# Moving Through the Planes

One of the good things that has come from the HeroWars game is the descriptions of the Planes and how they inter-relate.

One of the bad things that has come from the HeroWars game is the way that the Planes have been set in stone and separated from each other.

These two statements are heavily related and affect each other. It is a shame that the good idea of explaining the planes and describing how they interact has also forced those same planes to be treated as separate and isolated. One of the things about Glorantha that I liked was that the Planes were distinct but connected, that people could move between the planes at certain points and that the planes were not completely rigid. This is no longer the case. I have watched certain debates on the Gloranthan Digest as people come to terms with these things and it seems to me that the description of the Gloranthan Planes are being shoe-horned into the rules set of HeroWars. This is a mistake. A game system should reflect the reality of a game world, not drive the structure of the game world. We made this mistake with RuneQuest and are making it again with HeroWars. In my opinion, the Planes of Glorantha should be described in a non game way and then game mechanics should be put in place to model them and make those Planes usable within the game.

As I don't play HeroWars, I will try and put together some ideas of how these Planes should be treated in RuneQuest, or at least in a RuneQuest HeroQuesting system. This should mean that anyone using a system similar to my own should be able to use the depth of these Planes with ease.

I will be dealing with the Divine World or God World here, as I don't understand the Sorcery, Spirit or Mystical Worlds. In any case, most of the HeroQuesting that has been written concerns the God World and the interaction of the deities of Glorantha.

The God Plane contains all the mythical activity of Glorantha. [1] The God Learners split the God Plane into many Ages, each of which corresponded with a stream of mythical activity which was connected in some way. So, we have the Golden Age, the Storm Age (Lesser Darkness), the Chaos Age (Greater Darkness), the Silver Age and so on. Each Age has its own myths and its own HeroPaths. Glorantha also has its own physical areas, many of which cross the Ages. So, we have the Castle of Black Glass, the Spike, Kero Fin, the Rockwoods, The Castles of Lead and many more. Each of these places has its own myths and HeroPaths. How do we try and make sense of these different Ages and Places?

Let us take an example. Orlanth is a deity who crosses the Ages. He was present in the Storm Age, the Chaos Age and the Silver Age. However, he was not present in the Golden Age. This means that Orlanthi HeroQuestors can perform HeroQuests in the Storm, Chaos and Silver Ages but not in the Golden Age. Orlanth crossed the world of Glorantha and performed deeds in many of its places. So, Orlanthi HeroQuestors can access many of the Places of Myth. However, can we assume that an Orlanthi HeroQuestor can travel the God Plane willy-nilly? I doubt it. We need some way of controlling this so that HeroQuestors can travel in a controlled and systematic way.

HeroWars does this by putting up arbitrary barriers between the Places in the Planes. So, there is a barrier between the Storm Tula and the Emperor's Palace or between Genert's Garden and Pent. This prevents lesser people from crossing over between these areas. What is the justification here? It seems as though someone asked "Why can't people just cross over from Genert's Garden to Pent" and the answer was "Because there is a barrier there". This is highly unsatisfactory, in my opinion. It is always dangerous to look back at was was written and extrapolate from that, but there was nothing written about barriers between the areas of the God Plane before HeroWars, so I think that this is a Game Mechanic that will unduly influence the descriptions of the God PLane and how HeroQuestors interact with the God Plane.

In my HeroQuesting system, all events in the God Plane are described by the HeroPath that was first walked to create that event. The God Plane is made up of such HeroPaths and the people that walked them. There are HeroPaths between many of the Places of Glorantha. It is these HeroPaths that can be used to travel within the God Plane. I would go so far as to say that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to travel between two Places on the God Plane without a HeroPath or series of HeroPaths to connect them.

So, the God Plane can be viewed in an extremely simplistic way as a series of nodes connected by a massive tangle of lines. Each Node is a Place or an Event, each line is a HeroPath that connects them. The trick in navigating through the God Plane is to decide which of the lines and nodes to travel in order to reach the desired destination.

The way that HeroQuestors travel these Lines and Nodes is to use a HeroQuest that contains the HeroPath containing these Lines and Nodes. That way, they are protected from the rest of the God Plane and are assured that their Path is set for them. Such HeroQuests ritualize the God Plane, making it predictable and safer. The HeroQuestors know what they will face and how to defeat the enemy. They know where they may go and where they may not. This brings the God Plane into reach and tames it enough to be safe.

How can a HeroQuestor travel a Path that has not been set? This is quite difficult, but has been done. The simplest way is to gather a number of related Quests and combine them into a new Quest that achieves the desired objective. The more difficult way is to forge a brand new Path without any earlier Path to follow. Most HeroQuestors follow the first method. In my opinion, even powerful deities who changed the God Plane, such as Nysalor, Arkat and the Red Goddess did most of their HeroQuesting/GodQuesting using adaptations of existing Quests/Paths.

As an example, let us consider Sven GreatLove, an Orlanthi HeroQuestor who wants to create a new HeroPath, one of his own as he wants to create his own cult and gain special magic for his followers. He wants to create the Rescue Soul Path to rescue the soul of his wife who was taken by enemies. Sven knows that he must travel from Storm Walk Mountain to Hell in order to regain the soul of his lost love, so he researches the HeroQuests of Orlanth and decides that the LightBringer Quest is too dangerous to attempt. He finds several Quests that allow entry to the Underworld and Hell and to return. He is from the Kitori Tribe and also knows of several Darkness HeroQuests that allow for travel in Hell. He decides to learn a selection of these Quests and to combine them into one new Quest. As the only place that new Quests may be created, he needs to do this on the God Plane. His first Quest is a journey from StormWalk Mountain to the Castle of Black Glass. This is contained in several Orlanthi Quests and poses no problem. The next is to gain entry to the Castle of Black Glass as a friend. This is something that Orlanth rarely did, but the Kitori managed to do, being troll friends, so he uses a Station from a Kitori Quest to gain entry at a cost. Orlanth has several Quests that travel from the Castle of Black Glass to the Underworld and Sven uses one from the LightBringers' Quest where Orlanth leaves the Castle of Black Glass and becomes lost in the Underworld. He also uses a Kitori Quest where a Kitori Hero uses the Cats Eye and Keen Smell to find his way to Hell. Once at the Styx, Sven pays the Ferryman using the Styx Shore Station from many Quests. Sven then uses an Orlanthi Quest Station to travel from Styx Shore to the Diamond Spire that is found in Hell. From the Diamond Spire, he uses a Humakti Quest to travel to the Leaden Bridge and another to travel to the Tower of Screams where his wife is kept. Sven uses an Orlanthi Quest to enter the Tower of Screams, although the original Quest entered a different Tower, and to rescue his wife. Orlanth has many Quests where he steals something from Hell and escapes, so Sven uses one of these to reach the Leaden Bridge and another to reach the Styx Shore. To cross the Styx, he uses a Kitori Quest that fools the Ferryman into taking him back across the Styx, but at the cost that the next time they travel to the Styx they cannot cross back. Finally, he uses the Lightbringers' Ascent to the Surface and reappears with his wife. Each os these Quests and Stations had a different purpose, but Sven could merge them together on the God Plane and travel between the different Places, for those Paths already existed.

So, enterprising HeroQuestors will be able to travel to different parts of the God Plane using different Stations on Quests. Once there, they can change the Stations and exit on a different Quest. Arkat did this when he realized that he was reaching the same points on different Quests as a Hrestoli Knight, Sword of Humakt and Zorak Zorani Death Lord. His trick was to realise that if he entered a Place using a Hrestoli Station, he could leave it on a Zorak Zorani Quest, thus creating a new Quest.

Where Questors need to access different Ages, they need to gain HeroQuests that cross the Ages. These are nearly impossible to find. The next best thing is to find a Quest that travels to a Place from which there is an exit point to another Age. So, the Spike exists in the Golden Age and the Storm Age, so an Orlanth Questor wishing to enter the Golden Age may wish to travel to the Spike on an Orlanthi Storm Age Quest, perform a Station at the Spike, then leave the Spike using an Ernaldan Quest. These cross-deity Quests are quite dangerous if the Questor has not researched the Quests properly, for he/she carries with them the baggage of both deities when performing the second Quest.

This means that certain Places are very important as they enable Questors to cross over from one Age to another or to cross between one Place and another. Such Places are well guarded and are used to HeroQuestors travelling there. In fact, some retired HeroQuestors stay in these places permanently and guard them from HeroQuestors. Many Arkati and Jrusteli HeroQuestors became such Threshold Guardians. It also means that certain deities become important simply because they know the Quests that allow entry to certain places. For instance, Pavis knows a way into Genert's Garden that few other deities know, so Questors wanting to go there as a friend often seek out the Pavis cult.

How can we use this in gaming sessions? Well, the first thing to do is to map out the God Plane as a series of nodes and lines. The new Issaries supplements make this a lot easier, as each deity has its Sacred Place described, with links to other places and times. Also, myth write-ups can be used to draw these God Plane maps. The second thing is to decide which Quests can be used to travel to these places. This is fairly easy, as the Quests describe which Places are visited and which Age the Quest is part of. The third thing is to decide how many of these Quests are available to the PCs/NPCs. If Quests are not available, it may be necessary to perform other Quests to gain the required Quests, especially if the Quests are from another deity. The fourth thing is to decide how these Quests should be used, to write down which Quest Stations can be used to travel to which Place and to prepare for the Quest. The last thing is for the Quest to be run.

These things should all allow for simple and easy travel between Places on the God Plane and to allow PCs to HeroQuest in a simpler manner than before.

## Notes

1. OK, I know that this is not true, as in the HeroWars system mythical behaviour happens in the Spirit World, Sorcery World and so on, but I am looking at this from an old fashioned point of view where the God Plane was all that happened before Time started.

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