: absolutely forgot about that. I was playing Myth but
: hadn't taken interest in Myth Debating back then (see
: below more)
Yeah, most people have equated The Watcher with Bahl'al for quite a while. For one thing, The Watcher is the first mage known to have used Thrall, way back in the Wind Age. For another, Bahl'al is male, classified as an Ancient Evil in the prerelease info, and the guy who destroyed Tyr. That pretty much clinches him as The Watcher.
: this one might be a little vague, but im pretty sure most
: people just assumed the text was referring to the
: origin of the thrall they were reading about when they
: read that flavor. what else would they think it would
: mean, if Bahl'al had not discovered the dream, that
: flavor would kind of be a complete waste of space.
: to me thats like clicking on a roman centurian unit and
: reading a flavor about the failed exploits of Draco.
: makes no sense.
If you clicked on Napoleon, wouldn't it make sense to see a flavor about Waterloo? Spectacular failures--like the world's greatest necromancer spending nine days underwater looking for the world's most powerful spell in his field in--are still story-worthy.
There's a particular story this is meant to echo, I think: Gilgamesh's search for eternal life. He finally learned that a plant conferring immortality grows at the bottom of the ocean, and managed to go down and find it--but before he could eat it a snake did, which is why they shed their skin instead of dying and are immortal (according to the story).
Anyway, I think there's a definite literary link here of "Super-powerful dude's greatest quest is to gain control of an underwater artifact conferring a new kind of life, and he fails."
: puppetry, yes i beleive that one too. Lack of life but
: moving body is puppet, which i believe is another name
: for undead.
External definitions aside, both "Unlife" and "Undeath" are used in Myth, so I think it's likely that they don't mean precisely the same thing. That is, a Dream of Unlife does something more than just make Undead. It...uh...makes Unliving beings. Or it makes a *whole lot* of Undead. Or something. :-)
Remember also that most known Myth Dreams don't have an effect which is completely unique; they're just more powerful in some way than ordinary spells, or have added special qualities.
There are regular mind control spells like whatever the Head uses (and what the Deceiver seems to use to "influence" people without completely taking them over), and then there's the Binding Dream.
There are regular immobilizing spells, and then there's the Confinement Dream.
There are regular blowing-crap-up spells, and then there's the Dispersal Dream.
And so forth. So it would make sense that the Dream of Unlife is a super-powered version of some more ordinary necromantic spells.
: that is, if you assume that the dream of unlife cannot
: make thrall. i believe that is one of the several
: things it can do.
: actually the "(evil) charm" used by the
: Deceiver in TFL might be different than the binding
: dream. take the MythQuiz again, you'll remember that
: there is a difference stated about. in TFL it appears
: that he could convert several people at a time, like
: when you defend your standard from the converted Bolgs
: and duffs... i don't really think he could convert
: them one at a time in such a situation, leading me to
: believe that he had more strength which Balor allowing
: him to use that evil charm to Convert more people at
: once.
Well, we don't know how long he had to convert all those guys. But even so, the difference here is merely quantitative--exactly the same effect, but used to get more peeople at once, or in a shorter amount of time, or at a longer range, some such. That's much easier to buy than a qualitative difference, I think.
: thats a good arguement. but think about it like this:
: Finally, after all that searching, the unlife dream
: was discovered by Bahl'al. this dream quite possibly
: could be the most important discovery for the Dark,
: thus they would spend much time finding out all they
: could about it, i.e. discovering ways to manipulate
: it.
: I think it can be because it has never been said in the
: game or sources that it cannot be. Perhaps there are
: other uses for every dream, just no one has thought
: outside the box yet like SB and Shiver and Balor did
: with the dream of unlife. there are unboubtedly many
: other dreams lost in history, who knows if they had
: multiple uses?
We do have a good example with the Dispersal Dream. Employed by two very distinct parties--Alric and Shades--it's had a lot of time to mutate, yet the two versions differ only in the accompanying special effects (GURPS suggests that these may be a function of the caster's personality or "aura.") That implies that Dreams can't be made to vary that much.
Furthermore, Dreams are usually wielded only by extremely powerful mages--Shade-level or above--yet even low-level human mages can be taught to make Ghasts by Soulblighter. At the same time (as others have pointed out in this thread), creators of one type of undead may be completely unable to create a different type, whereas you'd expect that after you'd mastered at least one version of a Dream, it'd be comparatively easy to get the other versions down.
