: I'm pretty sure the avatara are just normal humans with
: powerful magic--nothing inherently special about them.
: Nor do I think it's a political role, though obviously
: they rise pretty quickly in the political arena--I
: would, too, if I could walk into a presidential debate
: with three dispersal dreams. And I don't think there's
: anything especially "light" about the
: avatara, nor any link with Wyrd.
: So why do I think this? The shades.
: The shades were definitely not light when they were alive
: (well, maybe some were, but they changed, man)--they
: were tyrants and butchers--one was even fragged by his
: own troops. How were they rewarded for this behavior?
: With immortality. Okay, so it's not a particularly
: pleasant immortality, but then other than the kind the
: Heron Guard have, what is? Soulblighter cut off his
: own face for it, Myrdred seems to spend a lot of time
: on ice, etc. Which brings up the question--do all
: avatara become shades? Hmm... that would suggest
: Connacht was NOT an avatara (Balor still had plenty of
: skin).
: Finally, I don't think "avatara" and
: "avatar" are the same thing at all. Bungie
: used all kinds of words and rarely with their original
: meanings. They wanted to suggest these guys were
: extremely powerful but the different spelling alone is
: enough to convince me a literal translation is
: probably wrong.
: To wit, what I'm suggesting is that the Nine (with the
: possible exception of a Journeyman, seen in the intro
: to Myth:TFL) are avatara, but not all avatara are in
: the Nine. Maybe anyone who finds a new dream is
: automatically called an avatara--which would mean
: Shiver, the Deceiver, etc. all fit into that
: classification (but not SB, or, as far as I can tell,
: Connacht/Balor).
It's a tough call. Everything pre-GURPS pointed to your characterization being correct--that Avatara were what GURPS calls Archmages, and the Nine were what GURPS calls Avatara. The problem, for me, is that I'm not sure whether the pre-GURPS stuff outranks GURPS or not in my hierarchy of evidence validity. On the one hand, GURPS outranks hearsay evidence of the narrator for me; on the other hand, direct narrator observation outranks GURPS. And I'm not really sure whether the manual is to be thought of as the TRU7H or as a collection of opinions of admittedly knowledgeable Myth citizens. I'd lean toward agreeing with you--all the powerful sorcerers are Avatara, pretty much. A few of the Fallen Lords (like Soulblighter) might not be called Avatara, inasmuch as they didn't become sorcerers until Balor took them under his wing.
--SiliconDream
