: For Shiver,the watcher, and soulbligter all their deaths
: were so ..Explosive! grounds shaking magic bombs of
: energy raining down on victims ... etc , etc But with
: the deceiver a simple small splat... almost nothing in
: fact.
This is probably relative to the amount of raw power each possessed. Shiver was a battle mage-she possessed extroadinarily powerfuly spells designed to physically damage targets. Soulblighter was possibly the greatest accumulation of power ever inside of a mortal man (discounting heroes and levellers). The Watcher? I don't remember his death as being explosive, i thought he just crumbled (the stone)...and we dont know much about him...
Then think of Balor, the leveller-he had so much raw power contained inside of him, that the destruction caused by his deathh ranged for miles.
I think that the deceiver is a different case. While a powerful man, surely, his art was gained through knowledge and mastery. I believe that Soulblighters visit to the east was an attempt to vastly increase the amount of magical energy at his disposal-not to fully master it. The deceiver's power centered on manipulating things around him. I also find it likely that his magics are fueled by different means than the vast raw magic i think to be inside of the other sorcerers....this is probably why he does not explode.
Also, keep in mind that all we can see is one plane of exisitence. The deceiver is possibly tied in with other planes than the physical one (explaining why his magics are not centered on physical attacks, i.e. a fireball or whisper dream). The wide ranging effects of his destruction may be much more evident on these other planes.
Another explanation is, of course, that the deceiver did not really die : )
Does this help at all?
