Many old lorehounds often make a common mistake regarding the Lightbringers Quest. Anyone who thinks “I’m going to perform the LBQ so X and Y happens” is setting themselves up to fail. Back in the 90s, a lot of participants on the old Glorantha Digest or in freeforms (I know I was one of them) used to resort to the LBQ as a solution for every problem. Greg humored us and was entertained by us, but honestly, it was more a case if all I have is a hammer, every problem is a nail.
The Lightbringers Quest is a desperate Hail Mary Pass to save the cosmos at all cost. The participants know their world is broken beyond repair and undertake the quest despite its impossibility. The participants must be broken, defeated, and brought to their lowest. They must truly accept that success is outside of their power alone.
The LBQ is ritualized by the Sacred Time rites, but even then we have no idea what the result of keeping the world going is going to be other than it will continue.
By doing those Sacred Time rites, we replenish the world’s mana, spin the wheel for another round, but other than knowing the cycles will keep spinning, we get no guarantees.
Kallyr’s failed LBQ failed for just that reason. She tried to retrofit the Sacred Time rites, dive a little deeper into the Hero Plane while still keeping control of events, but I think failed to realize just how vulnerable you are in the LBQ, and how much it opens you up. Even within the constraints she tried to construct, her ritual opened the gates to her enemies, and made it possible for Jar-eel herself to appear in the rites. Although Kallyr was able to technically complete the ritual (as in she performed the rest of the rites, likely nearly alone, so that the link with the God Time could be ended), that was more a matter of survival (no doubt she was informed that at all costs the ritual must completed, by her or whoever was present).
That Kallyr was willing to gamble on such an experiment does show just how much ideas of experimental heroquesting, be it from the Tournament of the Masters of Life and Death or from such Lunar heroes as the Seven Mothers, the Red Goddess, Hwarin Dalthippa, Hon-eel, or Jar-eel, had disseminated to others.
“Any LBQ that can be deliberately planned and managed is just a glam theyalan sacred time ceremony. Cosplay. Ritual drama. Good to have, good to do, resets the world ‘n’ all but not the kind of thing you need here and in fact it can make things worse.” It would be interesting to see a list of topics like this where fan consensus has gotten a little too cozy. That’s a really good way of looking at it. We have a lot of glam theyalan cosplay going on – but the actual LBQ is something terrifying and desperate. It is normally better to lock down what others have done through costume drama than try to do it yourself.
And thus most everyone fails on that quest. If you don’t get that each of the Lightbringers completely failed and had to acknowledge and accept that failure in order to restart their quest at the bottom, you’ll never survive the quest.
The specifics [of the quest] are mysteries – ultimately only known to those who have gone through it. There are plenty of stories about what they did at the bottom of the quest, and as Harmast found out, they are not necessarily helpful at all.
There are lots of ways to interact with the Hero Plane and the God Time. Naturally fans like to gravitate towards the most desperate and radical quest of them all, rather than go out and beat up on a Full Priest we’ve managed to ritually identify as Aroka, or go pound on Yelmalio on the Hill of Gold to get good magical gear.
Oddly, there’s never much discussion of the other radical quest that is as well-defined in published materials as the LBQ. But that one also requires that you lose everything at the bottom of the quest.
Eurmal ALWAYS has a role. Players generally do a better job with Eurmal carrying his magic into the setting than most internet discussions suggest. Eurmal deliberately and intentionally brings the forbidden into the sacred. His magic is key to how the Orlanthi religion understand and deal with the cosmos. Remember those sacred clowns are there making fart jokes in the middle of the most sacred of ceremonies, mocking the most beloved of leaders and gods, and violating all of the social and divine rules – and are accepted and acknowledged as having a key place in the magical ecology.
And note that the problem with the whole KoDP approach to HQing. You feel you need to use some specific script, which means that most players and groups will need to digest huge amounts of information.