: I'm in a bad moon tonight so appologies if I'm unduely
: harsh with anybody.
: That's a combination of a couple factors: 1) Is Damas was
: a Heron, he's ALREADY BE IMMORTAL! And the
: "truely exceptional" qualities probably
: don't just refer to them being really nice people, as
: that wouldn't make a lot of sense as far as healing
: goes. It's got to be something inherant to their soul
: or body, and hence if Damas was truely exceptional
: before, he'd still be now, and not have to extend his
: life by killing people and cutting off parts of
: himself.
: 2) The new thoughts on "ancient" versus
: "turned from the Light". If Bahl'al is
: "ancient" and he's REALLY old, then so
: should Damas and the Voiceless One be. Also, if you
: notice I insinuate that Damas has already begun to
: utilize... "alternative medicines", if you
: will, to stay alive so long. Hinting that he's already
: basically turning evil, even if he's still aligned to
: the good guys now.
: It's to align prerelease, GURPS, Myth II canon, and Myth
: III all together. GURPS is the thing that made it the
: most tricky; if they had just listed The Voiceless One
: as another name for Shiver instead of an unheardof
: Fallen Lord whose true name happens to ALSO be Ravana,
: and maybe listed Culwyeh as another unseen Fallen,
: then it'd be simple: Shiver is an Ancient and The
: Voiceless One is yet another name for her, and Culwyeh
: is someone else. But they DID list it that way, and
: there's nothing to explicitly contradict it (we know
: it's not an oversight because GURPS does note that
: Shiver is called Ravanna), and so we have to deal with
: it.
: (Side note: a guess as to how this whole thing turned out
: the way it did. Consider if The Voiceless One was the
: original prerelease name for Shiver, Bungie gave
: Seabolt any old stuff they had written about her,
: including her true name Ravanna, and thus Seabolt went
: and wrote all this up about the Voiceless One. The
: Culwyeh-Shiver connection comes from the fact that
: Shiver's forces are the first ones we ever see with
: Wights, and our men appear to have no clue what they
: are, thus it could be reasoned that Shiver was the
: first to weild Wights. Then in Myth II, Myrdred calls
: Shiver "Ravanna" and Seabolt has to connect
: these two Fallen Lords somehow, or rather, leave the
: implication that there is a connection and not explain
: it; when in fact there is only one Fallen Lord between
: the two of them. But either way: it's written, it's
: not contradicted, we deal with it just like we do
: Mjarin - it may be made up, but it's somewhere in the
: canon scales and so long as nothing higher contradicts
: it, it's real).
: Anyway... that whole parenthetical aside granted, my
: revised Shiver is that way for several other reasons.
: For one, Shiver is a mage! She should have some sort
: of magical abilities to show for it. In TFL she has
: the Nightmare dream, a sort of psionic mental
: projection, and then in M2 she has all these sound and
: light spells that fit the same general theme. For two,
: she's supposed to be an Ancient, on the order of
: Bahl'al and Damas. So making her an original Myrmidon
: psionic mage with astral projection gives her the
: Voiceless One connection, gives her a cool spell to
: use in Myth 3, and also helps explain the difference
: between her appearance in the three games, and how
: exactly she "lingered in defeat" after being
: killed by Rabican.
: I figure in a revised M3 solo, her Astral Projection
: spell would work like this. She's standing there,
: pretty M3 Ravanna, beautiful 700 year old (or however
: many, too lazy to remember) that she is, with these
: fancy glowing eyes. When she astrally projects though,
: her astral forms projects out from her eyes, and
: retains it's beautiful appearance, though a little...
: distorted (think psycho Galadriel from LotR)... and
: her physical form whithers to show it's true age, more
: like Shiver from TFL. I figure that Shiver would have
: astrally projected down to Muirthemne in M3 instead of
: actually going there herself, too.
: Sometime after M3, Shiver has been causing a little too
: much trouble in her astrally projected form (which I
: insinuated was already happening by the fact that some
: know her only in astral form - already turning evil),
: and so a battle is fought against her and The
: Voiceless One is cast into "eternal sleep"
: (that's from GURPS). Shiver is thus stuck with her
: soul astrally projected frozen in sleep somewhere, and
: both of them are out of comission. her physical body
: whithers and no longer appears beautiful even when the
: soul is there in it, and the soul's form has become
: twisted and evil looking with snakes for hair and
: such.
: Along comes Balor a long while later, frees the Voiceless
: One and gains Shiver along with her, as they are
: really the same person. In TFL then, during the battle
: with Rabican, Shiver is astrally projecting as part of
: the Nightmare Dream, and Rabican basically says
: "By Wyrd, you ugly hag! Just LOOK at
: yourself!" and Shiver's astral form turns it's
: attention back on its physical body (really, why would
: you look at yourself from astral form, unless you like
: to watch yourself having sex or something?). In
: disgust it just sort of... breaks the link, rejects
: it's own body, and so Rabican kills her. But the
: spirit is still lingering there like a ghost.
: Tramist's Mirror, I'd say, is something that basically
: takes ghosts and gives them a physical form (maybe
: this is where Soulblighter's Mahir came from?). So
: Damas in M2 takes Tramist's Mirror, gathers up
: Shiver's disembodied soul and makes it corporeal, in
: all it's freakish medusa-hair beauty. Stuck now in
: permanant psychotic rage, we have Shiver as me met her
: in M2.
: Yeah, I like that twist. It takes a necromancer to raise
: a necromancer :-)
: Myrdred can just make a pretty good point - he was only
: gonna side with Mjarin if he won. It looked like he
: was about to win, so he tried to side with him there,
: but now, clearly Connacht's the winner. Myrdred will
: serve whoever's in power, and the Cath Bruig are
: clearly in power now, and Connacht knows that will be
: so, so he trusts Myrdred to be Myrdred and serve the
: powerful well.
: Ooh... I like this idea. I originally just wanted to
: write out Mazzarin's shade too, but everybody else
: offered up excuses so I figured the hell I'll try to
: keep him. And we'd have to throw out those levels and
: then how does Connacht know the future and all of
: that... but now, consider this. They go down to the
: crypt to find Mazzarin. The Watcher's forces are
: looking for it too. We fend them off, go into the
: crypt, and find Mazzarin's well-preserved body, along
: with all his worldly possessions... including the
: Total Codex. Connacht opens it, it does it's
: random-page thing, and he reads about something, not
: his life neccesarily, but something that clearly
: illustrates the cycles of light and dark, and it
: becomes clear to him what will happen to himself...
okay okay, Damas is not a Heron Gaurd but some other high warrior. how about he uses roots to prolong his life, he'd be a mandrake junkie, and we know that some people aren't as healed as others, eg Herons are healed 100%, whereas most are healed on to about 80%, Trow are healed to 50% and undead die, how about as he becomes evil the roots don't have as great an effect as before and he requires other means to prolong his life. On Damas becoming evil I always liked the irony of someone becoming evil because of their good intentions, for example, after Connacht saved Damas' life he becomes totally loyal to him, even after death, and so he can continue to serve Connacht he takes more and more drastic ways to prolong his life and his youth. Eventually he finds a way to bring back his General, sure he'll be evil, but at least he'll be back, thus he ressurects Connacht 300 years before the spirit of the Leveler takes him.
The Shiver, Ravanna, Voiceless One, Culwyeh thing has a bit of a catch, if you astrally project yourself, your true form remains vunerable, and so it is only really useful in a Mage V mage battle where she'd be certain that her true form would be safe, which since very few mage battles occur without the backdrop of a battlescene would rarely happen, also since her astrally projected form would be pure soul and the body would be soulles, whouldn't the astrally projected Voiceless one be pure good? The whole astral projection just seems a bit impractical for someone who comes from a race of warriors. The Tramist mirror thing, personally I thought that perhaps all people have a choice, they can stay here in the hopes that they can slowly practise affecting the real world, akin to Terry Pratchett's King Verence in Wyrd Sisters, okay there's probably a better example but that's the only one that comes to mind.
The whole Connacht reading the Codex thing is unimportant, except for the I know about the cycle thing, but any self respecting Avatar could tell him that. I think it's be cool in the final Mjarin or Moagim V Connacht showdoen where Connacht calls Moagim/Mjarin evil, and Moagim/Mjarin laughs at him and tells Connacht that one day Connacht will bear the mantle of the Leveller. Maybe instead they find a massive mana stone that gets used in the Sunhammer instead of getting one from the Rod, cos personally I don't see the point of the rod, so what if he get's hit by arrows and just plucks them out, he's undead and the Leveler he laughs at Arrows, and anything bigger he can just teleport away from, though this would take away that fun Level where we destroy the Rod.
-zeph
a=b
a squared=ab
a squared + (a squared - 2ab) = ab+(a squared - 2ab)
2a squared - 2ab = a squared - ab
2(a squared - ab) =1(a squared - ab)
2=1
:P
