: Where did that horse thing come from? Am I missing
: something or is it a joke, which i am also missing?
: Other than that, a very plausible theory. About the
: artifacts, we dont know what Alric did with the Eblis
: stone. And Balor, if we assume that the armor he was
: wearing was the armor the Head sent Alric after,
: didn't destroy it did he? He wore it. And while we are
: on the subject of Artifacts, what about the Total
: Codex? The narrator resolved to destroy the thing, yet
: the Legion has to go get it from the Library. Did the
: narrator get stopped by a superior before he could
: destroy it? Or was there another copy? Or did someone
: re-write it? Or was there something in the story I
: missed?
: -Duffman
The fact that Alric continues to devote massive amounts of troops to fetching the Codex every time it falls into the wrong hands--and that it appears to have no practical use whatsoever--would help support SD's theory.
The horse thing is based on the fact that in a previous incarnation Alric was drawn and quartered and horses carried his still-living pieces to the corners of the world in hope of breaking the cycle. It didn't work, and now GURPS says that Alric has an irrational hatred of the animals and won't let his armies use cavalry.
SD: I love your theory, and would only add one thing. In general terms of strategy, A tends toward the brute force approach--sometimes with diversions, but sometimes not. At Rhi'anon he threw everything he had at Balor's fortress and lost almost his entire army. At Tharsis he chose to engage Soulblighter en masse. Of course, he isn't stupid, so he's more than willing to send small groups on special missions, but in general he seems to prefer pitched battles.
C, on the other hand, is more of an Odysseus figure, who is willing to get his victories through trickery. He defeated the krids by trapping them in the Tain; he managed somehow to trick the Trow into going into stasis under their cities. His tendency to use Lieutenants certainly facilitates this: he had Soulblighter trick the heron guard away from Muirthemne at the critical moment, he (potentially) used the Head to throw the Nine into chaos, etc.
This extends to their subordinates as well. The Deceiver, under Balor, lives up to his name--he's always where you don't expect him, he's very good at catching people who think they're safe, etc. Under Alric, he does things like attack Shiver and Soulblighter directly, even heedlessly.
I can see some holes in this already, but I think it works as a general tendency.
