From: gadbois@cs.utexas.edu (David Gadbois)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: RQ: Runelords and Heroes question
Date: 19 Dec 1992 23:08:53 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

   From: George.Harris@launchpad.unc.edu (George Harris)
   Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 20:25:15 GMT

   In article <BzHrup.Dow@acsu.buffalo.edu> v124pz9t@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (David Cheng) writes:
   >In article <1992Dec18.200122.19258@infonode.ingr.com>, beykema@infonode.ingr.com (Maurice Beyke) writes...

   >> has happened to it since the beginning of Time (up till now
   >> considered impossible by all the heroquest experts I'd heard
   >> from) or did it just change it's mythology, and how it functions
   >> from now on?  This is a *very* important distinction, and, if
   >> the first is correct, changes a great deal of what *I* thought I
   >> understood about Heroquesting.

   >AS I UNDERSTAND THIS REALLY WAY-OUT PHILOSOPHICAL STUFF: You
   >should think about this as an "evolutionary" process, not as a
   >"changing history" process.

   >When grandpa was a kid, that tribe down south worshipped Elmalio.
   >But, during his lifetime, the Elmalio HeroQuesters changed the way
   >their god would be perceived, _from that point onward_.

   >So, for me, I only hear the priests talk about Yelmalio.  Grandpa
   >says it was different back in his day, but that doesn't matter so
   >much to me, right?  I'm living now, and into the future, not back
   >in the past.

   >Grandpa won't be around to tell my kids about the old Elmalio, and
   >I only remember some of what Grandpa told me, so gradually the
   >"story" changes.

   >To an objective observer, the cult has evolved, including a name
   >change.  The "new" cult has different needs, so it comes up with
   >different legends to "teach" (indoctrinate ?) the next generation.

   Actually, my understanding of this phenomenon (such as it is)
   suggests that the opposite is the case.

   When one goes Heroquesting, one leaves the mundane plane and enters
   the Godtime.  This is the time before time, when the relationships
   among the gods was still fluid, and the Great Compromise had not
   sealed the gods off from the realm of the mortals.  Now, when you
   are in the Godtime, you are in a place where time does not exist.
   You are also before time exists, so in a way you have traveled back
   into the "past".

   Now, when you are there, if you are *really* powerful, you can
   change the way that various gods interacted, by putting yourself in
   one god's place, and taken a different path.  This is of course
   extraordinarily difficult and dangerous.  However, if you are
   successful, you have changed the way the gods interacted *before
   time was created*.  Thus, when you leave the Godtime, you will
   enter a mundane plane where the legends *are* and *always were*
   about the way the gods interact *after* your interference.  So, no,
   your grandfather would have no knowledge of the stormcult Elmalio,
   but rather of a somewhat weak Sky cult called Yelmalio.

   This is also the way in which the cult of Caladra and Aurelion was
   created by the Godlearners.  It is thought that the Godlearners
   created and altered many religions in this way, and that may be why
   they were destroyed.  But heroquesting in this way, I believe, does
   alter the way things have always been.

I have been advocating the position which Harris has stated rather
nicely here, but it occurs to me that there is evidence for both
sides.

For the "changing history" view, we have (Y)Elmalio.  No one seems to
know about Elmalio as an entity, and there is no record of his deeds.
It looks like history has been wiped clean of him.  Examples of this
sort of thing are rather scarce, since it's rather hard to speak of
something that once had been but now has always never been.

In support of the "changing legend" view, there are plenty of cases
where there is record of alterations of mythology -- Gbaji, the Red
Goddess, the Syndics Ban, and so forth.  In each of these, Godtime was
changed but folks still know about what things were like before the
change was effected and there is a sense of "before" for all of them.

The case of Caladra and Aurelion is curiously in the middle.  We know
that the cult was constructed sometime during the waning days of the
Jrustela Empire at the end of the Second Age.  But:  the cult was
active during the Gbaji Wars at the end of the *First* Age.  Maybe
random legends from the two separate cults were somehow put together
so as to make it look like Tessele was acting in the name of the Twins
when in fact he was just working for Aurelion, but it sure looks like
the fused cult was active back then.

On the other hand, knowledge about the cult's founding is explicit in
its secret rituals.  If history really had changed, why hadn't it done
so in such a way to wipe out the memory of its changing?

This kind of stuff really makes your head spin.  I still favor the
changing history view if only because it is weirder:  The changing
legend view is a lot easier for us arrow-of-time earth-bound folks to
deal with.

--David Gadbois