: Is it just 1000 years per cycle, light and dark being
: split up in varying degrees, or 1000 years per cycle,
: 500 dark/500 light? I only ask this, because I forgot
: what our decision was.
Actually, the Myth II epilogue implies that it's 2000 years per cycle, 1000 dark/1000 light. Balor's death marked the end of the Dark Age, and according to the epilogue the Leveler won't come back to start another one for another thousand years. Also, one of the TFL journal entries says that some of the Fallen are over a thousand years old, so I think that the last Dark Age had to be about that long; few Fallen would have survived if they spent hundreds of years under a Light Age. Also also, Connacht was the "first man in a thousand years" to beat the Myrkridia; again, a thousand-year period of Dark dominance. Of course, quite a few people, possibly the majority, believe the cycle to be only a thousand years long, but I certainly don't think the question is settled.
Keep in mind that the Light and Dark ages don't imply total dominance of one or the other; they just mean that whenever they have a battle, one side always wins. So Soulblighter was still able to amass an army and do a lot of damage during the post-Great War Light Age, but it was fated that he'd lose. All the area east of Muirthemne is ravaged and possibly still ruled by Dark forces (like the Mauls), and it's going to take a long time for Alric to reclaim the rest of the world for the Light; all of the Myth world that we've seen, after all, is something like the size of Europe. I'd imagine the same applies to the Dark Ages; at the beginning of the last Dark Age Balor started conquering way off in the East somewhere, and it wasn't until near the end of the age that he destroyed the Cath Bruig and attacked the Province. If you could watch the areas of Light and Dark dominance change on a map with the progression of the cycle, it would probably look like the tides: the Dark sweeps west until, at the end of the dark age, the Light holds only a tiny region near the western sea; then the Dark region ebbs eastward and the Light pursues. It's almost as if the comet exerts some sort of moral gravitational field, pulling the good- and evil-controlled regions around the planet as it orbits. Yeah, I know the orbital geometry's all wrong and everything, but hey, that's as poetic as I get, okay? Anyway, the point is a long Dark Age doesn't necessarily mean any Light races go extinct; they just retreat and become very few and concentrate in the West (ever heard of any humans from east of the Cath Bruig?)
: And about the Myrkridia... Are they really a part of the
: dark, or are they neutral, like the Trow? It seems to
: me like the Myrkridia allowed people to live, though
: under extreme fear/oppresion (see myth 1 manual
: intro). And I thought the motto of the dark is
: "seeking not to conquer but to destroy".
I don't think they really "allowed" people to live, unless you count "I'm going to let you live because you're hiding somewhere in a maze of caves several miles away and it's much easier for me to attack my cousin who's standing next to me." The Myrkridia were fierce, but they were basically animals without any real plans for genocide; they just killed whoever they happened to see. I'm sure humans could survive (although in very small numbers) by hiding in holes and under rocks and things; an uncivilized way of life would make them a lot less obvious (no big cities to attack). Also, being predators, the Myrkridia would have to be nomadic and relatively sparsely distributed, so that their food source (people and other large animals) had a chance to regenerate after being massacred. Probably a band of Myrkridia would sweep through an area every few decades or so, killing and eating anyone they noticed, but overlooking enough people so that the population could grow back to its original size before the next attack came. I've often wondered if the apparently instinctive terror inspired by the Myrkridia is actually genetic, evolved during this period of Myrkridian dominance. After all, the Myrkridia may be scary but at first sight they're a lot less scary (at least to me) than the Trow, or the Mahir, or even the Myrmidons. I think maybe the reason the Myrkridia cause such panic in Myth humans is that anyone who didn't panic and run away really really fast got et. I know a thousand years is a short time even for punctuated-equilibrium-style evolution, but the Myrkridia are one hell of an evolutionary stimulus.
You bring up an interesting point about how many of the Dark races are morally non-aligned. Ghols, Mauls and Myrmidons want to conquer and kill quite a few people, but presumably they don't want to end all life on the planet including themselves. It's only incredible stupidity which leads them to ally with the Fallen Lords, who are aiming for "blasted lands" populated only by "the unthinking dead." The Fetch were brought here against their will and are basically under a sentence of death unless a Fallen Lord sends them home, so they have to fight; they may be arrogant, but they're not necessarily evil at all. The only really dedicated Dark entities, in my opinion, are the Fallen Lords and maybe the Mahir and the Myrkridia (although the Myrkridia have no coherent plan to destroy all life, they probably wouldn't object, seeing as they happily kill anything put in front of them).
Phew, this was long, and I'll bet you can refute everything here in two paragraphs or less. Make 'em long ones, please, just to soothe my ego. ;)
--SiliconDream
