: According to GURPS, quite a few people are worried about
: this. However, the Light is still incredibly fragile,
: as Soulblighter's attack proved. Whatever danger Alric
: will pose to the Light a thousand years in the future,
: right now he's the only thing keeping it together and
: protecting it from Dark incursions. Besides, who's
: going to try and kill him? Even the most suicidally
: brave Heron Guard knows he doesn't have much of a
: chance against the single most powerful archmage in
: the world. A coalition of fifty Heron Guards backed by
: Myrdred, maybe. But no murderous conspiracy is going
: to show its hand until it's got the power to attain
: its goal.
Woah, nellie! The Heron Guard will not be the assassins, if such a thing ever comes to pass. They would have to become Jmen again--their bond is to the Emperor, not the Light, and I doubt very much they'd even think that killing Alric was a good idea anyway. Why? This is the Mythworld, where if you kill somebody powerful, it just makes them come back stronger. They've seen this a thousand times.
Which, of course, all ties into my theory that Balor is just Connacht with a divinely-inspired mental disorder. How? Because if Connacht had been killed before becoming Balor he would have returned without his memories--and therefore without his weakness (the Myrk standard). If the HG really wanted to neutralize the threat Alric might someday pose, they'd keep him alive as long as possible. That way, when he turns into the Leveller, they'll at least know how to deal with him. If they kill him he'll come back anyway only with more and better powers and no known weaknesses. I would imagine Alric is aware of what's going to happen himself. I'm also willing to bet my copy of the comic that he has a copy of the "So you want to be a shade?" spell tucked up one of his sleeves. The ambiguity in the game makes me think that Alric's weakness is already apparent: it's his need to micro-manage, which is so strong that he fights like Alexander the Great--leading the charge, despite what might happen to his army if he caught a stray mahir in the face (think about the Gate of Storms, where he goes after Myrks on his own, even when his kingdom is in desperate need of a leader, or Twice Born--what would have happened to the Light if he had gotten too far ahead of everybody and been snuffed by mahirs, so SB could go into the forge unopposed?). The Heron Guard will know this as well and be prepared--they'll set an ambush for him when he becomes the Leveller and be certain that he'll walk right into it. If he comes back as Ethelred the Pinkish-Hued (or whatever) instead, they'll have no clue how to defeat him and will probably end up digging up severed heads again.
: Also, Alric isn't necessarily going to be the next
: Leveller. According to the Great Cycle (at least as
: GURPS portrays it), Alric shouldn't even have survived
: the Great War. Balor should have killed him, ushered
: in a thousand years of Dark rule, and *then* a hero
: should have arisen, freed the land from wicked things,
: and gone on to become the next Leveller. The cycle's
: all fux0red now, and no one knows what'll happen.
I think we can safely assume though that there will be another Leveller. Killing Alric won't stop that--only a ballistic missile with a comet-punching warhead might. Of course, that could go wrong, too:
"I'm tellin' ya, those were standard critical mass cross-sections for thirteen-kiloton low yield cobalt devices!"
"They were ICBMs!"
"Why were they set up like backpack nukes, then?"
Er, sorry... had to be done. Anyway, even if you disregard the entire first half of my post and assume that the Heron Guard are gonna pull a Caligula on Alric's pointy... hat, then wouldn't the Leveller just pick somebody else? I remember the theory that all the Levellers and Heroes have been Alric and Connacht, but I can't see a transient divinity giving up that easily.
--Wellington
