The Role of the Empire in Hero Quest

[Tott]

to go back to the original post:
I see Mentor as an extremely ancient wizard of vast power, he seems to be a very close advisor to the emporer. Mentor acts as M to our heroes James Bond, highly trained and exceptionaly talented individuals under mentors command who are sent out on missions at mentors direction. Mentor organises and directs a large number of agents in this way with 'our' heroes simply being a small sample of the assets Mentor utilises. this is why Mentor doesnt (or rarely) venture out himself, in the same way as we rarely see a James Bond movie where M is in the field.
also, mentor controls loretome, which i always thought was a magical artifact of extreme power (it magicaly contains knowledge of everything) and probably takes a large amount of skill and power on behalf of the user to be able to show or find anything specific let alone usefull. this is another reason why Mentor is rarely in the field, his time is better spent organising his assets and using Loretome for research and information gathering purposes.
The empire I have to imagine as being particularly large, similar to the roman or british empire, if for no other reason than it seems to contain a vast number of forgotten ancient ruins for our heroes to explore around id imagine these to be fairly well spaced out (unless the world of heroquest is failry similar to terry pratchetts discworld (sorry, you're after the illucidated brethren of the ebon night, theyre two doors down and meet on thursdays, were the illuminated brethren of the eternal night, mondays and wednesdays.))
the emporer and prince magnus and indeed any other royalty would be similar to the royal family at the time of the british empire, politcal leaders and figureheads as well as occasional military leaders as well. the empire and its army is extremely large and well organised but spread thin by both the vast size of the territory they control and the number of threats on their borders.

[wallydubbs]

Just as Zargon is the villain the heroes never actually fight, Mentor is the good guy the monsters never see.
All the monsters are minions of Zargon, thus the heroes are minions of Mentor.
Mentor explains, not in so many words, that he uses his power to balance that of Zargons. Zargon is the Yin to Mentors Yang. It is as if God and the Devil are playing a game of chess for the fate of the world. Neither get too involved, but only in subtle ways.
Sure, we have a player who we all call Zargon but, let's face it, that player just controls the monsters' movements. He's a DM that we give a name to associate with the overall premise of the game.

Mentor and Zargon are eerily old in a God-like way, as they've been at this for quite a while. Rogar, Durgin, Ladrel and Telor were the heroes of old that ended Zargon's forces before and, apparently, it goes back and forth.
Maybe Mentor learned the secrets of everlasting life and discovered the Philosophers Stone and everything involved in the actual lore of Alchemy. Like the Count Saint Germain, these guys have been around for a long time, well known to the royal family and very rarely gets involved beyond a social level.

There isn't much I can say about the Emperor, as there's not a lot of information to run on. I went over the Heroes Background in forum with that name. But it seems that the heroes originally are hired by the Emperor as mere mercenaries to start off with. The Maze and The Trial are not actually quests given out by the Emperor, the Rescue of Sir Ragnar is. I meantioned in another forum (That nobody ever replied to) how unnerving it is that the Emperor is only willing to pay 240 gold for his "most powerful knight" whereas he'll also pay 400 gold for just finding his personal wizard (who turns out to be dead). Wizards should be worth more than knights, yes... but a dead wizard? I found these to be unbalanced rewards, but upon establishing the heroes as mercenaries and Sir Ragnar was their first quest, I realize their value would have increased after the rescue and killing Ulag.

My crew found the Emperor to be a bit of a cheapskate, as they were eager to buy more equipment but found his rewards to be underwhelming.
By no means does he seem like a bad guy, but nor do I see him being the best Emperor in a long line of monarchs. He sent mercenaries to retrieve the Star of the West, so he can wear it and take command of the lesser kingdoms in the war. This he did, but failed to win the decisive battle and had to rely on these same mercenaries to save his sorry ass.
They went to Barrok Tor to find the Star of the West for him and ended up waking the Witch Lord. In a roundabout way the Emperor is to blame for sending them there.
So he's not the most successful Emperor, he was born into that position and probably did the best he could. His kingdom probably didn't have the best economy either considering all his rewards from the first 15 quests can be outmatched by a single chest in Mage of the Mirror, which takes place in the Elven Kingdom.