: Every body should thank forest for his work for
: Myth and Bungie fans alike.
I second that emotion. Great article, Forrest. Here are my thoughts:
You say that Shiver is "popularly" thought to be an Ancient Evil. Is there any actual evidence for this? Based on her track record, I think it's unlikely. I mean, she's the first Fallen Lord to be defeated in TFL, and in Myth II she's a very poor general except when the Myrkridia are backing her up. And the Deceiver completely fakes her out. I think the signs point to her being a recently created, relatively naive Lord, powerful but not very shrewd. After all, anyone who looks like her and is vain about it has to be pretty stupid--I can't imagine a thousand-year-old undead witch even caring about such things. Besides, if Shiver's the Voiceless One, how come she has a voice? It's not pretty, but it's definitely there. I think "Bonesplitter" is a much more appropriate epithet for someone whose only method is brutal, unsubtle violence. And that would pair off the "Voiceless One" and the "Faceless Man" as the two Lords we never meet; these epithets would also be appropriate for beings who work mostly behind the scenes.
"Myrdred" and "Myrmidon" do sound alike, but the most likely etymologies are quite different, as I'm sure you know. The Myrmidons are named after two different Greek peoples; one was the personal army of Achilles, the other was a race descended from a son (also named Myrmidon) of Zeus. Myrdred's name, on the other hand, is probably modeled on Mordred, Arthur's traitorous son who was quite a deceiver in his own right. As for the similarity in their appearances, as far as I can tell the Myrmidons are mummified, while the Deceiver's just an old guy. I think that's part of the point of him, that he doesn't seem to be undead or in any way impressive--he just looks like an evil, Sarumanesque old man. And since the Myrmidons are undead (I think the Asylum's argument over that has been concluded), shouldn't Bahl'al, the Watcher, be their patron? The Deceiver already has his band of followers, the Warlocks. As beings who derive their power from forbidden knowledge rather than physical might, I think the Warlocks are much more appropriate servants of the Deceiver than the totally physical, let's-charge-the-enemy-and-impale-them-on-their own-shattered-femurs Myrmidons.
A couple of observations on name origins: The Watcher's nickname, "The Mad Goat of the Fens," was doubtless a takeoff on the characteristic epithet of Lovecraft's Shub-Niggurath, "The Black Goat of the Woods With a Thousand Young." Shub-Niggurath is the monstrous embodiment of the fertility principle in Lovecraft's mythos, and indeed you could view the Watcher as a warped fertility god--instead of overseeing the birth of living creatures, he endows the dead with a blasphemous new unlife. With respect to the Deceiver's name, "The Source of the Five Hundred Poisons," they may not be talking about any particular ones. Skill with poisons and plagues in general would certainly fit in with the Deceiver's modus operandi of sneakiness and indirect attack, and we know from his flavor that the area around his stronghold is "pregnant with diseases of the blood." And, of course, he's a master of poisoning men's minds and souls. (It's sorta like a Satanic A-team--"And this is the Deceiver," says Balor/Hannibal, "our poisons man.") Even if the Deceiver didn't actually create five hundred physical poisons, his skill and association with them might become so well known that in common lore he would be called the "patron saint" and source of all poisons (perhaps Myth folk believe that there are five hundred basic poisons, just like the Greeks believed in four elements). It's happened historically, where someone becomes known as the "Father of Kabuki Theatre" (or something) when he didn't actually create it, but merely exploited and popularized it.
Have I said anything informative, or indeed enlightening?
--SiliconDream
