Hero (Ven)

From the Wongery
Jump to navigation Jump to search

A hero, in the cosmos of Ven, is a very important concept. While it is still used colloquially the same as it is on other worlds, the word also has a more technical meaning. Those who achieve particular honor and renown among the local populace gain extra power by doing so, becoming something greater than a gregary human (or whatever race they happened to be)... becoming a hero, in not just the everyday sense but the preternatural as well. In fact, so integral is the concept of a hero to most cultures that the very cosmos takes its name from it—the name "Ven" is short for "Cruinney Veniagh", meaning "World of Heroes".

The study of heroes, in the Venic sense, is called agallology.

Becoming a hero

Becoming a hero is not someone one can achieve on one's own, by sheer willpower or through any other individual endeavor. The only way to achieve herohood is by inducing sufficient numbers of other people to hold one in high regard. It is, of course, possible for charismatic manipulators to gain enough followers to elevate them to heroship without their having done anything else truly worthy of the status, but more often one's status as a hero comes from famous acts one has performed, or ideas one has promulgated. It is not necessary that one gains honor and becomes a hero through valor in combat or victory in war; some artists, philosophers, and activists have gained enough respect and repute to ascend to heroic status. However, notoriety by itself is not enough to make one into a hero; one must have earned admiration above that of one's peers. Everyone in a nation may know the name and face of their king, but unless that king is especially beloved and revered, that mere fame will not make a hero of him.

Many heroes achieve their status through a single notable deed that catapults them into celebrity. For these heroes, the transition is a very quick process; they can be great heroes one day where they day before they were ordinary people. In other cases, though, their estimation builds over time, and with it their heroic nature. Heroism is not a wholly binary matter; while it is true that the vast majority of Ven's populace are not heroes, and have none of the concomitant power, among those who are heroes not all are at the same level. Even once one has risen into the lofty station of the hero, one may rise farther as one's reportage and standing further increase.. although once one has achieved a certain level of herohood, it never seems to be lost; there are no known cases of anyone decreasing in heroic power, or backsliding from herodom back to quotidianity. It's not clear whether there is any upper limit to the level of heroship one can attain, unless it is true that a particularly venerated hero will become a god.

There seems to be no simple way to measure one's renown or potential for heroism, or to predict if or exactly when someone will cross the threshold and gain their first heroic powers. While clearly the transition to herodom comes about due to people's esteem for the individual in question, the full suite of variables involved remains unknown and unmeasurable.

Heroic Powers

The powers gained by heroes vary, based in part on the people's view of them, in part on the heroes' own personalities and abilities, and perhaps in part on other factors not well understood. Still, there are some powers that seem to be more common than others among heroes. Very common is a simple augmentation of the hero's natural abilities: warrior heroes become supernaturally capable in combat; heroes who attained their status through inspiring leadership become even more aspiring and charismatic.

But heroes may also gain powers that are more overtly magical. Among the most common other powers of heroes are:

The powers marked with an asterisk usually apply only to the hero themself; there are heroes who can use these powers on others, but it's much rarer.

Other Magics

While heroes are known for the powers they wield, there are also magics dealing with heroes that others can use. Perhaps the best known is the Heroes' Call, which arcesses a hero to a particular location to serve the caller. The Heroes' Call can be affected by a spell, by a talisman (the best known being a horn called a Cayrn Symney), or by various other paracarminical means. It's often said that the Heroes' Call brings a dead hero back to life, but this isn't strictly true... what it does more accurately is create a copy of the hero in question. This is evidenced by the fact that it's entirely possible to call two copies of the same hero at the same time, or even to call a copy of a hero while the original is still alive. That this is rarely done seems to owe more to the fact that it isn't widely realized that it can be done than to any particular difficulty in doing it.

The Heroes' Call is not, however, the only magic that can affect heroes. Another, rarely used, set of effects is collectively called "kechla". Through kechla, a hero can be converted into other resources, including food, men, gems and gold, or even an entire town. Kechla is widely considered a measure of last resort, and is rarely used, not only because the hero is generally more valuable to the cause as themself, but also for moral reasons; there are some uncomfortable questions as to what happens to the soul of a hero subjected to kechla.

Heroes in society

As both powerful and highly respected individuals, heroes tend to rise to positions of prominence wherever they go... or rather usually tend to have already risen to positions of prominence before they became heroes, and to find that their herohood makes it even easier to maintain those positions, or even to rise further. It's far from unknown for heroes to attain positions of leadership, if they didn't already have them, and while it's certainly not the case that every political leader of a Venic nation is a hero, it's certainly true that heroes are disproportionately represented. Some heroes have been known to become gods, though it's not entirely clear if, as mentioned above, this is a result of reaching a certain level of heroism, or whether it's a separate process related to the reverence they receive but otherwise unrelated to their herohood. Some Venic theologists wonder if all gods were once heroes, but there is little evidence that this is the case. In any case, on their becoming gods, most of the other effects of their herodom cease; a god who was a former hero is no longer subject to kechla, and cannot be summoned in their current state by the Heroes' Call... though the Heroes' Call can in principle produce a copy of the hero as they were just before they became a god.

Not all heroes, however, manage to maintain the level of respect and admiration that led to their becoming heroes in the first place. There have been cases of heroes who later betrayed or disappointed their supporters and proved themselves unworthy of their heroship, at least in the eyes of many. As has already been noted, this does not undo or lower their herohood, which seems to be irreversible, but it certainly does affect their social standing. A fallen hero is often regarded with a contempt commensurate with their former honor, and many fallen heroes choose to move somewhere where they are unknown and hide the fact that they are heroes at all. Indeed, where kechla is known and practiced, it's all the more important for a fallen hero to hide their nature, because the fallen hero is still subject to kechla, and authorities may have fewer compunctions about converting a useless fallen hero to some more useful goods than they would about sacrificing a respected hero.

Mathoms

Living beings are not the only things that can be affected by people's feelings toward them. There are inanimate analogues of heroes, as well, powerful talismans called mathoms. (As with "hero", the word also has a noncelemological meaning, but unlike "hero", the word "mathom" is now on most worlds very rare in other uses.) A mathom arises by much the same process as a hero—when people have sufficiently strong positive feelings for an object, that imbues it with some magical nature of its own. Many mathoms, in fact, are associated with particular heroes; if a renowned warrior is known for using a trademark sword, then as that warrior becomes a hero their sword may become a mathom. Other mathoms, however, may arise independently of heroes, either because they have particular stories attached to them or because they were implicated in notable events (that may not have had any individual people involved to such an extent as to become heroes).

Like heroes, mathoms vary in power level. Any mathom, however, qualfies as an eximium; mathoms are unique items—except insofar as they can be duplicated by an analogue of the Heroes' Call called the Cur Lesh—and they are all but impossible to permanently destroy beyond retrieval.

Celemological explanation

While most people of Ven do not fully understand how heroes attain their status and what gives them their power, and simply take the matter for granted, there is an accepted celemological explanation. Magic, in Ven, is a capability shared by all humans (excepting the uncommon amagic individual), and many other creatures besides; some learn to direct and focus their magic, and become wizards, but others still use their magic unconsciously. It is this unconscious magic, formally known as cryptomagia, that gives rise to heroes, as well as mathoms.

In essence, most people tend to unconsciously exercise their magical power on people and things for which they feel particular awe and respect. The effect of this power is to refine the substance of the subject into another, magically potent form of matter called "stuabi". A hero may therefore superficially resemble their former self, but they are now made a different type of stuff, and it is that, along perhaps with other cryptomagical enchantments, that gives them their powers... and that renders them susceptible to effects such as kechla and the Heroes' Call.

Cryptomagical effecs are relatively weak, at least individually and on the short term, and so if the combined cryptomagic of many ordinary people can turn a person into a hero, it might seem that a powerful mage should be able to duplicate such a feat on their own. In principle, this is possible, but in practice, the power levels involved are prohibitive. The effect of one person performing cryptomagia during one day is negligible, and easily surpassable by a capable wizard, but a hero is made by thousands, if not millions, of people, working their cryptomagic on them over a prolonged period of time, and that combined effect is more than any mage could duplicate, save perhaps the most overwhelmingly powerful... and such overwhelmingly powerful mages likely have better things to do with their time.

Retrieved from "http://wongery.com/w/index.php?title=Hero_(Ven)&oldid=2761"