: No, he can't directly control what all of his creatures
: are doing--but the nature of his binding is stated as
: "without him, they would be powerless."
: Which, it turns out, the Light was wrong about--but
: anyway, this form of binding doesn't require him to
: hold all their minds closely--he can just shut down
: the power to anyone he sees obviously disobeying him.
Supposedly…
: Sure. The Fallen Lords he "bent to his will."
: Everyone else he just empowered.
I'm sure Fallen can empower beings like Shades as well without the help of a Leveler.
: Nonetheless, if Balor has bound many creatures besides
: the Fallen Lords, then when Alric discovers that
: "Balor has bound each of the Fallen to
: himself," it's most likely that he's referring to
: all those creatures. The Fallen Lords in particular
: are, as you say, possessed of a unique mental slavery
: as well.
Umm…no, Fallen applies explicitely to the Fallen Lords.
: That's true--I overlooked that quote. Still,
: "Fallen" can refer to Shades as well and I
: think that makes more sense in the context of the
: Turquine flavor. But we've hashed that out ad
: infinitum.
Not in the slightlest. There is not one bit of evidence or any reference even alluding to this. The Turquine flavor actually makes less sence if Shades are Fallen. What the heck would be the torture that he brings upon himself? This sounds extraneous to me.
: Conversely, if Soulblighter is in living limbo, he would
: make his human flunkies into a similar state. Or would
: he? Maybe he doesn't want his servants to be as
: powerful as he is. Maybe he can't make them like him
: because he was an exceptional being to start with.
: Either of these would explain his in-game uniqueness,
: no matter what his precise nature is.
Agreed, as well as many other things.
: Postulating the existence of somewhat tougher but still
: unliving creatures (especially when much of
: Soulblighter's toughness could be explained by the
: fact that he was a legendary hero to begin with) is
: simpler than postulating an entirely new
: "limbo" form of existence.
Agreed.
: I wouldn't have proposed time/space magic if we didn't
: already know that they existed from seeing teleport
: spells and the Tain's accelerated timeframe. And I
: wouldn't have opposed a necromantic explanation if the
: Myrkridia weren't conspicuously Living creatures.
: a) We've seen Thrall pop out of the ground before--that
: doesn't mean they were made on the spot, simply that
: they buried themselves for an ambush.
Right.
: b) We've never actually seen any undead being created,
: but obviously they require *some* sort of ritual. They
: don't just arise spontaneously. A "ritual"
: can refer to whatever casting a necromantic spell
: requires.
Yeah, agreed.
: c) That was a dream! That was Alric's fevered vision
: re-encapsulating all of TFL in thirty seconds! That
: has no bearing on Mythworld reality whatsoever! :-)
Aw, Sili, you can't be THAT unfamiliar with TFL! Surely you recall on such great levels as "The Road North" where the Thrall popped out of the ground.
: But "limbo" is having your body frozen in time,
: right? You should be totally immune to any sort of
: damage or alteration without first disrupting the
: spell. And once damage is done, it should be equally
: difficult to repair. What does it mean to be only
: "kinda" frozen in time? Much simpler to
: consider him an exceptional hero (Alric's also heavily
: resistant, particularly to lightning) who has the
: additional benefits of Unbeing.
It simply doesn't make sense, this Unlife limbo thing…
: We have a clear explanation for why it took a while to
: fix. He left TFL a magically-enhanced warrior; he
: returned to Myth II as a highly talented mage. Once he
: reached and excelled the magical talents that Shades
: possess, he was able to eliminate his healing
: vulnerability just as they can.
I was certain the Shades could be healed to death in TFL.
: On the other hand, why would putting himself in
: "limbo" give him a healing weakness he could
: then fix centuries later?
Yeah.
: Only if you classify "successes" as things we
: "know" to be true because the game already
: said it. If you don't believe GURPS unless the game
: confirms it, then you've already closed your mind to
: the possibilities of its "wild speculation."
Well, you must keep in mind the fact that Seabolt clearly invented much of what is new.
: I said that from the point of view of story analysis of
: *Myth III,* not the analysis of the original Bungie
: story underlying TFL and Myth II. As a matter of fact,
: I *don't* think Moagim "really" had
: Soulless, or Forsaken; I think it's pretty clear that
: MJ knew that Soulless and Myrms are well-liked and
: gameplay-important units, so they shoehorned them in
: to make the game more fun. Which is perfectly
: commendable for game designers to do, of course.
Of course.
: Once you bring in Myth III, you're talking about two
: different conceptual worlds. One, the world imagined
: jointly by the Bungie team; the other, the world
: imagined jointly by the MJ team. They overlap, because
: MJ tries as far as other considerations will allow to
: remain consistent with the first two games. But new
: information brought by Myth III has no bearing on the
: original Bungie world--unless, that is, we find out
: that it was based faithfully on the TFL/Myth II design
: documents.
Well, dear Sili, I'm sorry you weren't informed. Scott Campbell has been faithully following the design documents from the beginning; something he inherited from Bungie, including the rights to the game in full.
: Even then, Myth III would be slightly less
: reliable than, say, GURPS:
I cannot tell you how long this statement made me laugh…perhaps, countless seconds.
: both its creators and those
: of GURPS would have had direct access to info from
: Bungie, but only GURPS would have been edited,
: playtested and authorized by Bungie.
Incorrect. GURPS only spoke with some artists of the game who had little more than vague knowledge and a couple inside details, whereas we as Asylumites know more than they, without a doubt.
Myth III, however, not only is going utterly faithfully via the original design documents, it has full and truly complete rights to the game. These include the rights to change anything they desire. This would be a shame if MJ were assholes and wanted to change it into Diablo III (god I hate that series), but luckily, MJ kept it perfect.
I do not understand this faithful defense of GURPS. I already entirely disproved any relavance to it two months ago. Even Forrest is holding out until M3 now, as am I for the most part on further speculation in some of the areas.
: Naturally this has no bearing on the *quality* of Myth
: III's story.
Naturally.
: And whaddyaknow, he is an Avatara. :P Which is actually
: relevant, since most comparatively unassuming-looking
: high-class Mages are Light and therefore probably
: Avatara.
I don't think this matters either way.
: Of course, there are thousands of old men walking around
: who are definitely not Emperors or Avatara. Whereas we
: have yet to see floating shadow-casting mummies with
: sepulchral voices who are definitely not Shades.
Meh.
: Unlife as we have been defining it makes no reference to
: where the spirit comes from--it's merely a set of
: physical and mental characteristics. But there must
: *be* a spirit, or it wouldn't be Unlife; it would be
: Undeath. If Rabican had truly killed her and left the
: body, it could be raised as an mindless undead
: creature; if he had truly killed her and destroyed the
: body, nothing could be recovered.
That's right.
: True, so little is known about Tramist's mirror that we
: can't offhand say whether its products are living or
: unliving. But consider that Tramist's mirror took a
: disembodied spirit, created (in some fashion) a vacant
: body, and implanted one in the other. There are
: Unliving disembodied spirits: Mahir. And there are
: Undead vacant-but-functioning bodies: Thrall, Wights,
: and so forth. Thus both the components of the
: Shiver-to-be were very likely to be Un, which points
: to the final product being unliving.
I'm still unclear what this Unliving differentiation thing is.
: (Random alternative theory: if Tramist's mirror implants
: spirits in bodies, perhaps it's what the Leveller--or
: the A and B spirits--actually uses to inhabit its
: avatars.)
Perhaps…except that I've heard that the Moagims were born naturally.
: It matters to us, the players. And heck yeah, it matters
: to the TFL people. Like you said, it's a spit in the
: Light's eye to have an undead Mazzarin wandering
: around causing havoc. They'd care who he was and what
: happened to him.
: Because we spent a whole narration going "Hey, we're
: gonna kill the Watcher now," and then there was
: an entire level devoted to it. That issue was dealt
: with.
Yah.
: No one knows or cares who Cormorant was. He wasn't the
: greatest Avatara in history.
Mmhm.
: So it makes sense if you change it. Well then. :-)
Lol.
: According to the Myth II manual, Alric, and pretty much
: everyone else before "The Stair of Grief",
: Myrdred disappeared after Seven Gates. According to
: TFL and the Journeyman who nailed him, he actually
: crossed back into the Province with his army after
: Seven Gates and waged war until Balor's death, at
: which point he was chased into the Cloudspine and
: deep-frozen. It is very very strange that all these
: latter events were forgotten (especially when Alric
: was told about part of them back in TFL), and that the
: Journeyman didn't see fit to remind anybody for sixty
: years...
Yeah…
: He survived TFL, didn't he? And body-switching would be a
: good explanation for all the TFL-to-Myth2 survival
: weirdness discussed above.
: Anyway, if he died after Shiver, then there were mistakes
: in the later narrations, which is what I was talking
: about.
Elaborate.
: But under the TFL definition the "Avatara"
: existed throughout the Four Ages, which we now know to
: be incorrect. And the TFL Shade definition states that
: Shades are "undead Avatara," not
: "undead Avatara plus some mean guys who
: volunteered." I think it's clear that TFL Avatara
: were any Light-oriented mages at any time, and that
: TFL Shades were all dead, reanimated Light-oriented
: mages. Because in the TFL view, there just aren't very
: many naturally Dark humans of any sort--you need
: someone like the Leveller to come along and twist
: everyone. Hence the Fallen Lords also being mostly
: former good guys. Once Myth II rolls around, you've
: got Brigands and nasty mages who volunteer to be
: Shades and guys like the Summoner who were apparently
: bad from the beginning. It's a greyer world.
Yeah, maybe they ran out of Avatara corpses and found new Shades from the said m2 source.
: I think that it's a huge addition because it's creating
: new high-IQ minds, which we just haven't seen. If you
: want the Shade to handle the magics you give it, then
: you'd better make him out of a just-living mage who
: has the mind to deal with it. Which is why there
: aren't that many Shades. I don't see how it could have
: anything to do with the caster's body--why would
: someone's body determine whether or not they could
: cast spells? I mean, unless you have to have really
: tough skin to cast "Dump Razor Blades On Myself
: +23" or something.
I think it's perfectly logical. The ability to be a mage may easily lie within both body and soul, and it could be easier to take an archmage's magic-soaked body to have it weild magicks.
This idea fails where two parts are concerned: the mind. The mind of the Shade is simple and no more than a puppet for the Fallen, it can't have the intriguing, endless allusury dialogs such as between Sinis and Alric, or command armies without direct control via the Fallen. It's clear that Shades have minds of some sort or another, whether as decayed as their bodies or not.
: And even TFL Shades seem to retain their original
: minds--Sinis obviously knew what Alric was talking
: about and responded appropriately. Unless he just
: acted like he knew because he didn't want to be
: embarrassed...
: The TFL Shade definition says what Shades are. It doesn't
: say that "Some Shades are this and others can be
: made in different ways." It's wrong.
Actually, I'm inclined to believe that digging up Avatara just couldn't happen anymore, no more left to be found (or able to be recovered) with all of them killed over the years. So, Soulblighter found new recruits in the evil people which were starting to take over the world in this Grey Age.
: That way involves changing what the games actually say.
: :-)
: Then they could say "Shades are undead mages, some
: former Avatara."
: Alternatively, I could buy what you said and take it one
: step further--the Light thought Shades were undead
: Avatara, so they said so in the manual. They just
: happened to be wrong.
That's the leading theory which I admit fully is plausible.
: It's a very important guy you read about in a flavor--and
: as I pointed out above, even TFL Shades still
: apparently retain their original minds. This isn't
: just Mazzarin's body; this is Mazzarin himself,
: returned as a Bastard. That merits discussion. Doesn't
: have to be a whole narration and level, like the
: Watcher himself--but someone should mention it.
There are countless inuendoes, ideas, and, perhaps, unfinished thoughts that were implemented into the game that were not carried through with. That's what makes the story so exciting and so mysterious. It doesn't really matter if it's intended or not.
: Phelot never fought in any non-scripted scenes, and even
: then it was just a few Dispersals. We've seen both
: Alric and Shades fight on multiple levels--it's fair
: to base estimates of their "real" combat
: power on this. You can judge whether a Brigand would
: win or lose against a Myrkridia even though we never
: see them fight in-games.
Right; only what we are presented with actually exists.
: She is, or something very close to it. So Shades can be
: more powerful than living mages. I win!
You lose! :-) There's no such evidence, and Alric, a weak Light mage, could defeat any Shade.
Besides, Shiver is a Fallen Lord, not a Shade. Shades are created to be servile commanders of burden with some specific spells, and they have no freedom.
: Because when it's unproven and you assume it, your
: argument dies. :-)
Tru-dat.
: In which case Sinis *did* die and Alric's statement
: doesn't make sense.
Sure it does. Sinis' response is, "Indeed, Alric." He agrees with him that he died. Sinis' could have just as easily have been an evil, living archmage.
: "Hey, undead guy! I thought
: you died once!"
Naturally, I still understand where you're coming from.
: Furthermore, that would imply
: that Sinis was one of the good guys at the time--and
: one of Alric's former buddies, too--yet Alric seems to
: be fairly cheerful about his death and reanimation
: into an undead horror.
Nah, who has any idea what kind of Soap Opera things happened. The simplest explanation is that Alric is an incarnation of Mazzarin…as simple as any, at least. Eh.
