So how to do it? Well start with the RQ rules themselves. Let’s imagine we have a group of characters that are investigating the Old Vampire Cave on the darkest day in Darkness season and the Humakti leader is planning to enter the Underworld from there and seeking to find Death. To hedge his bets, he’s making sure he has an Eurmal worshiper with him, and has brought along his Orlanthi-worshiping kinsmen to keep the Trickster in line. Plus the regular bunch of player characters.
As preparation, the player (not the player character) has reread the Humakt cult writeup in the Lightbringers book, and the relevant snippet in the Mythology book.
The GM decides to treat this as a surreal dungeon crawl, with the following:
Cave section – this is the entry and as the adventurers go deeper and deeper into this, the real world begins to dissolve into the underworld. The blackness is greater than mere absence of light, and the GM decides the whole thing should get treated as giant shade which the adventurers need to overcome.
Deeper in the underworld, the GM treats this as a weird Jungian dreamscape populated by spirits that are unaware that Death exists. A mistress race troll informs them of the rules – – geases that must be taken on by the leader, and followed by his followers (without being geases). Finally the troll says that passage over there is strictly off limits and is guarded by several powerful shades/mistress race trolls that are sworn to stop any entry for any reason. She does not require an oath for that last one. Any violation of any of these results in combat.
The adventurers might decide to try to over power the shades and trolls, which results in a ferocious melee. Maybe they win and continue, maybe they all die.
The adventurers might decide to find another way. Remember there is a Trickster in the party after all. One of the shades is curious what is that passage and persuadable with a Fast Talk or other social contest to aid them.
One way or another they make their way into the passage (or are already dead). To find their way, someone needs to win an opposed role of their Death Rune against the Deep Darkness. The Deep Darkness criticals on a 1-10, specials on a 11-40, and succeeds on a 41-95, fails on a 96-99, and fumbles on a 00. Only one person can try at a time.
Each time they fail, they are subject to Fearshock and are attacked by countless biting things doing multiple attacks each round to each foe (making failing that CON check really bad).
Eventually either they die or someone succeeds. They make it to the vault and see Death. But now their shade guide betrays them and tries to steal Death. He reveals himself as the Living Dead and attacks the party for the sword – treat him as a Vampire Lord of Vivamort.
If he is defeated the Living Dead flees into the Darkness shrieking. This is their chance to take Death. Treat this like allying a spirit, because that is exactly what this is – a powerful allied spirit that violates the existing rules. If it is allied, it is willing to be bound into a weapon in exchange for its owner strictly following 3 new geases. That weapon automatically casts Sever Spirit the first time it strikes anyone in combat (using the allied spirit or the owner’s POW) and acts as if it has Truesword permanently cast on it. It cannot be broken or maybe it just has stupidly high hit points.
The adventurers now have to flee the Underworld, get past the remaining guards (having Death should help) and flee to the surface.
And boom, heroquest with cool weapon and lots of consequences!
Vivamort seeks you out as a personal foe (through his High Priest Delecti).
Did you kill a mistress race troll? The trolls might hate you really bad.
You have a whole bunch of new geases. But you do wield Death, or at least a copy.
Now the trick with these is you either need players that say – I want X cool power, how do I do it? Or you need to tell them – your temple leaders tell you to get X cool power, and here’s how to do it.
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And players being players, they will go off on something weird. Run with it.
Now if I was giving more than a bare bones treatment, I’d probably say that Honor is key to keeping the sword, but maybe also give the others a compulsion to want to use this to advance any passion they used in the scenario. Maybe that even twists their passions.
And more “terrible secret” hints and dialogues.
But heck I wrote this in less than an hour as a bare bones draft to just illustrate.
For example, we have an Orlanth cultist – he might insist that this new terrible weapon serve the needs of tribe or clan or of some great cause, instead of just the geases and honour of the Humakt temple. We’ve heard that one before, haven’t we?
Ultimately, what is important is that we remember a heroquest needs to be a gameable event with a bunch of people around the table, doing something that feels cool and their character comes out of this either dead or a Hero.
There’s a talking sword that insists on killing and honour. And that will take any owner willing to meet its demands. And likely now a pissed off Zorak Zoran Death Lord descended from the Mistress Race troll you killed, a bunch of vampires, and who knows what.
To me key to this is that we didn’t require any meta gaming rules to do this. Even if it “breaks” the RQ rules, it uses the RQ rules and any weird situational rules can be explained for that situation (finding a way in the Darkness, the Fearshock and the countless biting mouths, etc.).
One more thought – notice that the “myth” is pretty basic and reduced to archetypes. My STRONG suggestion is to approach it that way and let the players’ decisions and actions be the source of complexity.
Please note that this is my vision of heroquesting as a TTRPG activity. That is not the same as my vision of Heroquesting. But anything we do in TTRPG is going to have to accept the constraints of gaming as an activity done at a table with a GM and several players.
Are there penalties for failure? Death, loss of the weapon, whatever sounds good to the GM.
If you want, the Passions used can also have consequences.