: Balor *was* perfect though, don't you see? He hadn't had
: a recorded loss. His only loss came with Shiver, but
: that was the Head's fault.
: All of the losses for the Dark came, not at his blunder,
: but at an outside source interferring with the war. I
: wouldn't call that incompetence. He was flawless until
: the end.
OK, first, just because the Narrator, in one, short year, fails to mention a spectacular failure by Balor, does not mean that Balor's perfect (that still leaves about thirteen years during which he certainly made some mistakes).
Second, you completely missed an argument I've made elsewhere in this string about twice over. Try playing "The Last Battle" on Light vs. Dark. You will find that any fool can kick the bejeesus out of the other guy is he gets control of the dark. All he has to do is start zapping away with Balor, or group together all the fetch and myrmidons at one time and attack, or something else like that. Are you suggesting that a lowly Myth player can easily defeat the Alric and the Light, as compared to the "perfect military strategist" you hypothesize Balor is? This is a classic case of Bungie making it possible to win, even if the realism isn't stunning--much like "The Five Champions" and "Out of the Barrier."
: Ugh. I'm not going to bother addressing this because I've
: said it so many times already.
You are, here, responding to this, which I wrote:
"As a matter of fact, the only way to explain the D's
failure to be in a rage at the Light for vanquishing
him, upon being rescued, is that he understood it
wasn't their "fault"--they were enemies when
the D clashed with the Light for the final time in the
Great War, not friends. He's grateful that the Light
changed its mind and decided help him--as opposed to
being angry at a former ally that failed almost
destroyed and then failed to help him."
Saying "ugh" just doesn't answer me. I really, honestly, don't know what your answer is. Plus, you fail to address the six points I brought up!!! You don't get to pick and choose what you answer!!! Here they are:
1.Alric told his friends of the Light that it was the Balor who he got this info from, not the Deceiver.
2.60 years later, once Soulblighter returned, Alric would realize that the Deceiver had lied to him about Balor being the source of SB's power, and be rather peeved at the D.
3.If they had made this pact to destroy the Fallen Lords, the Deceiver wouldn't have fought with the Light over the Watcher's arm--or, alternatively, the Deceiver would have warned Alric to stay away from the arm, because he would take care of the Watcher himself.
4.Alric wouldn't have allowed his troops to vanquish the Deceiver, plunging him in the river, whenever that was.
5.Alric would have rescued the D, his former, secret ally, some time in the 60-year interval between wars, rather than letting him hang on the edge of death, both to rescue the D from a risky situation, and to have him around in case another evil surfaced.
6.The D would be quite peeved at his former, secret ally (Alric) for allowing his troops to stuff him in the river for 60 years, then failing to rescue him for so long.
So, are you still pushing the argument that some deal was made between the D and Alric? If so, answer my arguments.
: It never says "binding".
I assume you mean GURPS never says "binding," but it definitely says in the Myth Manual that Balor "suborned" the other Fallen Lords to him--elsewhere it says he "bound" them to himself. This is completely unlike the relationship between Alric and his fellows; the "similarity" between the Nine and the Fallen Lords only goes so far.
Anyway, then we get to debating over whether there's any evidence of power loss by the Fallen Lords after Balor's defeat. I won't keep on pushing the stuff I put out in this text string--it's all inconclusive at best. All I'm saying is that it's possible--but I get to that in the other text string.
: But, we do. How did Alric come across the knowledge of
: using the Watcher's arm against him?
I've said this before, but there's no reason that this is unique to the Watcher. It only comes up because he's the only guy who left a body part lying around. The use of body parts to create a weakness in the person who owned those parts is a common theme in magic. Heck, it's how you make voodoo dolls. My guess is that the idea that someone's arm could be used against the owner is common knowledge to all magic-users.
:The location of the Eblis stone?
No reason AT ALL to connect this to the Deceiver. Certainly some of the Journeymen are at least a thousand years old, and might know where it ended up. Or the Cath Bruig might have had that stone in while, and had been keeping it in storage. Or some of Alric's henchmen might have been ferreting out the stone's location since the beginning of the war, and found it shortly before Alric's trek to Rhi'Anon began. Once again, NO REASON this has ANYTHING to do with the Deceiver.
:His easy rescue? (whatever you
: counter with, it makes no difference. No man,
: especially the Leveller, would leave the most powerful
: of his enemies out in the open with practically no
: guard whatsoever. The Leveller seeks to destroy and
: should have the least killed Alric or protected him
: much better.) There are a lot of unanswered questions,
: and if you can provide some answers then I'll be happy
: to give up the theory.
Well, I already mentioned that he's not perfect. As for not killing Alric, clearly Balor isn't mindless, i.e., he doesn't kill blindly. He sees some use in interrogating Alric as a means to destroying things more effectively. Problem is, we don't know the questions he was asking, which would probably answer why he's kept Alric alive. They must be pretty important questions. My guess is, they were so important, Alric wouldn't answer, and so important that Balor was content to sit and wait and torture Alric till he 'fessed up.
