: I meant in TFL. And when you have only 2000 or so
: soldiers going against half a million you'd do
: anything you can to get more troops.
On the contrary, when you have 2000 soldiers going against half a million, getting troops is pointless. Are 3,000, or 10,000, or 50,000 going to do much better against half a million? Plus pretty much all the surviving Trow?
Alric's entire plan focused on getting a small force into the fortress--a force small enough that Balor would confront them directly. A hundred lucky soldiers went with Alric; everyone else was fodder. They'd still be fodder if there were a hundred times as many soldiers. Is Alric going to gamble on Gower's having a million-strong army just waiting for him? If he wanted more troops, he'd be better off heading back West and recruiting Province survivors, rather than spending months crossing the Dark-controlled Barrier where he'd already been captured once.
: Now I'm not saying that Gower is abandoned pernamantely,
: I'm saying that people, during Balors 50 year reign,
: were either partly killed off and left or just plain
: left.
: There was nothing to hold them to Gower. Gower is a
: barren waste it says so in the Manual: GOWER
: A human territory nestled within harsh lands. The
: clansmen of Gower brave the humid summers and the
: freezing winters. It is an inhospitable environment.
: The only reason they stayed there was because no one elso
: wanted it and there was no where else to run and
: during the Wind age it was just as good as anywhere
: else. The Trow had no interest, the Myrks just wanted
: food, and the Ghols little threat with no leader. For
: all we know maybe Gower was abandoned for lusher
: terrotories during the Wolf Age.
There is such a thing as love of one's homeland. :-) I'm sure many of us wouldn't want to live in the Twelve Duns either.
If Gower was just as good as anywhere else in the Wind Age, it'd be just as good as anywhere else in the Wolf Age. All those Dark threats are gone or vastly reduced, and now the population in more hospitable regions is climbing and making immigration more difficult. And without the threat of the Myrks, there's less reason to move to the large human cities, which are particularly good at defending against them. If the Gowermen didn't run to the protection of Muirthemne or the Western cities when they were being eaten by Myrks, why would they afterwards?
: But when one of the most powerful Mages comes along
: crushes the capital sity in a single blow, sterilises
: the lush and fertile Downs, I think its a good reason
: to get out of there to the much safer Province.
You mean, across the hideous wasteland he just created and toward where his army just went? :-) When a powerful mage with an army of undead has devastated the Cath Bruig Empire and now heads west...well, I wouldn't be thinking that the Province was exactly safe at that point. And if I was looking for safety, I wouldn't be following Balor west. :-) Better to stay in the backwater areas that don't currently have his attention.
: Also Balor wasn't some warlord , he was the Leveller, he
: saught death and destruction: "Balor before him,
: seeks not to conquer but to destroy; to be master of
: the unthinking dead and their blasted lands."
We've known for quite some time that the narrator was wrong here, though. Balor nuked the Cath Bruig. Why didn't he touch the Province or the Twelve Duns or anywhere else with his own magic? Soulblighter tried to shatter the Cloudspine; Balor could certainly have done so with the Fallen Lords backing him. Why didn't he? Perhaps because Balor's real motive was conquest or population control; in any event, he clearly wasn't as committed to total destruction as the narrator thought. Soulblighter was, but that to my mind is another illustration as to why he wasn't the Leveller.
: To destroy, 50 years he would have spent DESTROYING every
: thing East of the Cloudspine. What do you think he
: spent 33 years in the East, not building an Army, he
: already had a fairly BIG one. 33 years is the sort of
: time you'd spend looking in every cave in Gower.
We know what he did for 33 years. He crushed the remaining inhabitants of the Cath Bruig empire (we know from the Myth II manual that they were "scattered" but not instantly wiped out by his nuke spell). He fought the armies of the West, and Avatara such as Maeldun, and tried to break through the Cloudspine passes. He liberated the Trow. He probably destroyed non-Bruig human settlements like those around Forest Heart. And yes, he enlarged his army with the dead he created. It's not like he was racking his brain for something evil to do all that time.
: Also stratigically Gower is more vital than you think,
: Gower is the only southern pass to the East. The the
: Gjol blocks the North, and the Ghol hills slow if not
: block from the South. And its not a good idea to have
: Guerilla warriors ambushing armies coing from
: Nemcrancers temples in the Untamed Lands. We know
: Soulblighter went to the East, I doubt he went alone.
Perhaps, but surely he didn't go with a large retinue. Soulblighter can outdistance almost any of his minions, and he was operating under the Light radar at the time. An army would have gotten him killed before he could make his preparations.
As for Gower being a pass to the East--the Gjol's easy to cross, as we saw, and Ghol-haunted hills are only a barrier if you're Light. And why would the Light want to go to the East anyway? It's all Dark over there. And any sizable Dark army coming through isn't going to care whether a few Gowermen are sniping at them or not, although I'm sure they'll pick the humans off if they have the opportunity. More Thrall probably get killed by walking off cliffs and things.
--SiliconDream
