The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Forty One Up

[Land Phish]

The Greek gods are already dead. Kratos killed them all.

[Guardsman Bass]

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?

My guess is that it probably had something to do with numbers. Satan had millions of potential warriors under his control, along with his own formidable personal power, and while Yahweh doesn't seem to have that many, he has some pretty powerful angels in addition to himself (speaking of which, we've never actually seen a description of Yahweh other than "gigantic humanoid" - does he have wings?).

Each of the Other Gods might have individually been quite powerful (although Luga's contempt for them might belie that), but if they don't have the numbers, then they could still be overwhelmed by Yahweh's and Satan's forces.

[bcoogler]

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...

"Everybody knows leprechauns are just pretend." --Buffy the Vampire Slayer

What about the origins behind stories of vampires and other things that go bump in the night? More bubble critters from yet another universe?

Never mind who the Mesopotamians believed in, I suppose it is wide open who--or what--humans in Neolithic times worshiped. (Perhaps we could peg that as when Titans ruled the world?) Presumably these earlier occupants were driven out by the later Greek/Roman/Egyptian gods, who in turn were (mostly) driven off by Yahweh and his flying flock of feathered fiends.

[MarshalPurnell]

Certainly there are a lot of other pantheons and belief-systems that have nothing to do with Judeo-Christian mythology. Monotheism itself only became a major theme in world religion over the last 1900 or so years, with the closely coinciding rise of Christianity and Islam. Even then significant pockets of belief that had nothing to do with anything remotely Jewish, Christian, or Islamic dominated large parts of the world, notably India, China, and the Americas. If Yahweh had triumphed over all his competitors it's a tad odd that he wouldn't have tried introducing his brand of religion in those other large populations. Granted it wasn't so much about having pious followers as finding people who would unthinkingly obey his orders and accept his claims uncritically, but by not introducing his set of expectations into the majority of the world's population he surely missed out on quite a lot of prospective choir members.

A possibility is that Yahweh and Satan masqueraded as figured within those other pantheons to turn them to their will. It may be rather easy to classify Zoroastrianism as a case of good cop/bad cop by Heaven and Hell, though Ahura Mazda seems rather more benevolent on the whole than Yahweh. Most of the other pantheons tend to be either very much weirder or a lot more humanized, though the Indo-European ones (Norse, Germanic, Greek, Roman, Slavic, etc) all seem to share a basic root-layout filled in with culturally appropriate details. Hinduism probably started out the same way but evolved to be pretty highly distinctive. The Aztec gods are a particularly nightmarish lot, as might be expected given the way their society ran. The Celestial Bureaucracy of Chinese legends is pretty unique as far as I know. All of it has a lot of potential, and just how they fit in with the established details of Heaven and Hell is one key mystery of the setting thus far. Certainly there are quite a few deities that would make quite interesting characters, and others who are at least as much jerks as Yahweh - though the tendency of such gods to strike down mortals for questioning them, drown "fallen" worlds and kill off most of humanity with floods, and so on might be evidence that Yahweh goes by other names, like Zeus. Though for the sake of the more interesting members of the pantheons, like say Athena or Loki, I'd hope otherwise.

There's also the whole Book of Enoch and Jewish legend about the Grigorii, angels of God who copulated with human woman and produced a race of giants. It could be a distorted account of the creation of nephilim, and I suppose that's the way to lean now. They are kind of specific, though, with Azazel and Shemhazi accorded responsibility for leading 200 angels to disperse and teach the "secrets of Heaven" to humanity in addition to copulating with human women. Azazel was supposedly buried alive somewhere in Egypt by Raphael, to rest until thrown in the lake of fire at the end of the world.

I do wonder if that could account for the disappearance of armies of angels and demons on the world. It seems as though the Others were defeated well before the historical period, and it's been a matter of debate if humanity could have stopped Hell before roughly World War II. Probably could not have until at the late 19th century at the very earliest in any case, so there was no real impediment there, and certainly not during the period of say, the Roman Republic or the Middle Ages or the Tang Dynasty. Large scale visits of demons and angels to Earth apparently ended rather abruptly sometime before or as recorded history began for reasons that have yet to be discovered. If there was some sort of revelation about how to make it harder for angels and demons to open portals (by large-scale culling of once much-more plentiful nephilim, perhaps?) that might account for it. Heaven and Hell, getting the souls of humans eventually anyway, would have little reason to really fight to push open portals after they've come to their own accommodation and driven off the competition.

[ray245]

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?

My guess is that it probably had something to do with numbers. Satan had millions of potential warriors under his control, along with his own formidable personal power, and while Yahweh doesn't seem to have that many, he has some pretty powerful angels in addition to himself (speaking of which, we've never actually seen a description of Yahweh other than "gigantic humanoid" - does he have wings?).

Each of the Other Gods might have individually been quite powerful (although Luga's contempt for them might belie that), but if they don't have the numbers, then they could still be overwhelmed by Yahweh's and Satan's forces.

Same can be argued in regards to the Chinese mythology. I'm pretty sure there are are other religions that have some sort of heavenly or demonic army.

[Darth Wong]

Monotheism itself only became a major theme in world religion over the last 1900 or so years, with the closely coinciding rise of Christianity and Islam. Even then significant pockets of belief that had nothing to do with anything remotely Jewish, Christian, or Islamic dominated large parts of the world, notably India, China, and the Americas. If Yahweh had triumphed over all his competitors it's a tad odd that he wouldn't have tried introducing his brand of religion in those other large populations.

This only gives us another reason to imagine that Luga's version of events is simply misinformed. If you look at the internal politics of Heaven and Hell, it's pretty obvious that neither of them were exactly "freedom of information" environments.

[MarshalPurnell]

Possibly. One imagines that Abigor would be better informed, almost certainly the best source humanity has. Checking his version of events against those of Luga and other lower ranking demons might be instructive.

[Darth Yan]

My guess is that the others will make an appearence in the story; say when Uriel and Scarlet Beast attack, they might appear and help humanity fight defeat either Uriel or the Beast.

[Stuart Mackey]

My guess is that the others will make an appearence in the story; say when Uriel and Scarlet Beast attack, they might appear and help humanity fight defeat either Uriel or the Beast.

I suspect that humanity is quite capable of defeating anything Yahweh can send to this plane of existence without their help. If they want to help us, giving us a way into heaven would earn many brownie points.

[Darth Yan]

I wouldn't be surprised if that's how they help; also, this might be a stretch, but Beezelbub might recruit Dagon to his cause; I don't think he's too pleased with serving Abigor; he might help "arrange" a way for Belail to get the lava. As for the beast, aren't they still strapped for ammo? Plus it took almost all of fort bragg's resources to bring down wuffles, and the scarlet beast is far stronger.

[GrayAnderson]

Honestly, if I had to suggest a mechanism for "tinkering" with the DNA in the various groups, two candidates come to mind:
1) An enzyme aimed at tinkering with the DNA in some specific manner (adding/removing code in specific areas, for example, or altering specific chunks of the code).
2) "1950s-style radiation", of the type that causes a species to mutate in "new and interesting ways" (rather than "predictable and cancerous ways").

An interesting point of interest, of course, is that either both the angels and daemons have exceptionally long lives (by human standards, at least) or that we have exceptionally short lives by their standards. Some of this might be the side-effects of Heaven and Hell and whatnot on those living there, but one does wonder what the cause of this is all the same.

Also, I have to wonder what the effect on being born in/living in Heaven or Hell (absent the severe dust issue in Hell) would be. In other words, assuming you could cut out the dust issue, would being born in or living in one of these bottle universes (and, I'd argue, being exposed to the "natural environment") have any impact on the human(s) doing so?

[Jamesfirecat]

Plus it took almost all of fort bragg's resources to bring down wuffles, and the scarlet beast is far stronger.

I wouldn't be so sure that it's "far stronger" given that what DIMO(N) intelligence has to say on the issue a few chapters back.

“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.”

I think that teh Scarlet Beast is really going to be not that much more powerful than Wuffles, the problem is that it will have a powerful arc angel with her so we can't just impudently bomb the beat straight to hell or straffe it with helicopter, at least not until we take down the Angel...

Still if their target is heavily defended (and I've no reason to think one of the most fought/squabbled over cities in the world isn't at the moment) then they'll probably go down inside an hour, though I can't remember how long the first beast lasted...

[Simon_Jester]

Certainly there are a lot of other pantheons and belief-systems that have nothing to do with Judeo-Christian mythology. Monotheism itself only became a major theme in world religion over the last 1900 or so years, with the closely coinciding rise of Christianity and Islam. Even then significant pockets of belief that had nothing to do with anything remotely Jewish, Christian, or Islamic dominated large parts of the world, notably India, China, and the Americas. If Yahweh had triumphed over all his competitors it's a tad odd that he wouldn't have tried introducing his brand of religion in those other large populations. Granted it wasn't so much about having pious followers as finding people who would unthinkingly obey his orders and accept his claims uncritically, but by not introducing his set of expectations into the majority of the world's population he surely missed out on quite a lot of prospective choir members.

From what I've been hearing lately, it sounds like he just snagged any useful souls he needed into his own afterlife regardless of their prior religious beliefs. He wasn't so much looking for a lifetime of religious devotion to him as he was for the kind of person who could keep up eternal devotion to him after being yoinked to live in his little pocket dimension.

My guess is that the others will make an appearence in the story; say when Uriel and Scarlet Beast attack, they might appear and help humanity fight defeat either Uriel or the Beast.

I suspect that humanity is quite capable of defeating anything Yahweh can send to this plane of existence without their help. If they want to help us, giving us a way into heaven would earn many brownie points.

Also, any unexpected supernatural beings appearing in the middle of a fight between (in this corner!) Uriel, the Scarlet Beast, the Whore of Babylon and (in this corner!) the IDF are very likely to get shot up in the crossfire. Better for them to appear somewhere that isn't an active free-fire zone and try to do the "Greetings, we come in peace" schtick.

[Land Phish]

So we can assume that these other gods are also offshoots of some human ancestor, and possibly even the same race as Yaweh and Satan, what with most of them having humanoid appearances correct? If so we may just have to classify "god" as a species or genus.

Homo Supremus?
Homo Immortalus?
Homo Mutatio?
Immortalus Diabolus?
Immortalus Angelus?

[Junghalli]

With a divergence of over 3 million years from humanity they probably would be too distant from us to be considered Homo and so would probably get their own genus and species names.

[Ilya Muromets]

Y'know, I was under the impression that, given the behavior of a lot of fundies, we already classified Yah-yah under "Homo Phobic."

... damn, that was a lame pun. I'm sorry.

[Jim Starluck]

I'm not sure how it could be best utilized, but this gave me some amusing mental images. (Hint: mouse-over the asterisks)

[MarshalPurnell]

From what I've been hearing lately, it sounds like he just snagged any useful souls he needed into his own afterlife regardless of their prior religious beliefs. He wasn't so much looking for a lifetime of religious devotion to him as he was for the kind of person who could keep up eternal devotion to him after being yoinked to live in his little pocket dimension.

If that's the case then why intervene in human affairs at all? After driving off the others he could have just sat back with Satan and let the souls come to him. If it's necessary to create a cult to suppress individualism and critical thinking, then why leave so much of the world uncovered by it? Or if it's all ego-stroking for Yahweh to be worshiped by people who are still alive, even if they are consigned to Hell later, why stop at converting Europe and the Middle East when Asia was so much more densely populated, or wait until the Spanish conquered the Americas to introduce his worship there?

[Baughn]

What was the demographic and distribution of the nephilim like?

It occurs to me that yahweh may simply never have felt the need to expand beyond Europe/the middle east. If he didn't have ready access to nephilim to set up portals through, he may not have felt it deserved the attention required to have someone fly across the atlantic or whatever.

[Simon_Jester]

If that's the case then why intervene in human affairs at all? After driving off the others he could have just sat back with Satan and let the souls come to him. If it's necessary to create a cult to suppress individualism and critical thinking, then why leave so much of the world uncovered by it? Or if it's all ego-stroking for Yahweh to be worshiped by people who are still alive, even if they are consigned to Hell later, why stop at converting Europe and the Middle East when Asia was so much more densely populated, or wait until the Spanish conquered the Americas to introduce his worship there?

The treaty with Satan may have barred him from taking active steps to spread his own church, and the only other way he could help it would be to speed technological advances in Europe, which was hardly a likely thing to do.

[MarshalPurnell]

The treaty with Satan may have barred him from taking active steps to spread his own church, and the only other way he could help it would be to speed technological advances in Europe, which was hardly a likely thing to do.

If we assume Yahweh doesn't care about human religion, and that he's already consigned the overwhelming majority of souls to Hell, then what tactical difference to the balance between Heaven and Hell does the spread of Christianity make? Also of course there's every reason now to suspect that Islam actually was created by Gabriel giving the gist of the Koran to Mohammad, and Islam marked a tremendous explosion of monotheistic belief in historical times well after the armies of Satan had stopped appearing in the world. It's hard to believe that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam served absolutely no purpose at all to Yahweh when he and his servants seem to have put effort into creating them in the first place.

And of course the answer giving with why he wanted to recreate Revelations was ego-stroking, which suggests he did care to some extent about how humans viewed him.

[Darth Yan]

He shut humans out of heaven in 1000 AD. That was long before any people started to really disbelieve in him; indeed, this was before the crusades even, and those were quite popular with Europe. Maybe Yahweh just has ridiculously high standards

[Gogyra]

What was the demographic and distribution of the nephilim like?

It occurs to me that yahweh may simply never have felt the need to expand beyond Europe/the middle east. If he didn't have ready access to nephilim to set up portals through, he may not have felt it deserved the attention required to have someone fly across the atlantic or whatever.

Yah-yah didn't even necessarily *know* that the America's existed, because no one in Europe did.

[Simon_Jester]

Perhaps not, but he assuredly knew Asia and southern Africa existed, and that they were largely outside his control. So I think we need some factor other than simple lack of knowledge to explain his not deliberately expanding his religion(s) farther.

[Valiran]

Certainly there are a lot of other pantheons and belief-systems that have nothing to do with Judeo-Christian mythology. Monotheism itself only became a major theme in world religion over the last 1900 or so years, with the closely coinciding rise of Christianity and Islam. Even then significant pockets of belief that had nothing to do with anything remotely Jewish, Christian, or Islamic dominated large parts of the world, notably India, China, and the Americas. If Yahweh had triumphed over all his competitors it's a tad odd that he wouldn't have tried introducing his brand of religion in those other large populations. Granted it wasn't so much about having pious followers as finding people who would unthinkingly obey his orders and accept his claims uncritically, but by not introducing his set of expectations into the majority of the world's population he surely missed out on quite a lot of prospective choir members.

Heaven and Hell, getting the souls of humans eventually anyway, would have little reason to really fight to push open portals after they've come to their own accommodation and driven off the competition.

Here's a thought: maybe he only became 'all powerful' a relatively short time ago. One hypothesis I have is that beings like Yah-yah can more easily stop the 'competition', as it were, from accessing our world if they have more followers. We know he derives energy from those that worship him, so maybe the same is true for other such beings. Since monotheism has a sad/sickening history of both spreading itself through violence and intolerance of any other belief system, this could explain why the other pantheons haven't shown up yet. As Christianity spread itself across the world, it did its best to stamp out all other religions, with methods varying from peaceful conversion to mass murder. In doing so it deprived the other pantheons of followers while increasing their own numbers, thereby weakening the other pantheons and strengthening Yahweh. The stronger Yah-yah got, the easier it became for him to keep the others from accessing our world.

A possibility is that Yahweh and Satan masqueraded as figured within those other pantheons to turn them to their will.

Or ran a smear campaign against them.

It may be rather easy to classify Zoroastrianism as a case of good cop/bad cop by Heaven and Hell, though Ahura Mazda seems rather more benevolent on the whole than Yahweh.

Might even be another entity entirely.

Most of the other pantheons tend to be either very much weirder or a lot more humanized, though the Indo-European ones (Norse, Germanic, Greek, Roman, Slavic, etc) all seem to share a basic root-layout filled in with culturally appropriate details. Hinduism probably started out the same way but evolved to be pretty highly distinctive.

Ironically enough, Hinduism might have helped spread Yahweh's influence. One of their sayings goes something like: "God has many voices, but all speak the same truth."

The Aztec gods are a particularly nightmarish lot, as might be expected given the way their society ran.

As Teal'c would say, "Indeed". Should we run into them, conflict is almost a certainty.

All of it has a lot of potential, and just how they fit in with the established details of Heaven and Hell is one key mystery of the setting thus far. Certainly there are quite a few deities that would make quite interesting characters, and others who are at least as much jerks as Yahweh - though the tendency of such gods to strike down mortals for questioning them, drown "fallen" worlds and kill off most of humanity with floods, and so on might be evidence that Yahweh goes by other names, like Zeus. Though for the sake of the more interesting members of the pantheons, like say Athena or Loki, I'd hope otherwise.

The Greek pantheon were assholes in general, making them another likely source of conflict should we encounter them. Loki was another one, but since the rest of the Aesir didn't like him anyway, he probably won't be too much trouble to deal with.