Lagmonster wrote:I've split out the entire side-track on family histories to the HoS, for lack of a sensible other place to put it.
Understandable. I hope you don't mind if I paste a non-genealogy-related TSW-related question from my posts you moved back into here. (I'll leave behind those questions that have to do with both genealogy and TSW, such as about the Nephilim.)
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So, how about that square-cube law? Something I've been wondering since near the beginning of this series, is what sort of materials the kaiju-sized demons used for bones, ligaments, and muscles... and why no mention has been made of humanity trying to reverse-engineer those substances for their own use.
The main reason would probably be because, as has been noted, we already have construction materials considerably better than what demons are made of. They're impressive, to be sure, but there's a world of difference between a fifty-foot tall Wuffles and a thousand-feet tall skyscraper.
Besides that, reverse engineering anything whatsoever from biology is hard enough as to take decades. There is no way it could be done in time for story characters to care.
Our thousand-foot tall skyscrapers would quickly be shaken to pieces if they tried to start running around the way a fluffy does. Though we've got quite impressively huge static structures, our ability to create something both large and agile is inferior to the Demons' and Angels'.
Though we've got quite impressively huge static structures, our ability to create something both large and agile is inferior to the Demons' and Angels'.
One word rebuttal: tanks. Here's another one: fighters. Inferior, my ass; who cares if Wuffles was big compared to our vehicles, I'd say his ability to wreak havoc was considerably lower when a comparison is made; after all, they blew big holes in him quite well, no?
While it's true that we have no mobile ground unit on the size of Wuffles and his compatriots (the other mythical beasties), remember that there are only a few of them, making them the exception rather than the rule. We don't even know if the angels made them; maybe Yahweh just plucked them from somewhere else, massive fraud that he is. And when practicality comes into play, do we really even need something that big? At this point, given our current prowess at inflicting death, a fifty-foot tall ground unit, organic, mechanical, or otherwise, would feel more like overcompensating for something rather than actually useful.
We haven't tried making mobile structures on the size of Wuffles, so claiming that this means our materials are inferior (not that you did) seems specious.
In actual fact, our structural materials are better than nature's. Now, our motors aren't as flexible as muscles, so that might be a problem - though it's less of a problem for larger structures. Of course, the primary reason not to make them large is that they become too easy to hit, so we won't be trying either.
And, of course, all the usual arguments against mechs apply to Wuffles and his kin too. Did anyone try aiming for the joints with the Leopard?
Baughn wrote:And, of course, all the usual arguments against mechs apply to Wuffles and his kin too. Did anyone try aiming for the joints with the Leopard?
If anything, they'd apply even more so due to the target being mostly squishy instead of metal. I think anyone equipped with APFSDS ordnance should think of it as big honking nails. Just nails designed to fly really well, really far, and really fast, forget trying to join pieces of timber together at all. Also, what would the feasibility of multiple smaller kinetic penetrators in one round (think 'Super Giant Family Size Flechette') be for development, maybe using the KPs from old 25mm Bushmaster AP, for example? I'd imagine the Army would want to keep their tank cannons relevant in an anti-Baldrick/Percy/Kaiju role, plus we'd be able to manufacture new 'Flechettes' from cheap steel instead of tungsten carbide or depleted uranium.
The advantages over a simple package of high-velocity kaboom would have to be substantial enough to justify this development with resources stretched thin. Maybe multiple hits confer greater damage or shock like a shotgun blast, or they're simply cheaper per round than, say, M829A1 or M830A1 (assuming an M1 Abrams we're talking about; could be anything with a Big Fucking Gun); or the M1028 Canister or a hypothetical 'Ironball' anti-Demon variant just doesn't penetrate deeply enough into Soft Targets of Unusual Size?
Simon_Jester wrote:Of course, all that pales in comparison to the thing that's really hilarious: people who claim to be the reincarnation of famous people.
Ooh, now there's an interesting set of thoughts to apply to this setting: Can the Resurrection Machinery that pops out recently-killed people through the Minos Gate be tweaked to have... other results? Is it completely infallible in putting the right minds into the right bodies, or might some recently-dead fellow find himself in his Second Life in an unfamiliar form, of inappropriate shape, gender, and/or species?
... I should know better than to think I come up with any original ideas; after some semi-directed browsing, I came across an online comic that's not only had this idea, but Rule 34'ed it, and then some. The first two pages get the idea across, with nothing worse than nudity; after that is the sort of fetish porn that people sometimes say they wish they had brain-bleach for. The two pages are (NSFW!) http://bellystuffed.com/bellybirthed_10.html and 11.
And, speaking of Resurrection Machinery... has anyone else considered TSW compared to Spider Robinson's setup, where instead of other-dimensional beings, it's future humanity who goes about recording every human's brain state in order to resurrect them?
Though we've got quite impressively huge static structures, our ability to create something both large and agile is inferior to the Demons' and Angels'.
One word rebuttal: tanks. Here's another one: fighters. Inferior, my ass; who cares if Wuffles was big compared to our vehicles, I'd say his ability to wreak havoc was considerably lower when a comparison is made; after all, they blew big holes in him quite well, no?
That sort of misses the point; Gojira wasn't really talking about combat units as such, in the sense of "we have no weapon with this much physical size and destructive power." He was talking about mobility; most of the mobile structures we've built in that size class are designed to have very limited degrees of freedom (ships), or are extremely slow-moving (like giant mine crawlers). That's the kind of issue where megascale biologicals could actually be interesting, because we might learn something about building large structures with many degrees of freedom. I don't know (note use of words 'could' and 'might').
There's more to life and engineering than weapons.
Omega Scythe wrote:While it's true that we have no mobile ground unit on the size of Wuffles and his compatriots (the other mythical beasties), remember that there are only a few of them, making them the exception rather than the rule. We don't even know if the angels made them; maybe Yahweh just plucked them from somewhere else, massive fraud that he is. And when practicality comes into play, do we really even need something that big? At this point, given our current prowess at inflicting death, a fifty-foot tall ground unit, organic, mechanical, or otherwise, would feel more like overcompensating for something rather than actually useful.
The Scarlet Beast seems to be doing pretty well, but that's an aside. Chances are they are artificial. They don't even make sense in terms of scale for a natural life form. They are bigger and more massive than the largest whales, and those can only get up to that size because they are in a bouyant environment; they don't have to support their weight. For land creatures, the square-cube law kicks in with a vengeance. They must have been designed and engineered to be able to support their own weight and the Angels are currently the only candidates for doing so.
"Show me an angel and I will paint you one." - Gustav Courbet
"Quetzalcoatl, plumed serpent of the Aztecs... you are a pussy." - Stephen Colbert
"Really, I'm jealous of how much smarter than me he is. I'm not an expert on anything and he's an expert on things he knows nothing about." - Me, concerning a bullshitter
Einhander Sn0m4n wrote: what would the feasibility of multiple smaller kinetic penetrators in one round (think 'Super Giant Family Size Flechette') be for development,
The cheapest alternative, and therefore probably the first fielded, would be cannister. Fill a light shell casing with mild steel punchings. The casing is destroyed on firing. You have a big shotgun. The next step would be to add a time fuze in the base and an ejector charge. This would be akin to WW-I shrapnel. There should be no particular problem punch-pressing flechettes from 1/4 inch steel wire. I'd probably use high carbon steel and heat treat them after punching, but in a crunch would eliminate that step.
Simple HE rounds should be very effective. You could beef them up by reducing the burster charge and adding a wrap of pre-segmented steel wire.
- Dennis
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Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer, and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be relied upon to endure hardships in case of another war.
-Frederick the Great, 1777
Baughn wrote:We haven't tried making mobile structures on the size of Wuffles, so claiming that this means our materials are inferior (not that you did) seems specious.
Any mechanical engineer could tell you that making a highly-mobile quadrupedal machine 200 ft high is simply not feasible with our current technology. We are capable of creating moving objects on this scale, but it is only possible because they are heavily constrained in movement: even the most magnificently designed of these vehicles move very slowly and have very few degrees of freedom. Think of the space-shuttle crawler - even when it doesn't have a shuttle on it, it moves at about 1 mph.
Now, if we had a manhattan-style project to create a 200ft tall warmech? It might happen in a decade or two - I'm not qualified to comment on if that would be possible, though I can guarantee you that the final product would be made of something much stronger than steel. However if you were simply to tell a large engineering firm "here's a few billion dollars, build me a giant robotic dog capable of running at a speed appropriate to its scale," they would tell you you're SOL.
In actual fact, our structural materials are better than nature's. Now, our motors aren't as flexible as muscles, so that might be a problem - though it's less of a problem for larger structures. Of course, the primary reason not to make them large is that they become too easy to hit, so we won't be trying either.
Quite true. We have better materials than pretty much anything you can find in nature *on earth.* While heaven's giant creatures probably won't be able to inflict enough damage to do more than anger the humans, they are still marvels of bio-engineering, and we could potentially learn a lot from studying them.
Israeli General Command Headquarters, Tel Aviv, Israel
There had been a time when Muamur al Zahari had dreamed of getting into this room. Of course, in those dreams he had been wearing an explosive vest and the blast that took him to Paradise would also send the entire command staff of the Israeli defense forces to Hell. Now, he was their guest, an ally of sorts and the whole question of who went to Hell and why had been changed out of all recognition. The implications of that could be confusing, but only a fool refused to recognize the changes brought about by time. Anyway, he was finding the chaos in front of him amusing. Just one question tormented him. If this was the Israeli General Staff in action, didn’t the fact the country they defended had survived so long suggest that his own command staff were even worse? The likely answer to that simple question appalled him.
“Just what the blazes is going on up there?” General Andras Marosy stomped across the operations room floor and stared at the map.”
“It’s bad ground, terrible ground in fact. The inclines are steep, there’s more dead ground than we can shake a stick at, and the valleys all run against us. We’ve got some artillery but it’s all long-range stuff. A Romach battery, some 155s of assorted types. All guns, no howitzers. We can’t lob shots into the valleys. Whoever picked this location knew exactly how to exploit our weaknesses. The only thing to hurt the Scarlet Beast so far was that truck bomb.” The Israeli officers looked at al Zahari with a mixture of respect and resentment. After sixty years of hostility it was hard to admit that they were on the same side, even harder to accept that Hamas had struck the only effective blow against the Scarlet Beast and the Whore so far.
“Well done Colonel, a masterly exposition that completely fails to answer the question. I said, what’s going on up there? Or would you prefer I sent you in a jeep to find out?” General Marosy closed his eyes and muttered some choice epithets under his breath. A classically-trained officer he had long believed that the IDF were a superb example of the concept of lions lead by donkeys. It was significant that there was not a single Israeli officer in multi-national command positions anywhere in the Human Expeditionary Army. They were brave enough, gallant to a fault, but their staff-work was appalling. And, in the final analysis, staff-work won wars.
“The last message we had was 30 minutes ago.” The Colonel glanced sideways at the situation map and, to his relief, saw it had been updated. “It said that the Scarlet Beast had resumed its attack on Jerusalem after breaking off to recover from the effects of the truck bomb. It was reported in the city and was being fought by whatever troops, our own and Hamas, some Fatah as well of course, but they had only small arms. The Beast made a point of getting as close to our people as it could, as quickly as it could. That’s limiting our heavy weapons use. It’s crushing the city.”
“Crushing it? Is that all we have?”
“Yes General, it is. Not quite, one of the messages from police units inside the city said that the Whore of Babylon riding the Beast is stunningly beautiful.”
“I’m sure that is going to make a great deal of tactical difference.” Marosy spoke with a combination of weariness and anger. “Patch me through to H.E.A. Headquarters.”
The Communications Officer created the communications link. It was a complex one for the relatively short distance it had to go. It went from the HQ to the communications complex, up to a satellite, down to the earth station outside Baghdad, by microwave link to Hellgate Alpha, through the Alpha portal on a fiber optics link, then back to a microwave to the HQ building outside Dis. It took all of 20 seconds to establish.
“Could I speak with General Petraeus please?”
A clipped British accent responded. “General Petraeus is in Myanmar wrapping up operations there. I am his Chief of Staff, General Michael Jackson. You need help with the Scarlet Beast of course?”
“Yes Sir. We have only light infantry here and it’s tearing us apart.”
“I understand. We have portals opening now. We’ve brought in kitten to open them and she’s hard at work. We’ll have five divisions between the Beast and Tel Aviv by morning. The Aussies are sending in some F-111s to do the strike work.”
“General Jackson, we’ve lost eight aircraft already.”
“I know, all old Skyhawks. The Pigs are a different class of aircraft entirely and the Aussie pilots know how to fly them. Very aggressive pilots they are.” Sir Michael Jackson paused, it was the times when people standing on a parade ground had to drop flat as Australian F-111s flew overhead that were the epitome of ‘very aggressive’. And they had made the USAF rue the day they had pulled the F-111 from service. “Just hang on, Jerusalem’s a write-off but we’ll be there to stop any further damage. And don’t send any more troops in without full chemical warfare suits. The Whore sprays something we haven’t identified yet. Whatever it is, it’s lethal.”
“Thank you sir.” Marosy broke the connection before sighing. It appeared the H.E.A. knew more about what was happening few miles away that he did. That did not surprise him.
“Excuse me General.” al-Zahari was standing at one side of the room, looking at the operational display. “I thought you had three submarines at sea?”
“We do. Dolphin and Tekuma were at sea anyway, Leviathan sortied as soon as this attack started.”
“Well there are only two on this map.”
Marosy looked at the map and saw that the Palestinian was right. There were display indicators tagged for Dolphin and Leviathan but no sign of Tekuma .
Over Hacienda Heights, Los Angeles, California.
“Gangway, big boys coming through.” And that was an understatement thought Michael Wong. With the Bones on their way back to base, the YAL-1s were by far the largest aircraft in the battle. They had taken time to join in the wild furball over Los Angeles but now their great shadows were making a beeline for Uriel. It wasn’t hard to miss him. Wong stopped himself there, actually it was very easy to miss him. He guessed that only a small handful of the thousands of cannon shells that had been poured at the archangel had actually hit him. The fighters had stopped using rockets, to Wong’s certain knowledge at least three aircraft had gone down to friendly fire in the chaos. He’d seen them go, an F-15 taken down by an AIM-120, an F-16 by a pair of AIR-120s and a National Guard F-4 that had made the terrible mistake of getting between a Warthog and its target. Going by the fires on the ground, there had probably been others. In a strange way he was glad he had run out of ammunition and was leaving the battle area. Fighting Uriel was one thing but the thought he might accidentally take out a friendly weighed heavily on his mind.
Uriel was floundering, lashing out at the aircraft that swarmed around him. Wong was forced to remember the old King Kong movie with the giant ape trapped on top, his arms clutching at the aircraft flying around it. Uriel kept trying to form portals to escape but the aircraft were constantly forcing him away from each. Nobody had yet tried Wong’s trick of flying through the portal and coming back out on a collision course and that pleased the Commander greatly. That maneuver would give him bragging rights for months. Then he saw something he had never seen before and for the first human to shoot down a daemon and the first living human into Heaven, that said something. A bright red streak of light flashed across the sky and transfixed Uriel.
YAL-1A “Scalpel-One ,” over Los Angeles, California
“Laser is powered up, Sam, we’re ready to shoot.”
“Very good, lock on to that beast with the target designation laser. Main laser, prepare to fire.” There was a problem in using big, powerful lasers in an atmosphere. Microscopic drops of water in the air vaporized when the laser hit them, forming tiny lenses that dispersed the laser beam. It was called blooming and that’s what allowed the otherwise invisible beam to be seen. It also degraded the power of the laser and increasing the energy it contained to compensate didn’t help much. The more power in the beam, the faster the droplets turned into lenses and the greater the energy losses became. On its own, that made for a losing game. The answer had been remarkably simple once somebody had thought of it. Shine a medium power laser at the target first and it would clear all the water droplets out of the way. Then fire the main beam down the channel before they had a chance to reform. It sounded cranky but it worked.
Mickey Jennings had Uriel firmly in his sights. The target designation laser was already pouring data into the fire control system. Then, he initiated the main COIL laser and held the firing switch down for the full four seconds, watching the temperature gauge read-out as he did so. It crept higher as the laser shot stressed the system. Then the beam snapped off.
It had struck Uriel just under his rib cage, between his spine and the side of his body, slicing straight through him. For all four seconds of its life, it tracked backwards, cauterizing the wound as it went, but carving off a great swatch of Uriel’s side. For a fraction of a second, the slice stayed with him, but it quickly peeled away and plummeted to the ground beneath him.
To Uriel, already dazed with pain from the damage done by the fighters and exhausted from his efforts to escape, what had hit him was beyond any form of comprehension. The burning pain of the target tracking laser had been bad enough but the agony from the main COIL laser filled his mind and soul. He could feel it slicing into him, feel it tear at his body but there was nothing there to explain the horror that he knew was ending his life. Just light, clear, pure light. His muscles crippled by the great tear in his body, he started to fall from the sky. In a strange way, that saved his life for a few moments because the sudden change in direction threw the laser beam from Scalpel-Two off. The YAL-1 was an anti-missile system, designed to shoot down targets that moved on a steady, predictable course. The COIL shot just brushed Uriel’s face but that was enough to blind him, the thermal bloom destroying his eyes in a way that even his superb body repair capability couldn’t fix.
“He’s getting away!” Allansen brought his big aircraft around in a tight turn, its airframe creaking and groaning with the G-loads. It was, after all, a converted Boeing 747F and it was designed to civilian standards. Its airframe was flexing in ways that its designers had never contemplated. Nor had the designers of the COIL laser that filled its fuselage. “Hit him again.”
Jennings looked at the temperature gauges, they were still too high but Uriel had slaughtered tens, hundreds, of thousands in this war alone. How many he had massacred in his life was a number nobody else would ever know but Jennings had already decided that there would be no more. He designated Uriel’s falling shape and once again the great laser in the YAL-1 flashed out for its four second burst.
Uriel, blinded, desperate and dying didn’t feel the laser as it carved through his chest and into his neck. He was beyond pain, beyond exhaustion. All he wanted now was some of the peace that he had brought to the humans. The humans who had once cowered beneath him but had learned how to resist his will and to enforce their own on him. A fourth laser burst, the second fired from Scalpel-Two, slashed through his wings, finishing any chance he might ever have had of flying his way out of this death trap.
In Scalpel-One, Allansen and Jennings saw Uriel plummeting to the ground far below. The YAL-1 was still turning and Jennings saw the body drifting into his sights. Without having to be given the order, he designated the archangel and squeezed out his third burst from the laser, noting grimly that the temperature gauges were already well into the danger zone. It was a well-aimed shot, one that finally split Uriel’s head and ended his long life. He never heard the explosion that coincided with him hitting the ground.
It was the combination of turns and rising temperature that had done it. The turns, far tighter and faster than authorized had stressed the aircraft and the plumbing of its laser well beyond specifications. The three laser shots, fired in faster sequence than the book permitted, had pushed pressure in the system up to lethal levels. One pipe, not an important one as it happened but in this context that didn’t matter, ruptured and sprayed the volatile laser fuel over the heated laser modules. The flash fire that resulted did the rest by rupturing the fuel tanks and igniting their contents. Scalpel One exploded in mid-air at the precise moment Uriel died.
Orange Crush Interchange, Los Angeles, California
The Salvation War was a truly multi-national enterprise. That was why sub-munitions made in South Africa were delivered to China for installation in 227mm rockets that were shipped in Greek freighters to Hell where they were issued to American MLRS batteries that gained their mobility from oil that had been drilled in Saudi Arabia and refined in Singapore before being carried by Norwegian tankers to Dutch-built storage facilities on the shores of Hell. Early in the war, at least three economists were reputed to have committed suicide after trying to work out how to pay for everything.
What had made the system possible was the revival of an old system called Lend-Lease. In effect, every nation in the Grand Coalition was supplying whatever it could and it had been agreed that the nations would settle up after the war was over. This was where the Principality of Monaco played its vital part in the war effort. Monaco didn’t have tanks or jet fighters although it did have a well-armed and remarkably courteous police force. What it did have were armies of accountants who were furiously engaged in tracking who was building what and who was supplying which arms to which country. They knew what the balances were and who would owe what to whom. They also acted as a clearing house who matched operational requirements to suppliers.
And that was how a Russian-built MZKT-79221 truck painted U.S.A.F. blue was making its way up Interstate 5. Air Force Sergeant Franzing had been watching the fighting over the city as he had neared Los Angeles, the sky covered with the red streaks of tracer fire and the exhaust trails of missiles. He’d also seen the massive explosion that had ended the battle and wasn’t surprised to find Los Angeles was studded with fires. There was one massive one over to his left and at least half a dozen medium-sized ones scattered over the city. The small fires were everywhere. Whatever had happened here had done a lot of damage. He was making his way towards the Orange Crush interchange when he was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol. They had the road blocked with police cruisers and emergency flares were marking out all the available lanes. That meant an imposing array of flares. State Police Officer Earl Scott was, nevertheless, impressed by the sheer mass of automobile engineering that was stopped in front of him.
“Just what is that thing?”
Air Force Sergeant Franzing looked down at the police officer below him. “It’s a very big truck.”
Once, that remark would have been an invitation to a prompt arrest on a charge of ‘contempt of cop’ but the police officers were too overwhelmed by the chaos in the city to take umbrage. Scott had sheltered from the Uriel attack in a Salvation Army hostel before returning to duty when the attack ceased. Now he was trying to keep traffic away from the disaster area north of the Santa Ana River. “Doesn’t matter how big it is, you’ll have to stop here.”
“Not possible Officer, I’ve got to get this baby back to AMARC right away. There’s aircraft needing to be rebuilt up there.”
“Just do as I tell you. There’s no way you’re getting through, no matter how big that thing is.” The gearhead side of Scott won out. “What is it anyway, 16 by 16?”
“Nah, the trailer wheels are powered as well. 24 by 24. This mother can go anywhere I want. So let us through, OK?”
“Not OK, no way. Look, Sergeant, we’ve got a 747 down on Angel Stadium that’s blocking the highway completely. There’s an F-15 down in Disneyland and believe me, the Sleeping Beauty castle ain’t never going to look the same again. There’s another Air Force bird down on Katella High School. Couple of other crashes and small scattered fires. The city transport system is shot. This area’s bad enough normally, now with everybody wanting home after the Uriel attack and the Man himself skewered on the Crystal Cathedral, it’s as bad as it has ever been. You’re stuck, live with it.”
“Whoa, Uriel’s down? I saw the air battle going on driving up here but we got him?”
“We sure did. Or the Air Force did. They had a couple of laser planes in at the end. Never seen anything like it, they sliced and diced the bastard in mid-air. Sergeant, I’d get you through if I could but there ain’t no way at all.”
Franzing sighed. The big trucks were used to carry aircraft from the AMARC facility to factories around the country where they could be refurbished for use or broken up for spares. It had been a pretty good detail all things considered. Still if I really am stuck here. . . .
“Officer, sorry I mouthed off at you. Look, can I go see Uriel’s body?”
Scott laughed. “You and a hundred thousand other people. Everybody not going home is converging on Chapman to view the body. Those that can, those downed planes have screwed traffic up beyond all reason. Get in the line Air Force, it’s gonna be a long wait before you get to spit on the corpse.”
Franzing looked back at the long length of empty trailer behind him. “You know, the brass are going to want that body moved sooner or later. Study it, cut it up, stuff it and mount it, whatever. It’ll fit on this baby just fine. What say you we load Uriel on the back and parade him around the town for a bit? I can’t take my baby off the main streets but we can have our own victory parade and when the brass decide what to do, well, you’ve already got him on a truck ready to move out right.
Scott burst out laughing. “Parade the sonofabitch around the town. That works for me. I’ll pass the idea back to my watch commander. I guess the high-ups will want the final word on this but if I had my way, we’d be on our way down there right now.”
Nations do not survive by setting examples for others
Nations survive by making examples of others
Wow, I actually felt bad for Uriel when that laser got him. Once again, Stuart, you continue your tradition of "If you want to use a weapon in a story, then by gosh, you're gonna know exactly what it will do to someone."
He could feel it slicing into him, feel it tear at his body but there was nothing there to explain the horror that he knew was ending his life. Just light, clear, pure light.
This line really got to me. Underlining that the angels and demons are no longer in charge: Mythologically, heaven is supposed to be in charge of the light, but we've shown that we can use it better.
And I thought getting a pointer laser into one's eye was bad enough. This was just brutal.
Ya-Ya is gonna be angry when he finds out, that's for sure. Wonder how Michael is gonna phrase it? And would he even understand the concept of Laser weaponry? He seems to 'know' a lot about human weapons, but 'understanding' is something different.
RIP Urial-lan-Yaweh. You will not be missed, for our weapons travel at the speed of light.
Baughn wrote: This line really got to me. Underlining that the angels and demons are no longer in charge: Mythologically, heaven is supposed to be in charge of the light, but we've shown that we can use it better. Although, it's still pretty grisly.
Exactly, we're half way through the story and this is a cultural turning point we've been building up to. Uriel, for all his build-up was a part of the past, he represented the old way of doing things. I had Uriel's death put here at the hands of a laser for exactly that reason. Humans now are the holders of the power of light.
UCLA is the other side of the city, so it's away from the main battle area. It's in Uriel's original target area though
By the way, the faint sound you can here is Michael-Lan humming "Tomorrow Belongs To Me"
Nations do not survive by setting examples for others
Nations survive by making examples of others
Nice to see the laser planes in action, the one that blew up seemed like it came right out of a Michael Bay movie.
No doubt people will be losing hands and feet for years as all the rounds that missed their targets are found the hard way, but a great victory. Can't wait to see what happens to the Scarlet Beast.
Stuart wrote:
Exactly, we're half way through the story and this is a cultural turning point we've been building up to. Uriel, for all his build-up was a part of the past, he represented the old way of doing things. I had Uriel's death put here at the hands of a laser for exactly that reason. Humans now are the holders of the power of light.
I guess that would make us "Lightbringers" after-all
PRFYNAFBTFCP
Captain of the MFS Frigate of Pizazz +2 vs. Douchebags - Est vicis pro nonnullus suscito vir
"Are you an idiot? What demand do you think there is for aircraft carriers that aren't government?" - Captain Chewbacca
"I keep my eighteen wives in wonderfully appointed villas by bringing the underwear of god to the heathens. They will come to know God through well protected goodies." - Gandalf
"There is no such thing as being too righteous to understand." - Darth Wong
Stuart wrote:"This area’s bad enough normally, now with everybody wanting home after the Uriel attack and the Man himself skewered on the Crystal Cathedral, it’s as bad as it has ever been. You’re stuck, live with it.”
...am I reading this right? Because it sounded like the policeman is saying Urinal fell onto a church steeple and got skewered by it!
Interesting view of the IDF by the way. Is it really that bad?
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.
As the only guy in heaven who was not apparently a drug-using megalomaniac, I had sort of hoped that Uriel could be captured and turned. I guess anybody who sincerely believes that "My Honor is Loyalty" has got to go, too.
"I have never had anything to do with duels since. I consider them unwise and I know they are dangerous. Also, sinful. If a man should challenge me now I would go to that man and take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet spot and kill him" -Mark Twain
I'm back now and the next part should be up over the weekend unless something horrible happens.
PRFYNAFBTFCP
...am I reading this right? Because it sounded like the policeman is saying Urinal fell onto a church steeple and got skewered by it! 
