: I agree that he's pretty loyal, though. He could easily
: have teleported across the continent after killing
: Shiver, set up his own kingdom of mind-controlled
: Ghols or Mauls or humans, and ruled undisturbed for a
: few centuries; instead he apparently chose to live in
: the West and serve Alric. I think his loyalty is
: primarily to civilization itself and only secondarily
: to its practitioners. He'll serve anyone who, like
: Balor, promises political stability (albeit stability
: of a particularly horrible kind); but he has no love
: for those who seek only destruction and chaos, such as
: Shiver and Soulblighter.
Perhaps his reasoning for allying with Balor was not promise of political stability, but instead to force the fall of Balor and the return to the Cath Bruig. From what I can gather, the Deceiver was a supporter of the Empire and must have known Connacht's time would soon end as would the Empire's once the Leveller returned. He may have made it his goal to put a quick end to this period of Darkness and move towards a rebuilding of the Empire he was fond of.
After all, his victories aren't recorded and I don't recall the Deceiver being apart of any major battles in which the Dark won (of course, correct me if I'm wrong). The Battle for Tyr was more of the Watcher's doing, in my opinion, and the Deceiver swooped in to attack the weakened Watcher and his army, nearly killing him. Like it was said before, the Deceiver does things for personal reasons but his one motivation is the hopefully constant presence of Cath Bruig.
If (if, damnit ;) he helped Alric during the Great War and helped Alric in the second war, then you'd have to assume he has no larger desire than to see Muirthemne seat an Emperor in his lifetime (Speaking of which, does anyone know of the life expectancy on the average Fallen Lords?). His reasons for joining up with the Leveller's lot was two things :
1. Possible retribution (i.e. killing the Watcher and whomever else he had a vendetta against)
2. To undermine the Dark
Chris
