The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Eighty One Up

[Simon_Jester]

By now, I wouldn't be surprised if we've got a fair amount of recon assets over the City at all times; it's big, but it's also a damned important area to keep an eye on.

[tortieconspiracy]

The battle seems nice. One question though:
Where did the Elder learned the traditional gesture to zip his mouth? Does he know what a zipper is? Odd, indeed...

Eh , I don't think the Elder needs to know what a zipper is to make the gesture. Drawing one's hand over one's mouth pretty obviously means "My lips are sealed" whether it's symbolic of a zipper, tape, glue or even closing a lid.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Fun Fact: If the urban area of heaven is roughly 1500 kilometers per side, that means we're talking about a city just a bit smaller than the entire country of Venezuela.

I crunched the numbers, its about 850,000 square miles. Put another way, its a city three times the size of Texas.

And I reeeeeally hope we don't have to go house-to-house.

[LadyTevar]

perhaps soon we'll also learn the True Secret -- who or what "The targetters" are.

[Spekio]

Fun Fact: If the urban area of heaven is roughly 1500 kilometers per side, that means we're talking about a city just a bit smaller than the entire country of Venezuela.

....And both have egomaniacal dictators for rulers.

[Nematocyst]

perhaps soon we'll also learn the True Secret -- who or what "The targetters" are.

Don Brennan (the only Targeteer mentioned) is very human. Just a little enthusiast.

Fun Fact: If the urban area of heaven is roughly 1500 kilometers per side, that means we're talking about a city just a bit smaller than the entire country of Venezuela.

Sweet Haruhi, we are never going to successfully occupy that!

[Pelranius]

The battle seems nice. One question though:
Where did the Elder learned the traditional gesture to zip his mouth? Does he know what a zipper is? Odd, indeed...

Eh , I don't think the Elder needs to know what a zipper is to make the gesture. Drawing one's hand over one's mouth pretty obviously means "My lips are sealed" whether it's symbolic of a zipper, tape, glue or even closing a lid.

Well, the Elder won't know what a zipper is, but Michael has picked up a lot of human slang and so he would think "zippered his mouth" shut because it's his PoV, I guess.

I wonder if those Elders are the last of their race?

[Chris OFarrell]

Heh, I have to admit I was listening to the Mortal Kombat theme when reading this.
Worked rather well

The stunned moment of silence after the 'shut up' was brilliant. The utter stillness as everyone sort of stopped and wonders '...did...did Michael just say what I thought he said?'

And then when he followed that up...and everyone ran for the bunker throwing all the cash they had to spare at the Mason. Wonder if he had been expanding his bunker somewhat since he first built it, because this'll be the last chance to sell tickets!

And you have to wonder what the Global Hawk feeds are showing right now...it would be useful if one of them blew the roof off the palace, even if purely by accident, letting the UAV feed show that its going down.

Then we can get that CIA dude with the Predator to fire his Hellfires off again...

Though you have to wonder what the ELINT guys are saying.

"Yes General, I'm telling you, we're picking up the theme from 'The Dambusters'. Sounds like its being played by a cover band...preaty catchy tube too. No, Sir, I have not been at my post too long..."

[Jusu]

hmm, does my eyes deceive me? thought we updated. @_@;;

Nevermind, found it. Didn't look back far enough.

[nobody_really]

Fun Fact: If the urban area of heaven is roughly 1500 kilometers per side, that means we're talking about a city just a bit smaller than the entire country of Venezuela.

I crunched the numbers, its about 850,000 square miles. Put another way, its a city three times the size of Texas.

And I reeeeeally hope we don't have to go house-to-house.

Really? According to This site, Venezuela is a little more than 850,000 square kilometers (912,000, to be a little closer.) The Eternal City is 2,250,000 square kilometers, which makes it bigger than Mexico (at 1,972,000) and slightly smaller than the Democratic Republic of Congo (at 2,345,000). The three times larger than Texas (at 678,000 square kilometers) sounds not too bad, but almost 4 times would be better, IMO.

[edit: clarified what was 2 and a quarter million square kilometers]

[Jusu]

Hmm, not meaning to show myself as some stupid dolt, but "music is the key". Why do my thoughts instantly drift towards Macross and Minmei?

Guess it's how my mind is wired.

If this is how strong Yahweh is, if Michael fails, we're gonna need bigger bombs.

[nobody_really]

Hmm, not meaning to show myself as some stupid dolt, but "music is the key". Why do my thoughts instantly drift towards Macross and Minmei?

Guess it's how my mind is wired.

Well, I wouldn't say that, because several other commenters have said pretty much the same thing.

If this is how strong Yahweh is, if Michael fails, we're gonna need bigger bombs.

Meh, two of those ship killer missiles that took out Satan should be enough.

[LadyTevar]

perhaps soon we'll also learn the True Secret -- who or what "The targetters" are.

Don Brennan (the only Targeteer mentioned) is very human. Just a little enthusiast.

No hon... I'm talking the quiet MiB with the inflectionless voices who wilt flowers and cause a drop in temperature whenever they walk by. The "Wizards of Armegeddon". The ones who have been in the background with Korenoko, with Abigor, with various generals.

[Werrf]

No hon... I'm talking the quiet MiB with the inflectionless voices who wilt flowers and cause a drop in temperature whenever they walk by. The "Wizards of Armegeddon". The ones who have been in the background with Korenoko, with Abigor, with various generals.

Gotta say that I've always assumed that was them - the civilian contractors who analyse blast patterns and fallout and figure out the best places to put bombs, and that the chill and the dead plants were more figurative than literal. The two - Don Brennan and the Wizards of Armageddon - have both been described as "targeteers", so I'd assume they're the same people.

:: Shrug:: Just IMO.

I do have a question of my own, though - just what is the "Power" that Michael and Yah-Yah can gather from their followers that is enhanced by music? It almost sounds like we're straying into magic territory, with energy and magic and life-force that can be summoned from afar... Of course, knowing the way the story has gone, there will be an explanation for it, or perhaps there already has been and I missed it (entirely likely), or perhaps it's expected to be so obvious a blind haddock could make the connection and I haven't (also likely), but it seems like there's more going on here than we've seen in the past with the simple telekinesis or telepathy of the demons.

[Stuart]

No hon... I'm talking the quiet MiB with the inflectionless voices who wilt flowers and cause a drop in temperature whenever they walk by. The "Wizards of Armegeddon". The ones who have been in the background with Korenoko, with Abigor, with various generals.

They're members of the various independent think tanks (collectively known as The Business) who, inter alia, did work on target analysis for strategic weapons. The most famous is Herman Kahn. Don Brennan was the guy who took over HI after Herman died. Don was a friend, a very charming and affable man with a fund of good stories. Unfortunately, his ability at gardening was zero, the first year at H, his lawn died. All of it. We used to joke that he could kill a plant just by walking into the same room as it. We all try and keep out voices flat and uninflected while we're making study reports. It avoids misinterpretation. As for the drop in temperature, it's us cheerfully adopting the accusation "you people make my blood run cold" as a compliment.

[JBG]

If I wanted to go too far I would call you a apogenous, bovaristic, coprolalial, dasypygal, excerebrose, facinorous, gnathonic, hircine, ithyphallic, jumentous, kyphotic, labrose, mephitic, napiform, oligophrenial, papuliferous, quisquilian, rebarbative, saponaceous, thersitical, unguinous, ventripotent, wlatsome, xylocephalous, yirning zoophyte. Are those all English words? And are they all insults? I can't even pronounce some of them.

Some of them are medical. It means an impotent, conceited, obscene, hairy-buttocked, brainless, wicked, toadying, goatish, indecent, stable-smelling, hunchbacked, thick-lipped, stinking, turnip-shaped, feeble-minded, pimply, trashy, repellent, smarmy, foul-mouthed, greasy, gluttonous, loathsome, wooden-headed, whining, extremely low form of animal life. It's called an Abecadarian Insult. They can be good fun.

I first came across that in "The Superior Persons Little Book of Words". By Ambrose Bierce?

A wonderful little book dedicated to charientisms.

[Ilya Muromets]

Maybe it's just my love for silly word-play, but the most entertaining part of this entire chapter for me was the entire (English) alphabet of insults. And it's made even more hilarious by the fact that's it's followed by what finally set Yahweh off -- saying that his pets didn't love him.

[darksoul]

The battle seems nice. One question though:
Where did the Elder learned the traditional gesture to zip his mouth? Does he know what a zipper is? Odd, indeed...

Eh , I don't think the Elder needs to know what a zipper is to make the gesture. Drawing one's hand over one's mouth pretty obviously means "My lips are sealed" whether it's symbolic of a zipper, tape, glue or even closing a lid.

but then it's not a traditional gesture, is just a fairly obvious gesture or some other description. The phrasing is not accurate on that.

[darksoul]

The battle seems nice. One question though:
Where did the Elder learned the traditional gesture to zip his mouth? Does he know what a zipper is? Odd, indeed...

Eh , I don't think the Elder needs to know what a zipper is to make the gesture. Drawing one's hand over one's mouth pretty obviously means "My lips are sealed" whether it's symbolic of a zipper, tape, glue or even closing a lid.

Well, the Elder won't know what a zipper is, but Michael has picked up a lot of human slang and so he would think "zippered his mouth" shut because it's his PoV, I guess.

I wonder if those Elders are the last of their race?

true enough.

I would guess they are, along with the four creatures, and probably even the pets. It seems Yahwe had a thing for weird creatures.

[OmegaChief]

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say 'Unique' creatures?

[MysteriousDarkLordv3]

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say 'Unique' creatures?

The desciption of Yahweh's throne in the Apocalypse of St. John (aka the Book of Revelations) specifically calls the "four living creatures".

[Bayonet]

Does this paragraph look recycled? I'm fairly certain I saw it somewhere in Armageddon????...

The descriptions of the critters and the words of praise are from Revelations, so they're certainly recycled from that POV. They also mirror Michael-Lan's first appearance in the Throne Room.

[Bayonet]

It's a field, not a beam; it has to be to allow multiple crowd effects. Draw the field propagation from above the human head (since daemons are bigger than humans) and the tinfoil cap cuts out all the incident radiation from reaching the brain. Completely.

But we don't know where Hell is spatially, with respect to earth. Ii Hell is "below" our plane, whatever the hell that means (No pun intended), then the radiation would tend to come from below, regardless of the daemons' stature.

But depending on the frequency, radio waves often behave omni-directionally. Receiving some frequencies while under a bridge that blocks out others, is an example.

But these are very weak signals. The tin foil hat's ability to attenuate the signals may be enough to drop them below the effective amplitude.

Or maybe the geometries seredipitisly (however the Lucas Electricals you spell it) line up to our advantage.

[Bayonet]

I'm just noting it it so that poor Ghengis Quan doesn't think he's going insane.

Staying sane is wildly over rated.

[Bayonet]

perhaps soon we'll also learn the True Secret -- who or what "The targetters" are.

No secret there. They're mil-geeks. Specialists in the employment of nuclear weapons. Stuart was a targeteer, back in the day.