: Ah, I see. But the Fallen Lords are merely the Lords of
: the Fallen, or Lords who are Fallen.
: "Fallen" is a more general term which we've
: seen used to describe Dark armies as a whole. And
: since Shades are apparently the highest-rank Dark
: units after the Lords themselves, it wouldn't make
: sense to say they were "tortured by the
: Fallen." Plus, under that interpretation, the
: Shade bargain would make a lot less sense. I can see
: the Fallen Lords telling Turquine "We can make
: you into a new and more powerful being and back you
: with troops, but you're going to be in constant pain
: due to your altered nature." I can't really see
: them telling him "We can make you into a new and
: more powerful being and back you with troops, but then
: we're going to be total a$$holes to you and force you
: to do lots of pointless and painful things." I
: mean, you have to be psycho to accept either bargain,
: but you have to be psycho and stupid to accept the
: latter. :-)
i agree that the six Fallen Lords wouldn't make their Shades do anything that's stupid or torturous that isn't necessary, but torture is in their job description; probably the process of Shadification is extremely painful, perhaps existence after that is painful in some way too, plus being surrounded 24/7 by rotting grunting corpses can be considered torture too. therefore, their very nature is provided by the Fallen Lords, which is inherently torurous, and therefore they endure the tortures of the Fallen.
: (In case you're wondering, no, I don't think that living
: Dark units like Ghτls or Mauls are, strictly speaking,
: Fallen. I think the term "Fallen"
: encompasses those who are undead/unliving and/or
: mentally dominated by Balor or a Fallen Lord--from
: Thrall and Wights and Soulless through Myrmidons and
: Shades up to the Fallen Lords themselves. The Fallen
: are the core of the Dark, the beings that are innately
: Dark-aligned rather than temporarily allied like the
: Ghτls or the Trow.)
yeah that's true, even though the Ghols are always "Dark", they are only "fallen" when allied with Balor during TFL or with SB during his war. same with mauls and mb some other nutty races we don't know about yet.
: But since Shades do even better than Soulblighter did
: with respect to healing, it doesn't really make sense
: that Soulblighter would be Living and Shades not. I
: think Soulblighter, like the Shades, became an
: Undead/Unliving being with some weak points removed;
: but because he wasn't as talented a mage, he wasn't
: able to strengthen himself against healing as the
: Shades were. Once he studied magic for 60 years and
: came back in Myth II, he had the skillz to make
: himself healable.
hmm but i still believe he exists in a state of a Dark-warped life, still technically living, but perhaps trading off Mandrake Root healability for ultra-speed, immortality, uberstrength, and immunity to kinetic damage :) not that bad of a deal because he probably didn't ever want to or plan to be healed by Jmen... well because they're mortal enemies :D
but I'm beginning to think that perhaps you and i are both wrong :P. what if this:
consider "living" without a heart. not possible. therefore you have an arguement that he is un-something. but he isn't rotting his brains out (i think if he still had a face he'd look normal cept for the chest scar), he's fast as a mutha, and he knows his way around Cloudspine-shattering dreams. this complete lack of "un_" symptoms leads me to believe that he isn't unliving/undead either.
here's the third possibility if one considers the above theory to be true: he preserved himself right at the moment of his 'de-heartification' making him neither living, dead, unliving/undead, but something like 'limbo-ized'. this would explain his still-living qualities and appearance And his un-living weakness to healing in TFL, which he had conquered while in the untamed lands before the second war. therefore one can say he pickled himself.
: I tend not to think that any archmage would be anything
: negative--they're not going to use their magics to
: give themselves new weaknesses, right? An archmage
: will choose (or be assigned by a more powerful being)
: a form of existence and then start adding to it. So
: it'd make more sense to me that Soulblighter would
: make himself Unliving and then partially remove the
: healing disadvantage, than that he'd stay Living and
: give himself that weakness.
yup, considering the above "pickling theory" his un-ness and his living-asity is up for debate. god i love playing with words!
: Why not? There's no reason why a female mage can't be
: butt-ugly, regardless of her orientation. Specially if
: you look at the Black Company books from which Myth
: drew...most of the female mages are no more
: particularly stunning than the males. There's some
: pretty ones and some ugly ones. If Mumbo Jumbo makes
: her hot just because it wants to, that has no bearing
: on whether or not she was *supposed* to be hot
: according to Bungie.
everything that has been proven to be either unliving/undead
is hideously decayed (thrall shades etc.). if she is attractive, she most likely is alive, which clearly means she was not on her second and third lives as GURPS suggests. but this arguement, unlike our other ones, will almost Definitely be solved by MWA, so i'd like to wait and see.
: Plus Shiver ought to look a lot better in Myth 3 than in
: Myth 2. She's a thousand years younger! Who knows what
: she went through during the Wolf Age? Self-mutilation
: like Soulblighter, perhaps; possible death and
: resurrection; or just simple aging. (Myth II's Myrdred
: isn't exactly a paragon of beauty either.)
besides, none of us exactly want to see a corpse walking around in a push-up bra and with makeup on :P
: Well, you certainly don't have to buy GURPS' info on
: Shiver. But without GURPS, there's absolutely no
: information that Shiver was *ever* Living or beautiful
: in known history. (Well, obviously she had to be alive
: at some point before she was unliving/undead, and her
: vanity probably implies that she was once beautiful,
: but this was too long ago to be directly represented
: in Myth lore.) She's a withered undead-looking monster
: in TFL, and she's a withered undead-looking monster in
: Tales. Even if the Myth III guys have looked over
: Bungie's design docs and found that Shiver was alive
: and beautiful in the late Wind Age, she's still
: kentucky fried by TFL.
perhaps she's not so good looking in TFL simply because of her age, which was prolonged like other Dark lords'. her bad looks in TFL could be exactly the same reason why Myrdred looks so old (at least in M2)... they're both still alive but look old and crusty. so her crustiness might be simply prolonged age, like Myrdred's.
: Sure it does. Two reasons. First, Shades in the beta
: versions had a large number of names that have since
: been scrapped--including names that later got recycled
: into important characters, like Damas. They could have
: recycled Mazzarin too, but overlooked removing that
: name from the Shade list.
yes i remember that mess, remember how some of the units had names like Tfear and Cu Chullain? lol! but that mess was cleaned up by the game's release, why would they forget Mazzarin?
: Second, there could very well have been some more
: elaborate plot point there to begin with--Mazzarin
: being resurrected and enslaved by the Watcher and
: all--which was later mostly removed, perhaps due to
: storyline changes (like Shades becoming archmages who
: volunteered for Shadehood, something that Mazzarin
: would never do).
i personally think that after mazzarin was wasted by the watcher after those waves of thrall etc., the watcher reanimated his corpse into a shade (obviously not the same kind of process as the volunteer-shadehood like Turquine, but shadehood nonetheless).
: It's not like it'd take such a huge oversight to do what
: we see in-game by mistake, or to do it and then forget
: to remove it. It's a simple and small thing--one map
: action labeling that Shade as Mazzarin. Most
: playtesters who aren't story-obsessed like we are
: would play through and never even notice.
yep that's a possibility, but again, since all the other "beta names" confusion was cleaned up and worked out of the gm version, it still seems kind of weird how they could overlook mazzarin. i think he was bagged, then reanimated into a shade by the watcher soon after he was killed.
: And if it is intentional, what does that say about the
: story? The greatest Avatara in history returns,
: attacks you just like everyone else, gets nuked, and
: the level continues without a word? Mazz doesn't get a
: death speech, narrator doesn't mention it, no one says
: "Hey, did you recognize that Shade?" That's
: like if you were moving through "West of the
: Cloudspine" picking off Ghτls, and suddenly a
: resurrected Balor came charging along until your dwarf
: blew him up. Very strange.
ahh, but did the Watcher get a death speech either? not even a "finally he's dead" was spoken. that's because he's Dark, and so was the shade mazzarin. if nothing was said about the watcher's demise, there's no reason anything should be said about shade mazzarin's death, because he was less powerful, and it was just mazzarin's body that was destroyed in "the Watcher", not like he was actually killed (because he died already) which is why i think no death speech was made for him. besides, the mazzarin shade doesn't come off as though mazzarin can still be found inside that body, unlike the Turquine and the Sinis shade, which obviously has the same person inside the body.
: Well, that flavor says that he became a Shade so that he
: could have his revenge, not so that he could survive.
: True, he probably couldn't have his revenge if he was
: dead, but still, that doesn't seem to be the issue.
: :-) And there's lots of living mages recruited by the
: Dark, from the Deceiver on down to the Warlocks and
: the unnamed human mages working for the Watcher and
: Soulblighter. GURPS also suggests that mages actively
: seek out Shadehood. I think its attraction is the
: power and/or longevity. Again, in-game Shades are
: almost as effective combatants as Alric. I don't think
: they're as powerful sorcerers as he is in the
: "real" (as opposed to in-game) Mythworld,
: but they're definitely unusually powerful. The next
: level below Avatara and Fallen Lord.
but in order to get revenge, one must survive. which is why i agree that some Dark mages want to become shades because you get at least the following things:
prolonged existence
ability to make undead and cast dispersals (most likely)
armies and armies and more armies
a chance to get even with some lemurs you couldn't previously bag.
but then there is evidence of Another kind of Shade. this is the mazzarin kind, which Did Not want to be shadified, but was killed. then the corpse was made into a Shade, which is somewhat lesser then the volunteer-shade type spoken of above. these type 2 shades are made by the Fallen lords, for the Fallen lords, and do not appear to retain memories or the powers of their previous owners.
it appears then that one can make Shades with
1. avatar/archmage/ubermage corpses
2. still-living Dark mages or above who volunteer
: Nobody. I'm just saying that Bahl'al's power level isn't
: evidence for his being Living, because even if
: Unliving mages are weaker, he could still have
: siphoned power off Balor. We have no way of knowing
: how powerful he would have been without the Leveller
: strengthening him.
that's true. but it is evident he was pretty powerful before Balor because he killed mazzarin among other countless other unspoken Dark deeds. but again, it is possible that he was undead by the time of TFL and made up for the lack of energy by using Balor's, but i don't believe it :)
: Also, the Myth II manual attributes the Fallen Lords'
: defeat to a lack of leadership after Balor's
: death...after being mentally bound to him, his death
: probably crippled their willpower for a time.
agree 100%, not only did they have a sudden lack of energy, but they had no leader and began worrying about each others' backstabbing
: --SiliconDream
-Welly
from next post:
: If you're healing-vulnerable *and* you have a voice like
: Darth Vader *and* you're still walking around after your
: face and heart have been removed, chances are you're not
: Living. ;-)
hehe :D see the above 'sb limbo pickling' theory.
