From: Alex Ferguson (abf@interzone.ucc.ie)
Date: Thu 10 Jul 1997 - 00:05:50 EEST
David Cake on me (on him on me...) on whether the travelled (Hero Plane)
road is the easy road:
> >It's hard to say, but I feel
> >that "ease", and come to that having any possibility of the desired
> >outcome in the first place has something fundamentally to do with its
> >mythic significance.
> I agree - I just don't think 'mythic significance' is directly
> correlated to how often the quest is performed, or even how successfully.
Without an immediate way to distinguish between the effects of one,
My intuition is that if some "unknown" heropath is suspiciously "easy"
> if you are the first Zorak Zorani or the 100th to attempt to beat up
I don't agree with this, at least entirely, as it would seem to preclude
> Of course, it also helps that the Yelmalions know they are supposed to
I think that it's certainly possible to "win" the HoG quest, and even
and the other, though, it's effectively impossible to say. How many
very "mythicly significant" events are never re-enacted, or only
re-enacted disasterously? How many "insignificant" events are regularly
and successfully re-enacted with great magical benefit? I think the
correlation is very high in practice, though it may not be possible
to argue that the connection is "direct" or "intrinsic".
(that is, yields a similar magical "bang" for the difficulty/hazard
"buck" than a known one, corresponding to a common cultic one used
in ceremonies, or divine magic quests), then it's for some (unknown,
natch) reason. Such it being some sort of "forgotten" mythology, or
a Cosmic Secret Truth previously unknown to any cult, or whatever.
The whole nature of the Hero/God Plane after all, is that it conforms
to the nature of myth -- whatever _that_ really is.
> Yelmalio, he is just as tough.
the possibility that HQing can change the myth, or the HeroPlane --
which is ultimately the whole point.
> lose (because all the guys that beat ZZ and carried on ended up getting
> eaten by chaos bugs and never came back)
that some have done so, and got some or all of their fire powers "back".
I'm not sure what the particular mindset of the Quester is, though. I
don't think he "tries" to lose; perhaps rather, he just (consciously or
otherwise) chooses a path where winning is unlikely, and the most he can
do is to survive. So in a way, he's trying for the "best loss" he can
achieve. So I don't think that even in this case, are the Questers
simply playing a two-handed game of solitaire, which each happy to
accept the "status quo" outcome
> but [the HoG HQer] might be an Antirian, who will attempt to win, so
> its not intrinsic to the hero path but a social effect).
Of course, the two paths must not be exactly the same, and equally,
can't be entirely distinct, another Tricky Issue, should it ever come
up directly.
Slainte,
Alex.
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