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: There's over 40 definitely undiscovered Dreams that you
: could search for instead.
: And if Thrall and Bonemen
: and Wights and Soulless and Shades are all products of
: the Dream of Unlife, then it must be that new
: variations of the Dream, or new spells to use in
: conjunction with it, are constantly being discovered.
: The player could always go search for one of these
: variations, which would be just the same kind of
: scenario as searching for the Dream itself.
But wait, I tend to believe that the Fallen have found ways to alter, malevolently *warp* the Dream as to suit their needs. I don't think variations exist separately, but are created from the original Dream. But, say that you're right, and there are some variations, wouldn't it be a ton more exciting to search for the original, infamous, all-in-one Dream of Unlife? It would have a much more dramatic effect, which is exactly what GURPS wants in a campaign used in its format.
: Not really--he played the levels after
: "Shiver." He just didn't finish that one
: level.
Oh, I didn't know that. Why didn't he just finish that level? Also, where does it tell you this in the book (as you can tell it has been quite awhile since I read that).
Then I guess he missed from 1980 to 1990 or something like that :^P
: Yeah. So they must have let it get by because it's part
: of the real, finalized story. :-)
Perhaps Bungie let it go because they realized GURPS was a book of possibilities, where one could stem off the present storyline in a "what if" situation, which the book likes to do on almost every single page.
: There's about a thousand ways to reconcile what we saw in
: Shiver with the Deceiver's survival. It could have
: been an illusion; he could have occupied Phelot's body
: (and yeah, that could be considered flourishing, to
: have a cool new undead immortal walk-on-air body); the
: Deceiver we see in-game could have been some poor old
: guy the real Myrdred was controlling from a distance.
: I don't particularly espouse any one of these--I just
: think the Phelot one would make for the neatest
: followup story.
Indeed Phelot would be cool to contain the Dman, as it would make a fantastic possibility for expansion. However, although it is a cool idea, one would have to assume that Myrdred can inhabit his Binded servants, but there was no mention of this anywhere, even in GURPS. But for our arguement's sake, imagine he could inhabit Phelot's body.
Then, as Phelot floated away, we must assume that Myrdred is present at that point. But then, what about the Deceiver's old body? Who's in it, still using the Staff that only Myrdred himself could wield? Besides, although Shades are powerful, they don't have the capacity for spells as Myrdred did in his old body. Without the focus of his Staff, he just surrendered 1,000,000 dollars worth of magic for a Shade's body which has about 200,000 at most, assuming 0 is a normal person.
: Yeah. There's lots of Thrall. So what? Dwarves are the
: backbone of the Light explosives contingent. Does that
: mean that Dwarf cocktails are über-powerful, the
: pinnacle of explosive technology? Far from it.
: Warlocks can throw much more powerful fireballs;
: archmages can cast the Dispersal Dream. But because
: those are powerful and unusual spells, relatively few
: people can wield them. Dwarf grenades are the most
: useful precisely because they're low-level and easy to
: make and use.
Exactly. After awhile, one would use up those powerful, unusual, hard-to-come by fireballs and dispersal dreams, and succomb to infinite numbers of incoming coctails. That's the idea behind Thrall, massive numbers.
: Same thing with Thrall. Any halfway-competent necromancer
: can make a few hundred Thrall, because they're so
: low-grade and *don't* require any Dreams or other
: high-class spells to make. So the Dark uses lots of
: them.
: Dreams are used infrequently because of the great skill
: and energy cost it takes to wield them, but they have
: tremendous effects when they *are* used. We can see
: this pattern in the Dispersal Dream, the Binding
: Dream, and the Confinement Dream. The Thrall-making
: spell is exactly the opposite--doesn't produce a
: particularly impressive kind of undead, but it gets
: used all the time because it's an easy one.
Yup, easy and when used correctly, as in the case of Bahl'al, can be used for an infinite army. The Dream is not supposed to be used for a handful of Undead, you have to think big, like the Fallen did. Otherwise you interpret it incorrectly as a weak spell, but without it the Dark would not have been 10% as successful.
: Yeah, a few thousand Thrall, backed up by The
: Watcher--the most powerful of the Fallen Lord's
: sorcerers after Balor himself and (perhaps) The
: Deceiver--managed to ambush Mazzarin and kill him at
: the expense of over 6/7 of their number . What amazing
: creatures. :-P
Right, but without them the ole Goat woulnd't last a chance. You have to think Big! The Unlife Dream is used on a Huge Scale, not like a confined, localized spell as Confinement Dreams and Binding Dreams. It is like the Dispersal Dream. You don't ever use one on 5 guys! You use it on 50s or 60s or hundreds or thousands! Just like the Unlife Dream, it is meant to creat a massive backbone for the Dark of Thrall.
: --SiliconDream
-Welly
