: Mmm...I still think the Cycle's damaged/broken/to' up
: (unless Forrest's inverted thing holds). Yeah, a lot
: of people died, but the age is certainly one of Light
: rather than Dark so far. We've never heard of another
: supposedly-Dark Age when people had a nice time in
: spite of it.
The thing is, we don't really know what the dark ages were like. My guess would be that they aren't nearly as grim as some would like us to believe. They were, in my schema, merely times when there was no security, when evil kept bubbling out of the swamps and kept having to be put down. There's a big difference between mass slavery and death camps and merely a human society devoted to eternal vigilance, knowing that every time they got the harvest in they would have to face another wave of Thrall. Just because the current crises have been put down is no reason to believe that the next 900 years are going to be all fun and games. This may be a much gentler dark age than any in the past, but it's still called the "sword age" for a reason--the bad guys are still out there and it'll take another Great War to finally lay this undead invasion thing to rest. I have a feeling there aren't a lot of farmers who don't have a sword hanging in the barn, ready to be taken up when the plowshare is put down. The Heron Guard feel that the cycle might just be broken but all bets are still off. The comet is still up there, if the normal rules of astrophysics hold, and the Leveller doesn't die just because Balor sucked and Alric ruled.
: Given that GURPS describes Balmung as the most powerful
: magic weapon in the Mythworld, and the Ibis Crown as
: the most powerful magical artifact, I think they must
: have been pretty useful. Balmung is reusable, after
: all, as dispersal dreams are not. And as for the Ibis
: Crown, from what GURPS says it may be responsible for
: boosting his willpower and resistance to mind-control
: magics so that he can wield Balmung without it seizing
: control of him; it may help him cast the fear spells
: that allowed him to terrify the Dark army around the
: time of Twice Born, crippling their combat skills with
: panic; it may have enhanced his magical skillz so that
: he could out-wizard Soulblighter at the end. Even if
: it didn't directly enhance his battle prowess, greater
: wisdom and intelligence is always a good thing to have
: when fighting a war.
Sure. We could get into a long discussion as to whether events in the game suggest that the crown and the sword have the power to live up to their hype, but it seems like a rather fruitless thread to start. I will mention that the berserk who picks up Balmung in the catacombs doesn't seem to be possessed by it, but that's about as far as I think we need to go with this. The value of the crown and the sword as symbols are, I think, more important.
: It doesn't seem to me that Alric would have a problem
: declaring himself emperor at any time. The West loves
: him--
: he saved them from utter destruction twice! And the
: common folk apparently "always praised him for
: the change in their lives," even after sixty
: years had dulled the memories of the Fallen Lords. The
: only real advantages I can see in immediate
: emperorship (other than getting Balmung and the Ibis
: Crown) are that he secures the loyalty of Myrdred, and
: gets the Jmen to become Heron Guards again. Which are
: certainly useful.
My point here was just that his claim of succession is a very, very thin one. He's an usurper under any canon of law you choose to name. That doesn't mean he isn't popular and it doesn't mean he's in the wrong--there is no line of succession at this point, so taking the crown for himself isn't going to get him into a lot of trouble. Ceiscoran and Connacht are both dead. However, in peace time I think he would have had a much harder time just waltzing in and declaring himself Emperor. No king, no matter how popular, rules by his will alone. He needs the support of the rest of the government. During wartime he has that support automatically because he's commander in chief--every other military leader in the free world has sworn fealty to him. As soon as the army is demobilized, however, he's going to be faced by a whole bunch of lesser lords with their own political futures to think of who might oppose him. Alric is very popular and by accident of misfortune he happens to be the last truly powerful archmage left alive but no matter how anarchic and freedom-loving he is, he's still a political figure and political figures will always have enemies.
: Okay. Should have thought of that. :-) But the question
: can be rephrased as--why does the successful champion
: appear first as Light, then get corrupted to Dark? Why
: not the other way around? Just for the pathos factor
: of having the guy you used to worship come back and
: KIK your ass, or something more?
: In light of what I said in the other response about the
: Light being an order/chaos balance and the Dark
: tending to extremes, a possible answer occurs to me.
: When the champion is born, the eternal spirit within
: him has relatively little influence--it's forgotten in
: the trauma of birth, or something. He's therefore a
: pretty normal, balanced guy, and finds himself on the
: side of the Light. But over the years of the next
: Light Age, after he defeats the Leveller and doesn't
: have much else to do but look inward, the spirit
: starts to manifest itself. (This is a fairly common
: doctrine in religions involving reincarnation, I
: believe; that as you age you begin to remember your
: past lives and see yourself as an eternal being.) The
: champion slides more and more toward his natural
: principle, and becomes insanely dedicated to chaos or
: order. Toward the end of the Light Age, the Leveller
: chooses to exploit this monomania and enters the
: champion--it's much easier to turn him to the Dark by
: convincing him that the world should be completely
: given over either to chaos or order, than it would be
: to convert the other champion, the one who's just been
: born and is therefore still sanely balanced.
I like your theory, but I think mine (that the Leveller's only interest is in population control) works in conjunction with it. As each Leveller-infested guy gets older, he's going to become more and more powerful. The Leveller doesn't like exceptionally powerful people--they're too dangerous, they have the capacity to wipe out entire races (as Balor almost did with Muirthemne). I think, when the time comes the divinity sabotages its avatar (in the traditional sense, that's what the human half of the Leveller is) and lets some fresh blood in, knowing that when it comes time again, there'll be a perfect host waiting for it. To go along with your theory, maybe the Leveller (who you seem to be claiming is present in the Champion from birth) inspires the Hero as well--this would be kind of dodgy considering the "there are many heros, but only one leveller" quote, but we all know how flimsy that one is.
Hey, you think MB the Hed is agent of this Leveller? I dunno, MB!!!! Uh, sorry. What I meant to say was that maybe the Leveller sabotages his human half by sending agents like, for example, the Head.
: Obviously, there are many possible variations of this
: theory, and I have no idea which one seems the most
: likely. But I bet you have an idea!
Whoops... um, yeah, see above. And here are a couple more, just for kicks:
It's easier to bend a good man to evil than an evil man to good. Evil is just too seductive.
Another: With great age comes great rigidity. I'm thinking of a kind of long-view-mentality, which makes you start thinking that you know better than everybody else and that the ends justify the means. The Levellers, then, aren't "evil" in the common sense, they just have less interest in the feelings of others. When you're effectively immortal it's hard to look at normal mortals with any kind of respect. Your own goals, which are long-term and well-thought-out, start seeming like the right thing to do regardless of how many puny folk get hurt in the process. And yes, I do still believe that Balor thought of himself as Connacht and a good guy right up until his head got cut off.
A third: To gain power in the Mythworld you have to have a weakness. When you start out as the Great Hero you have relatively little power. To beat the Leveller you have to grab as much as you can get. As a result, you develop character flaws--which manifest themselves in things like Balor's totally stoopid inability to resist smiting Myrkridian standards and also in Shiver's vanity. The Leveller can't just overcome your core personality--it needs a crack to seep in through, and these weaknesses provide such a crack. The Heros, with less power than the Levellers, can't be contaminated as easily. Alric, in his time, may be undone by his hatred of horses--the next Great Hero may actually use some cavalry units. One good cavalry charge could knock out an entire platoon of dwarven mortars and could run circles around a whole tribe of zerks, but Alric will still refuse to invest in a couple of saddles and a lance or two. I like this theory because it explains both how Heros get turned to the dark and also how Levellers eventually get defeated.
: Awww...group hug!
Aw, shucks, ya big lug.
: Why, thank you. If I spent this much time defending it, I
: hope you'll understand that's a sign that...I..believe
: in it. Wait a minute, that's not a compliment. Sorry.
: ;-)
Yeah, you and your old man. Oh, wait, that didn't even make sense. 8-p
: Keep up dem constructive criticisms!
As if I could stop now...
: --SiliconDream
--David Wellington
