The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Forty One Up

[Darth Wong]

Well, the Christian mythologies are a bastardization of pre-existing mythologies, so perhaps Yahweh and Satan are offspring of older deities.

[Jeremy]

No Wong, do you want something really f*ed up?

The "gods" are Hermaphrodites like Earthworms. Satan is Jesus' Father and Yahweh is his mother.

[Guardsman Bass]

Well, the Christian mythologies are a bastardization of pre-existing mythologies, so perhaps Yahweh and Satan are offspring of older deities.

I wonder if they are deities we know of. Considering Stuart's speculations on the origins of Judaism, maybe they're Egyptian deities.

[Ted C]

Or it could be he's just a not-too-bright guy who toes the party line and does exactly what is asked of him without ever showing any initiative to go 'above and beyond'. The kind of guy whose house is painted beige and who watches the weather channel.

More or less what I was thinking. Remiel is apparently a complete sycophant to Yahweh, making him a non-threat to Michael.

[Simon_Jester]

So, with regards to humans in hell; They don't need to eat or sleep, but do so out of habit. Yet, George was in a constant state of starvation or near-starvation while in the Pit. Could it be that the healing properties of hell function better when a being takes in new 'raw materials' i.e. food to repair damage to his system?

We know that's true of the demons and angels, so it seems likely that the same goes for 'second life' humans.

[Darth Yan]

Personally I think the second conspiracy leader is Salaphael. Remiel's probably just an idiot who does everything Yahweh tells him

[Shroom Man 777]

You could feign foolishness so nobody would expect it when you come at them and stab them in the dick?

[Darth Wong]

You could feign foolishness so nobody would expect it when you come at them and stab them in the dick?

Feigning stupidity for thousands of years would be a neat trick, but not a particularly plausible one. It seems more likely that Michael's assessment of his rivals is probably fairly accurate, given the sheer amount of time he's had to observe them in action.

[Shroom Man 777]

How hard can it be in Heaven? Just act as though the only thing you do is to kowtow to Yah-yah, something Micheal does do all the time, and if people think that kowtowing to Yah-yah is the only thing you're doing then they'll just think you're some kind of hood ornament.

[Setzer]

Well, I think it's safe to say that Michael's plans are going to be executed soon. He's effectively neutralized Uriel, and sending him out again in his state is a death sentence. With Yahweh's other minions about to be KIA, he'll be that much more vulnerable.

[Darth Yan]

Not quite; he still has to deal with some of the other Archangels (Rafael and Sariel are the only ones firmly on his side, so if he wants a solid base he'll have to convert or kill at least 75% of the other Chayot to have a firm base), and Yahweh has at least 2 maybe 3 of his pets left. Plus many of the angels are still loyal to Yahweh, so it will be kind of hard spinning things to the public. Even if the next attack suceeds in getting Uriel and the Scarlet Beast killed, he still has quite a bit of work to do before he can make his move

[Baughn]

Something occurred to me about the angels' regeneration, which might justify Satan and Yahweh being siblings despite looking very different. This is all speculative, but here's a theory:

- Humans don't regenerate (mostly); any severe damage we take is there for keeps. This is because[1] regeneration depends on having a sort of internal body-plan; the various cells must know what should be where, in order to fix arbitrary damage. The degree to which that plan must be detailed or explicit depends on the complexity of the creature, which is probably why regeneration isn't common in higher animals. [2]

- Angels, or undead, do regenerate arbitrary damage. They can certainly die from sufficient damage, but any wound they survive eventually fixes itself. The exception seems to be certain chemicals (iron) that their systems have trouble dealing with, which is certainly understandable; iron is highly reactive, and we don't even have the decency to make it iron oxide.

-> This probably means that, somewhere in there (not in a central location, but as a distributed system), there's a map of how the angel is supposed to work. Or the human.

-> Although you'd need a different kind of system for building them from scratch (i.e. an egg cell), near as we can tell second-life humans just pop up from nowhere, they aren't flash-grown or some such.

=> This means that undead humans, angels and demons might all be the same species, simply with a different body plan built-in. Having it explicit in that way allows for a downright lamarckian kind of evolution, where adaptions happen during a lifetime and are then passed down to offspring. It'd certainly be helpful.

However, the kind of system I'm envisioning would be incredibly complex. It'd be stable, sure, and evolutionarily beneficial, but I have a hard time imagining it evolving naturally. This doesn't mean it couldn't (I know better than to tell nature what to do), but it's both evidence against the theory and evidence for the angels/baldricks being an artificial race. Stuart, do you have any comments? }:-)

Makes one wonder who made them, if so. If we're lucky, they may have done it themselves and then backslid. If not...

1: There are other reasons why we don't regenerate. A rather important one is that it's energetically costly, while leaving you out of commision for a while; as warm-blooded animals, we might starve to death in the meantime. So we evolved scarring instead and, in fact, if you disable scarring via drugs, we heal a lot better. Well, except that then some wounds don't heal at all, or wrongly; the regeneration mechanisms we do have have sort of.. degraded.

2: It's pretty common in lower ones, though. Yes, this requires a fair bit of computational power, which might make you wonder why our brains are so big, but as it turns out neurons are incredibly inefficient; a single neuron contains far more computational power than it contributes to the brain, the remainder just isn't exportable/connectable in the way required to build a larger system. Evolution built a new system instead of taking advantage of the fragile, ad-hoc, not very useful existing one, though I might claim it did a poor job.

[Stuart]

It's worth noting that, by and large, Angels are not differentiated the way Daemons were. Daemons tended to be specialized, mostly as warriors but with others optimized for efficient flying (harpies) aquatic work (kraken), opening portals (naga) and so on. In other words, the basic ability in one area emphasized at the expense of the others. (By the way, Gorgons were an attempt by Satan to get back to a multi-role flexible daemon that really didn't work out very well).

Angels are much more homogenous; the various classes differ in size, not basic layout. Angels are six-limbed humanoids with a pair of wings in addition to humanoid arms and legs. They have flight sacs for hydrogen and they have electrocytes but they are pretty much standardized. The few variations that exist are Yahweh's exotica rather than familiar types. If one saw a picture of an angel without anything to give scale, it would be very hard to tell which class it belonged to.

Humans, angels and daemons all share a common ancestor. We're the runts of the litter so to speak. Just very, very dangerous runts.

[Baughn]

Hum. Come to think of it, we sort of can interbreed, can't we?

The succubi can, at least. How close are the live humans to being the same species as the baldricks?

[Stuart]

Hum. Come to think of it, we sort of can interbreed, can't we? The succubi can, at least.

Not really. Succubae take semen from sexual relations with human males and then transfer said semen to an incubus, again during sexual relations. Then the incubus uses that semen to impregnate a human female. So, it's not actually interbreeding. However, during the process, the genetic material in the human sperm gets slightly "daemonized" and the result is that the human offspring is nephilim. Now, nephilim and humans can breed which results in the daemonic component within a nephilim becoming diluted (and probably corrupted). kitten is a powerful nephilim because the incubus-human relationship was very recent in her past (probably grandparents or great grandparents).

How close are the live humans to being the same species as the baldricks?

Not very; the divergence was a long, long time ago. Direct interbreeding doesn't happen (which makes one wonder whether the Succubae and Incubae were engineered to get around that problem). We're different in a lot of ways other than the obvious ones.

[Baughn]

I probably don't want to know what "slightly daemonized" means, do I?

Biology should not work that way. If you're implying that the incubus/succubus system is also engineered, you're succeeding.

[Guardsman Bass]

Out of curiosity, how did Satan "engineer" creatures? Are we talking about long-term selective breeding, or what? Or is this a RAFO question (Read And Find Out)?

[Stuart]

Biology should not work that way. If you're implying that the incubus/succubus system is also engineered, you're succeeding.

We're stuck with it because that is what the old legends about Incubae and Succubae state. By and large I've kept mythology as untouched as possible, just making the changes necessary to ease some sort of semi-rational explanation (ie fewest possible inexplicable ingredients). The legal aspects (touched on earlier) of the squicky incubus/succubus relationship are also interesting. By the way, one other legend about the Incubus/Succubus is that they are actually the same creature, that it takes female form to seduce and gather semen from a human male then transforms into male form to distribute that semen to a human female. I rejected that in favor of the two creature explanation for obvious reasons alhough there is a trace of it where Abigor refers to a succubus as a single-sex freak.

By the way, the suggestion that God and Satan were brothers does existing in mythology although it is condemned as blackest heresy (come to think of it 'blackest heretic' wouldn't be a bad custom title or screen name).

I would expect that the "genetic engineering" is done by long-term selective breeding plus the corruption of the basic life-blueprint by something else. What that something else is . . . . . .

[FireNexus]

I'd like to move that Stuart be given the custom title "Blackest Heretic", given the awesomeness of the Salvation War.

[Land Phish]

So if humans, angels and demons have a common ancestor, then how did the latter two get to heaven and hell?

[Rahvin]

So if humans, angels and demons have a common ancestor, then how did the latter two get to heaven and hell?

Who says the common ancestor is from Earth?

The recorded history of demons and angels is in the millions of years. That predates humanity.

I'm not entirely sure how Stuart is playing that alongside the solid evidence of humanity evolving on Earth. There may be some unusual time characteristics of the bottle-Universes, there may be interference and direction from the "others," or any number of explanations.

[Darmalus]

It could be that some human ancestor had a few tribes scooped up and taken away to become demons and angels, so the ones left behind became us, and evolution is intact.

[Junghalli]

It could be that some human ancestor had a few tribes scooped up and taken away to become demons and angels, so the ones left behind became us, and evolution is intact.

That would be the most plausible explanation.

[Valiran]

This story post got me thinking, how would each specific pantheon react to us? From what I've read, the Norse gods are the most likely to form a positive relationship with us, but what about others, like the Greek, Egyptian, Shinto, Chinese, Hindu, and Mesoamerican pantheons? Are there other 'gods' out there who are actually benevolent? Are the Hindu and Buddhist paths of reincarnation and enlightenment ways of avoiding Hell? And what about the Titans from Greek mythology, demigods like Heracles, and supposedly mythical creatures like cyclops, goblins, or Kitsune? With legends suddenly becoming reality, it makes me wonder...

[Samuel]

Actually, history records alot of them as being rather dickish. The Trojan War was started because of a divine feud that spiral out of control for example. On the other hand they also show more actual valor than the Judeo-Christian God- if there is any way you can fit in the story of Rama, I think that would be awesome.

And what about the Titans from Greek mythology, demigods like Heracles, and supposedly mythical creatures like cyclops, goblins, or Kitsune?

Titans are essentially a different group of Gods in Greek mythology- in this series it is probably just a faction name. As for demigods, they are probably out. Mythical creatures can easily fit in as different disguises or servants of different groups.

I'm curious as to why the other pantheons failed to hold Earth- where they so much weaker, where they less willing to commit as many resources, did they have other worlds?