: 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?
1)The head is ancient. Not even the Avatara knew about it until the fallen had almost conqoured the continent and only two cities still stood.
2)The head was the one who told(I think it was Rabican, I am not sure though...) him about how to defeat her.
3)The head had been in the sand for who knows how long, and therefore didnt know about the present untill he was dug up.
Leading me to the conclusion that: 1.The head is ancient, 2.The head knows Shiver, and 3.Because of this, Shiver is anceint.
: 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.
Remember, Soulblighter was the infamous general who didnt do much, she was a sorceress, and didnt care for the careful commanding of troops. She was a "Noobie Rusherô" type. And with myrks, the rush is easier than ever.
: 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
Shiver may have had a voice at one time, but now when she was killed. My thoery is as follows:
Shiver was an ancient sorceress from the wind age, or maybe even from before that. She was the classic witch caractor that couldnt stand it that Snow White was the fairest of them all. She was vain. Sometime during her thousand years of life, something happened, and it cost Shiver her voice. What exactly happened, I dont know, but she cant talk, sing, bellw orders, ect. Hundreds of years later, she is still notorious, and has earned the nickname of the Voiceless one. After dieing and going to the Ether, and being brought back, whatever that stopped her from speaking was gone.
Note: this same scenerio could have happened with any of the other fallen lords that we never hear speak.
: "Bonesplitter" is a much more appropriate
: epithet for someone whose only method is brutal,
: unsubtle violence.
It does sound like a myrmidon name, maybe they had a sorcerer/leader that "helped" in thier races betrayal of the light and Bonesplitter was his fallen lord name when they joined the dark.(assuming he did also and became a fallen lord)
: 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?
I like the name thing, and I agree with the mordred thoery.
: 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.
I agree, the deciever is human, and most likely had a hidden school for warlocks before he was conscripted for the dark.
: 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.
The Deciever was the guy who didnt like violence, and prefered to be crafty about his killing, but not in the same way soulblighter is. Soulblighter is more "Slice them to ribbons in a trap", and the Deciever is more "confuse them and kill them off my mysterious forces one by one, until they are doing the job of killing themselves for you out of paranoia"
I hope some of this is usefull to someone somewhere,
-Cryoblue
