If this post sounds kinda incoherent, it's only because I tried to respond twice at work and both times $*%^&ing Internet Explorer crashed after I'd written a page or two. I had to give up and wait until I got home to sweet, sweet Netscape.
: You raise some excellent points and I really didn't mean
: to suggest that you should give up or discard your
: theory--what would become of the Asylum then?
So you're saying this place is only called the Asylum because I post here? Hmmm. I think a certain fellow Inmate's going to be visited by a bar of soap and a sock tonight. **grins evilly**
: How about this: we know that the Fallen are pretty damn
: tough. These guys survive being incinerated and blown
: up and generally turned to muck all the time. Let's
: say, for purposes of argument, that a Fallen Lord's
: head can survive a good five minutes of being
: seperated from its body (hell, some of them went a lot
: longer than that...). This gives the Heron Guard hero
: plenty of time to run in, look up into an aerial
: camera and scream "Nooooo.... Myrdred, we hardly
: knew ye!" and then, realizing he's running out of
: time, heal as much of the Deceiver's body as he can
: find (one root can bring you back from .00001
: vitality, after all)--this probably still wouldn't be
: enough to give you a whole Deceiver, of course, but it
: might be just paramedic action--the heroes could then
: get the patchwork D back to Muirthemne in a LifeFlight
: Baloon and drop him off at Heron Presbyterian
: Hospital. Heck, the Heron Guard have been treating
: battlefield injuries for over two thousand years (how
: long has OUR western medicine been running wound
: clinics? Less than a hundred) so they must know a
: little something about microsurgery. You get five or
: six HG in a room chanting and throwing roots around,
: that's some powerful healin', right there. Voila, one
: whole Deceiver, with a real obligation to the light
: and one massive case of insurance abuse. Good thing
: "Do Not Resuscitate" orders don't seem to
: have caught on with the Myth judicial system.
: Okay, this requires some faith, just like every other
: theory. However, I think it works a little better
: since it requires nothing we don't see in the
: game--there is a Heron Guard Hero on call, the head is
: still intact, we know that heads survive decapitation
: pretty well, etc. I think it works... let me know what
: you think.
Of all the theories I've heard, this one comes closest to making me give up my own. However (you knew I was gonna say that), let me try to explain why I think mine's still a bit more plausible (no, the explanation isn't that I'm stubborn and egotistical, convincing as that may seem), by carefully and objectively analyzing your theory. Okay, I'm just going to dig up anything which could possibly count against it and throw it all at you. But I *could* just say, "Ha! Everything in your post actually supports my theory!" and leave it at that, so count your blessings. :)
To start with, does the game really support the idea that Fallen Lords can be blown apart and then resuscitated? We actually have no *confirmed* cases of anyone being killed and then revived in their same body. GURPS says The Deceiver *probably* received a fatal blow from the Watcher, but it doesn't say whether it was blown-to-bits fatal or slashed-an-artery fatal. Given the possible restrictions GURPS suggests for the Extra Life ability (body relatively intact, head still attached), it was most likely the slashed-an-artery kind, with relatively little damage.
You were probably thinking of Balor and The Head, though. Now, it isn't really clear that Balor survived decapitation. That line about "don't listen to anything his head says" might refer to an earlier plotline, or (more likely) might simply be a joke referring to The Head and its bad advice (as someone here suggested recently--I forget who, but statistically speaking it was probably either Chris or Charon. :) Certainly Balor's head doesn't move or talk or do anything to suggest it's alive, and it looks good and dead in the pre- and post-game pics.
As for The Head, GURPS suggests that it's either a genuine god, or the product of a powerful necromantic spell. Notice that it's necromantic, not healing-based. The Head is either a god or an undead being.
I should point out, too, that The Deceiver was in a lot worse shape after Shiver's death than Balor or The Head. Not only was he decapitated, but all his limbs flew off too. Plus each body part probably took quite a bit of damage--an explosion powerful enough to rip one's head and limbs from one's torso doesn't usually leave said head, limbs and torso unscathed. So I think your theory requires that The Deceiver be better at surviving damage than any other archmage, including the Leveller himself.
On other assumption you must make--you suggest that the Heron Guard heroes should be able to accomplish some pretty amazing feats of healing. But from their combat abilities and flavor texts, it seems to me that they're called heroes because of their fighting skills, not their prowess in medicine. In fact, such dedicated fighters would probably be less practiced in healing than their brethren--there's only so much time in the day, after all, and you can't dedicate your life both to combat and to medicine. Therefore, for this theory to work, I think you have to postulate that, for reasons unknown, these two Herons happen to be capable of medical feats obviously unattainable by any other healer (if healers could restore victims of even "minor" lethal injuries like stab wounds, the Light would do a lot better in its wars.)
Switching sides for a moment, I must say that your theory explains one of the more curious aspects of the Myth game--the fact that, no matter how many of your units die (provided enough survive to win), when you get to the next level you've got a full complement of troops again, even when there's no plot-supported way you could get reinforcements (as in "Relic"-->"The Summoner"). Your theory would imply that the Herons are able to reanimate even those soldiers who were blown apart or turned into Crispy Critters by Fetch, so that they can fight for you on the next level--but the trauma of death damages their memories, so that their combat experience drops to zero. And why do the new guys have different names if they're just the old ones revived, you ask? Well, they forget their names too, and one of the principal forms of entertainment for battle-weary Myth soldiers is the renaming of recently-dead comrades. "Hi, we just brought you back from the dead. Your name was I.P. Freely. What, you don't remember that?"
Back to my side...
There's a few points which actively count against your theory--each minor, but I think they add up.
1. Myrdred and his champions confronted Shiver way the hell out in the wilderness somewhere. It's pretty unlikely that they could have returned his bits to civilization before a few days went by, at which point he'd start smelling pretty bad and probably wouldn't be salvageable. If they were able to get back quickly, you'd expect to see some of the champions fighting Soulblighter alongside Alric, which we don't.
2. Soulblighter was unable to flee on the last two levels because Myrdred was "in possession of part of his being." Now, I don't see that someone who's lying in pieces on an operating table can be said to "possess" something except in an extremely abstract sense ("If my head was still attached to my body was still attached to my arm, I'd be able to take this crow out of my pocket!"). I would think that the "possession" as described here would require the possessor to be alive, conscious, and able to physically or magically hold on to the thing.
3. Check out the postgame pic for "Shiver." Are they rushing frantically about, snatching up Deceiver bits and jamming mandrake roots up every available orifice? Not at all. They're gaily burning Krid corpses. Even Seanchaidh, the Deceiver's faithful Warlock sidekick, isn't looking particularly rushed or perturbed (not that warlocks are famed for their variety of expressions). It looks to me like they've already ceased to worry about Myrdred's fate--which is explained in my theory, since he's already popped out from behind a bush and said, "Surprise! It was a double all along and you were on Candid Camera and I secretly replace Seanchaidh's mana with Folger's Crystals!" and the champions said "that Myrdred, wotta wild & crazy guy" and went about their business.
4. Presbyterianism does not exist in the Mythworld, hence there can be no Heron Presbyterian Hospital. This utterly and completely annihilates your theory.
And there you have it. My reasons for disbelief. I don't expect you to accept them and abandon your theory either, but perhaps we've reached an understanding.
On a completely different note--tell me more about Cu Roi! I've always been interested in weather-control effects and perhaps I can help if anything needs to be fine-tuned.
--SiliconDream
