: you interpret that quote like this: the shades had to
: endure the same tortures that the fallen lords
: endured.
: i interpret it like this: the shades endured the tortures
: that the fallen lords put onto them.
: "of the Fallen" leads me to think the statement
: means that the fallen were torturing them in some
: sense, as with difficult missions and terrible
: locations (marshes sometimes and other places with
: water etc.)
: it might take a minute, but try to see my interpretation
: of the phrase. because it took me a minute to
: understand yours :^D
Ah, I see. But the Fallen Lords are merely the Lords of the Fallen, or Lords who are Fallen. "Fallen" is a more general term which we've seen used to describe Dark armies as a whole. And since Shades are apparently the highest-rank Dark units after the Lords themselves, it wouldn't make sense to say they were "tortured by the Fallen." Plus, under that interpretation, the Shade bargain would make a lot less sense. I can see the Fallen Lords telling Turquine "We can make you into a new and more powerful being and back you with troops, but you're going to be in constant pain due to your altered nature." I can't really see them telling him "We can make you into a new and more powerful being and back you with troops, but then we're going to be total a$$holes to you and force you to do lots of pointless and painful things." I mean, you have to be psycho to accept either bargain, but you have to be psycho and stupid to accept the latter. :-)
(In case you're wondering, no, I don't think that living Dark units like Ghτls or Mauls are, strictly speaking, Fallen. I think the term "Fallen" encompasses those who are undead/unliving and/or mentally dominated by Balor or a Fallen Lord--from Thrall and Wights and Soulless through Myrmidons and Shades up to the Fallen Lords themselves. The Fallen are the core of the Dark, the beings that are innately Dark-aligned rather than temporarily allied like the Ghτls or the Trow.)
: i've always believed this was due to the nature of the
: corpse being reanimated. because the former avatar or
: dark avatar had such immense strength, when his body
: is reanimated, it simply lacks some of the weak points
: of the lesser un- creatures like thrall wights
: soulless etc. but the idea that it is an altered form
: of undeath is possible too, but it is becoming clear
: we probably will never know as MWA will most likely
: not answer such trivial things.
: ah but what I am saying is that Soulblighter is some
: vague unknown form of "human plus" (or
: should i say "human negative"?) while the
: shades would seem to fall into the "unliving
: plus" category.
But since Shades do even better than Soulblighter did with respect to healing, it doesn't really make sense that Soulblighter would be Living and Shades not. I think Soulblighter, like the Shades, became an Undead/Unliving being with some weak points removed; but because he wasn't as talented a mage, he wasn't able to strengthen himself against healing as the Shades were. Once he studied magic for 60 years and came back in Myth II, he had the skillz to make himself healable.
: right. but we differ in which improvement category we
: believe that the Fallen themselves fall into: living
: or unliving plus. then of course there is that crazy
: deal with negative we can consider. :D
I tend not to think that any archmage would be anything negative--they're not going to use their magics to give themselves new weaknesses, right? An archmage will choose (or be assigned by a more powerful being) a form of existence and then start adding to it. So it'd make more sense to me that Soulblighter would make himself Unliving and then partially remove the healing disadvantage, than that he'd stay Living and give himself that weakness.
: if GURPS happens to be right that her beauty was actually
: the product of magic then it is clear how rabican
: could have lifted that veil and made her see herself.
: but let's consider this: in Myth 3 i think that shiver
: will be hot. why would they make hideous? now, in M3
: she is obviously Light, which would mean that the guys
: over at MJ would most likely make her attractive. a
: hideous female Light archmage? it doesn't mix.
Why not? There's no reason why a female mage can't be butt-ugly, regardless of her orientation. Specially if you look at the Black Company books from which Myth drew...most of the female mages are no more particularly stunning than the males. There's some pretty ones and some ugly ones. If Mumbo Jumbo makes her hot just because it wants to, that has no bearing on whether or not she was *supposed* to be hot according to Bungie.
Plus Shiver ought to look a lot better in Myth 3 than in Myth 2. She's a thousand years younger! Who knows what she went through during the Wolf Age? Self-mutilation like Soulblighter, perhaps; possible death and resurrection; or just simple aging. (Myth II's Myrdred isn't exactly a paragon of beauty either.)
: so far, almost everything GURPS says about shiver is
: mixed up and moot. everyone knows Shiver and Ravanna
: are the same, because it so clearly, and obviously,
: states it in-game. yet in GURPS, it becomes evident
: that seabolt is ignorant to this fact. and yes, i know
: the story why :^D
: the "loveless child of unwed dawn" and all the
: other nicknames mentioned in GURPS and not heard of
: previously, have to be looked at like this: they are
: seabolt's conjecture, and could be just as far from
: the truth as saying "Twice Born" and
: "Soulblighter" are two different people,
: when we know that in the spelling and names of the
: character in Myth he is the same.
: if shiver is Light in M3, she is Living. if she gets
: bagged at the end of the game or during some point,
: then i could see how the GURPS statement that she was
: resurrected before TFL was correct. but she could not
: have been ressurected before that point, because she
: was alive during M3.
: which means that she was might not be on her second and
: third lives during TFL and M3 respectively. she in
: fact could have been on her first life throughout all
: the games, because if we assume she isn't faded at the
: end of M3, she is still alive in TFL for Balor to come
: and take her to the Dark. whether rabican killed her
: is questionable too: it is obvious he defeated her and
: destroyed much or all of her body, but whatever
: "afterlife" myth people go to was plainly
: not the path she followed, b/c she went to the ether
: region, and thus was able to be gathered by Tramist's
: Mirror (which GURPS calls 'Trabist's'... go figure.
: The only valid names for Shiver are: Shiver, Ravanna, and
: most likely Culwyeh. the name "the voiceless
: one" appears to be a name that was supposed to be
: used for TFL, but Bungie just dropped it. and
: nicknames like "mother of plagues" and
: "loveless child of unwed dawn" simply cannot
: be validated yet.
: although that is conceivable, personally i can't agree
: that she was killed prior to TFL, because we have to
: wait for MWA to see. but if she was killed, i don't
: think Balor used unlife to bring her back, instead he
: used Tramist Mirror magics, which so far we know
: almost nothing about.
Well, you certainly don't have to buy GURPS' info on Shiver. But without GURPS, there's absolutely no information that Shiver was *ever* Living or beautiful in known history. (Well, obviously she had to be alive at some point before she was unliving/undead, and her vanity probably implies that she was once beautiful, but this was too long ago to be directly represented in Myth lore.) She's a withered undead-looking monster in TFL, and she's a withered undead-looking monster in Tales. Even if the Myth III guys have looked over Bungie's design docs and found that Shiver was alive and beautiful in the late Wind Age, she's still kentucky fried by TFL.
: that shade had to have been mazzarin, because Bungie
: wouldn't have been as lame as to use that name more
: than once for different characters. it just doesn't
: make sense for such an error to get in the game.
Sure it does. Two reasons. First, Shades in the beta versions had a large number of names that have since been scrapped--including names that later got recycled into important characters, like Damas. They could have recycled Mazzarin too, but overlooked removing that name from the Shade list.
Second, there could very well have been some more elaborate plot point there to begin with--Mazzarin being resurrected and enslaved by the Watcher and all--which was later mostly removed, perhaps due to storyline changes (like Shades becoming archmages who volunteered for Shadehood, something that Mazzarin would never do).
It's not like it'd take such a huge oversight to do what we see in-game by mistake, or to do it and then forget to remove it. It's a simple and small thing--one map action labeling that Shade as Mazzarin. Most playtesters who aren't story-obsessed like we are would play through and never even notice.
And if it is intentional, what does that say about the story? The greatest Avatara in history returns, attacks you just like everyone else, gets nuked, and the level continues without a word? Mazz doesn't get a death speech, narrator doesn't mention it, no one says "Hey, did you recognize that Shade?" That's like if you were moving through "West of the Cloudspine" picking off Ghτls, and suddenly a resurrected Balor came charging along until your dwarf blew him up. Very strange.
: the power boost might just be a chance to stay around.
: living mages would be killed unless allied with the
: Fallen, whether or not they were Light, because the
: Fallen had no greta love for each other, why would
: they trust other Dark sorcerors who are much more
: "loosely" allies? therefore these mages,
: like Turquine, underwent the tortures that the Fallen
: inflicted on him to become a Shade, rather than be
: killed outright and be dead. Shadehood > death is
: their mindframe.
Well, that flavor says that he became a Shade so that he could have his revenge, not so that he could survive. True, he probably couldn't have his revenge if he was dead, but still, that doesn't seem to be the issue. :-) And there's lots of living mages recruited by the Dark, from the Deceiver on down to the Warlocks and the unnamed human mages working for the Watcher and Soulblighter. GURPS also suggests that mages actively seek out Shadehood. I think its attraction is the power and/or longevity. Again, in-game Shades are almost as effective combatants as Alric. I don't think they're as powerful sorcerers as he is in the "real" (as opposed to in-game) Mythworld, but they're definitely unusually powerful. The next level below Avatara and Fallen Lord.
: but who says Balor would not have backed him if he wasn't
: undead?
Nobody. I'm just saying that Bahl'al's power level isn't evidence for his being Living, because even if Unliving mages are weaker, he could still have siphoned power off Balor. We have no way of knowing how powerful he would have been without the Leveller strengthening him.
: during TFL, the six Fallen used the Leveler as an almost
: endless supply of magic energy it seems, and his
: demise kind of gave them an "energy shock"
: that allowed the Light survivors to come and negate
: Myrdred, and also most likely kill the 2 unnamed
: Fallen who were the weakest and thus most likely to be
: the most vulnerable of the remaining Fallen after
: Balor's demise.
Also, the Myth II manual attributes the Fallen Lords' defeat to a lack of leadership after Balor's death...after being mentally bound to him, his death probably crippled their willpower for a time.
--SiliconDream
