: 'Undeath' in my perspective is nothing more than the
: placement of "dark magics" in a corpse,
: re-animating it as a puppet. These "dark
: magics" can feel some general discomforts, and
: can respond to certain stimuli, but are absolutely
: different when compared to the "soul" or
: "life force" or whatever you call it, that
: had previously owned that body before death.
Undeath, in mine, is artificially reanimated life, naturally reanimated being performed by a god.
: Ghasts have certain vague "memory" of the life
: of the previous owner of its body because it inhabits
: the body itself, probably reading some scrambled brain
: patterns and getting flickers of memories, no doubt
: distorted to unthinkable levels.
Wow, so do Myrmidons and Shades :-). Heh, you kind of nicely disprove yourself there.
: Wights experience
: immense pain because the "dark magics" that
: give it undeath have limited responses somewhat
: similar but infinitely primitive to the repsonses of
: actual, living people.
: As metioned sometime before, I also believe that 'unlife'
: is different.
For the love of god, "unlife" = "DEATH!" "Unalive" = "dead." Please, please, pick a better term for this.
: It involves the *still living body* of
: someone, not a corpse.
A Shade's Body is dead. So is Soublighter's, Shiver's, so are Myrmidons', Thrall, Soulless, et al. Anything potentially classifiable as "undead" dies when its natural life ceases to exist, therefore dieing; and equally, its continual animation is generated by artificial means of suspended false life.
: By whatever means, the unlife
: is casted onto that person, making his body 'dead' but
: keeping his soul, life force, whatever you want to
: call it, inside of it. Like the Myrmidons, and
: *perhaps* certain shades such as Sinis, Phelot,
: Sciron, etc.
The preservation of conscious mind of an undead creature has to do with its remaining brain's thinking potential, in part, but also by what spells are used by a necromancer to preserve such things.
Shades need their minds to think through strategic situations, so their cognazance is understood. Myrmidons couldn't perform the complex, tactical moves they do, or move so quickly or be so in command of their senses, even to run away in a losing situation, if they didn't have a mind.
Everything undead which can think, at least in part, for itself has such for a reason, and this is applicable to all situations. Why else would a spell be directly used to preserve such a thing?
: Undeath and unlife have differences, but essentially wind
: up with dead bodies being inhabited by some kind of
: essence, whether it be the dark magics from the manual
: describing thrall (undeath) or the actual soul of a
: willing person as in myrmidons and possibly shades
: (unlife).
Myrmidons were willing. So are Shades.
: Of course, there are different levels of each, depending
: on the condition of the corpse when dealing with
: undeath casting on normal corpses (i.e. you can't make
: ghasts with fifty year old corpses). However, when
: seeking to reanimate the ever-so-rare archmage/avatar
: corpse, time of death doesn't exactly seem to matter,
: as in the case of Mazzarin. Although, it is very
: possible that after the Watcher killed Mazzarin in
: that infamous battle, he could have immediately used
: his undeath abilities on the corpse to create a shade,
: with the memories and name of the body's previous
: owner, but with the allegiance to his creator, viz.
: Bahl'al.
This is possible, but we actually have no idea if Mazzarin retained such thoughts, of how he was able to ellude destruction by the Light for two thousand years, or that's even the same Mazzarin.
: How can the Mazzarin shade's presence on "The
: Watcher" be a mistake, when it had been mentioned
: that Mazzarin had been killed by the Watcher
: previously?
Alric's head flying away at mach speed from the Great Devoid wasn't a mistake either. That doens't mean that lost plot arc was retained in the final story.
: It just makes too much sense to be a
: mistake of any kind. The Watcher killed Mazzarin and
: used his body for a shade. It complies with the TFL
: half of the Shade definition, which fits perfectly
: with the Myth II definition as I had explained at
: least twenty times before ;D
Which I think is great! If we are able to generate workable, realistic theories and postulates which people can use as reference, that's a huge plus! That's what our goal is, I think, which is why arrogance and fighting for no more than such a sake is pointless here.
: There's more to these hypotheses of mine, but I'm
: starting to lose interest in debating things that
: might be answered in a matter of weeks. I'd stated my
: stance on this in previous posts a few weeks, mb one
: or 2 months ago, but the above basically summarizes
: all of the main ideas somewhat.
: It is funny how some mention that the simplest answer is
: almost always the true one, but when it comes to
: things Myth, there are no true answers until the game
: says so.
That was just me, and it was in reference to something completely different, utterly different in tone.
: Besides, if you really believe that the
: simplest explanation is the best, you would believe
: that the Leveler possesses one of the most powerful
: heroes at a general time frame, not
: somewhat-alternating A/B spirits who come back
: ressurrected if they were defeated when they
: 'shouldn't' have been.
Lol, it just so happens I believe such a thing :-). Nothing but GURPS even suggests otherwise, and it's more interesting and depressingly beautiful if the cycle is limited to the Great Heroes being doomed to return as Fallen Lords or Levelers. The converse isn't necessary.
: The simplest explanation of the
: Cycle would be: the only constant in the Cycle is the
: Leveler diety; the people he possess are heroes, and
: different (which is exactly what the Myth II epilogue
: said).
Yeah, and that's definitely more personalable a relation we can forge with the Light heroes of every age. The terrible see-saw isn't interesting anymore.
: So please don't just simply repeat claims that something
: is "too complicated" to be a valid theory in
: my above writings, because all of us here have written
: things that in the Big Picture don't exactly make a
: ton of sense. The above writings aren't complicated at
: all, and are very basic, open-ended hypotheses, ready
: and Willing to be modified by the in-game evidence
: coming in Myth III.
Meh? Make up some term better than "unlife" and we'll talk :-). I suggest you go for the Latin
oo! Idea! If you don't get it, I will! :-)
