: An interesting idea but one we'll never be able to prove
: or disprove (like most of what I wrote). Since every
: Jman and Heron Guard in the game gets healed every
: time their health drops below half (well, the way I
: play them, anyway) it could go either way, as far as I
: can tell. Just on a common sense level, though, I feel
: it would take more than one application--it seems a
: little easy to have one basic ritual that makes you
: live FOREVER. You've got more actual evidence than I
: do, however, so as usual I concede. Oh, and a little
: factoid I've picked up from my roaming through the
: world of science: even if you never aged or got sick,
: the average lifespan would still only be roughly a
: thousand years. After that the statistical chance of
: you getting hit by a bus (or kicked by a trow,
: whatever) are astronomically high (well, okay, it
: doesn't happen on your thousandth birthday, it's the
: chance of having a fatal accident sometime in that
: millenium). Also, the human brain, in terms of storage
: space rendered in number of bits, can only hold
: something like ten to the thirteenth k, which is huge,
: but would only allow for about a thousand years worth
: of memories. Nobody knows what happens then but it's
: likely some really unpleasant form of Alzheimer's as
: your brain stops storing new information. Interesting
: synchronicity, no? A thousand years as human max, a
: thousand years between comets... hmm. Okay, so there's
: nothing there, I just wanted to show off my
: brilliance. ;)
You've demonstrated quite enough brilliance for this week, Wellington. Leave some for the rest of us. :)
Actually, I imagined that early in the history of the Order they *didn't* get healed every few minutes. It wasn't until they had a plentiful supply of the roots (which meant that the Cath Bruig had to expand to a certain minimum size) that they used the roots even to heal themselves. Before that the roots were saved for the much more important purpose of immortality. I'm just basing this off the fact that the healing technique *in general* is said to have its roots in the initiation rite, which would suggest that the anti-agathic use predated the healing use. So I think the Herons spent the first few centuries or so having taken only one root, when they were initiated--which means only one root was necessary. How's that for baseless speculation?
I'd guess that Heron Guards, with their mad combat skillz and all, might be more likely to survive a thousand years than other folks--sure, they're on the front lines in every Great War (although some of them, as the Emperor's personal guard, might remain in relative safety with him), but in peacetime they're a lot less likely to be offed by a passing Ghol, or a barrel falling off a cart, or something. No explanation for how they keep storing memories, although my crackpot Mythworld-as-simulation-running-on-Marathon-world-AI general theory would allow them to store information in files "outside" the Myth universe, so the size of their brains wouldn't necessarily limit their memories.
Hey, in relation to this, I've been wondering. How exactly have the ancient Heron Guards survived the wars? I mean, presumably Muirthemne gets the crap kicked out of it every time a Leveller comes and initiates a Dark Age. And presumably the Emperor dies. Do the Guards spend a few centuries as Jmen every time? Or does Muirthemne survive the Dark millennium, a beleaguered fortress barely hanging on, with the Emperor safe inside? Or do the surviving Guards
flee with the Emperor to a hidden place of refuge on another continent or something?
I love arguing with people whose temperament leans toward concession. Keep up the good work! :)
: Excellent points, as usual. My argument against: the
: other avatara don't seem to live all that long--Cu
: Roi, Murgen, Maeldun and Rabican all bit it (agreed,
: from unnatural causes) pretty early and show no signs
: of coming back. Those avatara that do live for a while
: become shades, which doesn't seem like real
: immortality to me--they're undead, aren't they?
: (aren't they? This is a point that's been bugging me
: for some time). The fallen lords don't live forever,
: they just keep coming back--imho, "ancient
: evil" means something that was alive once, bugged
: some people, died, and, oh, crap, here it is again. Do
: you know something about warlocks I don't? It wouldn't
: surprise me. As cool as they look I've never really
: bothered to study them closely. As far as I can tell
: the only long-lived people in the game who didn't at
: least "disappear" for a while are Alric and
: the Jmen, with the possible addition of Myrdred,
: Damas, and Connacht (though they all did
: "disappear"), all of whom have very close
: ties to the Cath Bruig Empire. There's no indication
: that Alric was especially healthy BEFORE he hooked up
: with Jmen, either--I'm guessing they had a pretty good
: idea who was going to go to Muirthemne. Maybe they
: even advised him to do so--it was the easiest way for
: them to get their honor back, after all. All of the
: above, of course, is circumstantial, but what about
: this: if any great warrior is that close to
: immortality that all they need is to get within five
: feet of a root, what about the various heroes and
: champions? Any one of them could kick heron guard ass
: all over the map, and I, personally, have healed
: ninety per cent of them. Are they immortal now? Again,
: common sense would suggest no.
Well, the Watcher never actually died and came back, as far as we know. Yes, he seems to have been near the Cath Bruig too, but *everyone* powerful is associated with the Cath Bruig to some extent, it being the center of Light power and all. And Shades are undead, BTW, but healable--I suppose they were able to use their sorcery to modify the healing technique (or their own physiology) so that it would work on them, the same thing Soulblighter figured out between the two wars.
As for the lesser long-lived folks--Mauriac must be over 100 by now, which I admit isn't impossible to achieve unaided, but seems fairly unlikely in a world with medieval levels of medicine. Yeah, he probably got Jman-healed in the war at some point, so that's not much evidence. And I always interpreted the Warlocks' being "ancient allies of the Deceiver" to mean that each Warlock was ancient, and a personal ally of the Deceiver. The way one of the Warlocks speaks on "The Wall" suggests to me that he's known the Deceiver personally from the old days. But looking back, I see that it could just as easily be interpreted as the order itself being ancient, not its members. In the end, the only evidence I have is circumstantial, too...if there were lots of people who weren't "naturally" immortal but could be made so with mandrakes, there'd be a *huge* mandrake farming industry, and we don't see one. Plus people would occasionally wonder out loud why assorted people were immortal, instead of just figuring it's natural, because they're heroes.
Oh, and reasons why all the heroes aren't immortal: #1, Heron Guards are said to have "exceptional vitality." And if you look at the GURPS description of their recruiting competition, what they're looking for is vitality and toughness--not strength, or speed, or dexterity, but the ability to absorb a lot of punishment and keep on going. As such, most heroes and champions may not rise to the Heron Guard level of vitality (in the general sense, not the green bar sense), even if their other abilities make them much more proficient warriors.
#2, maybe a lot of them *are* immortal but die anyway. Earlier, you gave assorted reasons why even an immortal would not be likely to survive more than a thousand years, and I would think that would be doubly true for champions. Where as Jmen spend their time in relative safety as doctors and advisors and whatnot in peacetime, champions (at least in most legends) have a habit of going off in the wilderness, finding the biggest, nastiest monster they can and trying to cut its head off with a spoon. Turgeis with Burning Steel probably runs head first into rocks over and over again when he doesn't have anyone to kill. And being immortal might make a champion less concerned with personal safety. So I'd suggest that most of the heroes with enough vitality to become immortal--which means Zerks, pretty much--expire sometime in the next few decades during one of their myriad feats of valour and stupidity.
: Except... I hate to do it, but I'm pretty clear on this
: one--in Myth II you find mandrake plants in the Ermine
: and in Forest Heart. They clearly belong in the
: old-growth forest ecosystem. Now, the Ermine was
: worked over pretty hard by Balor before the great war,
: I'm guessing (which lead to the Fir'Bolg signing up
: with the Nine--correct me here, please, if I'm wrong,
: but I'm imagining that everybody's favorite
: sore-throated archers* needed some provocation to give
: up their enmity with the men of the West), and the
: part of Forest Heart where you find the plants was
: most definitely NOT spared the attacks of the
: dark--that's where two of the Nine bit it, where
: Soulblighter first attacked the Legion... hell, it's
: where the Trow and the Forest Giants got it on. In
: fact, it is the SAME EXACT SPOT, since it's where the
: shard of the tain was dropped.
True--although I don't think the Dark ever actually got into the Ermine. I think the fir'Bolg simply got scared when the Dark got too close, and made their truce.
I'd actually hold up the Ermine and Forest Heart as the regions *most* sheltered from Dark attack. Yes, the Trow and the Forest Giants, and assorted Dark and Light warriors went at it in Forest Heart, but they didn't do anything to the land itself except stomping on it a lot. On the other hand, the Gjol, Avernus, and the Tiber all suffered considerable water pollution (okay, I'm just guessing that the Gjol is the Dark's fault); the Strand peninsula's been razed down to the undersoil; the great central plain of the Cath Bruig's been turned into a Blasted Heath™. In terms of ecological damage, it seems to me that the Ermine and Forest Heart did better than almost anywhere else.
: * My favorite bit of weirdness from Myth: TFL: the one
: Fir'Bolg with laryngitis (though sometimes I think
: he's just whispering, why I don't know since his
: buddies are yelling loud enough to wake the thrall):
: "Step aside! "
Well, he's unusually sensitive and doesn't want the whole army to hear him, in case they turn around and yell with one voice, "WHY DON'T *YOU* RUN AROUND *US*, YOU SMURFING FIR"BOLG!? TRY BREAKING THE 5 M.P.H. BARRIER FOR ONCE!!"
BTW, do you have a website for your conversion? I'm all curious about it.
--SiliconDream
