In Glorantha, we know that the myth is eternal, but the moment you enter it, it becomes personal, singular, and unrepeatable. This is the deepest and most paradoxical truth of heroquesting – you are entering something eternal and endless, but simultaneously you are doing it for the first time.
You might walk in knowing the story back to front. You know Orlanth killed Yelm with Death. You know Inanna stripped herself naked at each of the seven gates. You know the archetypes and their meanings. You’ve studied the Bardo Thodol and memorised the spells of the Book of Going Forth by Day. You know the Spider devours the Devil at the end.
And yet, when you step onto the Other Side, the myth is not a script you recite; it is happening now, for the first time, and you are the one it is happening to. When you follow the Lightbringers’ Quest to its bitter end and you finally stand in the ruins of the Yelm’s palace, holding the tattered net, facing the Devil for the first time in your life… the Devil has also never met you before. Arachne Solara is not waiting for “yet another reenactment”; she is waiting to see what this mortal will weave into the Web of Time that was not there yesterday. Each time a heroquest is performed it is ontologically real that it is being performed for the very first time – your experience is THE experience.
What are the rules! As I have said countless times, heroquesting is fundamentally not a “rules question” so much as a “how do we deconstruct a fantasy adventure to its mythic archetypes and wrap Glorantha around it”? I can certainly do that for individual quests using the existing rules, but haven’t yet worked out a ready-steady-go mechanical framework for that.
