: So what's your true definition of undeath (if there is
: such a universal thing)? I've stated mine. And what
: about it contradicts and discludes Myrmidons?
'Undeath' in my perspective is nothing more than the placement of "dark magics" in a corpse, re-animating it as a puppet. These "dark magics" can feel some general discomforts, and can respond to certain stimuli, but are absolutely different when compared to the "soul" or "life force" or whatever you call it, that had previously owned that body before death.
Ghasts have certain vague "memory" of the life of the previous owner of its body because it inhabits the body itself, probably reading some scrambled brain patterns and getting flickers of memories, no doubt distorted to unthinkable levels. Wights experience immense pain because the "dark magics" that give it undeath have limited responses somewhat similar but infinitely primitive to the repsonses of actual, living people.
As metioned sometime before, I also believe that 'unlife' is different. It involves the *still living body* of someone, not a corpse. By whatever means, the unlife is casted onto that person, making his body 'dead' but keeping his soul, life force, whatever you want to call it, inside of it. Like the Myrmidons, and *perhaps* certain shades such as Sinis, Phelot, Sciron, etc.
Undeath and unlife have differences, but essentially wind up with dead bodies being inhabited by some kind of essence, whether it be the dark magics from the manual describing thrall (undeath) or the actual soul of a willing person as in myrmidons and possibly shades (unlife).
Of course, there are different levels of each, depending on the condition of the corpse when dealing with undeath casting on normal corpses (i.e. you can't make ghasts with fifty year old corpses). However, when seeking to reanimate the ever-so-rare archmage/avatar corpse, time of death doesn't exactly seem to matter, as in the case of Mazzarin. Although, it is very possible that after the Watcher killed Mazzarin in that infamous battle, he could have immediately used his undeath abilities on the corpse to create a shade, with the memories and name of the body's previous owner, but with the allegiance to his creator, viz. Bahl'al.
How can the Mazzarin shade's presence on "The Watcher" be a mistake, when it had been mentioned that Mazzarin had been killed by the Watcher previously? It just makes too much sense to be a mistake of any kind. The Watcher killed Mazzarin and used his body for a shade. It complies with the TFL half of the Shade definition, which fits perfectly with the Myth II definition as I had explained at least twenty times before ;D
There's more to these hypotheses of mine, but I'm starting to lose interest in debating things that might be answered in a matter of weeks. I'd stated my stance on this in previous posts a few weeks, mb one or 2 months ago, but the above basically summarizes all of the main ideas somewhat.
It is funny how some mention that the simplest answer is almost always the true one, but when it comes to things Myth, there are no true answers until the game says so. Besides, if you really believe that the simplest explanation is the best, you would believe that the Leveler possesses one of the most powerful heroes at a general time frame, not somewhat-alternating A/B spirits who come back ressurrected if they were defeated when they 'shouldn't' have been. The simplest explanation of the Cycle would be: the only constant in the Cycle is the Leveler diety; the people he possess are heroes, and different (which is exactly what the Myth II epilogue said).
So please don't just simply repeat claims that something is "too complicated" to be a valid theory in my above writings, because all of us here have written things that in the Big Picture don't exactly make a ton of sense. The above writings aren't complicated at all, and are very basic, open-ended hypotheses, ready and Willing to be modified by the in-game evidence coming in Myth III.
-Welly
