: Keep in mind that like any military force, they operate
: in groups. Of course not all of the Heron Guard left
: to defend Bagrada, they would never leave their
: Emporer totally defenseless. So instead they had to
: send a large enough force to deal with the problem,
: thus weakening the strength of their defense.
: It would work the same in past ages as well. Certain
: teams of Herons would be sent to keep peace in the
: Empire. This would mean that if Muirthemne ever fell,
: then not all the Herons would be present for such an
: event. Even if this fraction of surviving members was
: scatterred across the land and hunted down, still a
: few would be able to survive.
But the group of Guards at Bagrada felt horrible about that. They felt they were disgraced and put on big fur coats and went around smoking roots for a century or two. Why wouldn't they do that *every* time they outlived their emperor by being somewhere else at the time?
: And even if all of them were killed, then I'm sure that
: there was a strong enough following so that the order
: could be rebuilt. The only way to truly destroy the
: Heron Guard would be to destroy the fundamentals and
: magic that the order upholds.
Well, we know from GURPS (and a little from the epilogue) that some of the Guards have survived practically every Dark assault back to the beginning of the Empire.
--SiliconDream
