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Re: Musinbgs on Myrdred, Bonesplitter, and Shiver
Posted By: SiliconDream (anton-mates.hip.berkeley.edu)
Date: 7/17/1999 at 10:58 p.m.
In Response To: Re: Musinbgs on Myrdred, Bonesplitter, and Shiver (Forrest)
: [major snip - good but moot points]
Moot?? MOOT??!! Ain't nuttin' moot 'til I say it's moot, foo! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!! You think that's funny? I'll spark your ass, fat boy!! I'm twice the man you'll ever be and three times the woman you'll ever get!! Attica!! Attica!! Attica!!
Ah, that was fun. And now, back to the wonderful world of rational discourse. But before that, a couple of general announcements.
#1: Anyone who hasn't bought the Myth and Myth II soundtracks, go and do it. They're half the price and twice the quality of--well, I can't name any particular pop star because I'm sure someone who likes her or him would read this and engage me in a month-long flame war. So just go get them. And while you're at it, buy some Bungie T-shirts, for chrissakes. You think you're ever gonna get a date looking like you shop at the Goodwill? Honestly, sometimes you act just like your father.
#2: I think a few people might have been a little confused (I know I was) by my version of Myth II as it would have played out had Alric's Eblis Stone been reusable. It was supposed to be:
"Hey, Shiver!" (says Alric)
[Fries her with giant lightning bolt]
"Hey, Soulblighter!"
[Fries him with giant lightning bolt]
The End.
For some reason (bracket problems, I think), every other line was lost when I posted. I know, I know, it wasn't very funny in the first place, but it's a lot better than the "Shiver and Soulblighter do a Green Day video' thing my incomplete post appeared to be describing.
Now, about the Head. Let me first say that I've learned my lesson about reading articles *carefully*; before your last post, I didn't even realize that part of your theory was that the Head started the whole cycle. So obviously, some of my observations need to be scrapped. But I don't think EVERYTHING's moot. Here are my objections, painstakingly and lovingly arranged in paragraphs with topic sentences by this proud graduate of Rhetoric 1A.
If the Head did create the Light/Dark cycle, he'd probably be so powerful as not to need the help of ordinary mortals, even Avatara. Even if he didn't have the power to stop the cosmic cycle once it was started, surely someone who was able essentially to add a new law of nature to the universe should be able to whip a few Fallen Lords every two thousand years with his...um...neck tied behind his...um...neck. Come to that, why would the Head need to take any action at all? He of all people would realize the inevitability of the cycle and that no matter what he or anyone else did, the Dark would fall as unstoppably as it had risen a thousand years ago. Unless the real nature of the cycle is that the Leveller is invincible during the Dark millennium and vulnerable during the Light millennium, but not necessarily defeated then unless the Light actually goes and kills him. Care to add this to your theory? It's pretty consistent with Myth history. The Leveller never just dies from a heart attack or something when the Light millennium rolls around; he has to be murdered by the Light. Hey, wait a minute. I'm not supposed to be championing *your* theory;) Next paragraph, please.
How likely is it that the Light/Dark cycle could be started by accident (if the Head's really a nice guy) and continue on its own for thousands of years? I mean, most accidental phenomena are a) chaotic and b) short-lived (although they may have long-term effects). You drop a glass of water and it breaks and spills in maybe a second, leaving glass shards and water drops scattered about randomly. You drop your ICBM and it blows up--a release of energy that takes a split second and converts everything nearby into a disordered plasma. The glass shards and water drops don't arrange themselves into a picture of Gandhi; the mushroom cloud doesn't morph between a cube and a dodecahedron every six minutes for the next year. I don't mean these examples to be taken too seriously; I'm just trying to point out it's unlikely that a six-thousand-year-old, precisely periodic effect began with a "whoops" and ran on its own for the rest of time.
I don't think the Nine would automatically distrust the Head if they knew it started the cycle. First, the Head has, we know, incredible powers of persuasion. Second, starting the cycle was a morally neutral act. The cycle doesn't favor the Dark or the Light; it just alternates their periods of dominance. So if its creator decides to show himself and ally with the Light, there'd be no reason for the Nine to assume he must secretly be evil. Third, the Nine are nothing if not pragmatic. They are fighting a desperate and losing war and cannot afford to turn away potential allies (especially ones smart enough to write the Total Codex) just because they did some naughty things a few thousand years ago. Look at Alric--he allies himself with the Trow, who oppressed an entire empire's worth of people, and The Deceiver, who was just plain evil for most of his life. He certainly wouldn't reject someone of godlike power and intellect who committed much less evil (if more momentous) acts millennia ago.
Even if the Head did have to mask its identity, it could have been a lot more helpful without blowing its cover story. The dependence of the Fallen on Balor, his hatred for the Myrkridia, and the availability of Myrkridian artifacts in the Tain are just the sort of things you'd expect a friend of Connacht and ancient enemy of Balor to know. I don't even think the Head would have to be that careful; in the Myth world, aeons-old beings with a wealth of arcane knowledge can be found under every rock. I can't think of any one fact which couldn't plausibly be known by the Deceiver, for instance, or an elder of the Forest Giants. If the Head sounds amazingly knowledgeable, the Nine are going to think of a lot of explanations before they think it's the cycle-starter. If you met someone who seemed to know the secret details of all the assassinations of leaders like JFK and MLK for the last century, you might think he was a high-placed government official or a Mafia Don or even a time traveler but you wouldn't immediately think he must be Jesus. Anyway, like I said, I think the Head's cover story of being one of Connacht's Avatara makes plausible its knowing pretty much any useful fact about Balor.
The Head's being the cycle-starter contradicts the general belief in the West. In the epilogue of Myth II, the narrator relates the Heron Guards' beliefs about the cosmic cycle, which are apparently accepted by him and everyone else in the West as the most expert opinions around:
"Soulblighter was not The Leveler. He may have been if
he had survived into the next millennium ñ but, in his
attempt to force the cycle, he perished and almost
certainly will suffer at the hands of those who set it
in motion."
This implies that the cycle was started by a group of beings; that they continue to maintain it and approve of it; and that their power is such that they can retrieve and torture the souls of dead men (i.e. they're probably gods). If the Heron Guards are right, the Head can't be the cycle-starter; if they're wrong, the West's beliefs are so far from the truth that the Head can pretty much volunteer any information it wants without anyone even suspecting it might be the cycle-starter.
Finally, you still have to explain the civil war. The Head had by this time completely lost the trust of the Nine, so it didn't need to keep up appearances, and you and I agree that it didn't have to worry about self-preservation. So why not disappear? Why did it have to hang around and cause a civil war and the deaths of more Avatara, when these didn't help Alric in the slightest? I really don't see how you can view the head as a good guy. Everything points toward him trying to stalemate both sides. As for who started the cycle, I think both my Marathon-PID connection theory and your own (both posted in this forum) provide more satisfying explanations. 'Specially if there was an Avatara in the Beta called Tfear.
Speaking of which, thank you so much for the "Unimplemented Features" article; it was truly enlightening. I've never worked with TFL files but I can tell you that in Myth II, "soulless gas" large and small projectiles are the puffs that come out when soulless are injured. The Myth II (again, I don't know about TFL) soulless can jab with their spears at short range, although probably not when they're computer-controlled, and this is called "soulless javelin stab." The "internal happy star" was probably intended for a confusion effect that never got implemented; the sequence for the stars that orbit a confused unit's head in Myth II is called "happy stars mythII." There's also a "internal happy star" in the Myth II projectiles tags, but it isn't directly responsible for the confusion effect, which is a
*local* projectile group. I think, though, that in certain cases for internal effects, a local projectile group can pull data from an ordinary projectile tag, so the Myth II "internal happy star" probably does have some role in the confusion effect. As for the two unexplained special arrows, an "arrow of forking" probably splits into several arrows during flight to do damage to several different units, and an "incendiary arrow" was probably intended to work just like the flaming arrow in Myth II, until they realized they weren't going to be able to put the fire effect into TFL. Bungie people have said more than once that Myth II is pretty much what they had originally hoped TFL could be. With respect to the "walking" and "running" sequences, Myth II allows different sequences for a monster when it's "moving" and "running." I'm not sure under circumstances it does one or the other, though. II also allows different sequences for firing straight ahead, up, and down; the engine decides which one to use. Myth II shades don't have multiple animations for their primary attack, but many other creatures do; I'm sure you've noticed the Trow punch two different ways. For some reason, although the Myth II berserk sequence collection contains three different and perfectly usable sword swing animations, the berserks in the game are only programmed to use one of these. BTW, did you know that both dwarves and mortar dwarves have close range attack animations? I've used them in a plugin I made for the Mill; the dwarves can stab with a small knife and the mortar dwarves can swing their mortars like clubs. I have no idea why these aren't used in the game. I guess because, like your article says, they really had to scale down the power level of the dwarves. I dunno why they'd keep the sprites available in Myth II, though. I'm sure you know most of this, but I hope something's new.
One last thing--remember that Thoth has the head of an ibis? I'll be very happy if anyone can come up with a convincing argument that the Ibis Crown is actually a cybernetic interface allowing the wearer to telepathically hack into the AI Thoth's databanks. It makes a little sense, since Alric doesn't get any tougher physically once he wears the crown--the "staggering power" it grants must be in the form of knowledge. I'll prove this theory myself just as soon as I get that IQ boost to 5000 I've been saving up for. Cheers,
--SiliconDream
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