: Depends on the time period, really. As I see it, it's
: more likely that the Deceiver got iced only a short
: while after his defeat by the Watcher, fleeing North,
: but being cornered by the Berserks and Fir'bolg
: stationed to guard the Stair of Grief. That the
: Deceiver would retreat later seems highly unlikely: by
: all accounts, the Dark was winning the battle in the
: West at the time of Balor's death- and if they had
: enough military might to take Madrigal, Tandem should
: have fallen relatively easily. My guess is that the
: Dark forces in the West were without any of the major
: Fallen Lords to accompany them (Soulblighter and the
: Watcher having been sent West to stop the Legion,
: Shiver being dead and the Deceiver, even if still
: active, left with no army worthy of the name. And
: without an accompanying Fallen Lord, these Dark forces
: would have been far more vulnerable to the psionic
: shockwave of Balor's death.
: As for the Legion, it was probably completely wiped out.
: But bear in mind that the Legion wasn't the only army
: of the Light- but it was the best trained, best
: equipped, best led, most experienced and most stubborn
: of the forces of the Light.
What in godsname makes you think the Legion was the "best trained, best equipped" of the forces of Light? For a long while, the Legion was led by someone other than Alric, and everything the narrator says indicates it was poorly equipped and lacked wanted for everything. Moreoever, the "Legion" was only a pseudonym, not the actual name of that large unit of soldiers; each Avatara led his own legion, I'm sure, and the soldiers ended up calling it the "Legion" in just the same way Roman legionnaires did, even though there were dozens of other legions in the empire. Alric only took control of the Legion we followed in the story because he was rescued by it and brought back.
But I'm sure it was the most stubborn, yes, like its Black Company antecedents.
: The Legion was, as it
: were, the hard backbone that kept the Light in
: battle-worthy condition. Yes, there were Province
: militias and the personal armies of nobles, but GURPS
: Myth makes it fairly clear that these were of fairly
: poor quality compared to the battle-hardened
: Legionairres, probably only armoured in leather
: (chainmail is /very/ expensive and time-consuming to
: produce and "armed with axes as often as
: swords".
Gene Seabolt proves countless times in GURPS that he doesn't know a thing about Myth, and very, very clearly -- for the needs of creating a viable and entertaining RPG -- improvises and fills in gaps where information is unavailable or relatively unattested. Take good ideas from that little book as they come, but trust not a one.
: Except that Chess is not exactly a perfect representation
: of reality. Or, the more-or-less quote Phyrrus,
: "Another such victory, and we shall be
: undone."
Hehe, nice quote.
Still, Chess isn't so bad; I actually find HGK unusually eloquent on that point. Myth isn't a perfect representation of reality either, for the same reasons as the ancient boardgame.
