: I'm gonna be terse in this. Don't take it personally...I
: just typed a full response to the whole post and then
: accidentally closed the window. But I'm redoing it
: again, because I love you that much. :-)
Aw, I hate that. Sorry to hear it; np. I used to hit the escape button…it erases everything. That's why I usually write longer posts in Appleworks or some other word document, saving every five seconds.
: I'm sure they can too, but Balor apparently magically
: bound and/or empowered a large number of creatures and
: it makes sense that many Shades would be included in
: this number.
Yeah, sure.
: Nope. That's been treated extensively in this thread.
And I find no compelling evidence that Fallen means anything more than Fallen Lords
: Being Unliving/Undead hurts, on more than one level, as
: Wights can doubtless attest. So the Fallen suffer
: indescribable tortures from the mode of their
: existence.
Perhaps, but then I sure wouldn't want to be in such a state. I'd tend to think they don't hurt that much, as much as Turquine's flavor says.
: I will mention one other possibility--that
: "Fallen" here does indeed mean "Fallen
: Lord" and that the process of being made into a
: Shade is extremely painful.
Yeah.
: I just mentioned that! But I think that in this case an
: erupting Thrall can simply be Alric's Dream-shorthand
: for "and in TFL lots of corpses were reanimated
: and killed people."
Ah-ha, agreed.
: I'll buy that...see my response to your other recent
: post.
Yes, I have.
: Or was told it by any of the half-dozen Bungie folk who
: worked on GURPS.
Not in the slightest! It wasn't even Bungie approved. The guy in the Bungie store is the only one even remotely related to Bungie who said that it's 'A valuable sorce for Myth history.' This tells us nothing. It says no where in the book that it's Bungie approved, only that it has the permission of Bungie to make it, if that. On the cover is says "Based on the Award-Winning Computer Game from [Bungie logo]".
: Where did he say this? I've been looking for a solid
: answer for a while.
I believe it was in one of those long interviews you had to downloud a few months back…oh yes, and Santa's Head told us here on the Asylum.
: Um...that artist guy, Rob McLees? He was the chief
: architect of Myth's story. Four of the other artists
: on GURPS were Myth level designers. And Doug and the
: rest of Bungie provided support and playtesting, which
: entails more than a couple of chats.
Nevertheless, it is proven time and time again their are many errors in it, errors which clearly show that Bungie was not fully interested in GURPS, especially in making it perfect. That's more than reason enough right there.
: MJ has the legal right to make a game off an evolved form
: of the Myth II engine, with characters from TFL and
: Soulblighter, and call it "Myth III." This
: has no bearing on whether Myth III's story information
: matches that of the Mythworld-as-envisioned-by-Bungie.
Actually, it does. They have everything. Take Two gave MJ all information and all the crap Bungie ever had to give, and MJ now holds supreme rights over it. They are free to change the story as they please and do what they want. Going by Bungie-only history is as absurd as going purely by TFL canon, seeing as Bungie tried to correct itself in M2. This is still done, but not widely practiced, nor economical.
: Who cares if contract X permits company Y to add to
: the Myth story? The fun of story discussion is
: reconstructing what Bungie was thinking when it made
: Myth. Reconstructing what MJ was thinking when it made
: Myth III may be equally fun, and doubtless we'll all
: be doing it in a few months' time, but it's not the
: same issue.
I personally disagree. We've pretty much beaten the dead horse that is Bungie for endless months. There doesn't seem much of anything left we can do.
: No offense,
Never any taken.
: but not everyone considered your anti-GURPS
: posts successful disproofs. I seem to remember many of
: the final responses being to the effect of "I
: WILL KILL YOU if you don't talk about something else
: now!" :-)
Lol, tou chet. Then again, there is no disproof over the final line of that argument (which I came to a conclusion to by truly acting out both sides, as you recall): MJ has the rights now, in full, so what they say goes, and MJ already impugned it. That means we have to wait until m3 comes out.
: Among Un-beings (those which don't eat or breathe or
: sleep, which are vulnerable to healing, who are
: rotting or otherwise aged by time, etc.), Shades,
: Myrmidons and Mahir are intelligent, retain their
: memories (at least under the Myth II Shade definition)
: and have names. Creating them is difficult and
: requires them to voluntarily move directly from life
: to Unbeing. On the other hand, Thrall, Ghasts, Wights
: and Soulless (and possibly Stygian Knights) are almost
: mindless, nameless and amnesiac. Making them is easy
: and you use corpses which have been dead for an
: appreciable time (or inanimate armor).
I think my own explanation regarding undeath is far simpler and makes more sense, personally. Those guys are Zombies and the others are Self-Aware, but bound.
: So I figured that there's probably a significant
: difference between the two groups--even if it's just
: that the former were turned before their brains had a
: chance to rot, so they kept their minds. And I started
: calling the former Unliving and the latter Undead. I
: didn't intend any direct link to the Dream of Unlife,
: although it's a plausible theory that the Dream is
: required to create Unliving beings.
Well, it just doesn't seem necessary. I woudn't mind discussing it under my posts's thread…and maybe there should be a different term used besides "Unliving" that is just Dead in my eyes (har har).
: Not the original Moagim;
Ah, yeah; he didn't technically die, like Connacht didn't die to become Balor, right?
: he was formerly Tireces,
: remember. Moagim Reborn was probably born not too long
: before his War, but that doesn't mean he was the
: Leveller at the moment of birth.
Yeah, that's reassonable to assume.
: For all we know, the
: Leveller could enter its avatar once he reaches
: adulthood and comes into his full powers. That'd be
: the smart thing to do, after all; don't want to
: inhabit a baby and have it immediately catch whooping
: cough or get dropped on its head by its mom, or
: something. :-)
Haha, yeah. :-)
: It's in the archives, but basically I argued that
: "Twice Born" is misdated. If so, the
: narrator considers Myrdred to still be alive two days
: after "Shiver," by which time he should know
: better. And (whether or not "Twice Born" is
: misdated) Soulblighter is trapped and fried as if the
: narrator's correct.
Agreed; the Narrator messed up in dating.
: I don't really see how; magic is cast by the mind and
: spirit, not the muscles. Especially in the Mythworld,
: where you don't even have to chant or sign to cast a
: spell--apparently you just think. Well, sometimes you
: raise your arms, but anyone can do that. :-)
Hehe.
: I'll buy that an archmage's body may have
: perks--permanently enchanted for extra toughness and
: strength, designed to store mana just like Energon
: Cubes, and so forth. But that should only make a Shade
: a better Shade; it shouldn't be necessary for its
: existence in the first place.
Agreed; I was just…well, I guess I was debating for no good reason :-). Ah, the Asylum…
: TFL provided eight new Avatara corpses, though. And
: couldn't dead Shades be re-used? I'd imagine re-dead
: corpses are as easy or easier to raise than originally
: dead ones, unless they've been incinerated or
: something.
I'd think that, yeah, they'd be incinerated or mostly destroyed so that they weren't usable.
: Which leads into another question--if Shades are
: reanimated Avatara, why are Avatara so lax about
: getting rid of their bodies? It'd seem to be an
: obviously wise policy to cremate or vaporize every
: dead Avatara; for Avatara to carry spells which would
: immediately destroy their bodies upon death; for
: Avatara to nuke themselves when death was imminent in
: enemy territory. Mazzarin in particular should have
: gone out with a bang when he realized he was about to
: get dropped by the Watcher, of all people.
Right, right.
: Matters to me. :-)
Ok, you do that then :-).
: I scripted Alric and a Shade, and when they cast their
: Dispersals first (due to some deficiencies in Alric's
: Dispersals), the Shade wins on harder difficulty
: levels. And since in the "real" Mythworld
: some Shades are presumably better than others, it's
: probably the case that some Shades would win more
: often and some less often.
That did not happen ingame. Only what is presented to us by the game makers actually happens. If we don't see if happen, it's offstage. All we can tell from such experiments, interesting and fun to watch as they are, is that Bungie, or our future MJ, didn't take their precious time to fix a menial error which had no relavance on the game anyway :-).
: I do think that if the "real" Alric and a Shade
: had a chance to prepare, Alric would win; Shades are
: pretty narrowly focused on immediate combat (but then
: Shiver is too). And the older Alric of Myth II could
: whack any Shade with ease.
Narrowly focused?
: Anyway, if Shades are intentionally limited because of
: their "operational design parameters," that
: suggests that their forms don't carry similar innate
: limitations. I think Shiver's a sort of
: "super-Shade;" she's what you get when you
: Shadify an exceptional Avatara, back her up with
: Balor's improvements and power supply, and give her a
: thousand years to practice.
Maybe, but I severely doubt Shades and Fallen Lords are related enough to be interchangable. If they are, then they are and you might be right. If they aren't, then she's just a Fallen Lord. We simply do not know either way, as this has not been revealed (but I hope it is in m3…like Shiver being made a Shade or something :-). All we can do is commend you for your ingenuity.
But, then, what about the Deceiver? He was an Avatara too. His Falling, as much as or less so than Shiver's, is rapped in mystery. We just don't know.
: I've no problem with Sinis' response; I was just pointing
: out Alric's talent for stating the obvious.
Lol, yeah, I get it now. :-)
: Moagim Reborn's simpler. That allows for Sinis to be
: Light or Dark; for Mazzarin to be alive or a Shade;
: and it even gets rid of the third-person problem. :-P
But why was Moagim there? And, from the conversation, I'd lean towards he and Alric being enemies. Alric's definitely an incarnation of something though, since it had to be during the Wind Age. I believe this since no Shrine of Nyx would be left standing high enough to kill any archmage, alive or undead. That means it has to be during the Wind Age, before those structures were destroyed (since Moagim didn't arrive until after Connacht got rid of the Trow). The logical conclusion then is that Alric was, being from the Wind Age, the incarnation of Mazzarin.
Well, Sili, I'd say this is one of the most peacable and agreeable(litterally) conversations we've ever had.
I was thinking recently, "Why endlessly debate something if the person is never going to give at all? For fun? Ok, I cam buy that…" But I just realized how much we're flexing on both sides and coming towards common terms. It's a positive sign.
