BTW, we can't give you answers to most of these questions that are both fast and perfectly accurate. We've debated most of them in the past, and they're still not fully decided. You might want to search the archives for relevant keywords.
: 2) who are these Forest Giants? They were probably a
: younger race than the trow... but they were never
: mentioned in Myth II or the comic. It seems like they
: are a match for the trow too, and since they hate the
: trow so much, there must have been an age-old conflict
: a long time ago when the trow and the forest giants
: fought. However, since the trow are much stronger..
: and exterminated 2 of the most powerful races before
: (the oghres and the cal-something I forgot) the forest
: giants would have been in huge trouble and wouldnt
: have survived unto this day.
We know why the Forest Giants hate the Trow; they "poisoned the soul of iron." This seems to refer to the period in the Age of Reason (about 2500 years before Myth:TFL, when the Cath Bruig empire had just been created) when the Trow developed ironworking and created iron weapons. So this doesn't require the Forest Giants to be an elder race.
I think they're probably a younger race; the Trow exterminated *all* the other elder races, as far as we know. Also, whereas the Trow are very alien--they're made of rock and they're immortal and they don't have to eat and they don't reproduce--the Forest Giants are much more "ordinary" in their makeup. They age, they reproduce, and they're made up of organic matter. So I think it's reasonable to assume that Forest Giants belong to the younger cycle of life, like Dwarves and Mauls and ferns and bumblebees and humans.
: 3) It said that Mazzarin was one of the most powerful
: Avatara before he died (his death caused by the
: Watcher I presume). When did he become a shade (or did
: he ever) in the game? It says he is in the
: encyclopedia.. but I do not remember seeing that shade
: in MythTFL.
As others have said, a Shade named Mazzarin appears in the Watcher level. This might simply be a mistake: there are other Shade names, like Damas, which are in the tags but which are given to other characters in-game. Apparently Bungie was kinda careless deciding who got what name, and making sure the names were consistent as the game went from beta to final.
If it *was* intentional, then either the Shade is the original Mazzarin, or he's just named after him (the same way lots of people are named Jesus or César.) I'm in favor of the latter option, even though it's more complicated; the former requires that, when Mazzarin was about to be killed by the Watcher, he allowed himself to be made into a Shade instead. And that when you finally meet him in-game, no one ever sees fit to say, "Hey, we met the greatest Avatara of the last 4,000 years; he's an evil Shade now." That seems unlikely to me. :-)
But honestly, I think it's probably a mistake.
: 4) Lastly, why do the trow befriend or have befriended
: the deceiver? What does "furor poeticus"
: mean?
"Furor poeticus" means "poetic madness." It's a term dating back to the Greeks. Poetic ability (and artistic ability in general) was thought to be given by the gods, as was insanity. Poets would go into trances or fits, and temporarily appear insane; during this time, the gods "spoke though them" and composed poems.
So, basically, the Trow and the Deceiver get along because they're the most "civilized" beings in Myth--the most interested in art and science and law and all that. The cultured Trow admire the Deceiver's artistic & intellectual abilities, and consider those abilities to be semi-divine in nature. The Deceiver, for his part, probably admires the power and wisdom contained in the Trow civilization.
--SiliconDream
