: After long and serious thought on the head's identity, I
: think I finally have it. Here we go...
: Remember the journal entry right before level four, where
: the writer says "...but the truth is even
: stranger than the rumors. Apperantly, the Nine dug up
: the head of one of Balor's old enemies, and started
: talking to the thing..." This comment alone means
: that whoever the Head is, it must be a very powerful
: sorcerer, and it must be very old, but not to old, or
: it wouldn't have a score to settle with Shiver. Even
: assuming that Shiver is the oldest of the Fallen
: Lords, this still limits her age, and therefore the
: Head's age, to about 1,000 ("...some of the
: Fallen are nearly a thousand years old, and have
: rivalries that go back just as far...")
Two things to note here. One, the narrator's misinformed, because some of the Fallen Lords are definitely more than 1,000 years old. The Watcher, and possibly The Deceiver and Shiver, were all active during the Wind Age. Furthermore, nearly a thousand years before TFL was the Early Wolf Age, just after Connacht's reign. The power of the Light was then at its peak, and it's unlikely that any major Fallen arose during that period--at least ones which were Dark-aligned at the time. Myth prerelease info breaks the Fallen Lords into "ancient evils" and "those turned from the Light," implying that the originally Dark Fallen Lords tended to be older than the originally Light ones.
It's understandable if the narrator doesn't know about the Fallen Lords' lives prior to the Wolf Age--no one seems to know much of anything about earlier periods. The last Great War and the millennium of Wind Age carnage preceding it clearly erased most earlier historical information. Also, remember that until halfway through its development Myth's storyline called for the Light and Dark Ages to be 500 years long each, rather than 1,000 years as in the finished story. Remnants of this pre-release Age length have led to certain minor inconsistencies or oddnesses in the story (as well as some major features--the Leveller's appearing at the start of every Dark *and* Light Age is apparently an attempt to resolve these inconsistencies), and I wouldn't be surprised if the narrator's statement was another prerelease artifact. In this case, his statement of "nearly a thousand years old" really means "born toward the beginning of the Wind Age", which would be nearly *two* thousand years old in the finalized story.
Two, there's no reason why the Head couldn't be much older or younger than Shiver, or Balor, or anyone else. He doesn't have to be the same age as them to have come into conflict with them. He could be 10,000 years old and have fought Shiver when he was 9,100; he could be 300 years old and have fought Shiver when he was 150.
: Now, this
: limits the number of possibilities drastically. But
: the final key comes from Alric's rescue, when Alric is
: ridiculing the belief that the Head was one of
: Connacht's lieutenats who had fallen to balor when he
: first emerged. From all the different clues, all we
: know is that Balor is really Connacht, and that the
: head fell to Balor/Connacht many centuries ago. There
: is only one person ever mentioned who fits this
: description, and that is the Leveller's previous
: incarnation of Moagim Reborn. In addition, Moagim
: Reborn was supposedly torn to pieces in front of the
: city of Muirthemne, which is where the Head was
: recovered from.
No Leveller was torn to pieces in front of Muirthemne. The original Moagim was torn to pieces in front of "Ilium," wherever that is--perhaps his personal fortress--and the pieces of his body were carried to the ends of the earth (which would be as far away from Muirthemne as possible.) Moagim Reborn's body was burnt to ash in an unknown location and buried under a distant mountain range.
: This would explain why the Head sought to play the Light
: and the Dark off against one another--it had a score
: to settle with Balor, but it was still an entity of
: the Dark, and so certainly didn't want the Light to
: win. And, of course, the leader of the race of
: Myrkridia would have to be an extremely powerful
: sorcerer in his own right--powerful enough, say, to
: survive six hundred years of having his head detached
: from the rest of his body.
It was the original Moagim who was the leader and evil genius of the Myrkridia--not that he was a Krid himself, of course. Moagim Reborn was loosely allied with them, but apparently relied on them more as a distraction.
That the *original* Moagim is the Head has been a recurring theory, but I personally doubt that The Head is any former Leveller. We saw what happened when Alric tried to preserve a Leveller's head; I believe that keeping a Leveller (or its head) alive would prevent the Leveller spirit from reincarnating, and that the Leveller therefore acts to prevent this.
And I'd think that a former Leveller would either be dedicatedly evil, dedicatedly good (if it returned to its previous personality once the Leveller-spirit vacated) or hopelessly insane. The Head is none of these--it's amoral, crafty, and capable of conducting long and convoluted campaigns for its own ends. Personally, I think its being a tool or ally of the Deceiver and possibly Soulblighter fits very well, but I've talked about that in previous threads.
To help you in developing your theory further, you might want to read the following archived threads for assorted entertaining/informative/ridiculous arguments over the Head = Moagim theory...
http://carnage.bungie.org/myth/asylum/asylum.forum.pl?read=576
http://carnage.bungie.org/myth/asylum/asylum.forum.pl?read=958
http://carnage.bungie.org/myth/asylum/asylum.forum.pl?read=1100
--SiliconDream
