: Actually, the best thing to do would be to get rid of as
: many of the Fallen Lords as possible, and make all the
: nine survive except Alric. If Alric survived, he could
: come back as the Leveller next time.
Not at this point in the cycle. Balor's supposed to be reborn as the next, unsuccessful Leveller. Alric wouldn't survive and come back as the Leveller until the end of the post-Sword Age--at the moment he's supposed to die, then be reborn at the end of the age, still as a good guy, and triumph over the next Leveller. Keeping him alive is about the most severe jolt you can give the cycle (short of somehow keeping both Alric and Balor alive).
: See above for reason.
See above for counterargument. :)
: If Shiver were the most powerful of the Fallen, she would
: hardly be expendable.
She was only the most powerful *battle sorcerer*. The Watcher was probably better at raising enormous undead armies; The Deceiver was probably better at strategy; Soulblighter may have been even better at combat thanks to his incredible magic-enhanced physical skillz. All the Lords were assets to Balor in their own ways, and Shiver's repertoire of personal combat spells didn't make her an exceptional asset in a continent-spanning war. Anyway, I was judging expendability off the criterion of loyalty. The less loyal a Fallen Lord is to Balor, the less important it is to keep him/her alive. When the Light is clearly doomed by fate anyway, the battle prowess of a Lord is a less important consideration.
: What if the Head was only trying to get Alric killed, and
: the rest of the nine died as a result of the cycle? It
: was supposed to be going into a dark age, so luck was
: not on their side. We are never told how he
: double-crossed them.
Nonetheless, we are told that he did double-cross them. If nothing else, he had two of them killed in the civil war, which I'd imagine wasn't absolutely necessary in order to allow The Head to escape.
--SiliconDream
