: But Balor didn't achieve total victory, as is obvious in
: the Mythworld today. Not only didn't he kill Alric,
: but there were plenty of civilians to kill, too.
My mistake--I should have said "secured" victory. That's what GURPS says. Moagim was killed before the Light forces were exterminated, but not before enough of them were destroyed that a Dark victory was inevitable. The same would have been true with Balor, if he hadn't bound the Fallen to him and thereby established the possibility of a Dark defeat no matter how few the Light forces had been reduced to.
: That's exactly what GURPS makes it sound like happened.
: ANything less wouldn't be total victory, and what was
: left of the light would be able to kill off the
: leaderless dark. Victory must at least involve killing
: the other side's hero.
To kill Balor required a sacrificial force of 2,000 Light troops, plus a few dozen picked men and an Avatara to actually immobilize and destroy him. Killing Moagim must have required even more men, as being captured, drug outside, drawn and quartered, and having the pieces of your body attached to magically-enhanced horses is a fairly time-consuming and lengthy process. They couldn't just pop in, do the deed, and pop out as Alric did--they must have had to dispatch Moagim's entire bodyguard first. So I doubt that a Light force large and powerful enough to destroy Moagim could exist in a time *after* the Dark had achieved total victory.
Yes, victory involves killing the other side's hero, but that's not a sufficient condition. Balor's Fallen Lords seem to have chosen their battle plans more or less independently; by the time Balor was killed, even though some pockets of Light resistance were left, the Fallen Lords could easily have triumphed, leaderless or no. I'd imagine the same was true of Moagim. Note that GURPS says that the would-be Dark tyrants have died "in the process of securing a chaotic Dark reign." Not afterwards.
--SiliconDream
