: Yes there is: "Balor himself, with a legion of
: creatures bound to him through sorcery and
: intimidation, unable to stop Alric from lopping off
: his head?" Unless you want to argue that the
: "sorcery" part applies to exactly 6 people
: and the "intimidation" to everyone else,
: this clearly means that he magically bound a large
: number of creatures. And these would naturally be the
: creatures who used magic or required it to function.
by binding the six Fallen Lords to himself directly, he binds the armies and the other undead/unliving creatures in a more indirect way because they are in turn bound to the Fallen Lords directly. i doubt even the leveler could hold such a close range on countless hundreds of thousands... if he could, why have fallen lords to lead them in the first place? by binding the six, whom he gives the armies to, he has bound them all, but in different levels.
of course i am not saying he hasn't bound the shades and the wights and everything else... he has, but not in the same way or on the same level as when he bound the six Fallen Lords.
: On the other hand, there is no quote that implies that
: Balor bound the Fallen Lords and no one else.
neither is there a quote that determines the levels of his binding, the main idea of which I am trying to convey.
: Furthermore, if each Shade was entirely dependent for its
: power upon a Fallen Lord, it would be difficult to see
: how the Shade could wield magics which that Lord did
: not possess (or could not acquire from the Shade if
: they chose.) Yet all Shades use the Dispersal Dream,
: and neither Myrdred nor Shiver uses it even when it
: would clearly be more useful than their own trademark
: spells.
I never said that shades draw their energy from the Fallen Lords, instead their Loyalty is bound to them.. not energy. you can see now that we both agree shades do not necessarily draw their strength from the six Fallen Lords directly, but they are 'bound' in the sense of loyalty. The six Fallen Lords are, however, bound in loyalty *and* in many ways energy-wise as well to the Leveler.
: No evidence for this. Fallen is never equated with Fallen
: Lords. That's why there's two different terms.
that's not true. here's a quote that equates "Fallen" with "Fallen Lords".
"The battle for Madrigal lasted four days without pause. Shiver fell on the first night in a spectacular dream duel with Rabican, one of the Nine. No one expected this. We have never before challenged one of The Fallen and won."
one can see how similar the phrases are (the simple fact that the former is *half* the latter) and how though they are not interchangable, Fallen can certainly pertain to the Fallen Lords. it's just a shortened form.
: And it hasn't been proven in-game that nothing undead is
: more powerful than a Shade, either. There's no need to
: complicate things by proposing a "unique limbo
: state" when a more powerful unliving state with a
: minor preservation spell does just as well. Swords
: damage him, lightning damages him, lava damages him.
: We've seen this. He just doesn't rot.
but this 'more powerful' unliving state you speak of has never been found before in any other examples. surely if soulblighter is unliving, he would make his shadesin a similar state as well. but he hasn't, because it's not unlife, but something different.
I didn't complicate things by proposing the preserved state of his life, i made them simpler. i guess i could say you complicated things by proposing the Tain/Time/Space spells which the summoner used to ressurrect the Krids. but you didn't complicate things, you made them simpler with that proposal because you believed at that time the dream of unlife wasn't discovered. therefore your proposal made more sense assuming that the dream wasn't found and therefore the Summoner was in fact not using Necromantic abilities at all but something different and unique to him.
same way I say soulblighter is using something different and unique to him.
: Obviously, if he's performing a necromantic spell on
: *himself*, then he's gonna be applying the mutilations
: to himself. The other examples show that you often
: mutilate the thing you want to make undead/unliving.
: In this case, that thing is Soulblighter himself.
: And it doesn't matter if that exact mutilation has never
: been seen before. It's still mutilation. Legs off to
: make a Soulless, a bit of rotting to make a Thrall,
: face off and heart out to make a Soulblighter.
but there has never been such a specific ritual to anything un-made before, and i do not think undead creatures require rituals to be made... in the Myth II intro, the thrall just pops out of the ground in front of the bowman that tripped... no mutilation or rituals or anything.
: But it's apparently a fairly crappy limbo, since you can
: clearly alter his body with swords and lightning and
: lava. The only way he's "preserved" is
: inasmuch as his body doesn't rot and age quite as much
: as a Shade's does. Hence, it's just a good
: disinfectant and a coat of varnish.
ahhh but tell me... what can *not* be harmed by swords and lightning and lava?
crappy limbo? in fact, his limbo is the best (besides only) we've ever seen! he cannot be harmed by arrows at All, swords do almost no damage on virtually any realistic level, it takes unrealistic amounts of Lightning to affect him... crappy? this is certainly unlike Any un-being ever encountered before :^)
the only trade off for such an incredible and towering immunity to such fantastic amounts of battle damage was his healing weakness... which was *completely* overcome by the time of Myth II. think about it.. if he was Unliving, why not just remove the healing weakness in the first place like with shades? why wait over sixty years? the only explanation can be that he is not unliving or undead... but instead simply something else.. alive, but warped into a preserved limbo.
: And we have no idea what gods he would have sacrificed
: to. I don't know why he'd pick b'Y'laggo in
: particular--the Ghτls' Dark Gods or Chimera's Cartucke
: would make more sense to me--but I might note that
: GURPS suggests that b'Y'laggo makes its worshippers
: into half-living, half-undead beings.
i chose b'y'laggo because it was the first demon other than the leveler that popped into my mind... i didn't remember what crazy things GURPS had to say about her. we do not know which demon he flirted with so i just picked one to fill in the blank.
: Sure it does. It's evidence for a close relationship
: between Seabolt and Bungie during GURPS Myth's
: creation. People use GURPS' errors to cast doubt on
: its general validity; you gotta go the other way and
: use its successes to support that validity.
but GURPS successes are mostly just mere quotes from the games or just a rehash of stuff we know, on the other hand, somewhat wild speculation is it's faults.
: That is, assuming that Myth 3 is based on the Bungie
: design docs, which we still haven't precisely pinned
: down. (We've heard that the team cares about fitting
: their story to the original design docs, but we don't
: yet actually know that they *have* them.) If it's not,
: then GURPS is right and Myth 3 is wrong.
perhaps if Myth III doesn't go by the Bungie papers, it is "wrong" in a sense... but we will just have to make it "right" because, like it or not, Bungie sold Myth to them and they can do anything they like (which is a scary prospect but unfortunately is true). you had said that we must think of a way for the Soulless to be in Myth III even though they shouldn't... well know we must think of a way for this.
: And it's also totally unlike any kind of Living demise
: ever seen before. But what it looks *most* like are
: the Shade and Mahir demises. When Shades die, their
: body comes apart and their Energon Cubes fall on the
: ground, containing all their magical power in
: explosive form. When Mahir die, they dissiplate into
: nothingness. Shiver dies by dissipating into
: nothingness *and* releasing all her power in an
: explosive burst. And she floats like a Shade and talks
: like a Shade and casts a shadow like a Shade and looks
: a lot like one. So: Unliving.
So Myrdred walks like an old man, looks like an old man, sounds like one too.. so he must be an old man. But wait! Alric fits all those things too! and Alric is an Emperor, the last of the Nine Avatara.... so therefore Myrdred, being an old man just like alric, must be an emperor too, and a light avatar.
:) personally i think although shiver sounds remotely like shades, and has some kind of shadow too, isn't enough to make her an unliving shade. She was "made corporeal again" *unlike* the undeath and unlife processess... something different and unique to Tramist's Mirror.
: No, Rabican didn't kill her. If he had, and her spirit
: had left the world, she would be undead. Instead,
: she's unliving.
at least we agree that Rabican didn't kill her that day. Tramist's mirror makes spirits from the ether region corporeal again... not Unlife as we have been defining it at all.
: The narrator's already shown that he knows a heck of a
: lot of history. Journeymen lived through it all. The
: Avatara know it. None of these are "typical"
: Mythworlders, but they're still in the Legion, and
: they'd still want to gather info on any Shade or other
: powerful creature their forces encountered. And the
: war's been raging for nearly a century now. The
: Mazzarin-Shade's not ancient history--he's one of the
: guys who's been destroying your buddies with Dispersal
: Dream for half your life.
How would the beserks recognize him and know his name... they wouldn't. if they didn't know his name, but killed him and then survived, how would anyone know what to call him when they got back? all that needs to be known was that the watcher was shattered. nothing was mentioned about him in the pregame texts or the pregame of the next level because he wasn't significant enough, like Cormorant wasn't. the shades aren't mentioned in the pregames of TFL as important (that is, if they are mentioned at All, i can't remember) no matter who they once were... you don't get a congrats every time you kill a shade, regardless who he once was... it doesn't matter who he was to these people, just as long as he is dead.
but maybe, for some odd and unknowable reason, the zerks Realized who he was and told alric they killed him. Was the watcher mentioned after you killed him? nope. why the heck would they mention one of his shades?
: And if no one could have known him, then he shouldn't
: have been there. Bungie wouldn't make a story defect
: that bad.
that's not a story defect at all. in fact it fits perfectly with the tfl shade definition that he is there. and why does it matter that someone "has" to know him? isn't it enough that he is there and you get to kill him? no one "had" to know cormorant... but he was there. now, cormorant can't be a mistake too.
: Yeah, and then Hitler replies "Indeed, SiliconDream,
: I'll wager you thought you saw the last of me."
: Because, of course, I'm the reincarnation of a German
: soldier and this is obvious to Hitler. Right.
You say that this reply is from some trashed story arc. obviously the story arc wasn't included in the final release, so therefore it is not canon. but the name "mazzarin" was included. we just have to interpret his reply in a way that makes sense to the 'actual' storyline, for example, like this:
the word "seen" in Sinis's reply is the only thing that makes us believe that Alric must have been there when it happened. change the word to "read" or "heard" and we can understand that alric had just known about him from history or heard about it in legend (which is exactly the truth). take the original quote in this new context, and you can see how it makes sense if you look at in under this new light.
: Nope, not unlike. The Deceiver debacle was discussed long
: before GURPS. Whatever happened to him after TFL?
: Whatever happened to him after Shiver? Why is
: "Twice Born" obviously dated wrong?
: Etcetera. None of these are ridiculously obvious to
: anyone except Asylumers, I'm afraid. And nor is the
: Mazzarin issue--the average TFL player couldn't care
: less. But all those mistakes are still there.
actually, we know what happened to myrdred after TFL. he wasn't killed, as the ignorant people believed he was, he was still "clinging" to life by preservation magics only: thus he wasn't killed. the dialog between the two ignorant zerks is at the beginning of The Ermine is null and void.
and i think it is clear what happened to him after Shiver: he got bagged. it even says he is dead in the scripting. they wouldn't blow him apart like that if he didn't die then and there and then not tell you anything. and yes, i am aware of the whole thing about there is a small chance he is living inside phelot, but i don't believe it, because if he could so easily travel between bodies, he could have done that during TFL to allow himself to flee, or even to kill the watcher by some elaborate scheme which he certainly could have pulled off: when you have a will, there is a way, which absolutely applies to Myrdred. Who is dead. :)
: No, the Myth II definition narrowed the older definition.
: TFL Avatara existed throughout the Four Ages, and all
: Shades were undead Avatara...hence "Avatara"
: encompassed any archmage affiliated with the Light and
: possibly those who were neutral as well. Myth II
: Avatara are *only* those archmages who belonged to the
: organization known as the Nine, which Mazzarin
: founded. Myth II corrected TFL.
the "avatars" of TFL were the only surviving ones, the Nine. but there were avatars before them. so, there were more than nine avatars at one point, and Myth II backed that up by revealing that Myrdred was one of them who happened to be dark.
: The ability to actually create new minds would be a HUGE
: addition to the story. Occam's razor is swinging
: toward your throat right now. :-) Besides, if you
: custom-make a Shade's mind and powers, then that
: completely invalidates *both* Shade definitions. Don't
: even bother finding mages, alive or dead--just take
: every peasant corpse in arm's reach and stuff in IQ
: and magical power until you've got fifty Shades.
the pseudo-mind idea I proposed can only be applied to a body that could *previously* handle magics... the body of a powerful archmage or avatar. why do you think that it is a huge addition... we don't know anything about the process of avatar-reanimation... surely if you want the shade to handle the magics you give it, then you must give it the ability to do so. and that ability is some kind of pseudo-mind, which could very well be a part of the caster's spirit. there's no evidence to the contrary, and this backs up A) the appearance of the Mazzarin shade and B) the TFL definition of shades.
both shade definitions can be correct; you just have to devise a way of accepting them, much like you devise ways of accepting your beliefs (e.g. the summoner's spells you proposed).
: No, TFL contains mistakes. Some of these were corrected
: in Myth II. In-game material isn't undisputable when
: it's self-contradictory.
but that depends if you look at it in a way that makes it contradictory, as you are. look at it my way and it is not. using my proposal, we can accept *both* game definitions for Both shades and avatars.
: Or, if you want to view it in a more kindly light, the
: TFL manual, like the Myth II manual, represents the
: consensus knowledge of the Mythworlders. And it simply
: wasn't common knowledge then that Shades were
: volunteers--so they naturally thought that Shades were
: reanimated corpses of
most if not all of the statements of the manual speaks to you as a third party, and the dark as one too. 'you are the light and you must battle the dark' is an idea - plainly objective - thoughout both the manuals. although it wasn't evident yet to the Light that all shades weren't corpses, they had to think of something to put in the manual to at least cover a percent of them (the other percent were volunteer dark mages).
: Everyone heard about Mazzarin. And, more to the point,
: *we* heard about Mazzarin. He has to get an
: introduction because we know he was important. It's a
: defect in the story otherwise.
I still cannot understand this need for introductions. where would this introduction fit in? it simply doesn't fit in. no one cares that the shade is dead, the big deal is the Watcher is dead. but did they mention it after you killed him? it's just the body of a guy you read about in a flavor, which 100 percent backs up the definition told to you in the manual about shades. also, you know mazzarin was killed, therefore it is 100% logic to know that what you see on The Watcher is his reanimated corpse.
: In-game is canon, I thought you said? :-P What in-game
: evidence is there that TFL Alric is substantially more
: powerful than a Shade? I mean, sure, he kills him
: (although actually if they cast all their Dispersals
: first, the Shade wins), but it takes a lot of effort.
: And Alric's a mid-range Avatara. So a weak Avatara and
: a strong Shade almost certainly overlap.
it is obvious it isn't canon when engine limitations and time deadlines affect the gameplay... this following is hard evidence:
Take Phelot and pit him against Balor converted from TFL. eventually, after some time, phelot will win. But in Real Life balor would kick his ass. then why did he lose? because Phelot has an object tag that makes him invincible. thus: just because phelot can kill balor, doesn't mean it is canon.
: And like I said, the truly Avatara-class Dark mages don't
: need to be Shades because--like Shiver and the
: Deceiver--they're already Fallen Lords. You don't get
: made a Shade unless you're already second-class.
ahh but i thought you said shiver was a powerful shade :-P
: Then your argument is invalid. :-)
how can you say that? it hasn't been proven any of them are unliving (which is what we are debating) nor has it been proven anything unliving is more powerful than a shade. therefore, if we assume nothing unliving is more powerful than a shade, the fallen lords cannot be unliving.
: --SiliconDream
-Welly
PS: besides, it can also be assumed if you don't like taking Sinis's response in that context, that the shade-mazz killed Sinis for some reason (mb because he refused to become a volunterr shade) and someone reanimated his body into the Sinis-shade.
