: So the order of Canon Myth goes as follows: 1.) Ingame
: 2.) Manuals
: 3.) What Bungie Offers Us (outside of the original
: material)
: 4.) GURPS
: 5.) Theories
: 6.) Plugins Based Off Of Above
: 7.) Pre-Release
: These things are all “canon”, but to varying degrees.
: Technically, only ingame is canon, and therefore
: everything else is nothing if Ingame didn’t say it
: first. Pre-Release is barely anything. Theories can be
: believed (often are), so they’re warented more than
: Pre-Release, especially the good ones. Again, only
: Ingame is True Canon.
: Gurps is approved by Bungie, you say? So were the
: manuals, but they’re sometimes wrong. GUPRS is often
: wrong. Hence, this order falls into succession, and
: the chain of canon command is complete.
Uh-uh. Pre-release facts are definitely known to have been part of the game at some point, which is important info in its own right. Theories and plugins, on the other hand, contribute zero information. All they do is point toward ways to assemble our existing information into coherent structures. I'd rank it this way:
1) In-game: The storyline's core
2) Manuals, Tales from the Fallen Lords, and any hints dropped by Bungie employees--written by Bungie and intended to be consistent with the core world
3) Chimera and GURPS--not written entirely by Bungie, but nontheless released by them and intended and stated to be consistent with the core world
4) Pre-release info: Known to have been consistent with the core world in an earlier version, and therefore has a good chance of being valid in the release version
Plugins, theories, and any later games like Myth III are junk if you're trying to reconstruct the "true" world of Myth. If you're trying to reconstruct the Mythworld-as-defined-by-Bungie-and-Mumbo-Jumbo, say, or the Mythworld-as-defined-by-Bungie-and-Creation, these criteria will change, but you've got to say which consensus reality you're trying to piece together first.
Note also that ranking in-game stuff above manuals and Tales is fairly arbitrary. If you believed in-game Myth without question, you'd believe that the Deceiver or a Mahir could beat Balor one-on-one, and that warriors can stand in one place for days on end without eating, sleeping, or even sitting down. Nowhere is it stated that Bungie paid closer attention to storyline when making the games than when making the manuals. Indeed, in general we might expect them to be laying out the story most meticulously and faithfully when they're writing text resources like manuals and narrations. Level designers have other concerns.
: Now, that section in GURPS which talks about the Fallen
: Lords, titled “The Fallen Lords” on page 99, is
: blatenly a loser of credit. It indicates clearly that
: Balor was a Fallen Lord, which he was not, thereby
: screwing over the entire section out of its own
: credibility. GURPS is not a tool to be used lightly or
: primarily, which it proves time and time again. It is
: tainted in every place, and by the very fact that it
: is not meant to be anything more than a gaming
: instruction book, not an encyclopedia.
Bungie states that GURPS is meant to provide valid information on the game world, so it is.
The first Myth wasn't Myth: The Fallen Lords And The Guy Who Led Them, was it? Many times in-game the Fallen Lords are referred to casually in a way which seems to embrace Balor. GURPS recognizes the two different meanings and employs them both--the seven Fallen Lords including Balor, or Balor with his six Fallen Lords. This isn't a flaw; GURPS is simply attempted to deal with an inconsistency already present in the Bungie storyline.
Remember that these are popularly-used terms we're talking about--one Mythworlder may use them in a different way than another. You can't define the class of "Fallen Lords" in Myth any more sharply than the class of "Conservatives," or of "Liberals," in the US.
: Lol…The Faceless Man is still a valid name for a Fallen
: Lord? Why not Lurker any bit more? They were never
: talked about ingame, ever, as were the unmentioned
: Avatara, and should be taken as such: unnamed and
: without identity.
I think you mean "Why not Bonesplitter?" Forrest never said the Lurker wasn't a Lord. And Forrest's reasoning is that since the Lurker's a woman, she can't be the Faceless Man. So of the two pre-release names, Bonesplitter is more likely to correspond to the Lurker and the Faceless Man is more likely to correspond to an unknown remaining Lord, if one exists.
And, by the way, we have pre-release info on Avatara names too. So the other Avatara aren't necessarily unnamed either.
: “And the last Fallen Lord has yet to be revealed!” This
: one cracks me up! There are only six Fallen Lords,
: which it states clearly in the beginning, and mentions
: all six it believes to be Fallen Lords. It then, at
: the end, says that line! LOL! You really believe this
: guy, Forrest? Ol’ Geney didn’t even bother to finish
: the game for you before he wrote his book. I bet he
: had a reason to say that…(such as the obvious one,
: that Seabolt was trying to inspire people to come up
: with their own RPGs, not to accurately deleniate
: history, in any way)
I personally believe Shiver and Ravanna to be separate, but obviously they're intended to be linked in some way, and the theory that they're the same being is perfectly valid and straightforward--there's a Myth II character named both "Shiver" and "Ravanna," for God's sake. GURPS explained quite clearly what happened in-game, and drew the obvious inference that perhaps Shiver and Ravanna *are* the same being. In which case there would have to be another Lord.
--SiliconDream
