: I don't know if their is a moral code to being an
: Avatara, but it would be interesting to look into.
: Personally though I think that "the Nine" are
: the Nine Avatara LEFT, i.e, people like Diarmuid have
: DIED.
: The term Avatara probably means anyone of a group of
: Light archmages, with presumably certain goals (Defeat
: the Leveller perhaps) and such.
: Certainly, you couldn't just join the ranks of the
: Avatara without being something special, esince we
: know not all of the Nine are blade
: masters/Adepts.(Adept= IMO, highest mage rank)
: But unless there is unshakable evidence that ALL Avatara
: must be part of the Nine, and that it is a term for
: the rulers or something, I'm sticking to my guns on
: this.
There's no other source for this except GURPS, but nothing contradicts it, so I personally consider it as cannonical as anything else...
Avatara is not a general term for a Light archmage. The Avatara are a select order of the most elite Light archmages with the specific goal of reuniting the 49 Dreams of Wyrd, and as such they share much (though of course not all) of their knowledge in the pursuit of this goal.
Normally, NOBODY shares it when they learn a Dream. Dreams are just too powerful to trust anybody else with. So if these people are sharing Dreams, they must be a very select, very elite, small circle of only the most physically, intellectually, and emotionally balanced people - the Avatara.
In circumstances like this, it would make perfect sense that you would keep a numerical limit: larger numbers are larger liabilities for leaked information. GURPS says that it's not ALWAYS nine, there have been exceptions, but normally there are only nine Avatara at a time.
So the Nine are the current circle of Avatara. Before, the Avatara might have been The Ten, or even The Thirteen, but I doubt they were ever the Hundred Twenty-Four.
