: this quote above seems actually to back me up, because
: Balor bound each of the Six Fallen Lords to his will,
: the shades appear to be bound to the six Fallen Lords
: themselves, acting as channels of their power. in this
: quote "Fallen" is meant as the Six Fallen
: Lords themselves, as there is no solid evidence that
: Balor also bound the shades which were subordinate to
: specific Fallen Lords.
Yes there is: "Balor himself, with a legion of creatures bound to him through sorcery and intimidation, unable to stop Alric from lopping off his head?" Unless you want to argue that the "sorcery" part applies to exactly 6 people and the "intimidation" to everyone else, this clearly means that he magically bound a large number of creatures. And these would naturally be the creatures who used magic or required it to function.
On the other hand, there is no quote that implies that Balor bound the Fallen Lords and no one else.
Furthermore, if each Shade was entirely dependent for its power upon a Fallen Lord, it would be difficult to see how the Shade could wield magics which that Lord did not possess (or could not acquire from the Shade if they chose.) Yet all Shades use the Dispersal Dream, and neither Myrdred nor Shiver uses it even when it would clearly be more useful than their own trademark spells.
: and finally in the strictest sense of all, Fallen refers
: to 'only the Six Fallen Lords whose names are
: Soulblighter, Shiver, the Deceiver, the Watcher, and
: unknown other two'. in the sense described above,
: Fallen doesn't include anything other than the six
: Fallen Lords. not shades, not Balor, not thrall nor
: ghols etc, only the six.
No evidence for this. Fallen is never equated with Fallen Lords. That's why there's two different terms.
: again, shades exist in a torturous, evil state of
: existence, which is, when you look at the big picture,
: handed out by the Fallen Lords. so by becoming a
: shade, the wizard endures the direct and indirect
: tortures which the Fallen put their way ("of the
: Fallen").
: first i think nothing undead is more powerful than a
: shade can be, due to the simple fact this hasn't been
: proven in game. if that is true, you can see why i
: cannot believe that soulblighter is un-something. his
: abilities tower above those of a shade's, in the same
: way Alric's do. and alric is alive. it just makes
: perfect sense to me to equate the power irregularity
: to the fact that he is either alive or in a unique
: limbo state which i proposed that no one on this forum
: is willing to take a second look at :(
And it hasn't been proven in-game that nothing undead is more powerful than a Shade, either. There's no need to complicate things by proposing a "unique limbo state" when a more powerful unliving state with a minor preservation spell does just as well. Swords damage him, lightning damages him, lava damages him. We've seen this. He just doesn't rot.
: true there is no evidence. but remember this was
: "self-mutiliation", not the mutilation of
: the thing you are trying to reanimate. so if doesn't
: fit; soulblighter's process cannot be a necromantic
: ritual as it seems.
: but again, the mutilation of the self, not that of the
: 3rd party, plus the other sacrifices makes it
: different. besides, mutilation is *specifically* the
: removal of the heart and majority of the face, which
: is not evident at all in any other kind of
: un-creature. not alive, not dead, not un-something to
: me = something new and not explored before, something
: at least similar to a limbo-existence.
Obviously, if he's performing a necromantic spell on *himself*, then he's gonna be applying the mutilations to himself. The other examples show that you often mutilate the thing you want to make undead/unliving. In this case, that thing is Soulblighter himself.
And it doesn't matter if that exact mutilation has never been seen before. It's still mutilation. Legs off to make a Soulless, a bit of rotting to make a Thrall, face off and heart out to make a Soulblighter.
: the leveler doesn't appear to seek specific sacrifices to
: his name, just death and general destruction. he
: trusts no one. and knowing that SB pledges his
: allegiance to the Leveler, it appears he sacrifices to
: another spirit, most possibly b'y'laggo (sp?). and
: that particular spirit doesn't have connections to
: undeath/unlife, which must mean something different.
: i dont remember saying about anything similar to the last
: sentence in your reply above, i have always thought
: the sacrifices were to a dark god (b'y'laggo probably)
: which validated his search for his twice-born state of
: being. therefore the removal of the heart and the face
: finally preserved him, leaving him frozen as he was,
: thus preserved in a limbo-like state.
But it's apparently a fairly crappy limbo, since you can clearly alter his body with swords and lightning and lava. The only way he's "preserved" is inasmuch as his body doesn't rot and age quite as much as a Shade's does. Hence, it's just a good disinfectant and a coat of varnish.
And we have no idea what gods he would have sacrificed to. I don't know why he'd pick b'Y'laggo in particular--the Ghτls' Dark Gods or Chimera's Cartucke would make more sense to me--but I might note that GURPS suggests that b'Y'laggo makes its worshippers into half-living, half-undead beings.
: on this one, we just have to wait and see for MWA since
: it most likely will be solved. if GURPS *is* proven
: correct and ravanna does die, it still doesn't
: validate anything else said about her in GURPS.
Sure it does. It's evidence for a close relationship between Seabolt and Bungie during GURPS Myth's creation. People use GURPS' errors to cast doubt on its general validity; you gotta go the other way and use its successes to support that validity.
: someone once proposed that Myth 3 will solve this
: question: Is she Ravanna, the loveless child of the
: unwed dawn, or Shiver, mother of plagues who first
: created the Wights
: this question is asked assuming the statements in GURPS
: are true, but ravanna is light in mwa. she cannot be
: either of those, just a female light archmage. if
: ravanna was a normal light archmage in Myth 3 then
: most of the things said about shiver in GURPS must be
: wrong. especially the made-up-on-the-spot names like
: "loveless child of the unwed dawn" and
: "mother of plagues".
That is, assuming that Myth 3 is based on the Bungie design docs, which we still haven't precisely pinned down. (We've heard that the team cares about fitting their story to the original design docs, but we don't yet actually know that they *have* them.) If it's not, then GURPS is right and Myth 3 is wrong.
: she wouldn't undergo the un- process willingly, knowing
: that she would become hideous. this would mean, that
: if she was undead, she would have had to have been
: killed before. but she wasn't killed in TFL because
: the Head didn't tell Rabican something, instead her
: spirit was casted upon the ether. when soulblighter
: brought her back using tramist's mirror, it does not
: appear to be any kind of necromantic magic, but
: something totally different with a different purpose.
: this is why her corpse remains don't slump to the
: floor when Myrdred kills her, rather all kinds of
: *other* magics fling upward then sink down, which is
: totally unlike any kind of un-something demise ever
: seen before. so in essence, rabican defeated her but
: did not kill her fully, when finally Myrdred did.
And it's also totally unlike any kind of Living demise ever seen before. But what it looks *most* like are the Shade and Mahir demises. When Shades die, their body comes apart and their Energon Cubes fall on the ground, containing all their magical power in explosive form. When Mahir die, they dissiplate into nothingness. Shiver dies by dissipating into nothingness *and* releasing all her power in an explosive burst. And she floats like a Shade and talks like a Shade and casts a shadow like a Shade and looks a lot like one. So: Unliving.
No, Rabican didn't kill her. If he had, and her spirit had left the world, she would be undead. Instead, she's unliving.
: not really. these people only know about recent things,
: not many unknown generations ago. washington wasn't
: that long ago, he is in Only the Relative past,
: because we personally are a few hundred years older.
: but hundreds of hundreds, and thousands! how can we
: expect Any Normal man in the Legion to know even their
: basic ancient history! these are shockingly uneducated
: people! they just know they have to fight to survive,
: and little else other than warped legends and campfire
: stories. think about it: the name Soulblighter was
: just a childhood legend.... Only Sixty Years Later!
: how can mazzarin be known to any normal person...
: hundreds of years later!
The narrator's already shown that he knows a heck of a lot of history. Journeymen lived through it all. The Avatara know it. None of these are "typical" Mythworlders, but they're still in the Legion, and they'd still want to gather info on any Shade or other powerful creature their forces encountered. And the war's been raging for nearly a century now. The Mazzarin-Shade's not ancient history--he's one of the guys who's been destroying your buddies with Dispersal Dream for half your life.
And if no one could have known him, then he shouldn't have been there. Bungie wouldn't make a story defect that bad.
: the conversation happened because alric must have read
: that Mazzarin killed Sinis way back in the day. now
: the Sinis shade is here, and Alric is now Living a
: legend which he read about in a scholars dusty tome or
: scroll. Alric was Not present when Mazz killed Sinis
: because of the time differences. nor was he mazz. :)
: he just knew about that vague old story, like this:
: you read in a history book that Hitler killed himself.
: then he comes into the US right now, today with an
: army, and you say to him
: "hitler! i thought you died when you stuck i burning
: piece of steel in your brain!"
: therefore, alric read about it (being the educated man he
: was unlike everyone else) and then all of a sudden he
: is introduced to his shade-form, and remembers reading
: about his death when sinis was alive.
Yeah, and then Hitler replies "Indeed, SiliconDream, I'll wager you thought you saw the last of me." Because, of course, I'm the reincarnation of a German soldier and this is obvious to Hitler. Right.
: a very huge (the biggest error), ridiculously obvious
: mistake unlike any other in both the games :)
Nope, not unlike. The Deceiver debacle was discussed long before GURPS. Whatever happened to him after TFL? Whatever happened to him after Shiver? Why is "Twice Born" obviously dated wrong? Etcetera. None of these are ridiculously obvious to anyone except Asylumers, I'm afraid. And nor is the Mazzarin issue--the average TFL player couldn't care less. But all those mistakes are still there.
: the old avatara definition was simply "the
: Nine." which is true... BUT the Myth II
: definition only Expanded (not recanted) on the older
: definition by saying there were Avatars before the
: Nine, and that the Nine simply were the Last Avatara.
: so both definitions can be taken as 100% truth, just
: the first one has to be looked upon with a new
: perspective (god forbid) :D
No, the Myth II definition narrowed the older definition. TFL Avatara existed throughout the Four Ages, and all Shades were undead Avatara...hence "Avatara" encompassed any archmage affiliated with the Light and possibly those who were neutral as well. Myth II Avatara are *only* those archmages who belonged to the organization known as the Nine, which Mazzarin founded. Myth II corrected TFL.
: so why not consider Both old And new Shade definitions to
: be truth? it is evident that Light Avatars can be
: reanimated as thrall are reanimated, and they must
: given a new mind to "fill in the blank" so
: that they can speak, think, etc. just like volunteer
: shades do. the fill in the blank mind must be
: influenced by whoever made that shade. thus the Body
: of Mazzarin became a shade when the Watcher reanimated
: it, gave it the shade powers it could handle, and
: created a dark magic to be inside the body. changing
: it's name would lessen the effect and memory of such a
: great victory.
The ability to actually create new minds would be a HUGE addition to the story. Occam's razor is swinging toward your throat right now. :-) Besides, if you custom-make a Shade's mind and powers, then that completely invalidates *both* Shade definitions. Don't even bother finding mages, alive or dead--just take every peasant corpse in arm's reach and stuff in IQ and magical power until you've got fifty Shades.
: perhaps the bargain saves the Fallen Lord the trouble of
: having to fill in the blank mind so that it can be
: intelligent. what you're saying is that avatar corpses
: cannot be reanimated then. but they can be because it
: is said in TFL... and I am aware of the appearance of
: a difference in the old and new definitions, but they
: Both must be True because it is in the game! they have
: to be true because it wasn't omitted from TFL,
: therefore it is simply in-game canon, which should be
: undisputable in all senses.
No, TFL contains mistakes. Some of these were corrected in Myth II. In-game material isn't undisputable when it's self-contradictory.
Or, if you want to view it in a more kindly light, the TFL manual, like the Myth II manual, represents the consensus knowledge of the Mythworlders. And it simply wasn't common knowledge then that Shades were volunteers--so they naturally thought that Shades were reanimated corpses of
: but just how relevant was mazz to the immediate TFL
: storyline, not just its past? besides, just because
: some shade shares the same name and body as a hero,
: doesn't mean he has to get an introduction or anything
: at all. the fact that he's there isn't even enough,
: who cares that you encounter the body of some long
: dead guy that did stuff you barely heard about?
Everyone heard about Mazzarin. And, more to the point, *we* heard about Mazzarin. He has to get an introduction because we know he was important. It's a defect in the story otherwise.
: in the game, alric kills the shade, in life, alric would
: have raped that shade, but time and engine limitations
: and other things made them fight similarly in game
: battles.
In-game is canon, I thought you said? :-P What in-game evidence is there that TFL Alric is substantially more powerful than a Shade? I mean, sure, he kills him (although actually if they cast all their Dispersals first, the Shade wins), but it takes a lot of effort. And Alric's a mid-range Avatara. So a weak Avatara and a strong Shade almost certainly overlap.
And like I said, the truly Avatara-class Dark mages don't need to be Shades because--like Shiver and the Deceiver--they're already Fallen Lords. You don't get made a Shade unless you're already second-class.
: i say that the immense abilities of the fallen is one of
: the reasons that they cannot be undead, because it has
: not been proven that any of them are unliving :)
Then your argument is invalid. :-)
--SiliconDream
