The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Forty One Up

[Samuel]

Wouldn't it be a lot easier to just open the portal on Earth and start tossing nuclear-tipped Tomahawks through? Besides, Heaven is nice real estate, and it's a shame to damage nice real estate more than you have to to win the war.

I was refering to what God would do.

[Peptuck]

Wouldn't it be a lot easier to just open the portal on Earth and start tossing nuclear-tipped Tomahawks through? Besides, Heaven is nice real estate, and it's a shame to damage nice real estate more than you have to to win the war.

Yes, but it wouldn't be as awesome as punching God with the Sun.

[Valiran]

Wouldn't it be a lot easier to just open the portal on Earth and start tossing nuclear-tipped Tomahawks through? Besides, Heaven is nice real estate, and it's a shame to damage nice real estate more than you have to to win the war.

Yes, but it wouldn't be as awesome as punching God with the Sun.

Oh this line just made me break out in psychotic giggling.

[Stuart]

DIMO(n) Briefing Room, Pentagon, Arlington V.A.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” Norman stammered, nervously. “I was trying to get all the data together since the attack on Fort Bragg.” The past twenty-four hours had been a blur for him. After the creature had been dead, before the body was even cool, DIMO(N) science teams had started going over the body and sending all the information they could back to the Pentagon. All of that information had been crunched and processed by Norman and his team, and fitted in to a briefing that the military brass was very interested in hearing. It hadn't helped that the garrison of Fort Bragg were demanding that the corpse of the Leopard Beast be stuffed and mounted outside their front gate. It was rumored that at least two taxidermists had taken a horrified look at the size of the Beast and turned the job down. That was a pity, because it would, as the Base Commander had said, make a nice entrance arch.

General Schatten waved Norman on. “It’s quite alright, Baines. Just give us what you have.”

“Yes, well, ok.” Norman turned to the screen as his power point started up. “Prior to the attack on Fort Bragg, we had put together a lot of data about the various beasts, angels, captains, and armies discussed in John’s Revelation. The problem is, based on what we’ve learned from hell, some of it didn’t fit and we were hoping that the beasts were in fact Satan’s constructs, similar to his golden hydra.”

The screen displayed the hulking corpse of the thing that attacked Bragg. “This is the first beast. Notice the coloration, and spotting. We believe it to be the ‘Leopard-Beast’ mentioned in Revelations 13. The good news is, the creature was just as vulnerable to conventional weaponry as anything else, in sufficiently large doses. The bad news, is that this was the first of four beasts. The even worse news…” He paused as he clicked over to a fresh dispatch from Crystal City “… is that shortly before the creature died, the cell-phone tower detection system recorded a minor aberration that looked a lot like a portal formation, just underpowered.” He looked at the people in the room. “Allowing for the fact that that the portal did not form, but also noting that no ‘animal handler’ was found nearby, the implication is that these things are capable of opening their own portals, which is an ability we have not observed in any non-sentient infernal life-forms.”

“So you’re telling us there’s three more of these leopard-beasts in heaven waiting for the go-ahead to attack, and they can get in and out at will?” A general from the domestic defense forces was looking noticeably agitated. Film of the fighting at Fort Bragg had been broadcast on network television and the sheer volume of firepower that had been necessary to put the Leopard Beast down had made a marked impression.

“No sir, no.” Norman went back to his presentation. “The other beasts won’t look anything like the one at Bragg. We feel it is likely they will all be of similar size and raw power, but the appearance varies widely. Revelations 13 also mentions a great beast appearing like a lamb, with two horns. Now lamb can more likely be interpreted as ram, which means it’ll probably be big and have hooves. It doesn’t sound very scary, but there’s this little tidbit:” He brought up a text on the screen. Rev 13:13- And he performs great signs and wonders, such that he even calls down the fire of heaven in the presence of men.

"Now this beast is really odd, the texts say it looks like a lamb but speaks like a dragon. That implies its appearance is seriously deceptive. There's a strange side to this, theologians have always assumed that the descriptions of the Beasts were allegorical, that they weren't really Beasts at all but metaphors for social and political developments. Well, as the troops at Fort Bragg can tell us, that isn’t so. The Leopard Beast was just as described, the seven heads didn’t represent seven kings or empires. Or seven hills come to that. So, we can anticipate that the rest of the descriptions are also literally correct. The Lamb Beast was assumed to be representative of a government that spoke softly but was actually viciously repressive. We can now assume that isn’t the case. We’re going to get what the old texts described. How that applies to the Lamb-Beast is something we’ll undoubtedly find out in due course. That brings us to its prediction that it will call down fire from Heaven.”

“That could be nothing, lots of mythic beasts are associated with fire, but only two of the Armageddon beasts you’ve mentioned are.”

“The other one being?” Colonel Taylor was paying close attention.

“This fella.” Norman brought up a rather nightmarish image. “The Scarlet Beast. Similar in power and ability to the leopard and lamb, it should have multiple faces and horns, like the leopard. However,” on top of the creature in the picture appeared a small figure. “The Scarlet Beast has a keeper, guardian, assistant something along those lines. The texts call her the Whore of Babylon.” The picture zoomed in on her. “Dressed in a purple robe, she rides the head of the scarlet beast and carries a golden goblet full of ‘abominations of obscenity’. The allegorical explanation of the Whore was that she represented an Empire far advanced in decadence. The prime candidate was usually Rome but some suggested Jerusalem. Modern apocalyptic cults claimed the Whore was Hollywood. San Francisco got a look-in as well.

“Now, we see no reason why we shouldn’t take the texts literally. The Scarlet Beast has a rider. The Whore and the beast together are supposed to bring the kingdoms of men down, so she’s probably a very powerful angel and can bring all sorts of surprises. The Golden Goblet, if it exists, probably contains some more plague material similar to what has already been thrown at us.

“And for surprises, look no further than the Red Dragon. Not to be confused with the scarlet beast.” He cleared his throat. “Now, the fact that this last is named a dragon and not simply a ‘beast’ is very significant, and very distressing.” A list of biblical passages scrolled on the screen. “Dragons are mentioned over twenty times in the old testament, and the most relevant occasion is in Isaiah 27:

Isaiah 27:1. –In that day the lord will take his terrible, swift sword and punish Leviathan, the piercing serpent, the coiling, unending serpent. He will kill the dragon of the sea.

Norman paused while that sank in. “Now, I’m sure everyone remembers Leviathan, and what kind of a creature he was. In the Old Testament, whenever someone REALLY wanted to wish ill on a place, they’d call for it to become a den or dwelling place of dragons. The power of the red dragon will be a lot more than these others. In fact, according to texts the other three Armageddon beasts may draw strength or energy from the red dragon, which might explain why the seemingly impossible physiology of the leopard-beast still worked. I want to caution everyone that just because we killed the first attacking beast doesn’t mean we can kill others. The leopard beast was pretty-much the easiest, they will get worse from here.”

For a moment, there was silence in the room and it felt a bit colder than air conditioning alone could manage. Everyone had seen the footage of the large, cancer-like monster’s remains strewn across the northern plains of Hell, and they were imagining it creeping across their homes. “Thank you, Baines.” Colonel Taylor shifted in his seat uncomfortably as he eyed the image on the screen. “Now, ladies and gentleman, apparently we have to figure out the best way to slay a dragon.”

“We’ve got more problems than that.” FBI Director Robert Mueller was quietly astonished that nobody had picked up on what, to him, was glaringly obvious. “Has it occurred to anybody that this Leopard Beast picked one of the main field research bases of DIMO(N) and made a bee-line right for the most sensitive area?”

There was a slow nodding of heads around the room. A few people had noted it but they hadn’t wanted to think about the obvious implications. “We thought it might be coincidence.”

Mueller looked at the speaker with withering contempt. “There’s no such thing as coincidence. Not at this level. That thing, or whoever sent it, knew exactly where it was going and why. You, ladies and gentlemen, have a leak. Possibly here in Washington, more likely in Fort Bragg.”

443rd Infantry Battalion, Myanmar Army, Chong Sadao, Thailand

Battalion Commander Ye Twat was a puzzled and bewildered man. For the first two days of the war, he’d faced nothing but local militia, Thai Rangers who had fought bravely but who were woefully ill-equipped and under-armed for the task they had in hand. That had changed in the last twelve hours, now he was up against regular troops at last and they were making their presence felt. It wasn’t just the heavy weapons they had, although their rifles left wounds that were gruesome to behold. It was that they had their own style of fighting, a doctrine that was bewildering. For the last twelve hours, Ye Twat had the feeling he was trying to dig a pit in dry sand. As fast as he shoveled, the sand flowed around his spade and filled in the hole he had just made.

That was what was so hard to understand. His battalion was being nibbled to death in a series of small encounter battles that, individually, were of no significance. There would be an exchange of fire, his unit would deploy to make an assault but by the time he had launched the attack, the target had faded away and his assault would hit air. Worse, they would suddenly be raked by gunfire from a flank or even their rear and by the time they reacted, once again the enemy had faded away.

That wasn’t the worst of it. The Thai artillery had arrived and the 155mm guns were already firing in support of the small units that appeared to be all over him. That also was strange, the guns never seemed to fire in mass or concentrate fire on a critical target. Instead, one of the little encounter battles would open with a pair of guns firing a few rounds on to his positions. No warning, no preparation, just a small handful of artillery rounds arriving on target. In the first few seconds, while his men were caught in the open, they would take casualties but by the time they had got to cover, the artillery fire would have stopped and another unit would be getting the punishment.

The overall effect was that his unit was being ground down and he had absolutely nothing to show for it. He couldn’t point to a single action and say ‘this is it, this is where they are’. Instead, he was being nibbled to death by mice. Well, when infested with mice, one laid traps.

“Get the mortar platoon loaded up. We’ll make a push down A68, towards Tha Sao.” That was an important road junction where the dirt-track A68 turned into an all-weather blacktop road. “When the Labyut move to block us, we’ll pin them down with mortar fire. Then we’ll have them.”

“Very good Sir.” The radio operator got on the network to pass the orders through to the mortar battery. “Sir, battery commander says he’ll register fire on the area you want, but he needs more ammunition. He’s only got the remnants from the unit of fire that he had yesterday, no supplies have come through.”

“Why not?”

“Sir, the supply officer is on another channel.”

“Put him on.” There was a pause and then Ye Twat barked down the phone. “Why aren’t the supplies getting through?”

“It’s the Labyut Sir. They have infiltrated behind us, they ambushed some of the porters. Wiped out the ones they hit, the rest have dumped their loads and run away. Or, worse, they’ve joined up with the Labyut and handed the supplies they were carrying over.”

Ye Twat swore picturesquely. That was the trouble with dealing with the Labyut as the Myanmar Army referred to the Thai regulars. They started by bribing people to change sides and things usually got worse from there. The problem was that the Myanmar Army depended on impressed porters to manpack its supplies forward and their efforts to force Thai villagers into that role had been monumentally unsuccessful. Most of the villagers had slipped away and the few that had remained had vanished with their loads soon after. Ye Twat guessed with grim despair that the stolen supplies would end up in a Thai marketplace within a week. Probably marked as a ‘special offer’.

That was when he heard an eerie howl overhead. Hones by years of fighting the Shan States Army, his ears told him “inbound” and he realized he had been on the radio much too long. That was something he’d never had to worry about fighting the SSA, their radio interception capability was barely measurable. He had only just enough time to wonder how the Thais had done it when the shells crashed down on the area occupied by his headquarters.
What saved him was the long range. The Thai GHN-45s were operating at the limit of even their long range and their dispersion was enough to give the headquarters staff a fighting chance of survival. Five kilometers closer in and they would have been wiped out by the 155mm shells but in that fine margin lay the difference between a headquarters unit crippled and one wiped out. A dozen shells landed, then the Thai gunners shifted to a new target as their Atila fire control systems shifted priorities to the next target set reported by the platoon-sized battlegroups. Looking at the ruin of his headquarters, Ye Twat decided that the war was not going well.

Headquarters, Third Army, Kanchanaburi, Thailand.

“Get me through to General Petraeus, right now.” General Asanee snapped the order out to her communications officer.

“Yes Ma’am. On the way.”

She picked up the telephone and thumbed the button for Line One. “American Express? Good, Commander Third Army here. Our officers are using their cards to buy diesel fuel at commercial gas stations. I’d like you to make sure that all such charges are honored. The Army will, of course, guarantee payment. . . . . Yes, that is most co-operative of you. Thank you. If there are any problems, inform me immediately.”

She put the phone down, waited a second and smiled as it rang almost immediately. Things were beginning to shake down into a reasonably efficient headquarters. “General Petraeus? Good to speak with you Sir.”

“And you General. What’s the situation out there?”

“We’ve blocked the southern Myanmarese advance, we’ve got them chasing their own tails. They’re also being free with their radios, that’s a bad habit to get into. We’re picking them up with ELINT aircraft and taking their headquarters down. Most of the locals are helping out, we’re getting a flood of cellphone messages in with information.”

“Be careful General. The Myanmarese could be feeding false info in.”

“Yes Sir, understood. Now, the next portal set, the one for Second Cavalry. I’d like to change plans. The information we have is that Three Pagodas Pass is clear. I want to move a sensitive in up there and deliver Second Cavalry right to the Pass. From there, it’s a straight run on good roads to Moulmein and, eventually, Yangon. That way we’ll bypass the whole of the Myanmar invasion force and trap it south of the Lake. The ground’s too rough to stop them getting out, but they won’t leave as organized units or ones capable of putting up a fight.”

“Just what sort of strength are you talking about here?”

“Myanmarese, so far we’ve got a force estimate of around thirty thousand. We’ve got good intel flowing in now, our patrols are in contact and holding that contact. Second Cavalry, two light armor regiments, one mechanized regiment. Around fifteen thousand sabers.”

At the other end of the line, Petraeus visualized the situation. He could see what Asanee had in mind, an end run that would cut the Myanmar forces off from their base. This would fit very well with his own plans for a counter-offensive if the brewing situation on the Korean Peninsula went hot. In effect, she was offering him a chance to test out the new doctrine in Myanmar before using it in Korea. The concept of moving troops by opening portals to and from Hell offered strategic options that were only now becoming apparent. “How will you supply the units?”

“Sir, every Thai village has a gas station and all of them have large supplies of diesel. Our unit commanders just buy the stuff whenever they need it. Your people never could adapt to that in Cobra Gold, that’s why your vehicles ran out of gas and ours didn’t. There’s enough fuel up at Three Pagodas to keep the division running for four days. By then, we can either open up a land route or portal fuel in from Hell. Ammunition likewise. Food’s no problem, all our troops can live off the jungle.”

“Or have pizza delivered. Yes, General, I’ve heard all about what your troops get up to during Cobra Gold. This isn’t an exercise.”

“No Sir. But, the lessons about living off the country still apply. Sir, take my word on this, we’re good at it. And we’re in amongst our own people, it’s a point of honor for them to help out. Sir, this way we can pull the sort of flanker that hasn’t been done since Inchon.”

“You admire MacArthur?” Petraeus was genuinely interested and it was a good means of stalling while he weighed up the situation..

“Not so much. Ridgeway, yes , very much so. Patton also. So, are our plans approved?”

Petraeus tapped his pad with a pencil, the sound clearly coming through over the phone link. “Yes. General, your orders are to move Second Cavalry to Three Pagodas Pass and then maneuver to seize the supply line of the Myanmar forces.”

General Asanee nodded, then remembered that she wasn’t on the ubiquitous video links that controlled the Human Expeditionary Army. “Very good sir. And thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet General. We’re doing something that has never been done before, maneuvering units like this. If this comes off, everything we learned about strategy will be outdated.”

[D.Turtle]

Nice updates.

Somebody mentioned "Lords of War" and in the context of what we now know about Heaven and Hell (suddenly stop fighting 60.000 years ago, some people being protected, etc.) I had the following thought:

Who says the WE are the "Lords of War"? What if some entity from another bubble Universe laid down the law on Heaven and Hell?

[erik_t]

New interval-between-chapters record!?

[Shroom Man 777]

Damn right! This is totally cool. Between Hillary Clinton being a bitch and the Burmese about to get their shit mightily ruined, man, I'm all for this!

I totally hope, though, that Micheal Lan and Belial figure out a way to make SKY VOLCANOES in Heaven and use it to ruin Pretaeus and Asanee's HEA-asses! Cause, come on, if Micheal was just telling the Burmese and Norks to attack the Thais and Sorks for no reason at all - without any follow-up aside from getting his drug-buddies whacked - then that would suck. Micheal needs to have a gameplan. Come on, Micheal is a magnificent bastard. While Earth may be all MURRICA FUCK YEAH, Micheal is STILL a schemer whose schemes last for eons. If the Celestial War was, like, millions of years ago and if Micheal really WAS from that time, then HOLY SHIT. A millions-years-old fuckopath is someone you've got to be totally careful around!

(Hrm... I'm gonna assume that these millions of years-old dudes like Micheal and Yahweh are total assholes because living for eons'll probably drive anyone batshit nuts.)

Also, Lemuel seems like a somewhat sympathetic character. In that he's not a total fuckoff and he's really not outright being malicious like the demons in Hell, and is more like a working stiff who's doing his job and genuinely believes in his cause. And he's all detective-y. I hope he doesn't get shafted and that Stuart totally develops his character some more. He's a nice guy, a nice inner-perspective to Heaven - aside from the dickeries of Micheal, the insanities of Yahweh, and all the other stuff we've seen so far. I like Lemuel.

Come on, aside from Micheal's internal asshole monologue that's so full of shit (:lol:), at least Lemuel gives us a straight-faced look at Heaven.


Hrm. Though we're not seeing much of Abrigor, it'd be totally cool for the HEA to use a whole lot of demon soldiers for fodder when they finally go and ruin Heaven's shit. Then we'd see Abrigor's glorious return, on his personal armored vehicle, carrying his awesome big-ass RARDEN gun.


Now it's URIEL TIME!

[squidman001]

Perhaps Maion will be the dragon's whore.

[LadyTevar]

Lemuel lan Michael is our 'man on the street'. Through him, we get to see what Heaven is truly like; the relationship between Angel and (dead) Human is no better than it was in Hell. The average angel, if we go by Lemuel, isn't troubled by it because the thought never crosses their minds that it shouldn't be that way.

It is also scary that Lemuel will watch a human woman be waterboarded to get information, but then not recognize or realize that she's about to be treated far worse by the people he's left her with. It doesn't even seem to be willful blindness, a 'that can't happen here' rationality. Lesser Angels simply seem to have No Clue.

[Xenophobe3691]

Empathy doesn't seem to be a cultivated skill, either.

EDIT: Ye Twat?!?

[Junghalli]

Through him, we get to see what Heaven is truly like; the relationship between Angel and (dead) Human is no better than it was in Hell.

I don't think it's that bad. Most humans in Heaven don't seem to be tortured. From the sound of it (as I mentioned a while back) their lives seem similar to a Midaeval peasant, except they never have to worry about hunger, disease, or injury and they don't age. This would actually be a significant step up from the way most people through the last 10,000 years have actually lived on the basis of day to day quality of life.

Buritot made mention a while back that the woman in that chapter might be Midaeval Welsh Princess he found on Google. That ties in well with this; such a person would be accustomed to a fair level of material luxury and more likely to resent conditions in Heaven. To your average peasant on the other hand it might seem actually pleasant compared to what they were used to on Earth. It would be sort of like the Egyptian idea of the afterlife (you do the same things you did on Earth, just for a lot longer), and they didn't consider such an afterlife horrible.

[CaptainChewbacca]

EDIT: Ye Twat?!?

Stuart is like one of those genies where you have to word your wishes carefully.

[Edward Yee]

The fact was, that while the angels lived in unparalleled luxury, the fate of the 'saved' was one of eternal grinding poverty. Again, the irony there never entered Lemuel's consciousness, nor did any thought that the situation could, in any way, be considered unjust.

On the one hand, I'm essentially rooting for Lemuel and Uriel against the "greater evil" of Michael-lan (in the sense that he's got more stroke) if only so that Michael-lan gets some comeuppance before the humans can come for him. On the other hand, Lemuel is starting to remind me of Goering, as Stuart described him.

Incidental thought: maybe the timing is ripe for Jesus to play "emissary," considering that the American humans at DIMO(N) and Fort Bragg are busy with the Four Beasts and thus they may not be prioritizing (or yet have gone over the implications) of the "Jesus leads the army" part of Revelations? Then again, Jesus appearing alone might help if he's meant by Michael not to be whacked by the humans...

[K. A. Pital]

Damn, portal-opening sentient flying animals and ram-o-dragons who will rain fire on Earth led by a millenia-old fuckopath. Wait, I'm speaking like Shroom. That's probably because the story is hitting all sorts of awesome, Stuart. Can't wait for more.

Prior to the attack on Fort Bragg, we had put together a lot of data about the various beasts, angels, captains, and armies discussed in John’s Revelation. The problem is, based on what we’ve learned from hell, some of it didn’t fit and we were hoping that the beasts were in fact Satan’s constructs, similar to his golden hydra.

So the "Satan bioengineering" theory sort of falls apart and it seems that those beasts are indeed otherworldly constructs.

The fact that theories of 'allegoric' nature of Revelation are so brutally curbstomped with almost by-the-book following makes me wonder just how fucking adept Michael is at making things perfectly fit. Was he entirely honest about the "acid trip"? Maybe not really; maybe part of it was him drugging the guy down and then explaning his future battle plan, with some things posing a problem but most already being sorted out by the year in which John got picked by Michael.

[Shroom Man 777]

The Chicken or the Egg argument, with John? Whether Yahweh is basing his grand destruction on Earth to the delusional ravings of a shroomed shitpiece, or if the shroomed shitpiece's delusional ravings were actually inspired by something.

I don't think it's utterly beyond Micheal to have some fun with St. John by telling him Heaven's battleplans while the guy's on shrooms. Yeah.

Maybe Micheal wasn't expecting the guy to actually get it transcribed to the Bible.

Or maybe Yahweh, being the monumental dick that he is, in a feat of even more dickery actually commanded Micheal to PROCLAIM Heaven's grand plans of doom to some worthless grovelling human 'Prophet' and since Micheal wanted some lulz, he decided to see what would happen if the 'Prophet' he chose was some shroomed shitpiece!

Yeah! I think the lattermost choice is reasonable.

Yahweh: *decides making some doomsday bullshit would be a good idea* "AS I SAY IT IS SO, SHALL IT BE SO! GO NOW!"

*commands Micheal to PROCLAIM it to the world!*

Micheal: *grumbles* "This is stupid. Hey, you, shitpiece, have some shrooms!" *gets human high**PROCLAIMS Yahweh's greatness to shroomed shitpiece*

Shitpiece/John: "WOAH! DUDE! TOTALLY!" *spasms*

Yeah.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I kinda envisioned Yaweh as a massive poser obsessed with image. John hallucinated revelations, and since it is in HIS book, Yaweh feels like he has to live up to the hype and do things just-so.

Kinda like in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, where Tom and Huck decide to break 'Nigger Jim' (don't get mad at me, that's his name) out, so they decide to do it like it was an epic novel.

[Buritot]

When you come across a new species you ask them to join us and if they do then all is well and good. If they refuse then we'll show them all the domestic and what not comforts that come from being a member of our civilization. If still they refuse then we calmly point a whole mess of guns (and missles and planes and whatever else we have on hand) at them and ask if they're sure, possibly with some demonstrations of just what our firepower is capable of. If they still our biting after that then I'd suggest we ignore that particular bubble reality until they attack us, at which point we should conquer them and go about making them memembers of our civilzation as second class citizens at first like we have with the Baldricks and hopefully a few generations down the line they won't be discriminated against anymore.

You're thinking in planets (bubbles) of hats or monogamous civilizations and cultures (One World Order). Earth is united in Heavens and Hells open proclamation of war but I highly doubt that will last for long. There probably won't be a unified culture after pantheocide either. I'm thinking rather of various national states exploring for themselves and maybe reporting back to an international organization about their findings. What I'm trying to say is, neither is Earth unified nor are we to assume that of other species. If the dominant culture doesn't want to trade with us, look at the smaller ones. Maybe we would increase the influence of our trade partner in its world and make it more eligible for other cultures to trade with us. And if they still refuse, maybe we (=Council of 15) won't trade with them but other nations of earth will.
Another point would also be showing them we killed our gods and they shall not fuck with us. After all we already set one example of a bubble universe which tried that on us and are currently working straightening out on another one.

Buritot made mention a while back that the woman in that chapter might be Midaeval Welsh Princess he found on Google. That ties in well with this; such a person would be accustomed to a fair level of material luxury and more likely to resent conditions in Heaven. To your average peasant on the other hand it might seem actually pleasant compared to what they were used to on Earth. It would be sort of like the Egyptian idea of the afterlife (you do the same things you did on Earth, just for a lot longer), and they didn't consider such an afterlife horrible.

I didn't mention it before since it seemed irrelevant, but the welsh princess Almedha was also driven to reclusion and became a hermit to be later killed by her own father. So she has probably experienced both ends of the luxury scale, medieval-wise.

It's nice to see some implications about portal-based warfare come to fruition. While reading I was just recognizing it before it was explained in-universe.

I'm wondering if there was a portal alert before/during the leopard beasts arrival. I'm still under the impression of a portals size equaling its detectability and the beasts portal had to be quite big. What I'm getting at - we detected its attempt to open a portal, and I'm suspecting its portalling in was also detected, but what if it wasn't? After all it simply appeared, so to speak. Shouldn't there have been klaxons crying before it arrived?
So the big question is - can we detect a portal being opened from Heaven?
If so, is it of a different signature than opening a portal from hell?
And last but not least - we detected various small portals being opened. Would it be feasible to analyse where angels portalled in and for how long? Maybe to look for correlations between portal sites and guess at their intentions.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I'm wondering if there was a portal alert before/during the leopard beasts arrival. I'm still under the impression of a portals size equaling its detectability and the beasts portal had to be quite big. What I'm getting at - we detected its attempt to open a portal, and I'm suspecting its portalling in was also detected, but what if it wasn't? After all it simply appeared, so to speak. Shouldn't there have been klaxons crying before it arrived?

Portal detection takes time. I think we saw how the process worked when they were opening the Detroit portal, but verifying that a portal has opened takes probably a minute. Contrast that with the mere seconds it takes for a creature to open and move through a portal.

What's more, they only noticed the near-portal-opening at Bragg because they were specifically going over the data for the area and checking for anomalies. You wouldn't get a near-portal signature from a successful portaling because it would open and become an ordinary portal too fast.

I...hope that made sense.

[Crayz9000]

Earlier on in this story, they mentioned that they noticed blips of portal activity, mostly around cities such as Las Vegas and for some reason, San Francisco.

[JN1]

Now that caught me slightly unawares, I wasn't expecting an update so soon.
The possibility of a leak is a serious matter. What else might Heaven know?

[Jamesfirecat]

The Chicken or the Egg argument, with John? Whether Yahweh is basing his grand destruction on Earth to the delusional ravings of a shroomed shitpiece, or if the shroomed shitpiece's delusional ravings were actually inspired by something.

As far as I can tell, the only part of the book of revelations that John got right was the beasts, all the bowls of wrath however were just him tripping his balls off. If Micheal was simply telling John what Heaven's battle plan would be, why would said plain involve a step that could only be easily pulled off (fire from the sky) if they had the help of their archnemisis (Hell's volcanoes)?

[dragon]

Yay 2 updates since I last looked in.

Hum with all the other hinted at bubble verses out there Michael might be able to tap one of them for the fire he needs.

[bcoogler]

Yay 2 updates since I last looked in.

Hum with all the other hinted at bubble verses out there Michael might be able to tap one of them for the fire he needs.

That is my thought as well.

We assume you cannot create a recursive portal, where the begin and end points are both in the same world. That would eliminate tapping into one of Earth's own volcanoes. But I do wonder if a recursive portal is not completely out of the picture, just that no one has ever tried before. Neither Baldricks nor Angels had a reason to create a recursive portal (so far), and up to now we have pretty much just emulated the Baldricks' inter-world portal methods.

Heaven, as far as we know, has no active volcanoes.

That leaves a third location -- yet another bubble world (YABuW?) as a best fit, given what we know so far.

Then again, Micheal could simply put on something little better than a light show (an earlier idea was lighting a forest fire and portalling that) just so he can check "fire" off his to-do list. Then brag to Yawn-way about all the destruction he caused.

Actually, if Micheal choose his target well, such as opening a forest fire portal over an oil refinery or a chemical plant (think Bhopal India), he probably could cause quite a bit of damage without tapping a volcano.

[Darth Wong]

The Chicken or the Egg argument, with John? Whether Yahweh is basing his grand destruction on Earth to the delusional ravings of a shroomed shitpiece, or if the shroomed shitpiece's delusional ravings were actually inspired by something.

As far as I can tell, the only part of the book of revelations that John got right was the beasts, all the bowls of wrath however were just him tripping his balls off. If Micheal was simply telling John what Heaven's battle plan would be, why would said plain involve a step that could only be easily pulled off (fire from the sky) if they had the help of their archnemisis (Hell's volcanoes)?

Why must we choose one or the other? Isn't it entirely possible that John made up a bunch of shit while tripping balls, but also incorporated a lot of other things that Michael talked about?

Let's say both John and Michael were high on shrooms. Michael starts telling stories about the Great Celestial War and then starts boasting about the Giant Can of Whoop-Ass that he'll open up on humanity if they get uppity. He starts incoherently ranting about LeopardBeast and Leviathan and other great creatures that he has at his disposal. John hears this and adds it to a delusional story brewing in his addled brain, and the result is the Book of Revelation. Two thousand years later, Michael only remembers John being high on shrooms; he does not recall himself being fucked up or blabbing all kinds of secrets about Heaven.

[Stuart Mackey]

How is it that a US CinC is issuing orders to a Thai general on how dispose her forces in the defence of her own country?