: "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.
For once, I'd actually agree with you here.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
Okay, since you seem to be allergic to all things GURPS, even when not contradicted by ingame evidence, ingame evidence for the sentience of Myrmidons:
1: They still remember their names, unlike practically all other undead.
2: They use formations, and not just simple formations like lines as used by Soulless, or blocks that quickly become disorganised, as used by Thrall. We see Myrmidons use: Loose line (Pools of Iron), Rabble (probably better thought of as "Skirmish" in this case) (Shadow of the Mountain, and Forest Heart too I think.), and even an attempt at encirclement in The Last Battle. All this suggests a high level of discipline that you wouldn't expect in unthinking undead.
3: They go after weaker targets by preference if these targets aren't too far away, suggesting a certain level of intelligence.
4: We even see Myrmidons being used individually in Shadow of the Mountain, accompanying the Deciever's charmed Light units. For the Dwarves, this can hardly be to protect them against melee attack (any melee units that get near get blown to tiny bits!), so I suspect they are primarily there as sergeants, to direct the actions of the charmed troops, which would suggest that the Deciever placed a good deal of store in their tactical ability, also suggested by their "Tactics" skill in GURPS... oops! :D
