From: Alex Ferguson (abf@interzone.ucc.ie)
Date: Wed 23 Jul 1997 - 21:25:09 EEST
David Dunham on my comment:
> > If being stuck in (a sort of) Hell for eternity, until someone performs a
> > world-shakingly original Quest to free you, doesn't qualify as being
> > Dead, then what exactly does?
> Being killed.
> I'm not being facetious. Heroes have many ways to enter Hell. Few of them
> involve literally dying (though I concede that any descent into Hell can be
> interpreted figuratively as death).
The ones involving being thrown there by your enemies to suffer endless
torment seem the least choice, though. Do you really suppose this is
more akin to entering Hell on a HQ than it is to "being killed"? If
Sheng "wasn't really dead" in his Lunar Hell, it neither seemed to make
it any easier for him to return, nor for anyone to free him from it.
I doubt it made his stay any more enjoyable, either...
It's not entirely clear to me whether the key difference between a
Dead Person, and Hero Harrowing Hell is. Is it how they got there?
Is some inherent part of their state of being (their "life signs",
as DD implies)? Does it come down to their own preparatedness or
resources that'd facilitate their return? I suspect the answer
has as much to do with cultural perspectives and personal
interpretation as any sort of hard and fast Rules. And do you have to
be "killed" in the mundane world, or can you "die" on a HeroQuest?
If the latter (which I suspect) the lines are yet more blurred.
> And as should be obvious, I think it can be an important distinction. For
> one thing, you can't leave by the same path you entered when you're dead.
Can you leave by the same path you entered (assuming it's the Western
Gate, at least) even if you haven't been "killed"). (Serious question,
not rhetorical.) Certainly that's not that the Lightbringers did.
Slainte,
Alex.
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