Sorry, guys. I don't mean to fill up the forum like this, but I can't seem to get the response button to work. So I'll just cut and paste and pretend this is a response.
:I was always under the impression that the Head was working :with Soulbighter in order to ensure his rise to supremacy, :but with the events described in GURPS, I believe he was :working with Soulblighter because he had the greatest :potential to hurt the cycle.
I'm no longer sure that the Head was trying to break the cycle, in the new light that GURPS sheds upon it. I doubt Soulblighter had any potential to hurt the cycle; rather, his mere existence assisted it. Remember that, according to the cycle, Balor and Alric were supposed to kill each other and the lesser Fallen Lords were supposed to preside over a millennium of Dark domination, until another Hero and Leveller arose. The best way of hurting the cycle, then, would be to make it a Light Age and not a Dark Age--make sure as many Avatara as possible survive, and as many Fallen Lords as possible are killed. Neither the Head nor Soulblighter seem to be aiming for this.
:First of all, the Head seemed to screw everyone over in one :way or another, except not-a-thing happened to SB. First :off, the Head sealed the defeat of Shiver by telling :Rabican how to kill her. Shiver out of the way. Next, the :Head told the Legion to go after the Codex, and in my :opinion, it knew the Watcher wanted that book really badly :and once uncovered he would track it down until retrival. :The plan was to get the Watcher to follow the Legion and :press them towards the Cloudspine where other armies and :distractions would naturally be. BTW - Have you noticed :that the Codex served no real purpose for the Legion?
Just a very minor nit, but if the Watcher wanted the book so badly then it certainly served a purpose for the Legion--keeping him from doing whatever he was planning to do with it.
:Now, as the Legion is fleeing Covenant with the Codex, we :all remember Soulblighter standing on that little cliff :watching the events unfold? He could have easily :slaughtered the small army of 10 that held the book and :that would have been the end of the story. But, he watches :them flee, and he himself flees the scene. He was simply :making sure the plan was falling into place and the Watcher :was in fact chasing the Legion's men.
Soulblighter's actions are odd, I agree. However, there are a couple of alternative explanations. First--and most unlikely--he might actually have been scared, or at least cautious. On the last level you find out that you can defeat him with a Jman and a couple of zerks; on this level you've got--if you suckered the Myrms the right way--at least a dozen warriors, half a dozen archers, a dwarf or two and a Jman. I think. It's been a while since I played this level. But anyway, if he attacked you I know he'd lose. And maybe he knows it too.
Second, Soulblighter may want the Watcher not to have the Total Codex--but for no other reason than to keep him from knowing too much in the future. The Codex, as Alric found out, is primarily a long-term weapon. It's much more likely to inform you about an event hundreds or thousands of years in the future than about one next month. So possession of the Codex by the Watcher probably wouldn't help the Dark win the Great War--but it would help the Watcher gain power over his rival Lords during the coming thousand-year Dark Age. Therefore it's directly beneficial to Soulblighter to let the Light run off with the Codex. He doesn't have to be following any elaborate plan to entrap the Watcher.
:The Deceiver is looking for the Watcher's arm back at :Silver Mines because their feud is extremely deep and this :arm will be a useful tool. Perhaps the Deciever was tipped :off by SB as to the rough location of the Watcher's arm, :but in any case the Deceiver is busily searching the :mountain. The Head and Soulblighter use this to their :advantage. Naturally, the Legion will escape from Covenant :with the Codex and head towards the Cloudspine, that's the :only place to go. The Watcher is right with them and on his :way after the Legion, he clashes with Rabican and :annihilates him. Rabican's gone. Somehow, and I'm assuming :Soulbighter tips the Watcher off, he finds out the Deceiver :is looking for his arm and this pisses him off to no end. :He deviates from his attack on the Legion and is so filled :with rage he attacks the Deceiver nearly killing him and :making him a non-issue. The Watcher didn't even go after :his own arm, he went after his arch-enemy and the Head and :SB made sure to play on this feud because a fight between :these two usually means the downfall and disablement of one :for at least a decent period of time. Basically, the :Deceiver is out of the picture. (I know he comes back :later, but oh well.)
If GURPS is correct, then the Deceiver would have known where the Watcher's arm is simply because he imprisoned the Watcher there in the first place. And the Legion didn't flee from Covenant to the Cloudspine with the Codex; the Legion was heading to the Cloudspine to stop the Deceiver. A small party of Legionnaires retrieved the Codex and sent it to Madrigal; later, another small party was sent after the Watcher's arm. (Both, coincidentally, contained the narrator.) The two missions were completely unconnected and it's highly unlikely that the Watcher would think that the Legion took the Codex with them to the Cloudspine. I think he came up here only because he knew the Deceiver was looking for his arm. Which wasn't necessarily because SB told him; he was a powerful sorcerer, after all, and may have kept an eye on what was being done to what used to be part of his body.
:*Also, Alric was sent by the Head through the Cloudspine :into Dark forces. Alric could have easily been killed at :this point, and that was what the Head was probably :counting on. But Alric survived and was later used to their :(The Head and SB's) advantage.
Agreed. The Head wanted Alric dead.
: After some time, the Legion is in the Dire Marsh and is :moving towards Balor's fortress with the Watcher standing :in their way. Soulbighter actually does something and :pushes his army towards the Legion's rear flank, making :their only option to force their way through the Watcher. :The Head (or not him, the real key here is Soulblighter :pushes the forces North) tells the Legion to use the bone-:tipped arrows to defeat him, and soon enough, the Watcher :is out of the picture.
I think it's a little far-fetched to say that Soulblighter intentionally "pushes the forces North" so that they can kill the Watcher. The Legion headed north and Soulblighter came after them, that's all. He may have hoped the Watcher's army would take the brunt of the damage when they dispatched the Legion together, but I don't see any reason to think that he wanted the Watcher dead at this point. And the bone-tipped arrows were thunk up by Alric, according to GURPS.
:As for Balor, well, his defeat is imminent anyway, and :perhaps the location of the Eblis Stone was brought into :light by the Head. Nonetheless, Balor is defeated and :Soulblighter just happens to be a second too late and :watches Balor's head soar into eternity leaving the throne :to the Dark army open.
According to GURPS, Soulblighter was the most loyal of Balor's lieutenants. And if he did want Balor dead, why would Soulblighter bother to be there at all? It's not like he has to "keep up appearances;" no one's suddenly going to think he's a good guy just because he didn't try to save Balor's head. He could have just sat back and let the Light force do the work for him.
:All that is left in the way of a Soulblighter victory is :Alric (it had to be somebody, someone else had to defeat :Balor, so by default another Avatar or Fallen Lord has to :live at this point and it just happens to be Alric, which :probably was not their first choice because he should have :perished months ago) the Legion and the Province. Oh! But :wait, the Head started up a Civil War in the Province :ensuring Soulblighter had a good amount of years to rebuild :his forces and develop sorcery before the Legion could be :rebuilt into a pwerful fighting force.
Again, if Soulblighter had successfully rebuilt his forces and destroyed Alric, he would merely be continuing the cycle. It's *supposed* to be a Dark Age right now.
I have no satisfactory explanation for the Head's behavior, though I used to think that he was a cycle-breaker. Possibly the Head's purpose was to keep Balor and those loyal to him alive. According to GURPS, Soulblighter was the only Fallen Lord who was truly loyal to Balor. So maybe the Head wanted to distort the cycle in a different way; destroy the Nine, but keep Balor alive into the next Age.
I probably need to think this theory out more, but I'd imagine a Balor-serving Head's thinking would go something like: Soulblighter is extremely loyal to Balor, and should survive. Shiver and the Watcher are content to serve for now; they're expendable, but need not be gotten rid of unless it serves some purpose. The Deceiver is highly untrustworthy, and should be dispatched whenever convenient; the Nine are Balor's sworn enemies, and must be destroyed.
Accordingly The Head appears and, to gain the Nine's confidence, sacrifices an expendable Shiver. Anyway, it's not a permanent loss; the manner of her death (as orchestrated by The Head) will allow Balor or Soulblighter to bring her back if convenient. Now the Nine's trusted advisor, The Head starts subtly misadvising them, crippling the war effort in ways not immediately obvious.
At one point he finds out that the Watcher is searching for the Total Codex. Here he sees a chance to help Balor's cause (by preventing a potentially mutinous underling from gaining an artifact of great power) *and* gain some brownie points with the Nine, by providing them with said artifact which only later turns out to be not all that useful in the middle of a war.
As his next great coup, the Head sends Alric off on a hopeless mission, expecting him to be captured and killed by the Dark. Unfortunately, the Nine find out about Alric's capture and send a rescue party. They're getting suspicious, so the Head needs to find a way to regain their trust. As luck would have it, he finds out that The Deceiver is searching for the Watcher's arm. Here's another golden opportunity--to get rid of the treacherous Deceiver, while pretending to provide the Nine with a useful artifact, making them trust him again. So he has the Nine send part of the Legion to get the arm, and then lets the Watcher know that The Deceiver was looking for it. As he had hoped, the Watcher takes care of the Deceiver without Balor or Soulblighter having to waste their strength on him.
However, the Light now possesses the Watcher's arm, which gives them a hope of killing him. The Head doesn't want the Watcher killed unnecessarily. So what does he do? When Murgen and Cu Roi travel to Forest Heart to speak to the Giants, he recommends that they take the arm with them. Then he informs Soulblighter, who shows up with the Tain. As a result, two Avatara are lost and so is the arm.
By this time the rest of the Nine figure out what's up and the Head does as much damage as he can before disappearing. And if not for two things, that would have been the end of the Light. Alric's tiny force would have been crushed by The Watcher and Soulblighter, and Balor would have survived. But The Head didn't plan on Murgen and Cu Roi being able to destroy the Tain, returning the Watcher's arm to this reality at the cost of their lives; nor did he plan on Alric recovering an Eblis Stone. With these two artifacts the Watcher was petrified and destroyed, and Balor was paralyzed and decapitated. The Head failed.
--SiliconDream
