Common Worlds

the "first threshold" can actually be the embarkation into the Other World. the Quest doesn't have to start with the Call.

Think of it like this--the First Threshold is the point past which you cannot turn around.

Luke crossed the Threshold at the Cantina--up to that point he could have told Obi-wan to piss off, and walked away. Once he left the cantina, his whole world was different. Walking away would have meant his death, or at least his transformation into a Sith.

I am an idiot and it will take a lot more explaining before I understand quest design. :shock: I am still working on the small stuff like running my character.

These almost always follow the heroic cycle.

Here's a source for some pretty obscure fairy tales. I wouldn't be surprised if one or more of them could just be copied, then with a search and replace in a word processor change every example of "Faust" into "Jokat Pulos" and "The Devil" into "Powers of the Sorcerous Dark" you have a myth, for example.

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/folktexts.html#f

Mike

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/monkey.html#monkeyboy

alas, that first link at the top of this thread is dead. I'll hunt for more.

Here we go:

With a flash interface! http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/mff/mythmachine.htm

search and replace http://www.mythiccrossroads.com/greek.htm

many stories http://www.pantheon.org/areas/

One interesting choice http://ias.berkeley.edu/orias/hero/sunjata/plot_sunjata.html

The monomyth http://ias.berkeley.edu/orias/hero/index.htm

Here's the unmodified Story-- http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/monkey.html#monkeyboy

Zitro Argon once saw the endless dark out of the corner of his all seeing eye, but he did not care for it and turned his vision away. Where he had left, instead was Vaneesha Kan Sa, the Child of the Edge of Light and Dark.

He was bright and shadowed, and so neither cared for him. But he hid in the dark and his dark mother sheltered him.

The dark powers and relations advised the mother to make away with it, but she refused, saying, "Zitro Argon knows why he has given me such a child, but as he has done so, I will rear it."

All her relations said that if she chose to rear such a half-breed they would turn her out of the family. However, she persisted that she would do so at all costs. So they sent her to live with her child in a hut at the edge of the world, and the light-and-dark boy grew up and learned everything about that place.

One day his elder brothers began to clear the earth for cultivation, and Vaneesha took a stone and went with them. He asked where he could clear land for himself, and in fun they showed him the place where the jungle was thickest. So he went there and broke his stone so its edge was sharp, stuck it into the trunk of a tree and then returned and watched his brothers working hard clearing the scrub with their hands and rough rocks, and when they had finished their work, he went and fetched his hand axe and returned home with them.

Every day he did the same. And one day his brothers asked why he spent all his time with them, but he said that he only came to them when he was tired of cutting down trees. They laughed at this and said that they would like to see his clearing, so he took them to the place, and to their astonishment they saw a large clearing, bigger than they had been able to make for themselves. Then the brothers burnt the jungle they had cut down and began to plow the land.

But Vaneesha's mother had no plow or cattle nor any seed rice. The only thing in the house was a pumpkin, so he took the seed out of the pumpkin and sowed it in his clearing. His brothers asked what he had sown, and he told them, "Rice."

The brothers plowed and sowed and used to go daily to watch the growing crop, and one day they went to have a look at Vaneesha's crop, and they saw that it was pumpkins and not rice, and they laughed at him. When their crop was ripe the brothers prepared to offer the first fruits, and Vaneesha watched them that he might observe the same ceremonies as they. One day they brought home the first fruits and offered them to the Good Gods and Spirits, and they invited Vaneesha and his mother to come to the feast which followed the offering.

They both went and enjoyed themselves; and two or three days later Vaneesha said that he would also have a feast of first fruits, so he told his mother to clear the courtyard, and invited his brothers, and he purified himself and went to his clearing and brought home the biggest pumpkin that had grown there. This he offered to the spirits. He sliced off the top of it as if it were the head of a fowl, and as he did so he saw that the inside was full of rice. He called his mother, and they filled a winnowing fan with the rice, and there was enough besides to nearly fill a basket.

They were delighted at this windfall but kept the matter secret lest they should be robbed. Vaneesha told his mother to be sure and cook enough rice so that his brothers and their wives might have as much as ever they could eat, and not merely a small helping such as they had given him, and if necessary he would go and fetch another pumpkin. So his mother boiled the rice.

When the time fixed for the feast came, nothing was to be seen of the brothers because they did not expect that there would really be anything for them to eat. So Vaneesha went and fetched them, and when they came to the feast they were astonished to have as much rice as they could eat. When the crop was quite ripe Vaneesha gathered all the pumpkins and got sufficient rice from them to last for the whole year.

After this the brothers went out to buy horses, and Vaneesha went with them, and as he had no money he took nothing but a coil of rope. His brothers were ashamed to have him with them and drove him away, so he went on ahead and got first to the place where the horse dealer lived. The brothers arrived late in the evening and decided to make their purchases the following morning and ride their horses home, so they camped for the night. Vaneesha spent the night hiding on the rafters of the stable. And in the night the horses began to talk to each other and discussed which could gallop farthest, and one mare said, "I can gallop twelve kos on the ground and never lose my footing on any path." [One kos equals about two miles.]

When Vaneesha heard this he got down and lamed the mare by running a splinter into her hoof. The next morning the brothers bought the horses which pleased them and rode off. Then Vaneesha went to the horse dealer and asked why the mare was lame and advised him to apply remedies. But the dealer said that that was useless; when horses got ill they always died. Then Vaneesha asked if he would sell the mare and offered to give the coil of rope in exchange. The dealer, thinking that the animal was useless, agreed. So Vaneesha led it away, but when he was out of sight he took out the splinter, and the lameness at once ceased. Then he mounted the mare and rode after his brothers, and when he had nearly overtaken them he galloped over a mountain on the thinnest of goat paths past his brothers and arrived first at home. There he tied up the mare outside his house and went and bathed and had his dinner and waited for his brothers.

They did not arrive for a full hour afterwards, and when they saw Vaneesha and his mount they wanted to know how he had got home first. He boasted of how swift his mare was, and so they arranged to have a race and match their horses against his. The race took place two or three days later, and Vaneesha's mare easily beat all the other horses. She galloped twelve kos on the ground and never faltered on the worst footing. Then they wanted to change their horses for his, but he said they had had first choice and he was not going to change.

In two or three years Vaneesha became rich, and then he announced that he wanted to marry. This puzzled his mother for she thought that no goddess of the sky would marry him and all the spirits of the dark feared his light. So she told him that he must find a bride for himself. One day he set off to look for a wife and came to a tank in which some girls were bathing, and he took up the cloth belonging to one of them and ran up a tree with it, and when the girl missed it and saw it hanging down from the tree, she borrowed a cloth from her friends and went and asked Vaneesha for her own. He told her that she could only have it back if she consented to marry him. She was surprised to find that he could speak the celestial language, and as he conversed she was bewitched by him and let him pull her up into the tree by her hair, and she called out to her friends to go home and leave her where she was. Then he took her on his back and ran off home with her.

The girl's father and relations turned out with bows and arrows to look for the dark spirit who had carried her off, but he had gone so far away that they never found him. When Vaneesha appeared with his bride all the villagers were astonished that he had found anyone to marry him, but everything was made ready for the marriage as quickly as possible, and all the relations were invited, and the wedding took place, and Vaneesha and his wife lived happily ever after.

This story adaptation isn't perfect, and also illustrates some principles of myth-telling in Glorantha.

This is probably the version of the story told to new initiates. Ranking initiates would know more, and devotees and priests more still. For example, is it reasonable to think that Vaneesha cleared the forest just by sticking his stone axe in one tree and leaving it there? No. Something occurred there in the forest that allowed that clearing to be made.

The places where the story leave you asking more questions are the places where the secret version of the story has answers.

There's some other tuning of this story that I may do over the next few days.

here's one already done http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Realm/5545/mything/soravato.html

PLEASE stay away from links about Argrath on this site. SPOILERS!

http://www.weirdload.com/oz-arda.html

I have mentioned how Frosty the snowman and the life of Jesus are similar, haven't I?

Here's the link to that Samurai game, Falling Leaves.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=18015.0

While I by no means intend to replace HQ with this, I think a few rounds of this might loosen up your "this is my story too" muscles.

This is for real, but it applies to Monday nights.

new info on the issaries site

http://www.glorantha.com/support/hq_types.html