: Once again, look at "The Stair of Grief." It is
: spelled out very clearly that it was the Light that
: vanquished the D, not the Watcher. GURPS is unclear.
: This pre-game text is not. Clearly, the Watcher
: weakened the D. Also possible is that Balor's death
: further weakened him.
For the love of God...
The Watcher attacked the Deceiver by surprise and severly weakened him and his army. Add to that the eruption of tharsis and we see the D's army shattered and wasnering around in pieces. The Deceiver is fleeing deeper into the Clioudspine from the Watcher when he and some troops are discovered by some legion soliders. The Legion kills of the D's soldiers and the D plunges into the river. It was not ice at the time, it was a raging river. He was swept by the current, but remember his sceptar was in the Dramus, not him.
"The Deceiver disappeared after the Watcher decimated his army at Seven Gates." -Deceiver Description, Glossary, Myth II Manual
I'll touch on this much more later.
: I said almost the exact same thing to Dan, but
: Soulblighter is immune to sword blows in Myth II, not
: at the Great Devoid. There is no evidence he learned
: this immunity in the 60 years between wars. My opinion
: is that he re-learned it in his recuperation. Or,
: perhaps Soulblighter just became a weaker fighter, or
: even easier to kill, or...whatever. We can think up a
: million weaknesses Soulblighter may have been struck
: with after the head went down the Great Devoid, not
: all of them magic-related. We just didn't get to see
: them because Soulblighter fled (which in and of itself
: suggests he had something to fear, perhaps because of
: his own weakness).
Um... get GURPS.
"First among Balor's lieutenants, at the time Soulblighter was the only Fallen Lord who wasn't an archmage -- simply a magically augmented warrior of epic potential." - GURPS
"After Balor's death, Soulblighter fled into the Untamed Lands and mastered magical skills awesome enough to shatter the Cloudspine. Most certainly by his return he qualified as an archmage of first rank..." - GURPS
And, Soulblighter fled because if he stayed he would have been blown up on the Great Devoid explosion. Please, no more about SB, he had little magical abilites prior to Balor's death. At the Devoid, he should no sign of change.
: So, under what circumstances DID the armies of the dark
: collapse??? It's mentioned as having happened very
: suddenly after Balor's death.
Where?
How else were they
: destroyed? The legion itself barely existed after the
: Great Devoid, and half a million undead remained at
: Rhi'Anon.
And just a reminder, I'm arguing that fact that the Fallen Lords don't die off or get terribly weakened when Balor dies, not the foot-soldiers.
: The journal-writer says that Alric was so exahusted, it
: was suspected he was delirious. Very possible that he
: did dream something up.
No. It says :
"It wasn't until they turned to escape, leading the barely conscious and unresponsive Alric, that the rescue became a thing of legend." - Out of the Barrier
No mentions of deliriousness oe exhaustion for that matter.
: Fine, then, if he wants to rule the Light, answer the
: question that I asked: why go behind Alric's back??
He doesn't want to *RULE* the Light, he wants to see the Cath Bruig Empire rise. Why are you so bent on the idea that everyone wants to rule something? I believe the Deceiver is in favor of the Empire and its restoration.
: And I'll say again, it was the Light that stuffed him in
: the ice. There were many days between the Watcher's
: demise and the Deceiver's fall...count the days
: between the mission "The Watcher" and
: "The Great Devoid," and keep in mind that,
: since the narrator doesn't document the Deceiver's
: fall, he still hasn't fallen in the ice by the time
: Balor is destroyed. That points to much time between
: the Watcher's destruction and the defeat of the
: Deceiver.
Now you are speculating.
First of all, no one stuffed anyone in any ice. It says that the Deceiver plunged into the river. Tharsis erupted, there was no ice. Plus, the river was raging with all the melted snow, the D could have been swept away for miles upon miles.
And what are you talking about? The Deceiver's fall did not come after the Great Devoid. It came after the Watcher beat him and some Legion troops forced him into the river. How do you know the D didn't fall into the ice before Balor died? You are making assumptions based on the journal *not* saying anything.
: What evidence do you have that the Deceiver fell in
: december??? The battle between The watcher and
: Deceiver happened at Seven Gates...yet the Deveiver
: makes it ALL THE WAY to the Stair of Grief, which is
: where he falls in the ice!! Again, this points to much
: time, perhaps weeks, between the two events.
Again, the Deceiver never fell into the ice.
"Today the Dramus River is frozen solid, but back then it was a muddy torrent of melted snow and ice brought on by the eruption of Tharsis. The Deceiver was plunged into the river and swept far downstream, his scepter sinking to the bottom." - The Stair of Grief
Now let's be reasonable, shall we. The Deceiver is severly injured and flees north with some troops, towards the Stair of Grief and closer to his allies, the Warlocks. Do you really think it would take him 8 months to get up there? It took the Legion from June 15th to July 20th to move from the edge of the Dire Marsh to Balor's fortress, which is a larger distance. That's a little over a month, and that is also with the Watcher standing in their way. The Deceiver was *fleeing* north, so he could move much more quickly. Plus, the entry says that the river was still a "muddy torrent of melted snow and ice brought on by the eruption of Tharsis". This implies that the volcano just erupted rather recently when the Legion troops forces the Deceiver into the river.
Also :
"He (the Watcher) then pursued Alric's ragtag forces with zeal even though he might have been tempted to seek out Myrdred's corpse..." - GURPS
So it was known while the Watcher was crossing the Cloudspine into the Barrier that the Deceiver was a dead-man but his body had not surfaced.
: How could he expect this if he knew that the Light was
: seeking to expunge the land of the Dark, and would
: succeed in doing so if Balor fell? Certainly, he could
: not expect to magically end up allied with the Light,
: which you are arguing is where his sympathies lie.
I don't remember what I originally said from which you are responding but my response now is probably something I'd end up repeating from before.
: Look, I'll use what you said: "Balor didn't
: anticipate" the tactic that Alric used in the
: last battle. It's just another case of him doing a
: stupid thing. Why can Balor only do stupid things when
: they involve thousand-year old battle standards, but
: not modern military tactics? Can't you accept that all
: those guys in "The five champions" and
: "Out of the Barrier" really ARE trying to
: kill Alric, as the post-game art after you lose would
: imply?
Because the standard played on his emotions and his previous self. Nothing else has come close to that. There was nothing in Out of the Barrier and The Five Champions that would cause Balor to screw up. Let's not forget that the Legion was screwed before the eruption. The eruption, along with the Watcher's attack on the Deceiver opened up the passes for the Legion. They would have never gotten through if it were anything else. Balor had a great plan but the Watcher broke rank for a moment and attacked his own "ally". Add the volcano and great military planning goes to waste. I'm never heard of a bogus plan created by Balor. He's succeed everytime. The Head caused their first defeat. My poijnt is, he's not open to military blunders, especially not one that allows five men to rescue the most important man in the Province right out of his grasps.
If all those guys are trying to kill Alric in those two levels, with the five heroes, why is the Dark coming after the five champions and practically no one is around Alric?
Chris
