: It was always perfectly possible to damage Soulblighter
: with any weapons, whether swords, spells or artifacts.
: The trouble is that he had the ability to transform
: into crows, and so could always escape when he felt he
: was too badly wounded. But lop his head off, and he'd
: be as dead as anyone else (of course, easier said than
: done!). As to why Alric chose to engage Soulblighter
: in single combat rather than use weight of numbers,
: consider that in "Twice Born", Alric had
: decided to weild Balmung (a very good idea, as it
: means he can kick the hell out of whole formations of
: Myrrkydia. However, the chain lightning effect pretty
: much forces a single combat, as anything else that
: comes near dies. And Alric, presumably, felt it
: necessary to be weilding Balmung as such a critical
: battle, both through its potency, and through the fact
: that it is an anchient symbol of the Cath Bruig
: empire, and so the sight of him weilding it (very
: impressive in itself) would have reinforced his
: authority. Also, Alric believed himself capable of
: taking on and beating Soulblighter in single combat,
: and knew that doing so would stremngthen his new
: empire no end (everyone likes to think they have a
: mighty ruler, especially a ruler who can take on a
: semi-immortal warlord at the age of 80 :) )
Furthermore, throwing weaker units at Soulblighter--either on A Murder of Crows or on Twice Born--would have resulted him killing a bunch of them before going down himself. If Alric and Myrdred are halfway responsible (okay, that's a big assumption for Myrdred), they're not going to send a bunch of Zerks or Herons to their deaths when they can take out Soulblighter themselves and no one else has to die.
: Firstly, it's pretty hard not to notice that the weapon
: of the guy you're fighting in single combat has just
: broken. In the press of the melee, perhaps, but in
: single combat, no. I, personally, think that
: Soulblighter fled because, with the destruction of
: Balmung, there was nothing to stop the rest of the
: Light troops from overwhelming him with sheer weight
: of numbers. Soulblighter knew he was capable of
: killing Alric if he stayed, but wasn't willing to risk
: his own death at the hands of an entire Light army.
I doubt he could have killed Alric, personally. If he could have, he would have; he had the ring of fire keeping the other Light units at bay, at least for long enough to finish Alric and run for it. And earlier in the level he had no compunction about going up against as many units as you threw at him (although you could argue that Alric's attack broke his nerve.)
I think after this I'll just reply to any post on this subject with "$#@& off! Alric's the MAN!"
--SiliconDream
