Don't forget though that the previous leveller's bodies were similarly desecrated - I forget all the details but I seem to recall burning, burying under mountains and dragging bits & pieces to the far corners of mythworld. None of the above stopped the cycle, so there's no reason to suppose the Devoid trick might (nice trick though it was). We all know the Devoid's only 20 feet deep anyway.
A question:-
Soulblighter's intervention - how exactly did it force the cycle, or even have any affect on the cycle whatsoever? If he's trying to turn a scheduled light age into a dark one off his own volition (rather than having the leveller's powers), then it'd be expected that Alric would smack him down and then after another 500 years or so would go evil and become the next leveller as is his apparent destiny.
If Alric is to be the next leveller, then Soulblighter is merely a blip - he was never going to be either hero or leveller so he really changes nothing. The only thing that would really have stuffed things up would have been if Blighty won & killed Alric, but that didn't happen (well it did in the first dozen times I played Twice Born, but that's another story). Perhaps that's why the "powers that set the cycle in motion" were going to punish SB - not because he failed, but because he could have succeeded. As he did fail though, surely the cycle can't be broken. If he'd been alive in 940 years time, what difference would it have made?
On the other hand though it could be that the hero isn't destined to become the leveller. Perhaps the leveller spirit simply chooses whoever's the meanest dude alive at the time (good or evil) and takes him/her over - in which case Soulblighter could have been the next arch-villain. Even so, Alric's still alive & ready to take the mantle in another 500 years or so.
Of course, the summation at the end of Myth II could simply be dismissed as the ill informed ramblings of an ignorant journeyman who's smoked too much mandrake root...
This version of the cycle does have a major bearing on how a sequel would have been written (if only there had been one). The thousand-year view would have had the remnants of good trying to fight a desperate battle to _really_ break the cycle and prevent the scheduled dark millenium. The 500 year view however would have had things coming to a climax at the end of the 1000 years with the light once again defeating the dark - a replay of TFL in effect, and not as interesting.
cheers
Iron
