As we think about the RuneQuest setting for 1621-1655, there’s going to be a LOT of change. Some of this may be player character driven, but much – in my experience, most – is not. The player characters will need to react, adapt, and try to ride a changing world. The spotlight is on the player characters, even if they rarely get their hands directly on the wheels of fate.
How the Hero Wars resolve is going to be different from campaign to campaign – the played experience is always more real than the published guidelines (which in turn is more real than internet fan arguments). But in the end, no one person or even group of people are able to drive it.
If I was analogizing it to a game, there are at least a dozen major players, each with their own goals. Sure, Argrath gets the wheel spinning, but one read of the Hero Wars era is that most of his actions from the mid-1630s on are desperate attempts to keep the wheel from spinning completely out of control. Same thing with the Red Emperor and the Lunar Empire – events are already spinning out of control, which presents opportunities and unknown dangers. Plus the Elder Races view this as a last chance for them – elves, trolls, and dwarves all take dramatic actions. Add to that a break down on the reluctance to use obviously dangerous magics – chaos, dragon magic, sorcery, and experimental heroquestings – and you can see how things spin out of control again and again.
And although there are strongn parallels to the Gbaji Wars that ended the First Age, the Hero Wars have major players who have no past parallel. Harrek the Berserk, Jar-eel the Razoress, and Androgeus have no First Age equivalent, and possess more raw power than Argrath or the Red Emperor.
Your characters also play an unknown role. Some will become the companions of these heroes, some might become heroes in their own right. Others may try to protect their communities, to ride the waves of ongoing change and still others might just try to exploit the opportunities created. Mercenaries for the gods, saviours of their people, or desperate survivors.
After the Hero Wars all I know is the following: the Red Moon is no longer in the sky, Argrath is apotheosized as a god, and the Red Emperor is no more. Centuries later the Hero Wars become garbled as a result of a later dark age, but that is many generations after they end. And what any of that means is open to countless interpretations.
Note that Androgeus is not a “they”. She is strongly gendered as he and then as she and then as he again. That’s a key part of her identity, although it is a nightmare in editing.