: But consider this: before GURPS came out, no one ever
: equated the Watcher with Bahl'al, he was just thought
: to be some long dead evil sorceror of time past.
This is not true. Forrest had guessed as to that fact long before GURPS if I remember correctly.
: and before GURPS came out, it was thought that the dream
: of unlife was indeed discovered by Bahl'al
Not necessarily true either. I wasn't there, but the feeling seem pretty deeply rooted. Someone like Sili or Forrest would have to verify this claim (unless you were around then… which I don't recall you being).
: Consider also: Thrall are corpses, dead bodies given
: unlife. why would their flavor text speak about a
: sorceror who searched for the dream of unlife, their
: origin, but did not find it?
I agree with Raven on the definition of Unlife here.
: to me thats like making a unit that is a giant Soffish,
: then writing a flavor text exactly like this:
: "The Fisherman fished for nine years in search of
: the giant SOffish to add to his army."
: Do you see that I'm trying to compare that made up flavor
: with the Thrall flavor? why would one think that the
: Fisherman did not catch the Giant Soffish? its clearly
: implied, i believe.
Now that's just not accurate. The flavor text refers to Bahl'al searching for the _Dream_of_Unlife_, a sort of obscure reference to something we don't know the power of. It doesn't read that the Watcher searched for the Thrall Dream which is what your example would imply.
: in the big picture, it kind of makes sense that the
: Watcher found the dream in a shattered Trow city. The
: idea that he did find it falls right in with the
: continuity of the game, i believe.
I think that the main reason most people don't think that the Dream of Unlife is what's used to make thrall, etc… is that Dreams are incredibly powerful magic requiring a huge expenditure of either energy or energy stored in an object. It wouldn't make sense for the Fallen Lords to be making huuuuuge thrall armies using this, especially since Dreams don't seem to come in mass varieties (i.e. the Deciever, even though famed for his charm skills can still only convert one unit at a time through the Binding Dream).
Also in addition to my argument, Soulless are undead, right? And therefor they would be animated with the Dream of Unlife by your reasoning. Yet we _know_ that Soulblighter experimented with them and that they've existed in several forms. This would mean that the Dream of Unlife is a dynamic form of magic, it can be bent to several purposes. Now from what we know of Dreams they are about as static magic as you can get. We don't see the Biding dream being used for anything else but Binding and we don't see the Dispersal Dream being used for anything else but blowing up obscene amounts of enemies. True there could be other uses, but they are never mentioned. So from ingame evidence Dreams are static. Why should Unlife be any different?
