantha.temppeli.org/digest/nbelldigest/1990.06/0014.html

[davecake]

There are multiple ways to think about Chaos. The idea of Chaos as the bountiful, beneficial, source of creation is thought of by even those that acknowledge it (eg Kralorelans) as being what Chaos may be outside creation, not what Chaos is once it enters creation. The Void exists before, and gives rise to, Creation, but that doesn't mean that mixing Void into the world is a good thing. Chaos is a source of Creation, sure, but *different* creations to the one we have now. Mostly, as in the great demons of the Pre-Dark, versions of creation that are monstrous and hard to even conceive and understand for beings of this creation (which is, of course, all the justification you need to make greater Chaos resemble Lovecraftian monsters if you wish). 

Another useful metaphor is the kabbbalistic idea of the qlippoth. If we take the runes as being roughly analogous to the Sephiroth, adding Chaos makes them qlippoth, backwards perversions of the divine. Chaos is a bit like that. Chaos doesn't want one single thing, or work one single way - Chaos has many varieties, because it takes all the varieties of goodness and corrupts and perverts them all in turn. 

I do think that there is a bit of contradiction that subverts the original question. Chaos ruins things, Chaos is destructive, Chaos breaks things. The things it breaks include stories, truth, social institutions, etc. So Chaos cults in general are going to find it harder to have predictable heroquest stories that are passed down as heroquest paths through Chaotic social institutions. So you aren't going to have a lot of heroquest paths for cults like Thed or Malia or Pocharngo that are carefully written down and preserved through ritual and retelling the way the heroquest paths of a god like Orlanth or Yelm are - and the people that are attempting those quests are more likely to be driven by rage, hate and ego than rational desires. There is going to be a LOT of inconsistency, confusion and, well, chaos. There are a few cults that are more likely to keep a solid structure going enough be a bit more organised - Krarsht, Thanatar, Vivamort. But even there, the desires and hungers of the chaotic followers is going to make consistently following any heroquest path that isn't a pretty simple quest for power difficult, there are going to be improvisations and deviations aplenty. 

Another thing that should be mentioned - some Chaos cults are effectively parasitic, hiding inside other cults or cultures. Often, their myths are going to be myths of the 'host' culture but seen from a different viewpoint or corrupted or perverted. A good example is the initiation ritual for ogres in The Coming Storm - it is a 'failed' Orlanth initiation that turns into a call to walk Ragnaglars path and contact with Cacodemon. A rare example of this sort of thing happening when it is known and understood is the Crimson Bat - their heroquest paths are branches off Lunar heroquests I think.

[boztakang]

I would suggest the Birth of the Devil as an excellent heroquest. Something goes badly enough that the PCs need a powerful ally. So they make one. Only it is more terrible and powerful than they could have ever imagined. You've already got the Corrupt Healer (Mallia), the Abused and Wronged (Thed) and Violent Madman (Ragnaglar). All that remains is to put them on the path to summoning/creating an ally to wreak vengeance upon their enemies. Then its just up to you to help them "invent some entirely new ritual" to accomplish it.

For best effect, the true nature of the quest should obviously not be apparent except in retrospect. Like, once their planned revenge is complete, they realize that they have no idea how to stop their "child" and that it's ever-increasing destructive power shows no sign of slowing or becoming less destructive.

[Madrona]

There was a website from the web 1.0 era somewhere around that had a bunch of chaos heroquests on it. I remember reading it before it vanished a while back. Mostly I remember it had a bunch of varieties and internal interpretations of aspects of Thed's life. Now, I'm suuuper foggy on details as this was a while ago.

The one I remembered was a cult-initiation thing in the mortal world and was the Rape of Thed (and in this version, this specifically is from which the broos were first born, even before they were chaotic) and Thed's legal case to the gods and the injustices of the 'evil' gods as they denied all her requests as the weakness of womenfolk. Having to ask certain questions and beg certain things until the gods relent and grant her 'power of rape' (which they didn't believe existed/couldn't understand or something) I think its reward was supposed to be the 'special child' born of the priest who sired the unfortunate broo female who got to play Thed.

There was also something about a different reenactment, specifically, the broo being responsible for weakening Ragnaglar to a point where Storm Bull kills him, by breeding some holy totem goat out of existence out of revenge for Thed. I'm however, not sure where that story comes from, I've not seen it in a book or zine I've read since. Or I may be having a complete brainfart.

Edited May 19, 2018 by Madrona
Left out a sentence like a dope.

[Joerg]

Were you thinking of this article by Ron Edwards?

http://adept-press.com/ideas-and-discourse/other-essays/goddess-of-rape/

[Madrona]

You know I'm pretty sure part of that got mixed into my memory, I'm kind of wondering if it was a 'snippet' taken from that and edited in some campaign notes into some kind of adjusted Quest This was quite a while ago and at the time my introduction to Glorantha was the Glorantha book in RQ3's deluxe box, and I was growing outwards.

Or my mind has filled in blanks from vague memories and drawn conclusions. Memory is a strange thing.