Orlanth is one of the most important deities in Glorantha. He participated in many of the deeds of God Time and caused and solved many of the problems. He is the Culture Hero, War God and Ruler God of many of the people of Genertela and is widely worshipped. Probably more important from a role playing viewpoint, Orlanth is one of the easiest deities for HeroQuesting or general role playing. His mythology is fairly widely known and written up, his cult has been written up for a long time and everyone knows how Orlanthi behave.

Since Orlanth is so important from both a Gloranthan and Role Playing point of view, I think it is about time he had more HeroQuests written up for him. So I have bitten the bullet and looked through the myths to find those HeroQuests that are easy to sketch out. These HeroQuests are not all the Orlanthi HeroQuests, there are many more Quests associated with Orlanth and many more that Orlanthi have hijacked for their own purposes, but I am not looking at those at the moment.

These HeroQuests are written in a fairly standard format that applies to all levels of play. This is because I think that the same HeroQuest should apply to Initiates and to Heroes. It is up to the GM to design opponents or to use opponents from within the campaign rather than the writer giving example characters that do not fit into normal campaigns.

I am trying to concentrate on the skeletons of these HeroQuests rather than a great amount of detail. Good GMs should be able to use these skeletons to pad them out with extra role playing opportunities or to add extra events relating to the particular participants.

There are several HeroQuests that are difficult to write. These include the Baths of Nelat and the Lightbringers' Quest. The Baths of Nelat is supposed to have never been completed by anyone but Orlanth and that is probably true in the God Time and at the Baths of Nelat, but I believe that the Quest has been successfully completed as a Practice Run Quest or even as an Other Place Quest and gives a number of abilities to Orlanthi attempting this Quest. The Lightbringers' Quest is difficult for several reasons. Firstly, it is a very long Quest and should be thought of as several Quests linked together. Secondly, it is a very important Quest and has ramifications beyond the physical into the mystical and social. Thirdly, it has been described in several forms from the description in Cults of Terror to the Long and Short Forms in King of Sartar. Fourthly, whatever we write on the Lightbringers Quest will be wrong or at least incomplete. Still, I am going to give it a go and try to write these Quests up.

As I remember other myths of Orlanth I will try and include other HeroQuests when I have the time. I am trying to scour the supplements I still have to pick out useful myths or stories but it is a time-consuming task.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the Orlanthi HeroQuests and find them useful in your campaigns or useful to get ideas from.

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