Michael Hodum wrote:
Judging from the majority of examples in the novels, I have found the categorization below to be heavily flawed.
" Amateur (Raven) Low Level Professional (better than Raven, less powerful than company wizards) Professional (One Eye, Goblin, Silent, and Tom-Tom) Good Professional (Smoke) Great (The Circle of 18, New Taken) Great with Experience (The Ten Who Were Taken) Extremely Great (Dominator, Lady) "
Harden, merely "Great" and placed on the level of non-entities like Scorn and Blister, was able to freeze three Taken during their frontal, offensive charge: the Hanged Man, an effective battle mage as seen earlier in the initial carpet attack; Stormbringer, vastly powerful as we all know; and Soulcatcher herself. Only one thing stopped Harden from scattering the brains of these 3 Taken: the action of unseen Shifter.
That's true. I think there may have been a combination of luck and the Taken underestimating him... Then again they devoted four of their number to deal with him - three as distractions while the fourth pretended to his house. Maybe, with a few more years and / or a greater exposure to magic Lore, he could have been on the same level as the Lady and Dominator? And Croaker makes it clear that he considered Whisper the equal of the Old Taken Thinking back, I should have talked about a difference between the New Circle of 18 and the Original Circle of 18 - that number was stable as their best were destroyed. Harden and Whisper were clearly far more powerful than Journey and Feather. The Original Circle of 18 were the biggest, baddest wizards to arise in the centuries since the fall of the Domination while Journey and Feather were clearly the second (maybe third) string as far as the Circle goes. But I would still put Journey, Feather, Scorn, etc at more or less the same level - born with the power of a Taken, but lacking the knowledge and experience to play with the big boys.
Raven is not the amateur we think he is. He kills Raker, the first or second most dangerous and respected member of the original eighteen in the Circle. It would be foolish to think that he did not use considerable magic in this effort, perhaps a powerful concealment spell, as someone in the Circle isn't likely to be dispatched by some talentless thug who sneaks up behind him with a dagger.
Just because Raker was a wizard doesn't mean he used magic for everything. I suspect he was respect more for his skills as a general than for his power level, but even if he was - look how he died: All his sense concentrating on Bait (Raven's pet name for Croaker at this point) who carries the stink of the Taken on him. He's been run ragged for weeks, he knows he's in a trap, so he takes some bait. Nothing happens (well, Croaker has to do some stitching) so he takes some more bait - all the while looking for the trap the Taken has set for him. Only the Taken is out of town (stirring up trouble for her rival Taken) and some dude with a knife takes him out. In some ways this argues that Raven wasn't every powerful - Soulcatcher couldn't watch Limper's fall because she knew the Limper would be able to sense her powers. She talked about putting aside all her power to watch, but decided it was too dangerous. Raker, looking for a sorcerer to attack him, never sensed Raven coming.
One-Eye built a spear that utterly destroyed an ancient "Extremely Great" sorcerer Kina, when forces of considerably greater power were only able to trap her. Sure, it took him extra time to craft it, but consider the leftover time the entrapping powers had after imprisoning Kina in the plain castle.
Perhaps they never bothered to return to finish her off. Kina was neutralized and there would be other problems to deal with. Or maybe her prison was a monument to their victory? I'm sure the powers that beat the Dominator could have eventually destroyed him. All it would have taken was them remaining on a war footing for generations as they destroyed his allies one at a time then finished him off - but people wouldn't want to do that. They fought a hard war for survival and when he was beaten they took a deep breath and relaxed. They got on with life, raised kids, and didn't make the sacrifices they would have had to if they wanted the Dominator destroy. And why should they? Making sacrifices when your existence depends on it is one thing, but doing that when you are safe? When there's no real threat? Why bother when the eternal guard will ensure that the Dominator never rises again? And even we do destroy him won't some of his spirit and evil live on?
A group of lesser light mages summoned a tree that still keeps an ancient Dominator underground. And of course, nearly any fool who stumbles upon a true name can use it to wholly disarm a demigod.
Were they lesser mages? Or were the Circle of 18 to that age's Dominator? There's been other debate about naming. Remember when Croaker named Shiftshifter's sidekick (Lisa something?) in the books of the south? He said something like "Your real name is blah, and all these sorcerer types just heard that True Name so watch it." And when the Naming is done it's with words like "The Ritual is Done. You are blah..." What kind of ritual work went on before the Naming? Who knows?
None of these are exceptions: interactions like these are the norm in the Black Company microcosm. Understanding this, it appears rather useless to try to force any kind of gaming paradigm onto the type of fiction that Glen Cook has written here. None of these categories hold fast in any significant way.
And that's the problem with using books as a gaming source. Games are writing with rules and play balance. Books are written with drama, plot, and effects. In a game a wizard is limited by the rules; in a book the same wizard is limited only by what the author needs him to do with the plot. I've read books that are almost easy to convert to games because the author has laid out how magic works in that world. Glen Cook never lays out a system - his wizards are more or less consistent in their power level (someone like One Eye is as powerful one day as he is the next) but that's it. The only part of a system he does give is the stuff about True Names. No, it's not easy converting Cook's world to gaming, but it can be done. There was a GURPS Magic book that cited The Black Company in it's world building section as an example of a world where magic existed but didn't dominate the battlefield, and GURPS would be a good fit for low level Black Company Wizards (but not the Taken). Then again, The Lord of the Rings gives even less insight to how magic works there, but there have been at least two RPG adaptations so anything can be adapted. The question then comes: Is this a good adaptation or not? For the product I reviewed the answer was clearly no.
-Mike
PS- did anyone receive my previous post?
I don't think I saw it. Richard