I've just been looking at GURPS Myth and have noticed something which I do not think has been touched on before. For quite a while I have been thinking to myself that the cycle is a bit unfair in some way (!), but I have not had time to think about it and try and work out why I think this.
Instead of mentioning the names of people, I will just present the cycles showing the 'big picture' only. I think that sometimes it is easy to get lost in specifics that make little difference to the overall cycle.
Age of Reason: LIGHT, 570 (?) H.C - 430 A.E
Comet (presumably) appears
Great Hero kills Leveller
Great Hero vanishes
Wind Age: DARK, 431 A.E - 1431 A.E
Comet appears
Leveller kills Great Hero
Leveller is killed
Wolf Age: LIGHT, 1431 A.E - 2431 A.E
Comet appears
Great Hero kills Leveller
Great Hero Vanishes
Sword Age: should be DARK, 2431 A.E - 3431 A.E (should do anyway)
Comet appears
Great Hero kills Leveller
As you can see, after the Wolf Age things get fux0red.
After I had writted this down, I could see what was troubling me. A Leveller is killed every age, be it light or dark, whereas a Great Hero is only killed during the dark age, HOWEVER he vanishes during each light age. So in effect, a Great Hero and Leveller 'vanish' each age. Good, that's fair now!
While I was doing this, I touched on the fact that Balor is thriving during the Wolf Age, by 2181 A.E. That's 250 years before he is meant to attack. Then I noticed a passage in GURPS that tells of how Moagim reborn 'chooses' a certain moment to attack. This suggests that he was around before that, and was perhaps watching for the moment to strike.
These two facts in turn suggest that the Leveller appears in the light age (which we know Balor did) and then the dark age begins when he attacks (which is also the time that a comet appears in the sky).
This begs the question does the light always know of the Leveller's presence before he attacks, during the light age. Well they knew of Balor, because GURPS gives a year at which point he was thriving. That doesn't mean that they knew he was the Leveller though. In fact it's very doubtful, as you would think the light would have done more to stop him.
GURPS does not tell of whether the light knew of Moagim reborn's presence.
When I started writing this post, I did not plan on saying all of those above things. I only just saw that it says that Moagim reborn 'chose' to attack.
I was going to try and find a link to the fact that Balor was thriving 250 years too early, and that the comet appeared 300 years after that (50 years too late) and that this comet appears right before Alric kills Balor, perhaps signifying the start of the light age (meaning the dark age was tiny and had no comet).
Just one more thing. In the TLF instruction book, the story near the begining is set in the 7th year of the war in the north, and it says that Muirthemne was sacked, '...just a few years ago.'. In TFL, you start playing in the 17th year of the war (the Seven Gates narration says, 'So ends the seventeenth year of the war).
This is inconsistent with GURPS. According to it, Muirthemne was sacked in 2431. It also says that the light begin their long-overdue fight back in 2463, 32 years after Muirthemne fell. I think that this fight back is what is referred to as the 'war in the north', because (still according to GURPS) Shiver was killed in 2480, 17 years after the start of the fight back (which is consistent with the game, Shiver is killed in the 17th year).
That means that in the 7th year of the war, the year was 2470, 39 years after Muirthemne was sacked. So how come the instruction manuel says that it was but a few years ago?
