: And let me just say...ouch. I thought you were proposing
: some relatively minor variation on my own theory, not
: a completely different theory that turns out to be
: very convincing. Ouch again. :-)
Sorry... though, as I mentioned, I think both our theories dovetail pretty well. Yours was mostly about the personalities of the various characters, mine was about what was inspiring them... we can work it out, man! ;)
: Now, there was lotsa storytelling stuff in your post,
: which was great, but not something I could really
: respond to point by point. So you'll have to forgive
: me for snipping the rest and just listing a few points
: of your theory--some big, some small--and responding
: to them. Let me know if I'm misrepresenting you
: anywhere. My arguments generally concern relative
: probabilities, since you (very impressively) never put
: forth anything which is immediately disprovable by
: textual evidence.
Very impressively--or very slyly? I know my theory doesn't contain a lot of hard evidence. It's mostly based on speculation and a change in perspective. I really didn't mean to do it that way, but it was the only method that allowed me to get my ideas across without constantly annotating and footnoting.
: Your points: 1. The Leveller's agenda is to effect zero
: population growth and a balance of power between the
: Young Races on the Mythworld.
: Now, the most obvious evidence for this theorized agenda
: is that the Leveller periodically tries to kill almost
: everyone--but then, that's the evidence for pretty
: much every theory of Leveller psychology, since that's
: what he's famous for doing. :-) So two important
: questions are: does the Leveller take actions that
: might promote a balance of power and retard population
: growth *besides* killing a whole lot of people, and
: does he refrain from taking actions that disrupt the
: power balance and increase population growth?
: With regard to the first question--it seems to me that
: there are many things the Leveller could do to further
: his hypothetical aims without behaving like the
: psychotic Lord of Darkness he seems to be. He could
: encourage zero-population-growth-promoting cultural
: qualities--availability of contraception,
: glorification of abstinence, a legal limit on the
: number of children one could have--either by
: possessing a cultural leader like the Great Hero and
: influencing him to work for societal change, or by
: selectively attacking and destroying the cultures
: which possess such qualities to the least degree. The
: Leveller could encourage a balance of power by
: attempting to sow discord and distrust between *all*
: the younger races, so that no race was inclined to
: ally with any other. This, he does not do.
It's my feeling that the Leveller is a very limited Divinity. It doesn't have the power to effect radical, significant changes in the Mythworld, only to subtly alter the psychology of certain persons. It cannot, for instance, possess a pro-population growth leader and make him go to his scientists and say "invent for me the birth control pill". It can, however, possess someone who believes big families are a good thing and suggest to him that mass infanticide is perfectly justifiable if it's for the greater good. The bulk of my theory was devoted to describing how this is achieved--by giving the avatar a bit of god-like perspective so that he begins to think that the end justifies any means necessary.
: Concerning the second--the cycle itself destroys the
: possibility of a balance of power, I think. Every
: thousand years a big mean guy appears, takes control
: of certain races, and attacks all the rest. It's
: inevitable that a) the races he took control of will
: remain politically affiliated, as the Dark, and that
: b) the races he attacked will band together for
: defensive purposes, as the Light. Thus the Leveller
: promotes political polarization and the development of
: two main power blocs. Furthermore, it's thanks to his
: wars that the Light and Dark races are determined to
: wipe each other off the face of the earth. The Krids
: would never have been exterminated if Moagim hadn't
: made them such a threat that their extinction was a
: matter of vital import to the humanoid races.
The polarization I see not so much as an effect of the Leveller's influence as a survival of the original personality of the avatar in question. Certainly it is possible for a "dark" race to ally with the light, and vice versa--hence the Trow (I know, I know, a special case) in M2, and the Myrmidons in M1. Not to mention all the brigands and dark bowmen and, for that matter, dark dwarves. Certainly we see in the Fallen Lords how the polarization is not perfect. The political alliances in the Mythworld are very old and do tend, I agree, to change very slowly if at all. They are, in my theory, one reason the Mythworld needs a Leveller in the first place. Were one side or the other to become too strong, it might actually succeed in wiping the other side out, which is what MY transient divinity is trying to avoid. For the most part they seem to almost get along, or at the very least be willing to sit back and build their power bases in hopes of an eventual genocide. If not for the Great Wars and such, it might come to that pass. When every thousand years a sizeable chunk of the population of both sides is wiped out it keeps either side from becoming too powerful.
With
: respect to the matter of population growth, the
: Leveller's attacks generally hit the least
: technologically advanced segment of the population
: hardest--the city folk, armed with cannons and magical
: artifacts and whatnot, have a much better chance for
: survival than the poor peasants, who get wiped out
: every time a Krid pack wanders by or a necromancer
: wants to combat-train his undead. In this way the
: Leveller indirectly encourages a high-tech culture
: which is most capable of exhausting the resources in
: its environment and, therefore, is most likely to
: experience a population spike followed by a crash and
: ecological disaster.
You make an excellent point here. It occurs to me that the Leveller may not understand technological progress. It also occurs to me that despite the old adage that technology and war are mutually reinforcing, the Mythworld is only now reaching the level of basic gunpowder weapons after several thousand years of uninterupted civilization--and then only because of the presence of the dwarves. The human population is still fighting with swords as their primary weapons and doesn't even appear to possess the longbow. It seems that something--I would vote for the constant warfare--is keeping human technology down.
Similarly, the Leveller seems to act as an agent of technology transfer, as well, making sure that the dwarves aren't the only ones with satchel charges. The ghols would never have figured that one out on their own--Balor or perhaps Soulblighter must have taught them that one. How the Leveller deals with the escalation of military technology is a good question; I'd say in general it tends to spread the wealth and help keep a level playing field (its primary function).
I'd also point out that while the
: Leveller does admittedly use more non-reproducing
: beings than the Light (Trow, Fetch, undead, Mahir), he
: also encourages the races *most* likely to undergo
: disastrous population growth--Krids and Ghols. Both,
: if made dominant, could very quickly and easily
: exhaust their entire resource base, due to their high
: mobility and rapid rate of reproduction (according to
: GURPS, both Ghols and Krids achieve maturity at an
: early age.) Yet the Leveller repeatedly works to
: provide these races with dominance in the Dark
: Ages--he gives the Ghols the Dwarven lands, and hands
: the entire continent over to the Krids, who have a
: high probability of eating everyone else, then eating
: each other, then not being there anymore. It doesn't
: seem safe to me.
Moagim may actually have functioned to limit the krids, rather than elevating them. Surely, the end result of his actions was to get them killed off in the Tain. That seems rather indirect and contrary to what Moagim had in mind, granted, but the Leveller works in mysterious ways... perhaps it knew that unless it gathered the krids together and made them vulnerable, they would do exactly as you say. As to the ghols, though your point below about them not being so bad off now is a good one, the Leveller did force open conflict between them and the dwarves, which lead to the numbers of both races being cut considerably back. By encouraging a constant displacement of both races, as one or the other of the dwarven cities is occupied or liberated in turn, the Leveller manages to keep the two most dangerous peoples (dwarves for their technology, ghols for their numbers) from finding a safe homeland.
: 2. The Leveller does not provide its host with physical
: power, nor does it convey information to him
: symbolically; rather, it provides him with visions and
: enhances his perceptions.
: Though GURPS doesn't say that all the Levellers were in
: some sense the same being, the Epilogue does. I don't
: see how they could have arrived at this conclusion
: (after all, they don't consider the Heroes to be the
: same being) unless the Leveller avatars considered
: *themselves* to all be the same, and expressed this at
: some point, and also clearly shared some common
: knowledge. Which means that the Leveller probably
: conveys direct information to its Avatar, on what it
: is and what its purpose is.
An excellent point, to which I have only a half-assed answer. My guess would be that there is enough scholarship and longitudinal studies of the cycle in the Mythworld that the cycle is an open secret. Every Leveller avatar who comes along will have been in a position, at some point, to have heard the story and know what is going to happen to him--surely Alric is aware of his own eventual fate. Rather than assume that the divinity speaks directly to his avatars, I would suggest that they are perfectly aware of what is happening to them because they've studied the old books as well. Certainly there is a certain kind of person who WANTS to become the Leveller--I'm thinking specifically here on Soulblighter, of course--and others who want anything but. There must be a chaired, tenured position at the University of Covenant in Leveller Studies. When Balor came back he would describe himself as the Leveller both because he knew he was right and because he wanted to inspire fear in his enemies. With his new god-like vision it wouldn't seem like such a bad thing to be.
: I agree, though, that the Leveller doesn't provide its
: host with power. In fact, maybe it drains him a bit!
: That would explain why, when a young Leveller and
: young Hero fight, the Hero always wins; and why, when
: a young Hero fights an old and extra-powerful
: Leveller, the Hero's at least able to accomplish their
: mutual destruction.
An interesting idea... hmm, but not really one I can respond to, without damaging my own theory... curse you, SiliconDream, you've lead me right into a trap! :)
: 3. Connacht was the Mythworld's greatest hero ever.
: I dunno. Tireces seems to me to have accomplished more;
: he pioneered the use of sorcery against the Leveller,
: founded the first city in the Mythworld and enabled
: the creation of the Cath Bruig empire.
Sorry--minor point--wasn't that Clovis? Or did I miss something?
Connacht simply
: preserved the empire. The Trow were already weak, and
: wouldn't have been a major power in the future anyway,
: since they were regressing technologically and did not
: breed; the Zerks were fighting alongside the Bruig
: before Connacht appeared and the Dwarves were already
: allies of humanity back when the empire was founded.
: In fact, Connacht seems to have done very little,
: politically--he only ruled for a year before turning
: his attention to the matter of magical artifacts, and
: 29 years later he stepped down. (Compare that to
: Alric, who's ruled happily for 60 years so far.) It's
: pretty unlikely that he wanted to keep ruling but left
: to avoid the Leveller, since he must have known the
: Leveller wasn't supposed to reappear for at least a
: few centuries
My argument here would be that Connacht's legend was the greater and that power is at least half appearance, but pray, do go on...
: But I suppose you're speaking in terms of what power
: level each of them ended up at. Connacht did have more
: stuff--all the artifacts Tireces left behind,
: probably, plus the new stuff he had made--and he did
: oversee an empire, even if he didn't do more to
: achieve it than Tireces had to achieve his goals. I
: guess I'd say that Tireces was a more capable hero,
: but Connacht had more to work with. I don't know which
: the Leveller would prefer to inhabit.
Okay, I may have been indulging in a bit of unintended hyperbole here--there are plenty of candidates for Best Hero Ever--but I think in general Connacht is the Big Name. Whether he was the most powerful man who ever lived is kind of a moot point, now that I think about it (I know I made a big deal out of it, and now I'm backing down--sue me :)). The point is, he was powerful enough to get the divinity's attention. I don't think anyone is arguing that he wasn't worthy of the mantle.
: 4. Connacht changed his name to Balor in order to elude
: the Leveller. Hey, I told you some of the points were
: small. :-)
: Why did Tireces change his name? And why didn't Connacht
: go back to his original name once the Great War
: started?
Here I was trying to clear up a small but important mystery and in twenty-one words you've shot me down. Nice one!
: 5. Balor thought he was a nice guy.
: I still don't buy it. Balor destroyed the entire empire
: because he needed the Ibis Crown? Why would he attack
: anything other than Muirthemne? It's not like some
: farmer off by the Cloudspine was going to help hide
: the crown from him.
Did he know that? Anyway, my feeling was that he attacked anyone who refused to acknowledge him as Emperor--putting down a mutiny, as he would have seen it--and my intention was to try to explain the lengthy gap between the razing of Muirthemne and the beginning of the Great War. He wanted to re-consolidate his power base. His power base had been the old empire. Therefore, he would attack the entirety of the old empire but would stop at the Cloudspine until he was given a serious provocation--in this case, the formation of the Nine, which represented an enemy superpower arming itself to take away what was his by right.
: I grant you that he wasn't completely evil--he didn't
: actually *want* people to suffer, it just wasn't that
: important to him--but I don't think he was ever
: planning to rule a grateful populace. If that's what
: he wanted to do, he could have just come back as
: Connacht. Or knocked out a few centers of government
: and claimed the commoners; it's not like they would
: have dared to say no.
His army was comprised mostly of dark units. To him that would seem like a valid political expediency. To everyone else it would look like treason against his very humanity. I think his grand master plan was to become ruler of the Mythworld; the tactics he used to reach that end were what changed. With his god-like perspective, setting the entire continent on fire wouldn't invalidate his claim to rulership while to everyone else, with their limited human sensoria, that would make him look like a stone cold destroyer.
: 6. Alric exploited Balor's weakness by using an
: unprecedented strategy.
: You make a good point that Balor didn't expect his
: opposition to be wily tacticians, though I think that
: applies equally well to any Leveller--they're all
: former Great Heroes who triumphed over a more powerful
: foe through intellect. But I don't think Alric did
: anything unusual by amping himself; every successful
: Great Hero that we know of has enhanced his own power
: through magic, as Connacht did with the Tain and
: Tireces did with...whatever he used to immobilize the
: Leveller. All are momentarily the Leveller's
: equal--that's how they manage to kill him, right?
: Connacht slew his Leveller personally, so I'd say that
: he was, at the time, superior to the Leveller. Nor was
: Alric's sacrifice of his army surprising--given that
: the Leveller always dies, pretty much every pre-Dark
: Age Great Hero must do the same thing, desperately
: sacrificing his remaining forces so that he can
: dispatch the Leveller before dying himself.
That the Great Heroes take unbelievable risks and make unthinkable sacrifices is understandable, since they feel they're fighting an unstoppable evil that wants only to destroy. That the Levellers might not expect that seems sensible to me as well--these are humans they're fighting, and humans aren't suicidal in general.
Again, I probably overstated my case for reasons that seemed valid at the time. I do feel that Alric acted like a truly desperate man and that the risks he took were unconscionable--after all, if his zerks hadn't beheaded Balor, there would have been no Legion left to stop the bastard and the whole Mythworld would have gone down with their leader. However, since he won, and we all saw him win, and history vindicates the victors, the general feeling is that Alric didn't do anything so very rash.
The thing is, we don't know what previous Great Heroes had to do to win. Whether they sacrificed their entire armies is an academic question. It's my personal feeling and opinion that this Great War was a lot worse than all the others. I'm basing this on the evidence we have that Balor's actions far outstripped the perfidy of any other Leveller--specifically, the total destruction of the entire Cath Bruig empire. It seems to me that magic and technology have come so far at this point that mutually assured destruction is the only policy left for the Hero to pursue. We can agree to disagree, but it's my feeling that the cycle is getting worse over time, and that the Leveller isn't strong enough to keep the balance in the face of human and dwarven ingenuity.
: In fact, nothing of the Great War was really surprising
: except the bit right after Balor's death, wherein
: Alric unaccountably failed to die. Whether this
: miscarriage occurred because he was smart enough to
: evade The Head's trap, or because Balor,
: subconsciously hoping for a Light Victory, bound his
: forces to himself, I dunno.
My theory was largely created to deal with the discussion over whether the cycle has been broken or not. From the human perspective, Alric's survival and the high quality of life in this "dark age" look like things that could break the cycle. From a godlike perspective I think it's just a minor glitch which will not keep the program from going ahead as scheduled.
: 7. The Sword Age is a Dark Age for Ghols.
: I disagree with this. The Ghols own half the Dwarven
: lands, and according to GURPS they're planning to
: improve their quality of life--something they never
: thought to do before. They've also got a major
: technological boost and the freedom to range over the
: deserted Cath Bruig. If they play their cards right
: and behave themselves, they might be a major and
: accepted power by the end of the millennium. Or they
: might just piss everyone off and get stomped on, of
: course. But then they'd only be back to where they
: were before Balor appeared.
You make some good points, but I still think the ghols are in trouble. The dwarves have even more reason to hate them now and with the new dwarven technologies (which the ghols have only begun to understand, and apparently require non-ghol leadership to be effective), it's going to be one hell of a fireworks display for a while. With their godhead destroyed, the ghols have lost even their spiritual advantage (barring the idea that there might be more heads out there, which was suggested at one point but never really developed)--they're cut off from their old gods and their position as occupiers of half the dwarven homeland is at best a momentary thing. They've got it pretty good right now but they're about to become the targets of the biggest sh*tstorm to ever hit their race. Sounds like a dark age to me. Hey, has anyone ever suggested the parallels between the dwarf/ghol enmity and the Israeli/Palestinian debacle? That might be an interesting thread...
: Well, that's all I have at the moment. Obviously, nothing
: that threatens to destroy your theory--just assorted
: possible weak points. I'd like to say that's because
: I'm a big fan of constructive criticism, but I must
: admit that I just wasn't able to find a way to cripple
: you. Grrr...
Hah! You found all the holes in my theory without even trying and you dug right in with your theoretical retractors... man, it's like open heart surgery sparring with you. Keep it up!
: On a side note, you've got reams of talent at telling
: stories. I'd be interested in seeing that novel of
: yours once it approaches completion.
Sure, you can be one of our beta testers--I mean proofreaders! Really, thanks for saying that. As an aspiring (mostly read struggling) writer, it warms the cockles of my heart.
: --SiliconDream
--David Wellington
