: As to whether there were more Myrkridia than Myrmidons: I
: rather liked the "great white shark" analogy
: we had a while ago. The Myrks are (presumably)
: carnivorous top-level predators who don't understand
: agriculture (and don't eat their veggies anyway). If
: they have any kind of culture it is restricted to the
: maintenance of skull platforms (though that they might
: have a standard confuses this issue considerably).
: The Myrmidons were human beings, originally (did anyone
: ever decide if Zerks and Myrms--and Firbys for that
: matter--were "human" or just very similar?).
: Though they probably spent most of their time primping
: and didn't care much for agriculture, they did have a
: considerably advanced society--at least compared to
: the Myrks.
: Now, look at how many Great White Sharks there are in the
: waters off Australia and how many People live in
: Sydney. For some reason there are a lot more of the
: people. Why? Because the shark population is limited
: by the available, ambient food supply while the people
: are capable of producing their own food and therefore
: can breed enough to keep their numbers growing
: exponentially.
: It therefore seems logical to me that there should be
: more Myrms--even if Balor only took the men of
: battle-faring age (I believe I saw a quote on that
: somewhere... awfully sexist, but who knows? Maybe the
: women were smarter and saw through Balor's offer). The
: Myrkridia may have been a "continent-spanning
: race" but if there were more than a few thousand
: of them they would have eaten the Mythworld clean in a
: generation or two. Top-level predators need to eat
: several times their body weight in dwarves every day
: to keep up their energy and support their
: hyper-evolved biology.
The problem with this is that Mykridia can reproduce, and had plenty of time to establish themselves before they got thrown into the Tain. As you point out, thye were a continent-spanning race. The Myrmidons were a tribe or two, probably not more than a few hundred in number. I seriously doubt they could reproduce. There were probably quite a few more Myrkridia.
