: Unlife does not mean death, in fact, unlife is not even
: an official word, at least according to any of the
: dictionaries I've looked for it in.
Exactly. Its meaning, as closely as can be defined, means the reversal of life: death.
: In YOUR opinion it
: means death, but your interpretation doesn't
: immediatly become canon.
Ah, but technicality obviously rules over all. It's hardly my interpretation, but a statement of verbal fact.
: In traditional roleplaying
: circles (many RPGs are the forefathers are the term
: Undead), Unlife is the state of sentient life after
: death.
Lol, no it's not. Despite that, it's not even IN MYTH. Myth is hardly an RPG or some other stupid mythology.
: Unlife would then apply to Shades, Fallen
: Lords, Myrmidons etc. Think of Vampires as Unliving,
: and Thrall as Undead.
Lol! Vampires have never, ever, been called "unliving" by any official source. You and Welly claim to have invented the word "unliving" anyway, based on the Watcher looking for the Dream of Unlife. The Watcher looking for the Dream of Unlife has NOTHING to do with him creating undead creatures using the Dream. Undead have been known how to be made by necromancers for millenia, so this Dream is most likely not used for it. Further,
Vampires have been called undead, of undeath, and so forth. According to you, then, "undead" would pertain to the "non-dead" beings and "unalive" to the Thrall and "simpler" undead.
: Where did you get the information that Soulblighter died?
"Twice Born", of two lives, and the very fact that, once natural life ends, it dies. It may be immediately replaced by an artificial life. This is the case for all undead creatures, all of which could be healed to a "death" in TFL; an achilles heal of which the higher-magic ability undead seem to have counteracted by m2.
: We could divide the Undead into two groups, rather than
: calling them Undead and Unliving. Sentient Undead and
: Puppet Undead.
: SENTIENT
: Shades
: Myrmidons
: Ghosts
: PUPPET
: Thrall
: Wights (Although their ability to feel pain may indicate
: some form of sentience)
: Soulless
Why is it one undead creature has thought and another none? It's already been described to us that it's a spell or affectation of a spell which allows consciousness or not. All undead beings had their natural lives end. Some have control over themselves, like Fallen Lords. Others have had some amount of consciousness be retained for tactical or strategic purposes, such as with Myrmidons or Shades. Finally, some need no thought at all, and the retaining of mind in these creatures is either pointless and a waste of energy or impossible, like Thrall, Ghasts, Wights, and Soulless.
And a creature doesn't need sentience to feel pain.
: I don't know where Mahir fall in all of this. Are they
: even considered Undead?
::heals Mahir; watches it die:: Yup. We don't really know too much about Mahir, but we can consider them undead for the time being.
: Myrmidons never died, they were simply preserved.
Myrmidons died when their natural lives ended, which coinsided with their new, artificial lives. This is just one way of looking at the situation, which can hardly be disproved.
: So
: their sentience is not an issue here.
How sentient are they? They might not be any more in capacity than a rabid racoon.
In fact, this is all we know of Myrmidons:
1. They betrayed the Light to join Balor and became known as the Kithless, originally akin to the Berserk tribes of the North.
2. They were quite vain and wore body paint, making themselves impressive before battle.
3. They yet walk the earth three hundred years later as undead.
Well, they sound pretty undead to me. They don't need any description of having sentience at all, but they can have some sort of thinking capacity, if it must be so. We don't know for sure. I think it is an Asylum invention to think of Myrmidons as having obvious thought
or that of GURPS, more likely.
: We know Shades
: are former Avatars,
Lol! Turquine wasn't. They're just long-dead sorcerers. Avatara are sorcerers, so they might qualify to become Shades (MIGHT the key word there). We know of Mazzarin the Shade, so he might be the undead form of Mazzarin.
: and thus they were killed.
Right.
: It does look like Alric's head, although it is debateable
: whether or not it is actually his.
you are serious? We see other Avatara in TFL, in the intro at least, and they don't bear any resemblance to Alric, and certainly not that head we see flying by, the spitting image of Alric. It looks just like the pregame art and all other art for Alric, including the intro. It's obviously originally meant to be Alric. Besides, that's just one example of a lost plot arc, including Mazzarin, potentially.
: If you ask me, it
: is kinda fat considering the lithe state of his body.
You base this off ingame? It's the same head as we see in the intro and pregame art.
: Why is it that we have to use a better term of unlife
: just because you don't like it?
I'm not the only one who dislikes it. I'm also informing you that it is a confusing and wrongly-suggestive term which will only cause problems. We have enought of those here.
: I'm sure there ARE
: better words, but your dislike of the term isn't
: immediate grounds for us to change our way of using
: it.
I already proved why it's a faulty term. Why can't we pick a better one?
: In several roleplaying games (Dungeons and Dragons
: being a prominent one), Unlife is referred to as the
: state of sentient death, the ability to act as you did
: in life without the constraints of death.
Good for D&D. They also have Dragons in D&D too, not to mention Elves. There are no Fallen Lords in D&D, no Alric, Muirthemne, or Avatara, or Berserks, Myrgard, Stoneheim, Madrigal, Barrier, Province, or thousand other things. You see, there are many differences between the two stories. Let's not confuse them, seeing as they have little in the way of similarity.
: By your
: theory of Unlife=Death, then Undeath would equal life.
"Un" is an English prefix meaning "reversal," as to undo a mistake or look at an unmade bed.
"Undeath" means reversal of death. The reversal of death is to animate a thing that died, however long its period of death was (which can even be considered to coinside with undeath). "Unlife" means "reversal of life." The reversal of life is death, non-existance. Shades surely exist, however, and are clearly more than dead. This is why your term is faulty.
And I originally meant no disrespect in all of this. It was only by your fool-hardy defense of an illogical term which brought this argument up.
