: This reply will largely overlap with Forrest's, but I'm
: egotistical enough to think that it should still be
: posted.
: 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.
I never paid attention to this part of your theory. Think you could somehow work it in to my geographical chaos/order/balance/extremes distinctions? Like why the victor always comes from the east, (until now, at least).
