: Uhm... for a thousand years? Sharks are much less
: frequent than krids, for one thing, and for another,
: given that it takes at least 15 years for a human
: being to breed, and that if they stuck together a
: whole band would be wiped out together... no. Babies
: cry when when your tribe is hiding in the dark from
: huge, lumbering creatures, or they do at least once in
: forty generations.
For one thing, we don't know how many krids there ever were. If there were only a couple hundred--or even a couple of thousand--and they travelled in packs (the only way they could have gotten their reputation) then there would be no way for them to overrun an entire continent. Most likely they were used by Moagim Reborn as shock troops, but the actual work of destroying/conquering (whichever) was handled by the equivalent of brigands. You make it sound as if there were more krids than people--we know there are large areas of the Mythworld that are sparsely populated at best. It was never wall-to-wall krids. If it was they would have had to eat each other just to make ends meet and the problem would go away on its own. This is why the sea isn't full of great whites.
If the krids were just masterless animals, they would be a minor threat--unbelievably dangerous, but very rare. If they were an army under the control of the Leveller, they could be a much bigger problem but only for those areas the Leveller was concentrating on at the time.
Similarly, the Leveller can't be everywhere at once. If you assume that the Cath Bruig Empire had a much more extensive empire than that possessed by the Nine (not a difficult assumption, I think) then you have to think of it in terms of campaigns and specific battles, not as some kind of evil wave that washes over the land. It took fifty years for Balor to consolidate his hold on the East, even after he killed ninety per cent of its population at one go. What was he doing during that time? If he sought only to destroy, maybe he was wasting his time sowing the Barrier with salt and making sure it would never be fertile again. Imagine how long it would take to do that to entire continent, not just the chunk of land around one city. And if the Leveller is just seeking to destroy, and he isn't using the undead (Moagim reborn apparently did not) he'll have an awful hard time keeping his armies fed and billeted if everywhere he goes he scorches the earth. It just isn't the kind of policy that works for long-term campaigns. The Leveller would at least have to enslave, if only in order to ensure a certain supply of grain (and meat for a vast, sprawling army of krids--they must eat a couple of times their body weight every day to be that fast and that vicious).
: See, I WOULD concede this if a city could be
: self-supporting for a thousand years.
It doesn't have to be. No warlord, even the Leveller, could support a siege for that long. It would mean dedicating a good chunk of his army to garrison duty--if all he seeks is to destroy, that isn't the kind of thing the Leveller would devote much effort to. He knows his best troops are useless against the stone walls--Myrk Giants notwithstanding--and the rest of his guys (mostly ghols, probably, with a few brigands thrown in for good measure) are pretty wimpy and wouldn't last long in a serious fight against the Heron Guard. The Leveller probably didn't besiege Muirthemne at all--if he had any strategic sense at all he would have spent his time decimating the landscape, ruining Muirthemne's supply lines. Since he seeks "only to destroy", however, he would probably harry the city for a while, get bored, and move on to other cities that didn't have such strong walls.
Besides, there's Magic to consider. No sorceror worth his grimoire would be without his handy "mana from heaven" spell.
: Hyperbole and nothing more. It would be equally true if
: the krids were created, and attacked for the first
: time yesterday, and Connacht won his battles tomorrow.
Then what makes you say "he sought only to destroy" isn't hyperbole? If he's going to be a decent general he'll have a lot of things he HAS to do other than destroying.
My personal feeling is that Connacht's brilliance lay in realizing that he couldn't fight the krids one-on-one, that he had to trick them. I imagine he was the first to realize that if you shot a couple of arrows into the rearmost krid, the entire pack would go nuts and tear itself apart.
: I'd say the Dark was dominating pretty well when TFL was
: taking place. There was one city left - Madrigal, just
: like there was likely only Muirthemne left when
: Connacht arose.
It's quite possible that "seeks only to destroy" refers purely to Balor, and by extension Soulblighter. It could be that the Great War was so great because for the first time ever the Leveller wasn't playing by the normal rules of engagement. Maybe Moagim Reborn was a perfectly sensible conqueror--after all, he didn't use the undead, so he would have had to work with human troops. Balor, on the other head, relied pretty heavily on the undead, so he didn't have to worry about supplying his armies, or about the weather, or disease, or how to pay half a million troops when all the treasuries of the world were on fire... it could be that Balor was a much, much nastier Leveller than Moagim Reborn could ever have been in his wildest dreams.
: Heh, ok, I'm sure Bungie would say that when they're
: making money off it :P
Excellent point. I've never cared much for GURPS, either. But you think maybe the copy on the back of the box ought to be held up to the same scrutiny? How many hormonally pumped thirteen year olds would buy a game that said on the back, "He came out of the east, with terrifying bureaucracy--he stole our farms to feed his troops, so he could keep up his ponderously slow but remarkably effective land-use-control policies!". Or even, "Join the morally ambiguous story of two armies, both of them destructive, who let peasants die as they struggle over a barren piece of dirt"? No. The thirteen year olds prefer their stories free of moral quandaries and they don't want to think about what Levellers do when they throw a conquest and nobody comes. So they put on the box "He was a hideous beast who ate human flesh and had sex with hot babes every night!" or whatever they can get away with that's close.
: -Ares
: PS I wrote this all in one sitting and have no time to
: check over it. Will fill any holes later, but gotta
: go!
Looking forward to it--fill away!
