I really, truly, wasn't getting anal again. It's just that if you had been able to show a flavor text or something that said that Myrdred DID NOT work with Connacht I would have been out on my ear. The main character of my scenario is supposed to be one of Connacht's best buds who fought the Leveller with the Wolf, then, when Connacht needed to solidify his claim to Empire, joined the Heron Guard to create a better relationship there. Two of my levels (out of five! that's forty per cent of my entire scenario!) are based on the idea that this guy (the HG) and Myrdred used to fight krids back to back and what became of that friendship after Connacht's victory. If Myrdred wasn't hanging out in Muirthemne at the time there would have been no way for my HG superstar and everybody's favorite krazy avatara to have developed a strong relationship, and all the pathos of the levels would have just disappeared.
As long as Myrdred was around Connacht during the war against the krids, I'm fine. If you could have shown he was spending all his time in Madrigal back then, I would have been wrecked. So your chronology (masterful and exhaustive, concise and unassailable, as always) works just fine for my purposes. What Myrdred did before he met Connacht don't amount to a hill of beans, as far as my scenario is concerned.
Okay, on now to the quibbling details:
The guy with Connacht and Damas in that picture could by Myrdred, and I'll stick by that one. Here are my points, in no particular order:
The only avatara we ever see not wearing a pointy hat is Rabican. Why? Because we only ever see Rabican when he's fighting Shiver. I would not march into that fight wearing nothing but a pointy hat, either. I would put on all the kevlar body armor I could find, or, failing that, plate mail. I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that if you were to look in Rabican's closet you would find a whole bunch of pointy-hat robes hung up quite carefully and neatly on padded hangers. As far as I can tell it is the official avatara costume, maybe like the shirts and aprons they give you when you get a job at Kinko's.
So why doesn't the D have a pointy hat? Ah. Well. Excuse me for a moment. Oh, you've locked the door? Well, I wasn't going anywhere, really... urm... okay, how about this? If the avatara are Madrigal kind of guys and the D left them to go live in Muirthemne (I know, I've never proved this, but bear with me) he would be breaking his contract and declaring himself no longer officially associated with the Avatara. Therefore he would have gotten rid of the pointy hat and robe--much as Alric did when he stopped being an avatara and became a king. Maybe it's like when you quit a job at Kinko's and you have to give the shirts and apron back. More likely, Myrdred had never liked the pointy hat (he doesn't seem to be much of a conformist) and tossed it when he stopped needing to look like an Avatara. Or he became a lord of the Cath Bruig and decided he could afford to dress a little better. Or maybe he's just really proud of his long, flowing hair and wanted to show it off.
Anyway, if it isn't Myrdred, it's definitely an avatara of some kind--whether an official Madrigal brand avatara or just some guy Connacht picked up with avatara-like powers. It makes sense; Connacht was a military strategist and the generals he picked would play to his weaknesses, i.e., one field tactitian and martial arts expert to take care of the actual battles (Damas) since Connacht's forte was tricking people, not fighting them directly; and one guy who could take care of all the magic and keep those dispersal dreams away from Connacht while he worked his tain thing. There might have been others but it seems to me those would be the big players. It seems to me that for casting in the role of pet avatara, Myrdred is the best fit--he was alive at the time, there are suggestions that he was involved with Connacht, he would have had the necessary skills (which were pretty rare...) and the other candidates for the job, like the Faceless Man/One, etc, are too vague: we just don't know enough about this fellow to make him a viable alternative.
I won't even try for a Latin postscript. The best I ever came up with was my personal motto, "Ex nihilo omnia fit," which I'm sure is atrocious grammar and probably spelling.
BTW, how's your GF? If you'd rather not talk about it, that's cool, but I know we were all thinking good thoughts for you.
