: 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.
You could always have had Myrdred's favorite Labrador puppy die...never mind. I'll be very interested to see how you use Myrdred, of all people, to evoke pathos. Kind of like using Durandal instead of Ralph Fiennes in the English Patient. But I'm sure you're up to the challenge.
: 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.
Weeellll...according to GURPS Connacht first dealt with the Krids, then the Trow, then the Leveller. So by my chronology Myrdred *wasn't* around during the war against the Krids. But since my chronology is in fact neither masterful (I've never mastered anyone with a chronology in my life, I'll have you know) nor unassailable, it's not a problem for your scenario. :-)
: 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.
Mmm...remember the pregame picture on Gate of Storms? Rabican, Maeldun and Murgen, looking resignedly grim as only an Avatara can? Rabican's wearing his armor there too. Since this is the closest we have to a "group shot" of the Avatara, I think that's his standard costume. GURPS seems to confirm this when it says Rabican "routinely wore great helm and armor." For that matter, Murgen's, Maeldun's and Alric's costumes aren't *that* similar, not as much as you'd expect a standardized uniform to be.
I think it's likely that the robe/pointy hat thing is simply a traditional form of dress for archmages or sorcerers in general--look at Merlin, undoubtedly the most famous magician in the principal Earth culture from which the Mythworld is developed--and since the members of the Avatara are archmages, most of them wear some version of this costume.
: 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.
But if the robe/pointy hat is the formal wear, why wouldn't he wear something more casual/functional when he went with Connacht to fight the Trow? I mean, that situation calls as much for armor as does a fight with Shiver. Or do only a few Avatara, like Rabican, have separate work clothes and dress clothes? (I'm not being snide; it's a definite possibility.)
Also, pretty much every source of info we have on the Deceiver's past (okay, so that's a grand total of two) says he was an Avatara who fell in with Balor. The narrator and GURPS both say this. Granted, a thousand years is plenty of time for facts to get lost, but how likely is it that they would both forget to mention over 3 decades of Myrdred's life in which he served the greatest hero in the world, and helped him in all his most famous exploits? And wouldn't Soulblighter be a little friendlier toward the Deceiver if Myrdred shared Damas' strong loyalty toward Connacht/Balor, the man himself? I suppose Damas might be jealous of Myrdred as a potential usurper of his position as Connacht's right-hand man. Somehow I suspect this might come up in your scenario...
Concerning Alric--he never really stopped being an Avatara. In fact, he's THE Avatara, these days. He's just a king as well. Changing your costume when you become a king is a bit more understandable, since there's big masses of tradition you're supposed to uphold. Also, Alric's new armor is enchanted, so he had a practical reason to change his outfit.
: 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.
On the contrary, knowing nothing about the Faceless Man makes him an even better alternative, because there's no possibility of conflict with already-established facts about him, as there is with Myrdred. And I'm pretty sure there's a reason why the mystery archmage's face was *completely* hidden. There wasn't even a hint of it, as you'd sort of expect there to be if Bungie was trying to get us to guess who was under the hood.
I'm not about to try to prove that that guy was the Faceless Man; I'm content just to say it was someone other than Myrdred. I agree with your assessment of the mystery man's military utility for Connacht, but I think that (and his costume) simply show him to be an archmage, not necessarily an Avatara as such. I think it most likely he was an archmage of the Cath Bruig whom Connacht met while stomping on the Krids.
: 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.
I think you want "fiunt" rather than "fit," but the spelling's fine. Spitto, spittere, hoctui, splattus!
: 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.
She's out now. She's been under a lot of stress lately--thanks to the irresponsibility of the teacher who oversees the literary magazine she works on, she's ended up pretty much in charge of it, which isn't really the sort of workload a clinically depressed person needs--and on Wednesday she made a half-hearted suicide attempt by overdosing on her Zoloft. Thank God, she called me an hour later and I took her to the ER. She was fine, physically--they gave her a big nasty drink of charcoal--but the doctors told her they wanted her to stay for a day in the adolescent crisis ward.
Then they proceeded to, basically, imprison her there for the next 72 hours.
Thanks to Reagan's closing almost all the mental institutions in America, the ward has to take everyone--from attempted suicides to drug addicts to anorexics to psychotics--and puts them all together. So she spent three days in a place where you're not allowed to wear clothes that expose your navel, or leave your room except for two hour-long periods each day, or listen to the radio, or have any personal items made of glass or metal, or talk to anyone on the phone, or have visitors for more than an hour a day, or turn on the lights in your room after dark, or drink more than one soda per meal, or touch anyone else without asking the nurses' permission, or...well, there was a 3-page list of all the things you couldn't do. This is not exactly the best way to make a suicidally-depressed person feel better about themselves. (I'm not actually sure if there's *any* sort of disturbed youth who would be improved by this treatment, but let it pass.)
I was *extremely* angry, not just at the hospital but at her parents, whose motivation for forcing her to stay there was pretty much that they were pissed off at her for trying to kill herself and wanted to teach her a lesson. But she's out now, and we're just trying to survive the three months until she's 18 and (God willing) accepted by UCB and we can get an apartment together and she never has to deal with her parents again, except of course to ask for large amounts of money for tuition. :-)
Have your ears fallen off yet? That'll teach *you* to be concerned for me.
Seriously, I'm very appreciative of your support. You got any problems concerning which you want our advice/sympathy/hundred dollars in cash?
--SiliconDream
