Do you have any cultural heroes in your setting?

...

Yes. The Prince In Gold. Greatest hero or the land, brought down by a simple beggar who just didn't bother to show up.

Yes we do, usually it's the former group of our GM who incorporates their story and achievements in his world.

Once I saw a statue of one of my old characters in a small town because he had 'liberated the village from slavers' and I laughed because I vividly remember that I actually brought the slavers to the town to ambush them a few weeks to collect their gold.

A few weeks later* christ I can't write today

ok, explain.

Not so much a hero but there is a princess who people thought was mad/retarded so she played on it but what people didnt know is she had pet mice she could communicate with so when she was stuck in her room the mice would run about the palace picking up gossip and she'd use that to her advantage.

I run one shots with my players of things happening in the past. One of these is about how four paladins killed my equivalent of Strahd and freed his kingdom. The entire place is protected by magic mist that prevents people from entering or leaving. Thus the paladins' mission control decided to buff up an Apparel of Kwalish into near indestructible levels, cram the four paladins inside, and teleport it five kilometers above the vampire lord's castle, outside of the magic barrier's range.
The one shot lasted nine hours but against all odds the paladins made it and became the setting's equivalent of the Justice League.

tldr: four paladins got in a drop pod to kill a vampire lord and wreck his castle up.

There's the Diarchy(thief and paladin, essentially), two heroes whose names are lost. They were friends who worked together to slay a great evil and established a city state on the site of the battle. There's rumours of a third friend, but that's just heresy, user, there is no Faceless One who stole their names/ keeps them safe/ betrayed them, depending on the source.

The two teach temperance and flexibility, but also integrity and forgiveness.
The Third teaches nothing, but indirectly individuality, the search for truth, agency and knowledge.

There's also The Shattered Emperor, the first chieftain to create a kingdom, expand into vast territories and end up incorporating different species as citizens
He invented Kyriarchy, the magic of commanding others.
He was deified in his life and there's a cult of worship around his afterlife, The Halls of Majesty, with disciples learning his magic.
During the height of a vast ritual he vanished, sort of. People around the world had weird dreams for weeks after and in some circumstances he seemed to have possessed individuals for brief moments, usually to do something miraculous.
His disappearance caused a lot of strife, the Empire broke down, but his cult is more popular than ever.

Father green
supposedly wanders the earth curing ailments in times of plague, teaching people how to farm during famines, helping people build wells and windmills etc.
secretly recovering viral weapons research from abandoned bio temples

One of my primitive societies has Winter-Of-Trees, a shaman who turned his back on his tribe, out of jealousy. He killed them and are their minds, gaining all their power. He stalks the shadows his people's migration and punishes or rewards them based on whim. What he always does is destroy anyone of a different species in his people's ancestral lands. Allegedly, it's not like anyone can verify this.

Hreagar the sharp tongued
United the warring peoples of the volcanic steppes to throw out an encroaching empire. Recovered a sword forged using the literal blood and bones of his people and infused with their indomitable spirit.
Eventually got greedy and declared himself the undisputed king of the land.

Shortly afterwards the sword jumped out of his hand and stabbed him through the mouth

Throd. He fed his arm to the Horrizon Beast Ngolgangr so he could choke it out from the inside.

The Defiant.
A highly oppressive lawful evil empire holds regular gladiator games. One gladiator in particular became rather politically powerful and wealthy, effectively ruling a mafia from his seat of imprisonment. When he was finally killed by a son of the Pale Emperor, he was thought to be dead.
He popped back up Dalai Lama style in a different body and proceeded to be a tremendous thorn in the emperor's side.

My frog people have First Arpash who was their first carpenter/mason. He sat still in a pool of water contemplating a seed he planted on the shore. He watched it grow into a mighty tree for years. When the tree is at its most majestic he strokes it once and it falls down, to the horror of the others who are it's fruit and built a home under it for shade. He chastised them and told them to leave, destroying their thatch and mud shelter.
The others feared him and fled, but returned in one week with many others to take revenge. Then they saw First Arpash had cut the tree into long strips and used rock to create a new dwelling, larger and much more impressive than the old one.

* He strikes it once. Autocorrect is making it more erotic than it needs to be.

when he was finally killed...., he was thought to be dead.

mkay.

The heroes themselves. They stand against a tyrannical red dragon who aims to take up residence in the city of the gods. The players swear an oath to their paladin friend to never rest until the dragon is destroyed. They all die in the fight except the paladin who vows to serve the dragon if it will allow him to bury his companions, the dragon agrees. Thousands of years the players awake in a church to the tolling of a bell. they are legends, but have lost all of their power (started them at 20th level) back to level one. They travel the lands in the wake of an unknown paladin who is seemingly on his way to the city of the gods to kill the dragon.

The first group of adventurers* were** also the first cultural heroes. They set up the archetype of the small band willing to risk much for greater gains. One of them became the Forgotten One.

*They were also the first group of players of the GM's setting, about 20+ years ago.

**should it be "was" or "were"? English is not my first language.

Curious.

Yeah we do that also. It's kinda funny seeing the players interact with NPCs which were once PCs. My past character became the emperor!

That's a nice one. Write it right, it becomes very much a fable or fairy tale.

Almost stealing this.

The Yellow king. Wrote this awesome play and placed his cool looking symbol everywhere. Carcosa is a bit of a shithole now though

The Prince in Gold is the greatest hero to ever live. When he was born, an evil pixie/demon/thing was stealing all the beauty from the town, and also stole the beauty of him when he was but an infant. But as soon as he left the womb and saw his mother as ugly as a hag, despite being young, he grabbed the pixie with his umbilical cord, grabbed a candlestick, and then beat it over and over until it gave back. However, since no man knows what he looks like when he is born, he forgot to get his own beauty back, and as such he was marked with an ugly face for as long as he lived, which he usually covered in a mask or cowl.

His first 'real' act of heroism was when he slayed a dragon. He first pretended to swear fealty to it, saying he would kiss it's claw like the ring of a king. But the dragon was tricked, and the man grabbed its claw and refused to let go. The dragon breathed its fire over and over, but the boy resisted. The dragon's fire melted its own gold, and eventually the prince drowned the dragon in its own gold. But this marked his skin with gold, and now the prince's skin was always the color of gold, which is where his name came from.

Then he decided to travel the world, righting wrongs. He would walk into a village full of poor, sick, cold villagers. With his hands he would knit a great big scarf that could wrap around the neck of every villager, with his nose he would sniff and tell the villagers where they could find healing herbs, and then with his ears he heard giggling monsters in the mountains and dungeons, telling the villagers where the monsters hid their treasures. So then the villagers would be rich, healthy, and warm by the time he left. His travels wore away all his shoes, so he had to tie iron sandals around his feet instead.

This guy got SO famous that the Gods began to notice. He was approached by The Red God, the most powerful and evil God, who shook his hand. But it was a trick.

The Red God tried to suck out the Prince's liftforce, but the Prince squeezed the God's hand he had to let go before he could. Then the Prince grabbed a huge sword, and the God flew away, unable to slay this immortal human champion.

But as he did, the God sneered and offered an evil portent of doom; "You shall sit at a dinner with your peers, those equal in status to you, and if you shall leave that table before the meal is done ye shall surely die."

So what did the immortal, masked, iron footed, golden skinned, sword wielding Prince do? Who did he invite to a dinner of his peers? He found the eight most pathetic, downtrodden, poorest men and women of the city of scum and invited them to dinner. Above all else, the prince was humble.

The story hear gets more complicated based on the teller. Many discuss each guest in turn, telling about how pathetically and stereotypical they are of some social woe. This depends on the teller and culture of the story. But it always ends the same.

The prince sat at the table and then seven guests came and sat to eat with him, but the eight guest never showed up. And as the food rotted, and the other guests left, and the building collapsed into the earth and was claimed by the Red God as a dungeon, the prince never left his seat and never left the table. Waiting. The greatest hero of all time, brought down by nothing more then a worthless man he wouldn't even have the honor or decency to show up to receive a free meal. And that is the story of the Prince in Gold.

Woah, why are there so many charlemagnes?