: i agree that the six Fallen Lords wouldn't make their
: Shades do anything that's stupid or torturous that
: isn't necessary, but torture is in their job
: description; probably the process of Shadification is
: extremely painful, perhaps existence after that is
: painful in some way too, plus being surrounded 24/7 by
: rotting grunting corpses can be considered torture
: too. therefore, their very nature is provided by the
: Fallen Lords, which is inherently torurous, and
: therefore they endure the tortures of the Fallen.
But the Fallen include not just the Fallen Lords, but minor undead and probably Shades themselves. If they were being ordered around and mistreated by the Fallen Lords, that would be enduring the tortures of the *Fallen Lords.* Enduring the tortures of the group to which they themselves belong implies that those tortures are suffered by that group, not inflicted by that group on others. I mean, unless Thrall keep shambling up to Shades and poking them with axes.
I do think that Shades exist in constant pain, as Wights are known to. But I think that's a trademark of all undead/unliving creatures from Thrall up to unliving Fallen Lords. Their bodies just aren't meant to work the way they do.
: hmm but i still believe he exists in a state of a
: Dark-warped life, still technically living, but
: perhaps trading off Mandrake Root healability for
: ultra-speed, immortality, uberstrength, and immunity
: to kinetic damage :) not that bad of a deal because he
: probably didn't ever want to or plan to be healed by
: Jmen... well because they're mortal enemies :D
: but I'm beginning to think that perhaps you and i are
: both wrong :P. what if this: consider
: "living" without a heart. not possible.
: therefore you have an arguement that he is
: un-something. but he isn't rotting his brains out (i
: think if he still had a face he'd look normal cept for
: the chest scar), he's fast as a mutha, and he knows
: his way around Cloudspine-shattering dreams. this
: complete lack of "un_" symptoms leads me to
: believe that he isn't unliving/undead either.
: here's the third possibility if one considers the above
: theory to be true: he preserved himself right at the
: moment of his 'de-heartification' making him neither
: living, dead, unliving/undead, but something like
: 'limbo-ized'. this would explain his still-living
: qualities and appearance And his un-living weakness to
: healing in TFL, which he had conquered while in the
: untamed lands before the second war. therefore one can
: say he pickled himself.
Shades are powerful mages; Myrmidons are extremely fast. Both high speed and magical skill are possible for unliving beings, though not (so far as we've seen) for undead--you have to go straight from life to unbeing in order to retain enough of your mind and nervous system to think fast and well.
As for preservedness, well...Shades may be ugly, but after their initial transformation they remain quite well-preserved, with even soft parts like the eyeballs persisting over at least a century. And Thrall actually improve from their original form--remains hundreds of years old, which must be dust or at least skeletal, are regenerated into a mostly-fleshed corpse. So it's certainly not out of the question for an undead/unliving being to be well-preserved. Soulblighter's state is certainly better than most, but then he employed especially powerful magic.
So I think that "pickling" is nothing more than unlife plus a comparatively minor spell producing the magical equivalent of a good coat of shellac. :-)
: everything that has been proven to be either
: unliving/undead
: is hideously decayed (thrall shades etc.). if she is
: attractive, she most likely is alive, which clearly
: means she was not on her second and third lives as
: GURPS suggests. but this arguement, unlike our other
: ones, will almost Definitely be solved by MWA, so i'd
: like to wait and see.
GURPS only suggests that she was on her second life by TFL, by which time she was most definitely hideous. Since GURPS attributes her resurrection to Balor, this fits perfectly with the MWA Shiver; alive during the early Wolf Age, then killed, then resurrected by Balor, and undead/unliving during TFL, then killed again, then resurrected by Soulblighter, and finally undead/unliving/living again during Myth II.
: besides, none of us exactly want to see a corpse walking
: around in a push-up bra and with makeup on :P
Hey, we saw the Myth II Shiver already, and it didn't scar us for life. Unless we were that guy who got his eyes torn out. :-)
: perhaps she's not so good looking in TFL simply because
: of her age, which was prolonged like other Dark
: lords'. her bad looks in TFL could be exactly the same
: reason why Myrdred looks so old (at least in M2)...
: they're both still alive but look old and crusty. so
: her crustiness might be simply prolonged age, like
: Myrdred's.
Hey, Myrdred just looks old. Like 70 or 80. He's not damn near mummified and missing his entire nose, like Shiver.
: yes i remember that mess, remember how some of the units
: had names like Tfear and Cu Chullain? lol! but that
: mess was cleaned up by the game's release, why would
: they forget Mazzarin?
Chance...coupled with the fact that Mazzarin was an easier name to overlook than those belonging to more high-profile characters like Damas or Tfear...coupled with the possibility that (as I suggested) there was a more significant confrontation there in earlier betas, that was incompletely removed due to known storyline changes.
: i personally think that after mazzarin was wasted by the
: watcher after those waves of thrall etc., the watcher
: reanimated his corpse into a shade (obviously not the
: same kind of process as the volunteer-shadehood like
: Turquine, but shadehood nonetheless).
: yep that's a possibility, but again, since all the other
: "beta names" confusion was cleaned up and
: worked out of the gm version, it still seems kind of
: weird how they could overlook mazzarin. i think he was
: bagged, then reanimated into a shade by the watcher
: soon after he was killed.
: but then there is evidence of Another kind of Shade. this
: is the mazzarin kind, which Did Not want to be
: shadified, but was killed. then the corpse was made
: into a Shade, which is somewhat lesser then the
: volunteer-shade type spoken of above. these type 2
: shades are made by the Fallen lords, for the Fallen
: lords, and do not appear to retain memories or the
: powers of their previous owners.
: it appears then that one can make Shades with
: 1. avatar/archmage/ubermage corpses
: 2. still-living Dark mages or above who volunteer
I think this is merely fallout from the term redefinitions that occured during the series. "Avatara" doesn't meant the same thing in TFL that it does in Myth II; nor does "Shade". Plus we've never seen a power/skill difference between in-game Shades that would suggest that there's two fundamental types, nor have we ever heard a Shade flavor that talks about them being mindless or memoryless. All Shades seem to work exactly the same way.
And undead who lack memories/personality don't retain their names, so it'd be inappropriate to name a revived, low-powered amnesiac corpse "Mazzarin."
: ahh, but did the Watcher get a death speech either? not
: even a "finally he's dead" was spoken.
: that's because he's Dark, and so was the shade
: mazzarin. if nothing was said about the watcher's
: demise, there's no reason anything should be said
: about shade mazzarin's death, because he was less
: powerful, and it was just mazzarin's body that was
: destroyed in "the Watcher", not like he was
: actually killed (because he died already) which is why
: i think no death speech was made for him. besides, the
: mazzarin shade doesn't come off as though mazzarin can
: still be found inside that body, unlike the Turquine
: and the Sinis shade, which obviously has the same
: person inside the body.
The Watcher didn't need a death speech. He had an entire level and narration devoted to his death! Even Shiver, who died off-screen, got a narration section and a section of the Tales comic. And if that wasn't the real Mazzarin but merely his revived mindless corpse, it's still an important event to us poor players who suddenly see someone named Mazzarin onscreen. If Balor suddenly appears on Gonen's Bridge until you kill him, it's still an attention-worthy event even if it turns out that it was only Balor's corpse mounted on wheels and pushed around by some inventive Ghτls. The fact that Mazzarin's appearance is worthy of attention but apparently not important to the storyline is strong evidence that it's a mistake.
: that's true. but it is evident he was pretty powerful
: before Balor because he killed mazzarin among other
: countless other unspoken Dark deeds. but again, it is
: possible that he was undead by the time of TFL and
: made up for the lack of energy by using Balor's, but i
: don't believe it :)
It's also possible that you can be a powerful mage and still be undead. But as I said, I don't think there's any way to guess whether the Watcher was alive or unliving or a hologram or a robot or what have you. But he can't be a clone, because that's illegal. Definitely not a clone.
--SiliconDream
