England's Hours of Not Quite Greatest Need

[bunn]

When thinking about England*'s Hour of Greatest Need, I started considering previous Hours of Apparently Insufficient Need.  It must be admitted though, that my knowledge of anything that happened during the period between about 1485 and 1900 is pretty appalling, so I thought I'd ask for suggestions

Comments

[ladyofastolat]

I've always assumed it's a bit like that awesome single-use scroll or potion you pick up in an RPG - the one that you never dare use, no matter how tough the battle, in case the next battle is harder. Invariably, you reach the end of the game with the scroll or potion still in your backpack, untouched. I expect the Sleeping Heroes were counting on this, and knew that they could safely say, "Don't worry, I'll come and help you in your direst need," secure in the knowledge that nobody would ever dare call in the favour. A bit like keeping a dinner service "for best" - although with the added complication of "best" having to be decided by politicians.

If the Sleeping Heroes were seriously planning on coming along to help, they'd have set up some sort of rota system by which each one handled a different crisis, ideally one well-suited to their skill set. Drake could handle Dunkirk, perhaps, but a Sleeping King would be a better fit for something like the Anarchy or the Wars of the Roses, when he could come in sweep away all the bickering claimants and assume the throne himself.

[bunn]

I'm now wondering if there should be a Hero Bank of heroes cross-referenced by skillset. Wellinghall seems to feel a cricket one is required, for example.

[ladyofastolat]

That's a very good idea. Also a checklist for each hero listing his own personal definition of an Hour of Need. It would be quite embarrassing to carefully select your cricket-playing, seafaring, pure-at-heart warlord, only for him to say, "You call that an Hour of Need? Pah! That's only a Mild Difficulty. I'm going back to bed!"

[bunn]

I've just thought of one completely obvious omission from the List of Sleeping Heroes : James Bond.

James Bond HAS to be an on-call Sleeping Hero with particularly low standards of Hour of Need. This explains a lot!

[ladyofastolat]

In which case, I think he misread the job description, and for "Sleeping Hero" read "Sleeping-Around Hero." :-D

[anna_wing]

There also needs to be some sort of indemnity arrangement, to be signed by those invoking the hero's assistance, to cover ancillary damage and unexpected side-effects.

[bunn]

It's only safest *nods sagely*

[boggyb]

I've always assumed it's a bit like that awesome single-use scroll or potion you pick up in an RPG - the one that you never dare use, no matter how tough the battle, in case the next battle is harder.

I've noticed myself doing this in many game. Take Metroid Prime: normally I'm very stingy with missiles, because unlike the various beam weapons missiles do use ammunition and your starting capacity is tiny. On one playthrough however I was determined to get 100% completion and ended up collecting a lot of missile expansions earlier rather than later. It becomes a rather different game when you have 200 missiles instead of 20 and start spamming missile combos at everything (like the wavebuster combo - which chews through missiles at a ferocious rate, but deals equally ferocious amounts of damage to anything in front of you).