This reply will largely overlap with Forrest's, but I'm egotistical enough to think that it should still be posted.
: But that goes against your original theory. Chaos, order
: and Balance are three completely different things (in
: fact they are viewed as opposites of one another in
: certain eastern cultures and even role-playing games,
: which I shant mention for the sake of briefness). So
: the Light being a force balance just _doesn't_ work if
: it's lead by an embodiment of chaos or order. A more
: plausible explanation might be that, in essence, the
: Dark tends towards Chaso and the Light towards order,
: but neither towards balance :)
Whether or not you think that chaos, order and balance are three fundamentally different things is between you and your New Age guru of choice, my friend. :-)
Regardless of what assorted Eastern cultures believe, I think that *in the Mythworld* the fundamental ideological polarity is that of order and chaos, while the primary political blocs are balance (Light) and extremism (Dark). Too much order leads to totalitarianism and stasis; too much chaos leads to meaninglessness and--well, chaos. You need a mix of both for life and mind and civilization.
You may ask why extreme chaotic beings and extreme orderly beings would come together under the banner of the Dark. The reasons are threefold. 1) the Light races are more numerous and powerful than either the extreme chaotic beings or the extreme orderly beings; the latter two therefore have a pragmatic reason to join against a common enemy. 2) the Dark beings may believe that it's better to choose either extreme than to waver in the middle, just as some people respect people of an enemy country more than they respect fellow citizens who somwewhat sympathize with the enemy. 3) The Leveller, the primary leader and architect of the Dark, finds it easier to work with extremist beings for assorted reasons. (You can find the reasons I've given in the archives, or just mock me until I give them again. :-)
And why is the Light led by someone strongly affiliated with chaos or order? Because it doesn't have a choice. The incarnations of chaos and order are the most powerful mortal beings in the Mythworld. The Light would have no chance of resisting the Dark if it didn't have *one* of them on its side.
Furthermore, the affiliation strength of the chaos/order avatars varies. The Light avatars tend to be less strongly pulled to their poles--and therefore more balanced--than the Dark avatars. This explains the
Chaotic Light
Chaotic Dark
Orderly Light
Orderly Dark
progression that the ages have followed so far. Basically, if a Chaotic avatar is born in an Orderly age, or an Orderly one in a Chaotic age, the external influences of his upbringing and so forth partly cancel his internal affiliation and so he's fairly balanced and becomes a Hero. On the other hand, an avatar born in (or surviving into) an age of the same affiliation as himself experiences internal and external influences in the same direction and so he becomes an extremist, prone to possession by the Leveller.
For example, Moagim established the chaotic Wind Age. The chaotic avatar born at the end of that age became extremist and Dark--Moagim Reborn. The orderly avatar was Connacht. Raised in a chaotic environment that balanced his innate tendency toward order, he became the great hero of the Light.
Triumphing, Connacht established the Wolf Age as an orderly one. His orderly tendency became more extreme--perhaps because the world around him was more orderly than it had been, and perhaps because avatars just get more extreme as they age and their governing spirit takes over more fully--and he turned to the Dark, becoming possessed by the Leveller as Balor. Alric was then born at the end of this age, and his chaotic nature was balanced by external order so that he became the Light's great hero.
: Actually, that's one of the most ordered forms of
: government that there is. If Alric really wanted to
: create Chaos, but still have a working society, he
: would reliquish power, thereby creating a feudal
: society (lots of petty nobles kept in check by
: eachother). Not only does this prevent one noble from
: rising to absolute authority (speaking of which, why
: do keep saying that Alric is afraid of this when he
: himself practices it?), but it also has enough Chaos
: for any "Chaos-spirit-incarnate" to enjoy.
: :P
You're thinking of "order" a bit differently than I am. Yes, the nobles enjoy a bit more freedom and act more unpredictably in a feudal society. But what of their subjects? Is the average citizen of a medieval feudal society, or a modern semi-feudal society in the Third World, particularly free? I'd say not. The issue isn't whether everyone's being commanded by a single person or not--the issue is how much of each person's life is dictated by someone else. Every serf in a feudal society has an absolute ruler: whatever petty lord he happens to serve under. It doesn't really matter that the serf next door isn't obeying the same lord--he's still following orders from *someone*.
So I think a large, centralized but liberal regime is more chaotic and freedom-oriented than a feudal society. The government may be more stable and predictable, but the people are less so, and the latter outweighs the former.
--SiliconDream
