P.S. Another part I love is when Picker is stressing to Paran about how they're reliant on Quick Ben for battlemagic (he's a stiletto, not a sledgehammer--"You unsheathed the wrong weapon for this fight, Dujek") and how spectacularly wrong she turns out to be. No coruscating waves of power from QB, but his illusions and wraiths take out several of the Pannion battlemages and exhaust their energies, and the avalanche he starts takes out a large chunk of their troops. In Dom3 terms, they waste energy tossing Magma Eruption at his False Horrors and then he hits the Pannion army with a no-friendly-fire Earthquake. Cleverness and finesse even moreso than raw power.
And Quick Ben, unlike me, never accidentally suicides his gem-carrying scout in a Storm Castle attempt.
-Max