: But the Fallen include not just the Fallen Lords, but
: minor undead and probably Shades themselves. If they
: were being ordered around and mistreated by the Fallen
: Lords, that would be enduring the tortures of the
: *Fallen Lords.* Enduring the tortures of the group to
: which they themselves belong implies that those
: tortures are suffered by that group, not inflicted by
: that group on others. I mean, unless Thrall keep
: shambling up to Shades and poking them with axes.
i believe that the Fallen spoken of in that statement refers only to the six Fallen Lords themselves. because in-game it says you must fight the Fallen and their Undead armies, or Dark armies... the definition you use doesn't seem to fit the context of the quote about shades when you look at it while considering the presented definition of Fallen... thrall and shades aren't called Fallen, they're called minions of the Fallen, Undead, Dark armies, etc., but the confusion that would arise from calling them Fallen would imply they are Fallen Lords too.
besides, the Fallen Lords didn't treat anything with respect at all, not even each other... these are evil people, who would be glad to torture anything they could. since torturing a shade wouldn't have much of an effect on him, why not?
: I do think that Shades exist in constant pain, as Wights
: are known to. But I think that's a trademark of all
: undead/unliving creatures from Thrall up to unliving
: Fallen Lords. Their bodies just aren't meant to work
: the way they do.
yup i agree in the painful state of un-existence. but i don't believe that the six Fallen Lords existed in that state.
: Shades are powerful mages; Myrmidons are extremely fast.
: Both high speed and magical skill are possible for
: unliving beings, though not (so far as we've seen) for
: undead--you have to go straight from life to unbeing
: in order to retain enough of your mind and nervous
: system to think fast and well.
in the same way you think that the Summoner used something totally unlike the unlife dream and necromantic spells to resurrect the Myrkridia (the time-space theory of the Tain you explained), i believe that SB used something unlike the unlife dream and necromantic spells as well to make him what he has become (the state of limbo he exists in). i can't just limit my explanation to SB's healing weakness in TFL to strictly necromantic means, but rather something different, something new, and something he knows about only (in the same way only the summoner knew about His abilities).
: As for preservedness, well...Shades may be ugly, but
: after their initial transformation they remain quite
: well-preserved, with even soft parts like the eyeballs
: persisting over at least a century. And Thrall
: actually improve from their original form--remains
: hundreds of years old, which must be dust or at least
: skeletal, are regenerated into a mostly-fleshed
: corpse. So it's certainly not out of the question for
: an undead/unliving being to be well-preserved.
: Soulblighter's state is certainly better than most,
: but then he employed especially powerful magic.
there is no real evidence shades remain preserved immediately after they're creation. they're soft tissue and sinew is probably recreated in the same way an old thrall's is. how soulblighter can remain so absolutely perfectly preserved so such a long time in my mind cannot be explained by necromantic spells or the dream of unlife, but something totally different, something that can be done with 'ritual human sacrifice and self-mutilation' which was explained in Myth... note also the above ritual has no link to necromantic spells at all. therefore that process described in the canon-reference doesn't appear to be any kind of necromantic spell at all, rather something totally different, requiring a totally different spell-casting or dream-casting rite (viz. the ritual human sacrifice and self-mutilation). no other necromantic process requires anything even remotely similar to ritual human sacrifice and self-mutilation, so why should sb's?
: So I think that "pickling" is nothing more than
: unlife plus a comparatively minor spell producing the
: magical equivalent of a good coat of shellac. :-)
hehe... though i see you're point, it is very much unlike any other kind of un-existence, and therefore in my mind has to be explained by other means.
: GURPS only suggests that she was on her second life by
: TFL, by which time she was most definitely hideous.
: Since GURPS attributes her resurrection to Balor, this
: fits perfectly with the MWA Shiver; alive during the
: early Wolf Age, then killed, then resurrected by
: Balor, and undead/unliving during TFL, then killed
: again, then resurrected by Soulblighter, and finally
: undead/unliving/living again during Myth II.
that is, of course, if ravanna dies after MWA. if she doesn't, GURPS is once again wrong. we just have to wait till the release to see.
: Hey, we saw the Myth II Shiver already, and it didn't
: scar us for life. Unless we were that guy who got his
: eyes torn out. :-)
:D her hideousness is due to her unusual state of existence, plus Tramist's Mirror, being a Dark artifact, has no known abilities other than to search the "ether" realm, which is clearly not the Myth afterlife but a region between, and it's use to make a corporeal body for adrift, but still living spirits. the body which results is most likely much more hideous than anything of it's past.
: Hey, Myrdred just looks old. Like 70 or 80. He's not damn
: near mummified and missing his entire nose, like
: Shiver.
that's because myrdred hasn't messed with his appearance in vanity-inspired fits as shiver has. it doesn't fit to believe that an undead person would even care about his or her looks. which is why i am convinced she is alive, though deformed due to her constant alterations. kind of like michael jackson.
: Chance...coupled with the fact that Mazzarin was an
: easier name to overlook than those belonging to more
: high-profile characters like Damas or Tfear...coupled
: with the possibility that (as I suggested) there was a
: more significant confrontation there in earlier betas,
: that was incompletely removed due to known storyline
: changes.
none of the other name mix up's were left in. the explanation you provide is adequate for normal gamemakers, but bungie wasn't a normal gamemaker. all the loose ends of the beta names were cleaned up. not only was the shade name present in the shade common names, but it was there in the scripting. which makes it way too obvious to be overlooked. PLUS: how can we expect the ignorant and uninformed berserks to know just who mazzarin was? 60 years later, people have forgotten almost everything about TFL, which is so painfully obvious in the game. How Can we Expect these berserks and the simple narrator to know about mazzarin when the people are so ignorant about their history? the scholar from Antero's bestiary didn't know about the Connacht/Balor connection! how can TFL guys know about Mazzarin, someone Generations and Generations ago? ?
: I think this is merely fallout from the term
: redefinitions that occured during the series.
: "Avatara" doesn't meant the same thing in
: TFL that it does in Myth II; nor does
: "Shade". Plus we've never seen a power/skill
: difference between in-game Shades that would suggest
: that there's two fundamental types, nor have we ever
: heard a Shade flavor that talks about them being
: mindless or memoryless. All Shades seem to work
: exactly the same way.
they work the same way, but it is evident that the Mazzarin shade wasn't the old mazzarin in the same way Turquine was the Turquine from before. there must be 2 forms of shades, but that doesn't affect their performance at all. which answers why there is no in game difference.
and whether we like it or not, at least Some shades are the "reanimated corpses of long dead avatara" which means Not All are the volunteer Dark-mage kind like Turqine and Sciron and Sinis etc. some, like Mazzarin, are the corpses spoken of in one (or more i can't remember) of the manuals, which is a source of canon, which means there Must be at least two ways to make shades. whether this effects their performance is not known, but there is 2 ways to make them.
: And undead who lack memories/personality don't retain
: their names, so it'd be inappropriate to name a
: revived, low-powered amnesiac corpse
: "Mazzarin."
ahh! wait a sec. even if the mazzarin shade didn't have the memories and personality of the living mazzarin, it makes perfect sense for the Fallen Lords to name him Mazzarin anyway. why not? First, it reminds them of their monumental victory over the Light Maz, and although it doesn't remind the Light armies (because they are uninformed about basic history as evident throughout the games) it Does remind great, still living heroes of their monumental loss.
besides, what else would you call it? Bob? Cletus?
: The Watcher didn't need a death speech. He had an entire
: level and narration devoted to his death! Even Shiver,
: who died off-screen, got a narration section and a
: section of the Tales comic. And if that wasn't the
: real Mazzarin but merely his revived mindless corpse,
: it's still an important event to us poor players who
: suddenly see someone named Mazzarin onscreen. If Balor
: suddenly appears on Gonen's Bridge until you kill him,
: it's still an attention-worthy event even if it turns
: out that it was only Balor's corpse mounted on wheels
: and pushed around by some inventive Ghτls. The fact
: that Mazzarin's appearance is worthy of attention but
: apparently not important to the storyline is strong
: evidence that it's a mistake.
again, the narrator was uninformed, as is everyone in the dismal myth world. the Myth II narrator seems to think of TFL events as legends... only sixty years ago! we are educated people today in our world, we know about the past... these people don't, therefore there was no "death" speech because they didn't know who the heck he was in the first place.
: It's also possible that you can be a powerful mage and
: still be undead. But as I said, I don't think there's
: any way to guess whether the Watcher was alive or
: unliving or a hologram or a robot or what have you.
: But he can't be a clone, because that's illegal.
: Definitely not a clone.
yup you can be unliving and powerful, as evident with shades, but that appears to be the highest point. people of the power of the watcher and SB, shiver, and myrdred however in my mind must be alive simply because of the immensity of their power, shades, though next on the latter, don't stand a chance against them. nor do they stand a chance against the avatars either
wait, he ain't alive, dead, undead, unalive, robot, clone, or hamster... he's a soffish! gdi, i knew it all along!
: --SiliconDream
-Welly
PS; just to clarify, is this list below the list of every shade known to have existed in the myth world?
Sciron
Sinis
Scaripant
Cormorant
Mazzarin
Turquine
Phelot
Herod
Nym
Sycorax
Gullveig
Cailleac Bheur
miss any?
