: shades aren't really any of the six Fallen Lords.
No, but they do "endure the indescribable tortures of the Fallen," which suggests that there's some sort of basic physical makeup which is shared by Shades and at least a few of the Fallen Lords.
: Although soulblighter was affected by healing in TFL, it
: didn't kill him. he just fled in the murder of crows
: form. the point i'm trying to make is SB isn't undead,
: but he isn't 100% living either... he's in a warped
: state of life of his own category. i believe he does
: not qualify as undead or unliving, rather a 'warped
: living' of some kind that resulted from the 'human
: sacrifices and self-mutilation' spoken about in the
: manual.
But Shades don't have the healing vulnerability either. Which could mean that they also fall into a separate category...but I think it's more likely that they simply use defensive and regenerative magics to combat that particular vulnerability. Just as root rituals or other powerful spells turn Alric or a Heron Guard into a "human Plus", resistant or immune to many things which hurt ordinary humans, archmage-level magics can turn an unliving Soulblighter or Shade into "unliving Plus."
In other words, anyone who reaches archmage level can basically custom-create their own subcategory to be in, but I think they still fundamentally fall into "Living plus improvements" or "Unliving plus improvements" or so forth.
: her appearance in TFL was that of a very beautiful woman,
: which is why she was so vain. that tends to make me
: think she was living like everyone else, and not a
: rotting, hideous corpse :)
GURPS is pretty much the only source which says she was beautiful, and it describes her appearance as "gauzy." Hence, her beauty was the product of magical glamour. If you get a close look at her--as in the TFL postgame pics, or in the Tales of the Fallen Lords Comic--her true form is wizened and almost Myrmidon-like. Rabican apparently defeated her (as you can see in Tales) by tearing the glamour from her eyes so that she could see herself as she really was. With her vanity mortally wounded, she froze and let herself get nuked.
Also, GURPS suggests that Shiver was revived from death by Balor prior to TFL; he could have raised her as an Undead at that point.
: a state of walking dead seems to make more limits than
: openings for a person's abilities, certainly the
: previous owners of shade corpses were much more
: powerful than their shade form (we can see this
: clearly, as in the case of Mazzarin, who was the most
: powerful light avatar when he was alive, but in shade
: form the most impressive thing his body could do was
: only cast dispersals, make undead, and swing a sword
: around). so if the watcher is undead, he wouldn't have
: been as powerful as he had appeared in TFL, he would
: have most likely just been another Shade. again, as
: with SB and Shiver, he has just prolonged his life
: like other dark, yet living, archmages in a state of
: warped life, but not undeath/unlife forms.
Well, it's still up in the air whether that Shade was truly Mazzarin--and if he was, whether he was as much Mazzarin as was originally intended. And even if that was Mazzarin, one might expect The Watcher and Balor to rein in his power as punishment and protection. For less illustrious Shades, the power to raise mass undead and wield a Dream is quite impressive--Shades perform almost as well as Alric, at least in-game. And Turqine apparently sought to become a Shade so that he might have the power to take revenge on his foes. So one might suspect that some mages actually experience a power boost when Shadified.
Plus, of course, the Fallen Lords had Balor backing them up; it's possible that The Watcher wouldn't have been nearly so impressive without the Leveller as a power source. Both Shiver and The Deceiver seem to have taken a power hit between games; Soulblighter didn't, but then he had 60 years to regain his strength.
--SiliconDream
