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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bluenose" data-source="post: 6255910" data-attributes="member: 49017">I would say that it varies depending on the scale of the change you're trying to make. Myths resist being changed, and the larger the change is the higher that resistance should be. Also, there's a benefit to doing a myth the "correct" way - even when it appears you fail all the time, as a follower of Yelmalio seems to on the Hill of Gold heroquest, in the end there's a benefit to be had from completing it properly (Endurance, in this particular case). A follower of Yelmalio who defeats the representative of Zorak Zoran on this quest will be able to use the fire powers that the ZZ worshipper is supposed to steal, but may not get the other benefits of the quest. On an individual scale it doesn't matter so much. On the other hand, a Community can support a quester. Sometimes it can be a small quest that lets that community do something that others have already learnt to - a quest to befriend Bee Mother that allows the community to harvest honey from her children, in exchange for whatever the quester agreed to (which may not always be a good bargain, but is mythically significant). That's more a matter of learning a new heroquest, which will then turn out to be one your clan has forgotten it always could do. But then of course there's much larger stuff you can do. It may start out as a personal thing, where you do something slightly differently and discover a new "reward" that you can gain from the quest. If you teach other people, and they do the quest the same way, and it spreads widely, at some point more people start to think that's how the quest should be and that's how the world actually works. This isn't changing the myth for you, or "changing" your clan history so that something you know how to do is remembered again when you never knew it before. This is making the world different by changing a myth. When some Orlanthi in Dragon Pass changed a myth, they learnt to talk to dragonewts and understand their way of thinking, and created the EWF. When Jrusteli explorers changed a myth, they proved that two grain goddesses could be exchanged without their worshippers noticing (at least, until all the crops failed in one land and all the marriages in the other).This is dangerous. The EWF ended when every human being in Dragon Pass was killed by dragons. The Jrusteli Middle Sea Empire ended with lands being sunk under the sea, the oceans being closed for generations, and everyone who knew the Secret that let them change myths as easily as they did was killed by invisible assassins. These consequences may or may not have been the result of other people questing, but it's quite certain that experimental heroquesting is not a popular activity in the 3rd Age - after all, the 2nd Age where it was at it's height ended so well.</blockquote>

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