History Main / Myth

** The Deceiver is initially only known as that, but in the second game, he gets a little more fleshing out. One of his titles, as it turns out, is "Source of the Five Hundred Poisons".
* NeedsMoreLove: Was very popular in the few years following it's release. Recently, however, the community has waned and the game itself has become pretty obscure.

* RavensAndCrows: Soulblighter's signature ability is to turn into a murder of crows, which is how he escapes destruction in the first game. The Deciever weakens him by killing one of the birds.

* BadassArmy: The Legion from the first game is this. However, it also means that the guys in charge always send them where the fighting's going to be the ugliest, as noted by the author of the journal. Just before meeting a Trow for the first time.

NeedsMoreLove

* EverybodysDeadDave: The Legion get completely slaughtered in the final battle in both ''The Fallen Lords'' and ''Soulblighter''. In the first game even the narrator is implied to have been killed and Alric is pretty much the SoleSurvivor only because he wasn't present for the last level.
** The loss of the Legion in the second game can be averted if your hero unit takes the lead for the final battle; he can even take Soulblighter 1-on-1 at any but the highest difficulty level.

* RavensAndCrows: Soulblighter's signature ability is to turn into a murder of crows, which is how he escapes destruction in the first game.

* EliteMooks: Trow, fetch and the myrkridia are all far more dangerous than standard grunts of the both sides.

* TakenForGranite: The Watcher gets petrified and then [[LiterallyShatteredLives smashed to pieces]] to make sure he isn't coming back.

''Myth: The Fallen Lords'' and ''Myth 2: Soulblighter'' are a pair of classic Real Time Tactics games produced by {{Bungie}}, the studio now famous for the {{Halo}} series, which contains at least one ShoutOut to them.

Heavily inspired by the BlackCompany novels and battle scenes from ''{{Braveheart}}'', the games tell the story of an epic war between the living and TheUndead, led by the eponymous Fallen Lords. They represent one of the first attempts to create a strategy game with no base building, instead giving each side a fixed number of units per level.

** They're called Trow. They exist primarily to scare and kick the hell out of noobs.
** There are Trolls in the Seventh God expansion, too. They're moss-covered creatures of living stone that can pretend to be boulders.
* ArtificialStupidity: The AI is generally good with one exception - ranged units don't check that their target is clear of nearby friendly units, resulting in lots of friendly fire. That's not a bug it's a feature. Seriously, it was listed as one.
-->'''Dwarf:''' "Incoming!"\\
'''Announcer:''' "Casualties."

* TheBerserker: The [[ShapedLikeItself aptly named]] human Berserks.
* BerserkButton: Even centuries later, Balor ''really'' doesn't like anything to to do with the Myrkridia. [[spoiler:Alric uses this to his advantage]].
* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: The again, [[ShapedLikeItself aptly named]] Deceiver.

* DeadWeight: See ActionBomb.

* EliteMooks: Trow, Fetches and the Myrkridia all are far more dangerous than standard grunts of the both sides.

* EverythingFades: Averted to the extreme, as you lay permanent waste to the landscape. ''Awesomely''. Bloodstains, craters, heads, limbs, even broken arrows and bits of armor remain until the level ends. This is tactically relevant, especially in multiplayer, as you can see where battles have occurred before you got there. This is further tactically relevant for [[OurGoblinsAreDifferent Ghols]], who can pick up discarded weapons or even [[GrievousHarmWithABody body parts]] (particularly those of the [[ActionBomb wights]]) and [[ImprovisedWeaponUser hurl them at the enemy]].

-->"Back when I joined up with the Legion there was a mad Journeyman who regaled anyone too tired to move away with his theory about the Edge of All - that line between the land and nothingness out beyond the kingdom of Gower, where Connacht arose. He claimed the world is double-sided and constantly spinning, like a coin tossed in the air, and the living and the dead are held to its surface by sorceries too powerful for humans to master."

* LittleHeroBigWar: The whole tale is told from the view of low ranking soldiers, as inspired by the BlackCompany books.

* MartyrdomCulture: According the the {{GURPS}} sourcebook for Myth, this is something of the case with the warriors of The Legion. They are quite GenreSavvy about their status as the RedshirtArmy, understanding that their role on the battlefield is sometimes to pave the way for the success of other units by laying down their lives:
-->"The average Legionare takes a perverse pride in all of this. Nobody sacrifices more for Emperor, Empire, and the Light. He knows this, and he knows his superiors all the way up to [[BigGood Alric]] himself know this. He may gripe and bemoan his fate, but giving his all is why he first took up the sword, and likely why he will die with it in hand."

** Balor's title in the first game is The Leveler.

* NiceJobFixingItVillain: Depending on interpretation, it is possible that Soulblighter's attempt to finish what Balor started, and overthrow the new age of Light in this beginning, broke the ViciousCycle of Leveler for good (unless making Balor DeaderThanDead didn't do the trick earlier).

* NothingButSkulls: The Myrkridia totem platforms.
* OntologicalMystery: Arguably. The player never learns how the ViciousCycle came to be or what force perpetuates it. Just vague allusions to gods in conflict. WordOfGod has hinted that that the game somehow connects to {{Marathon}}.[[hottip:*:See May 19, 1999's entry [[http://marathon.bungie.org/story/cortana.html here]].]]

** Lovecraft style Apemen called Ghols who can pick up and throw battlefield debris.
** The Ghasts, rotting corpses with the ability to paralyze.
* OurLichesAreDifferent: The Shades. Magic-users who have "traded a lifetime of hording power for an unlifetime of abusing it." They move with their feet hovering a few inches above the ground, are unable to cross running water, and cast a perpetual shadow around themselves in all directions, regardless of light sources (hence their name.) Each is magically quite powerful, having access to the rightly-feared Dispersal Dream. However, becoming one seems to require the assistance of another wizard to complete their transformation, and thus they tend to beholden to a more powerful magic-user (such as the Fallen Lords.)
* OurWerewolvesAreDifferent: The Myrkridia.

* SealedEvilInACan: The Myrkridia in ''Myth''. [[spoiler:Not in the second one]].

** Soulblighter also tries to do this in the second game - he continues his attempts to destroy civilization even though the latest incarnation of the Leveller, Balor, has already been defeated. [[AllThereInTheManual The epilogue]] even states that he was deliberately trying to force the cycle by not waiting for the Leveller's next incarnation.

** This is played straighter as the series progresses, to every magic user except evil bosses being complete pansies compared to non-magic-users of equivalent plot value.

** Alric is shown as older but still very healthy enough to fight on the battlefield in full plate armor after sixty years had passed between ''Myth: The Fallen Lords'', and ''Myth II: Soulblighter''.
** The Fallen Lords themselves are an even more extreme case.
** This applies even to the Heron Guard/Journeymen, the "deathless" personal guards of the Emperor of the Cath Bruig. At the end of the second game, an older one of these guards remarked on the former splendor of the capital city before its destruction 110 years prior, told a new inductee into the order that he may see it return to glory some day soon, and joked that with a little luck, they would be around in another 940 years to see whether or not the cycle of the Leveler had been broken permanently.
** Bungie implied in [[WordOfGod early developer interviews]] that some of the most powerful wizards are essentially unkillable, and even [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill hacking them to pieces, burning their corpses, packing the ashes with salt in seperate containers, and burying them various places around the world]] might not be enough to permenantly put them down, though it would incapacitate them until someone could put them back together again for a re-animation. It is even speculated that Balor, despite being decapitated near the end of the first game, is still technically "alive" as his fully-aware head falls down a BottomlessPit for [[AndIMustScream eternity]].

----
<<|RealTimeStrategy|>>

->-[[WarWasBeginning Opening Crawl]]

-[[WarWasBeginning Opening Crawl]]

* EverythingFades: Averted to the extreme, as you lay permanent waste to the landscape. ''Awesomely''. Bloodstains, craters, heads, limbs, even broken arrows and bits of armor remain until the level ends. This is tactically relevant, especially in multiplayer, as you can see where battles have occurred before you got there.

* CompleteMonster: You will not find yourself RootingForTheEmpire in these games.

* {{Five Man Band}}: The Five Champions.

* MissedMomentOfAwesome: The exploits of the Seventh Legion, who were not mentioned between charging in Soulblighter's army as a first strike and suddenly appearing as TheCavalry in a battle hundreds of miles away.

* NiceJobFixingItVillain: Depending on interpretation, it is possible that Soulblighter's attempt to finish what Balor started, and overthrow the new age of Light in this beginning, broke the ViciousCircle of Leveler for good (unless making Balor DeaderThanDead didn't do the trick earlier).

* TheEmpire: Subverted, as the Cath Bruig Empire were the good guys - that is until Balor and and his minions sacked it and reanimated it's inhabitants as walking dead.

* BerserkButton: Even centuries later, [[spoiler:Balor]] ''really'' doesn't like anything to to do with the Myrkridia. Alric uses this to his advantage.

* ReviveKillsZombie: Healing any undead unit will kill it.

* TheAlliance: The survivors of the Cath Bruig Empire, the Dwarves of Myrgard, the Free Cities of the North, and the [[OurElvesAreBetter fir'Bolg]]. There would have been a fifth, the [[LizardFolk Skrael]], however time and budget constraints prevented this.

** Lovecraft style Apemen called Ghols.

Not to be confused with the [[MythAdventures book series of the same name]] by RobertAsprin.

Myth: The Fallen Lords and Myth 2: Soulblighter are a pair of classic RealTimeTactics games produced by {{Bungie}}, the studio now famous for the {{Halo}} series, which contains at least one ShoutOut to them.

Heavily inspired by the BlackCompany novels and battle scenes from ''{{Braveheart}}'', the games tell the story of an epic war between the living and TheUndead,led by the eponymous fallen lords. They represent one of the first attempts to create a strategy game with no base building, instead giving each side a fixed number of units per level.

A prequel, Myth: The Wolf Age was produced by GOD games. It is widely considered [[{{Discontinuity}} Non-Canon]] by fans.

------
These Games provide examples of:

* TheAlliance: The survivors of theCath Bruig Empire, the Dwarves of Myrgard, the Free Cities of the North, and the [[OurElvesAreBetter Fir?Bolg]]. There would have been a fifth, the [[LizardFolk Skrael]], however time and budget constraints prevented this.
* AllTrollsAreDifferent: They're called Trow. They exist primarily to scare (and kick) the hell out of noobs.

* ArtificialStupidity: The AI is generally good with one exception: ranged units don't check that their target is clear of nearby friendly units, resulting in lots of friendly fire.
-->[Dwarf] "Incoming!" [Announcer] "Casualties."
** That's not a bug it's a feature. Seriously, it was listed as one.
* BackFromTheBrink: One human city remains unsacked at the start of the first game.
** and then, toward the end of the game, it gets sacked.

* BigBadWolves: and how!

* ColonelMakepeace: The Eight good sorcerers who aren't Alric.
* TheCaptain: Alric
* DeadWeight: See ActionBomb above.
* DecoyProtagonist: The early levels of Myth 2 follow the heroics and inspired tactics of the narrator's commander in the legion. He is unceremoniously killed in Soulblighter's first appearance in the narrative.
** Unceremoniously? He fought through hordes of undead, and it took the BigBad, who has literally slaughtered armies, to kill him, and he even somehow survived that, ''by holding his organs in with his shield.'' Just think, this man is just some low-status captain of around 50 people who mostly walk around stopping pickpockets and vandals, and he managed to go up against someone who has tangled with god-like forces, and he survived the encounter. BadassNormal, anybody?

* ExpandedUniverse: The abovementioned Myth III, but also a comic book and the {{GURPS}} Myth roleplaying game.
* FiveBadBand: arguably the five The Fallen Lords encountered in the game.
** BigBad: Balor
** TheDragon: Soulblighter
** TheBrute: The Watcher
** EvilGenius: The Deceiver
** DarkChick: Shiver
* FallenHero: [[spoiler:Balor and Soulblighter]]

* ForTheEvulz: The Fallen Lords have no real motivation but evil for the sake of it.
** Well there's that matter of the Leveller...
*** Described in the game as "a transient divinity that seeks only conflict."
* FriendlyFireproof: Averted. See ArtificialStupidity above.
* GameMod: Countless, especially after Myth II and its bundled editing tools. While most are "simply" new maps or sets of units (Civil War, Wild West, WWII and the like), a few like Jinn and The Seventh God easily rival the original game.

-->''"It can't be hopeless." Two nights ago half a dozen men and I crouched around a campfire, trying to stay warm, and one of them said those words. [...] Tonight I sit by a campfire fifty miles northwest, remembering the way he screamed this morning when four thrall surrounded him, knocked the sword from his good hand, and hacked him to pieces.''

* MolotovCocktail
* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: Balor's title in the first game is The Leveler. His [[TheDragon second]] calls himself Soulblighter. The Deceiver is initially only known as that, but in the second game, he gets a little more fleshing out. One of his titles, as it turns out, is "Source of the Five Hundred Poisons".

* NoArcInArchery: averted. Arrows arc and are even effected by strong winds. The archers also visibly aim higher to shoot farther, and gain increased range from high ground.
* NothingButSkulls: The Myrkridia totem platforms
* OntologicalMystery: Arguably. The player never learns how the {{Vicious Cycle}} came to be or what force perpetuates it; just vague allusions to gods in conflict. {{Word of God}} has hinted that that the game somehow connects to {{Marathon}}.[[hottip:*:See May 19, 1999's entry [[http://marathon.bungie.org/story/cortana.html here]].]]

* OurGhoulsAreCreepier: Lovecraft style Apemen called Ghols; or if you prefer, the Ghasts, rotting corpses with the ability to paralyze.
* OurWerewolvesAreDifferent
* TheRemnant: Soulblighter in the second game
* SealedEvilInACan: The Myrkridia. [[spoiler:Not in the second one...]]
* ScrewDestiny: The Fallen Lords are prophesied and double prophesied to win. They're the non-player side. You do the math.[[hottip:*:Technically, this is [[http://carnage.bungie.org/myth/asylum/asylum.forum.pl?noframes;read=25097 disputed]] by some fans, who argue that the nature of the cycle was misinterpreted and the true battle to break it hasn't begun.]]

* SquishyWizard: In the first game, played straight with the fetch, inverted with everyone else that uses magic - using magic actually makes a person more hearty and hale. This is played straighter as the series progresses, to every magic user except evil bosses being complete pansies compared to non-magic-users of equivalent plot value.
** It should be noted that, unlike in many other fantasy settings, wizards can wear heavy armor with no apparent impairment of their magical abilities. Balor, BigBad of the first game, wore a full suit of plate, and Alric in the second game wore a suit of Heron Guard plate. Given the power of wizards in the setting, it can be assumed that they all have magical protection that might render heavy armor redundant, but Balor would likely wear armor for intimidation reasons and Alric for symbolic ones.

* ViciousCycle: Apparently a basic law of the world - every 500 or 1000 years (it's [[http://carnage.bungie.org/myth/asylum/asylum.forum.pl?noframes;read=25097 hard to be sure]]), a champion of good rises to defeat the Leveler, the champion of evil, and is then doomed to become the new Leveler by the time the cycle begins again.
** It's even more depressing if you go by the prequel's [[AllThereInTheManual backstory]] (hey, not ''everyone'' considers it DisContinuity); human civilization was systematically reduced to ruin and barbarism every thousand years by an incarnation of the Leveller, and every time civilization had recovered, the next Leveller would destroy it again. The times that a hero actually managed to ''beat'' the Leveller were the rare exceptions to the rule - before Connacht, Tireces (who later returned as the undead Moagim) was the only one who had ever defeated an incarnation of the Leveller.
* WizardsLiveLonger: Alric is shown as older but still very healthy enough to fight on the battlefield in full plate armor after sixty years had passed between Myth: The Fallen Lords, and Myth II: Soulblighter. The Fallen Lords themselves are an even more extreme case.

*** Considering what happened to Connacht after he was victorious, this should be a pretty clear message of things to come...
*** The idea was that Soulblighter forcing the cycle may have broken it, not that the Fallen Lords lost.

->''"In a time long past, the armies of the Dark came again into the lands of men. Their leaders became known as The Fallen Lords, and their terrible sorcery was without equal in the west. For sixty years, they reduced the civilized nations to carrion and ash, until the free city of Madrigal alone defied them. An army gathered there, and a desperate battle was joined against the Fallen. Heroes were born in the fire and bloodshed of the wars which followed, and their names and deeds will never be forgotten."''

The series boasted of a vibrant modding community that lasted well into the next decade. This included entire, full-length fanmade campaigns with new factions. Some of these rivaled the original in quality, and a few were even included in the ''Total Codex'' re-release.

* ActionBomb: The wights are [[DeadWeight bloated gas filled animated corpses]] that explode paralyzing everyone within range.
* TheAlliance: The survivors of theCath Bruig Empire, the Dwarves of Myrgard, the Free Cities of the North, and the [[OurElvesAreBetter Fir?Bolg]]. There would have been a fifth, the [[LizardFolk Skrael]], however time and budget constraints prevented this.
* AllTrollsAreDifferent: They're called Trow. They exist primarily to scare (and kick) the hell out of noobs.
* ArtificialStupidity: The AI is generally good with one exception: ranged units don't check that their target is clear of nearby friendly units, resulting in lots of friendly fire.

** That's not a bug it's a feature. Seriously, it was listed as one.
* BackFromTheBrink: One human city remains unsacked at the start of the first game.
* BadassArmy: The Legion from the first game is this. However, it also means that the guys in charge always send them where the fighting's going to be the ugliest, as noted by the author of the journal. Just before meeting a Trow for the first time.
* BigBadWolves: and how!
* TheBerserker: The [[ShapedLikeItself aptly named]] human Berserks.
* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: The again, [[ShapedLikeItself aptly named]] Deceiver.
* CompleteMonster: You will not find yourself RootingForTheEmpire in these games.
* ColonelMakepeace: The Eight good sorcerers who aren't Alric.
* TheCaptain: Alric
* DeadWeight: See ActionBomb above.
* DecoyProtagonist: The early levels of Myth 2 follow the heroics and inspired tactics of the narrator's commander in the legion. He is unceremoniously killed in Soulblighter's first appearance in the narrative.

* TheEmpire: Subverted, as the Cath Bruig Empire were the good guys - that is until Balor and and his minions sacked it and reanimated it's inhabitants as walking dead.
* EnemyMine: The Deceiver.
* EverythingFades: Averted to the extreme, as you lay permanent waste to the landscape. ''Awesomely''. Bloodstains, craters, heads, limbs, even broken arrows and bits of armor remain until the level ends. This is tactically relevant, especially in multiplayer, as you can see where battles have occurred before you got there.
* ExpandedUniverse: The abovementioned Myth III, but also a comic book and the {{GURPS}} Myth roleplaying game.
* FiveBadBand: arguably the five The Fallen Lords encountered in the game.
** BigBad: Balor
** TheDragon: Soulblighter
** TheBrute: The Watcher
** EvilGenius: The Deceiver
** DarkChick: Shiver
* FallenHero: [[spoiler:Balor and Soulblighter]]
* FlatWorld: Hinted at in the first game's manual.

* ForTheEvulz: The Fallen Lords have no real motivation but evil for the sake of it.

* FriendlyFireproof: Averted. See ArtificialStupidity above.
* GameMod: Countless, especially after Myth II and its bundled editing tools. While most are "simply" new maps or sets of units (Civil War, Wild West, WWII and the like), a few like Jinn and The Seventh God easily rival the original game.
* HopelessWar: Conveyed particularly brutally in the first game.

* LittleHeroBigWar: The whole tale is told from the view of low ranking soldiers, as inspired by the BlackCompany books.
* MissedMomentOfAwesome: The exploits of the Seventh Legion, who were not mentioned between charging in Soulblighter's army as a first strike and suddenly appearing as TheCavalry in a battle hundreds of miles away.
* MolotovCocktail
* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: Balor's title in the first game is The Leveler. His [[TheDragon second]] calls himself Soulblighter. The Deceiver is initially only known as that, but in the second game, he gets a little more fleshing out. One of his titles, as it turns out, is "Source of the Five Hundred Poisons".
* NightOfTheLivingMooks
* NoArcInArchery: averted; arrows arc and are even effected by strong winds. The archers also visibly aim higher to shoot farther, and gain increased range from high ground.
* NothingButSkulls: The Myrkridia totem platforms
* OntologicalMystery: Arguably. The player never learns how the {{Vicious Cycle}} came to be or what force perpetuates it; just vague allusions to gods in conflict. {{Word of God}} has hinted that that the game somehow connects to {{Marathon}}.[[hottip:*:See May 19, 1999's entry [[http://marathon.bungie.org/story/cortana.html here]].]]
* OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame
* OurGhoulsAreCreepier: Lovecraft style Apemen called Ghols; or if you prefer, the Ghasts, rotting corpses with the ability to paralyze.
* OurWerewolvesAreDifferent
* TheRemnant: Soulblighter in the second game
* SealedEvilInACan: The Myrkridia. [[spoiler:Not in the second one...]]
* ScrewDestiny: The Fallen Lords are prophesied and double prophesied to win. They're the non-player side. You do the math.[[hottip:*:Technically, this is [[http://carnage.bungie.org/myth/asylum/asylum.forum.pl?noframes;read=25097 disputed]] by some fans, who argue that the nature of the cycle was misinterpreted and the true battle to break it hasn't begun.]]
** Soulblighter also tries to do this in the second game - he continues his attempts to destroy civilization even though the latest incarnation of the Leveller, Balor, has already been defeated. [[AllThereInTheManual The epilogue]] even states that he was deliberately trying to force the cycle by not waiting for the Leveller's next incarnation.
* SquishyWizard: In the first game, played straight with the fetch, inverted with everyone else that uses magic - using magic actually makes a person more hearty and hale. This is played straighter as the series progresses, to every magic user except evil bosses being complete pansies compared to non-magic-users of equivalent plot value.
** It should be noted that, unlike in many other fantasy settings, wizards can wear heavy armor with no apparent impairment of their magical abilities. Balor, BigBad of the first game, wore a full suit of plate, and Alric in the second game wore a suit of Heron Guard plate. Given the power of wizards in the setting, it can be assumed that they all have magical protection that might render heavy armor redundant, but Balor would likely wear armor for intimidation reasons and Alric for symbolic ones.
* TheStrategist: The Deceiver in the second game.
* ViciousCycle: Apparently a basic law of the world - every 500 or 1000 years (it's [[http://carnage.bungie.org/myth/asylum/asylum.forum.pl?noframes;read=25097 hard to be sure]]), a champion of good rises to defeat the Leveler, the champion of evil, and is then doomed to become the new Leveler by the time the cycle begins again.
** It's even more depressing if you go by the prequel's [[AllThereInTheManual backstory]] (hey, not ''everyone'' considers it DisContinuity); human civilization was systematically reduced to ruin and barbarism every thousand years by an incarnation of the Leveller, and every time civilization had recovered, the next Leveller would destroy it again. The times that a hero actually managed to ''beat'' the Leveller were the rare exceptions to the rule - before Connacht, Tireces (who later returned as the undead Moagim) was the only one who had ever defeated an incarnation of the Leveller.
* WizardsLiveLonger: Alric is shown as older but still very healthy enough to fight on the battlefield in full plate armor after sixty years had passed between Myth: The Fallen Lords, and Myth II: Soulblighter. The Fallen Lords themselves are an even more extreme case.
** This applies even to the Heron Guard/Journeymen, the "deathless" personal guards of the Emperor of the Cath Bruig. At the end of the second game, an older one of these guards remarked on the former splendor of the capital city before its destruction 110 years prior, told a new inductee into the order that he may see it return to glory some day soon, and joked that with a little luck, they would be around in another 940 years to see whether or not the cycle of the Leveler had been broken permanently.
*** Considering what happened to Connacht after he was victorious, this should be a pretty clear message of things to come...