: Personally, I have to go for Balor as the baddest of the
: archvillains- hey, he is, quite literally, destruction
: incarnate! His armies far outnumbered Soulblighter's,
: and he fought a running battle against the entire
: world for 19 years, and was winning right up until the
: end, and he only lost then because Alric had several
: factors in his favour that he could not have foreseen
: (the Myrkrydian standard, the Eblis stone and The
: Head). In Myth TFL, there is a mounting sense of
: desperation, not seen in Myth2. Balor even levels
: Madrigal, the last bastion of humanity, before he
: finally falls, and when he does, most of the civilised
: nations are merely smoking ruins.
: Soulblighter only
: manages to hold back the light for two years, fighting
: mostly on equal terms, and suffering numerous decisive
: defeats.
Actually, Soulblighter did a bit more damage to the West than Balor did, and much more quickly. Over 17 years of the War in the West, Scales, Covenant, Tyr, and finally Madrigal fell, but Tandem never fell at all. Soulblighter, on the other hand, demolished all of them in a few months, and Tandem shortly thereafter. Of course, as the narrator says, the armies of the west were softened by 60 years of peace, and when you take into account that Balor LITERALLY razed over half the continent, populated with the greatest empire ever known, then yeah, Balor was the bigger baddy..
: He also commits acts of the highest stupidity
: at times, like not leaving The Summoner with anything
: like enough guards, considering how valuable he is to
: Soulblighter. Another major mistake was binding his
: column of 1000 Thrall to Baron Kildaer, and then
: allowing him to leave Keep Kildaer defended by only a
: handful of Brigands, Dark Archers and Stygian Knights,
: allowing the Legion to kill the Baron and destroy the
: Thrall.
The Thrall weren't bound to the Baron; after the Baron was killed they came after the Legion (see Gonen's Bridge). They were bound to Soulblighter. Only the Stygs were bound to the Baron.
: Sending 1000 Thrall as a major attack force
: was stupid in itself- without support, a small force
: of Dwarves could blast them all to pieces, and the few
: Legionairres who reached Rhi'anon numbered 2200, so
: think how pathetic an army of 1000 Thrall would be
: against the newly revitalised West.
Those thousand thrall were nothing. They were sent to sack a few small towns along the edge of Forest Heart. Not until he had the Myrkridia did he actually go after the major cities of the West.
