Salvation War Criticism Thread

[Formless]

The fact that Uriel gets killed (neglecting for a moment that he was effectively murdered by Michael) is the turning point of the story - and it's deliberately symbolic that he was killed by a laser.

Stu, the issue I have with this is that even just skimming the story as I have been doing you could see this climax coming from a mile away. I don't mean in the sense that Uriel's death was inevitable-- I get it, "most stories you know who is going to win ahead of time, this shouldn't be a problem blah blah blah Sherlock Holmes analogy. * " But from the instant you mentioned Uriel being hurt by radar I not only knew that he would die, but you all but telegraphed how he would die (by a directed energy weapon of some sort). After you know that information, and with the way his attacks are depicted from the beginning as being no more threatening strategically than Nazi Germany's air raids over Britain, the whole Uriel subplot becomes just a waiting game with no real tension. Boring.

* P.S. Just for the record, I hate this analogy. You do realize that for some of us this predictability is exactly what is so frustrating about mainstream media? Besides, the heros win/the heros lose being the only choices open to a storyteller is a absurd Black White fallacy anyway.

[Darth Raptor]

Wow, I wondered where that post went. Apologies for dumping it in the main thread for whatever reason.

The point is that, despite being given every break possible, they still don't stand a chance. That was clear before the story was ever written; the whole point that kicked it off was that the mythology in question is hopelessly outdated by modern weaponry. As you say, even having been given every break reasonably possible, they didn't stand a chance against guns. Frankly, I find the whole "tension" argument a bit absurd. There is very little "tension" in most stories. We know Sherlock Holmes will solve the mystery, we know that "The Lootenant" in a TV copshow will solve everything in 44 minutes 23 seconds. The end destination is known and obvious. What matters is the route by which we get there , who we meet and what we learn on the way.

That's just it. I didn't quit reading TSW because I was offended, I quit reading because I was bored. Humanity is simply resolving this conflict by shooting it until it stops moving. You're not writing a story; you're writing a series of things that happen. You can have Hell be a serious, existential threat and still lose without compromising your message (modern science >>> superstition). IIRC, you mentioned before that they could have taken WWI-era Earth and would have given WWII-era Earth a run for its money, so why not set the story in 1939?

When Heaven and Hell can conceivably win, the premise becomes infinitely more compelling, and when humanity can conceivably lose, they become proportionally more sympathetic.

[Jamesfirecat]

That's just it. I didn't quit reading TSW because I was offended, I quit reading because I was bored. Humanity is simply resolving this conflict by shooting it until it stops moving. You're not writing a story; you're writing a series of things that happen. You can have Hell be a serious, existential threat and still lose without compromising your message (modern science >>> superstition). IIRC, you mentioned before that they could have taken WWI-era Earth and would have given WWII-era Earth a run for its money, so why not set the story in 1939?

When Heaven and Hell can conceivably win, the premise becomes infinitely more compelling, and when humanity can conceivably lose, they become proportionally more sympathetic.

So you're suggesting that a powerful external force made up of beings who come from a very stagnant culture should suddenly show up in the middle of World War 2 forcing the two sides to put aside their differences and work together despite their mutual distrust? While I can't read the man's mind I think that Stuart might have decided not to write that novel because Harry Turtledove already has http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwar

Just saying...

[Darth Raptor]

Yeah, I know. But he could have just as easily tweaked the demons to bring them on par with modern Earth. It's really quite trivial to make them tougher and more potent without making them unstoppable.

Again, I appreciate that it's BECAUSE of science that humanity has such an overwhelming advantage in power. That's a short story at best, maybe a vignette. If you're going to write such a massive tome, you might want to have ups and downs and distinct arcs and subplots (that go places) and characters that aren't 2D mock ups of opinions and people you've encountered. Maybe have humanity eke out a victory by virtue of their, well, virtues, and not because they can spam MBTs.

[Eulogy]

How does shutting down breathing and heartbeats "erase" a soul, anyway?

[Jamesfirecat]

Maybe have humanity eke out a victory by virtue of their, well, virtues, and not because they can spam MBTs.

To be perfectly fair, isn't the human intelligence, ingenuity, and hard work that goes into making an MBT or MRLS and making them fast and cheap enough that we can effectively spam them against the deamons a show of humanity's virtue? It's a lot more impersonal virtue then when Ori hacks apart a demon with his sword, but its a virtue none the less.

Also to be perfectly honest, I'm the kind of guy who enjoys Hellsing, so maybe I'm just more disposed to not being bothered with stories that are more about sitting back and watching the heroes kick ass then worrying about if they'll come out okay, which is probably why I'm enjoying the salvation war.

[DataPacRat]

How does shutting down breathing and heartbeats "erase" a soul, anyway?

That depends on how you define 'soul'. The /effect/ of Uriel's tinkering with his victims' neurology is that they never appear in either Heaven or Hell - so, presumably, Uriel's electromagnetic tinkering does something to interfere with the mysterious Resurrection Machinery.

[Darth Raptor]

To be perfectly fair, isn't the human intelligence, ingenuity, and hard work that goes into making an MBT or MRLS and making them fast and cheap enough that we can effectively spam them against the deamons a show of humanity's virtue? It's a lot more impersonal virtue then when Ori hacks apart a demon with his sword, but its a virtue none the less.

Jesus Christ, YES. Is that eleventy billion chapters worth of material? Not on your life. TSW is not the next epic trilogy of our time; it's an episode of The Twilight Zone. Way to miss the point.

[Samuel]

So you're suggesting that a powerful external force made up of beings who come from a very stagnant culture should suddenly show up in the middle of World War 2 forcing the two sides to put aside their differences and work together despite their mutual distrust? While I can't read the man's mind I think that Stuart might have decided not to write that novel because Harry Turtledove already has http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwar

Have it set in the 1900s. Sure humanity doesn't have as big an advantage (in fact they might lose), but is Hell not known for treason in it ranks?

[Jamesfirecat]

Jesus Christ, YES. Is that eleventy billion chapters worth of material? Not on your life. TSW is not the next epic trilogy of our time; it's an episode of The Twilight Zone. Way to miss the point.

I was just trying to address the point of "humanity winning by its virtues, which is something they obviously do in the Salvation War.

On the issue of how easily they win by their virtues, I'll admit that I've got nothing which would convince you to change your mind. That's why I picked the battles I figured I had a shot at winning.

[Darth Raptor]

It seems to me that Stuart has it in his head that he's somehow constrained by a certain interpretation of the mythology in question. That's unfortunate, because as both an irreverent bastard and the writer, he's free to basically interpret the true nature of these races however he wants.

For whatever reason, he went out of his way to remove any potential for conflict and drama. It's a profound lack of content, and it only becomes more inexcusable as it snowballs into this super-massive epic.

[Formless]

To be perfectly fair, isn't the human intelligence, ingenuity, and hard work that goes into making an MBT or MRLS and making them fast and cheap enough that we can effectively spam them against the deamons a show of humanity's virtue? It's a lot more impersonal virtue then when Ori hacks apart a demon with his sword, but its a virtue none the less.

Perhaps, but I would argue that its an extraordinarily brute force method for conveying the theme of "science and reason triumphs over faith, tradition, and superstition." In fact, arguably what it really conveys is the triumph of industry and military might over a culture that was dead hundreds of years ago that just happens to be ultra-ultra-ultra conservative in the same sense as the Amish. Tell me, which one gets the point across better: a story where the legions of hell are truly alien in a way that humanity has never had to deal with before but are also of a troglodyte mindset, forcing humanity to alter its entire understanding of the universe USING the scientific method rather than blindly accepting the traditional beliefs about "humanity is doomed by default"? Or a story where the demon's strengths don't even get a tenth of the story and humanity main weapons are in fact the same goddamn weapons we have used against other humans for the past several decades? Which conveys the point better, a story where our primary weapons are bullets and bombs like we've been using for over a century, or a story where science itself is our greatest weapon against the apocalypse?

Frankly, if the legions of hell were truly as alien as the weird physics of their dimension imply they should be you should be shocked and awed if even one of our modern weapons had an effect even resembling what they do to humans. Not that it shouldn't happen, but think about the opportunities wasted! It could be discovered that against a certain kind of demon the only kind of weapon that works against are chemical weapons, allowing Stu to draw tension out of humanity having to come to grips with its (justified) fears about WMDs (rather than just using them and never talking about it again as actually happens in the story). And heck, where are all the people who hear The Message and, rather than laying down and killing themselves, creatively interpret it to mean they should become more fanatical, decide to take a few people down with them, and generally go turncoat on the rest of humanity? If you change nothing else, that alone would make Yahweh and Satan feel more threatening because of their ability to subvert the very fabric of our society. Heck, you would think the threat of Succubi would do just that in the story we have, but I guess Stu is just too damn addicted to his Crowning Moments of Awesome Blowjobs.

[Guardsman Bass]

To be perfectly fair, isn't the human intelligence, ingenuity, and hard work that goes into making an MBT or MRLS and making them fast and cheap enough that we can effectively spam them against the deamons a show of humanity's virtue? It's a lot more impersonal virtue then when Ori hacks apart a demon with his sword, but its a virtue none the less.

Perhaps, but I would argue that its an extraordinarily brute force method for conveying the theme of "science and reason triumphs over faith, tradition, and superstition." In fact, arguably what it really conveys is the triumph of industry and military might over a culture that was dead hundreds of years ago that just happens to be ultra-ultra-ultra conservative in the same sense as the Amish. Tell me, which one gets the point across better: a story where the legions of hell are truly alien in a way that humanity has never had to deal with before but are also of a troglodyte mindset, forcing humanity to alter its entire understanding of the universe USING the scientific method rather than blindly accepting the traditional beliefs about "humanity is doomed by default"? Or a story where the demon's strengths don't even get a tenth of the story and humanity main weapons are in fact the same goddamn weapons we have used against other humans for the past several decades? Which conveys the point better, a story where our primary weapons are bullets and bombs like we've been using for over a century, or a story where science itself is our greatest weapon against the apocalypse?

The former is easier to write, and better in my opinion. The latter can have its possibilities, but it's also a gamble - what might strike some as terrifying and alien would strike others as cheesy. Plus, there's always the risk that it will descend into wanking super-weapons and technologies. Stuart, at least, has constrained himself a bit on that by limiting it to stuff that exists today, and describing the actual effects of it (which is something that most people don't actually know -hell, I didn't know the effects of much of these weapons until Stuart started writing it into the story).

Frankly, if the legions of hell were truly as alien as the weird physics of their dimension imply they should be you should be shocked and awed if even one of our modern weapons had an effect even resembling what they do to humans. Not that it shouldn't happen, but think about the opportunities wasted! It could be discovered that against a certain kind of demon the only kind of weapon that works against are chemical weapons, allowing Stu to draw tension out of humanity having to come to grips with its (justified) fears about WMDs (rather than just using them and never talking about it again as actually happens in the story).

What, are they Made of Magic/Warp/Unobtainium? You're getting awfully close to fantasy there, and that's not the intention of story, AFAIK. Moreover, that really runs the risk of turning into super-weapon wanking.

And heck, where are all the people who hear The Message and, rather than laying down and killing themselves, creatively interpret it to mean they should become more fanatical, decide to take a few people down with them, and generally go turncoat on the rest of humanity?

Some did, or stayed around but blamed it on others (in Armageddon, Richard Dawkins gets killed by one such person). Besides, from what we've picked up the Message basically said something along the lines of "Lay down and embrace death." Why would the faithful interpret that as a reason not to do so?

If you change nothing else, that alone would make Yahweh and Satan feel more threatening because of their ability to subvert the very fabric of our society. Heck, you would think the threat of Succubi would do just that in the story we have, but I guess Stu is just too damn addicted to his Crowning Moments of Awesome Blowjobs.

Personally, I find the demons/angels to be quite fascinating without feeling the need to make them into Scary Uber-Monsters to create "tension".

[Junghalli]

Here's the thing Stuart. You may be technically right about how Uriel could theoretically have killed all the people in L.A., but when I was actually reading the story you never for a moment made me believe that might actually happen. I could tell from the very beginning that there was probably no way you were going to let him inflict any real serious damage before his ass became toast (let alone let him get in a successful attack and then get away and strike again). Note: I define "serious damage" in this context as him acheiving a significant part of what he set out to do (kill most of the people in L.A.), not "well a bunch of planes got shot down and a few buildings got wrecked". The humans win with near total predictability, I can only really think of two times where they actually lose and lose hard (Detroit and Sheffield), and even then it was analagous to the Nazis getting to A-bomb New York with Silbervogels; a tactical defeat for the good guys but the outcome was never in doubt, because humans already had a way into Hell so there was no way the Demons could possibly have held out long enough to actually make the sky volcano weapon a potential war-winning weapon.

And heck, where are all the people who hear The Message and, rather than laying down and killing themselves, creatively interpret it to mean they should become more fanatical, decide to take a few people down with them, and generally go turncoat on the rest of humanity? If you change nothing else, that alone would make Yahweh and Satan feel more threatening because of their ability to subvert the very fabric of our society.

Even leaving that aside, there's tons of ways for God and Satan to subvert humans in this scenario. After all, they control what happens to you after you die.

Imagine you're some functionary at the Pentagon or something and you have a child who is dying of cancer. The doctors can't save them and you know when (not if) they die they're going to Hell and are going to be tortured horribly, possibly for an indefinite span of time. Then one night some Angel shows up in your room and tells you if you help them they're going to make an exception for him, when he dies they'll let him into Heaven. Or maybe instead of an Angel it's a Demon and he says when he dies, yeah he'll go to Hell, but if you help them he'll be exempted from the torture. Maybe the Angel or Demon telepathically gives you a glimpse of what Hell is like, so you know exactly what the consequences will be for your child if you refuse the offer. How many people would accept an offer like that? Especially in a universe where we aren't absolutely wiping the floor with the Demons, so it looks entirely possible that we'll lose or that it could be a while before Hell is liberated? I'm going to guess quite a few.

It should be pathetically easy for the Demons and Angels to suborn people with promises of being let into Heaven or special treatment in Hell for themselves and/or their loved ones. Even good people could easily be tempted by something like that, as the example above demonstrates. That would be a really interesting angle with tons of dramatic potential and is left totally unexplored in Armageddon, partly because the Demons don't have time to capitalize on this before they're brutally curbstomped (and probably mostly wouldn't have the brains anyway if the rest of their conduct is any indication), and with the threat of Hell gone "I'll let you into Heaven if you help me" becomes a worthless offer.

Can you give me a physical mechanism consistent with the laws of physics (more or less, I'll accept limited modifications) by which it could be done? Remember, traditions were written by people without understanding of what they were seeing. We now understand some of what we were seeing. Old-style. "The Universe exists - HE must have created it". New style. "The Universe exists. Now, for a long explanation of the Big Bang, see . . . . . .).
And remember, for interaction to be possible, there must be extensive similarity of physical laws. If there is not, they cannot exist here, we cannot exist there, therefore we can't interact, therefore to all intents and purposes they don't exist (The aether argument). This leads to an interesting conundrum which resulted in a fundie running off with his tail between his legs.

No, there isn't, but let's go through Revelations and see how we can rationalize some of Heaven's strategic weapons.

The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down upon the earth. A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up.

This isn't too hard to rationalize, they bombard the planet with assloads of some napalm-like incendiary, enough to ignite firestorms large enough to burn much of the Earth's terrestrial biomass. Obviously you'd need ridiculous quantities of the stuff to do that (about 150 million tons or the equivalent of 25 Great Pyramids if it's dispersed at an average of 1 ton per km^2 of the Earth's land surface), but that's a question of scale, not of whether or not it's physically possible. This is going to do plenty of damage to human civilization; I'm pretty sure our fire departments aren't exactly up to fighting continent-scale firestorms, and I'm pretty sure a lot of agricultural and inhabited land will burn.

The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, 9a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.

Now "something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea" sounds remarkably, one might almost see eerily, like a primitive's attempt to describe the sight of an asteroid crashing into the ocean. So God has weaponized asteroid deflection capability. That doesn't require anything physics-breaking, only that Heaven apparently has some sort of space program. An asteroid that big (I'd say "huge mountain" implies size comparable to terrestrial mountains of the Middle East, which suggests kilometer dimensions) would do all sorts of nasty things. First it would cause a huge tsunami, and then it would throw up vast quantities of dust which would block out the sunlight, killing photosynthetic organisms, changing the climate, and generally completely disrupting agriculture planet-wide. Remember that discussion on what would happen if the Yellowstone caldera erupted? The climatic effects of this would be comparable or worse. This attack by itself would be the worst natural disaster since the Toba Catastrophe if it happened in isolation. I got nothing on how it would turn the sea to blood by itself but God simultaneously seeding the coastal waters with red tide as you had them do in Pantheocide would manage the trick well enough, and would compound the effects of the asteroid strike and mass napalm attacks on our food production.

The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water— 11the name of the star is Wormwood.[a] A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.

God contaminates 1/3 of the world's drinkable surface water with some kind of poison. Doesn't require anything particularly physics-shattering or mysterious, just chemical warfare on a massive scale. The wording might be taken to imply the waters permanently become bitter, which could be done by instead releasing some kind of organism that produces the toxin as part of its metabolism (God does have a fondness for bioweapons - e.g. the torture bugs and flamethrower horses). That doesn't require anything physics-breaking either. 1/3 of the planet's drinkable water becoming poisonous, even temporarily, would obviously be a massive inconvenience at the very least. Especially when you consider this is happening in the context of a world that has already been devestated by some of the worst environmental disasters in human history (the First and Second Trumpet).

The fourth angel sounded his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them turned dark. A third of the day was without light, and also a third of the night.

Taken literally that does require magic, but I'd be inclined to write it up as a poetic, not literally accurate description of the effects of the asteroid strike in Trumpet # 2. Throw enough particulate matter into the air and you can dim the sun and make it hard to see the stars - that's nothing magical, we see it happen every cloudy day and night. Alternately, God throws an assload of particulate matter into the atmosphere from somewhere. Again, doesn't require magic if we interpret if we write up its more blatantly impossible aspects to distortion.

The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. 2When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss. 3And out of the smoke locusts came down upon the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth. 4They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. 5They were not given power to kill them, but only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes a man. 6During those days men will seek death, but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.

7The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore something like crowns of gold, and their faces resembled human faces. 8Their hair was like women's hair, and their teeth were like lions' teeth. 9They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. 10They had tails and stings like scorpions, and in their tails they had power to torment people for five months. 11They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek, Apollyon.

God releases huge swarms of venemous insects. The venom apparently isn't fatal but causes extreme pain, so they're not so much weapons as a sort of torture device. Again, doesn't require anything magical, we could probably create creatures like this in a few decades or centuries with genetic engineering if we wanted to.

The sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the horns of the golden altar that is before God. 14It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, "Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates." 15And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. 16The number of the mounted troops was two hundred million. I heard their number.

17The horses and riders I saw in my vision looked like this: Their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur. The heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke and sulfur. 18A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur that came out of their mouths. 19The power of the horses was in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails were like snakes, having heads with which they inflict injury.

Heaven's Army. 200 million horse cavalry, apparently armed with (biological) flamethrowers and perhaps some sort of crude chemical weapon ("plague of sulfur"). Honestly along with the torture bugs these are the least impressive attacks, a modern army could probably defeat these guys relatively easily. Of course, the problems of dealing with them will be magnified by the lingering effects of the first three attacks. Yeah, veneomous insects and horsemen with flamethrowers aren't too scary, but they might be more of a problem in a world where the environment has turned to shit and human civilization is having a hard enough time just keeping everybody from starving to death. They'd be nuisance attacks for us, but nuisance attacks on top of really devestating attacks.

There's more but I think that's good enough for now.

Now I'm not saying this is the only way to interpret these passages or that you have to do it this way or should have done it this way, but I am pointing out that if you look at the source material you can have the opposition be much more powerful than you've made them and still have it stay reasonably within the boundaries of known scientific reality.

[DataPacRat]

The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, 9a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.

Just a thought... instead of interpreting it as an asteroid, what if we simply went with a 'mountain', thrown into the sea... specifically, the already hypothesized threat of a mega-landslide and/or volcanic eruption in the Canary islands, triggering an Atlantic tsunami, predicted to be 20 metres high when it hits Florida? ( http://geology.com/news/2005/09/atlanti ... hreat.html ) Perhaps all that's really required is the right weather-related push, and we've already got Yahweh fiddling with the storms...

[Jamesfirecat]

Imagine you're some functionary at the Pentagon or something and you have a child who is dying of cancer. The doctors can't save them and you know when (not if) they die they're going to Hell and are going to be tortured horribly, possibly for an indefinite span of time. Then one night some Angel shows up in your room and tells you if you help them they're going to make an exception for him, when he dies they'll let him into Heaven. Or maybe instead of an Angel it's a Demon and he says when he dies, yeah he'll go to Hell, but if you help them he'll be exempted from the torture. Maybe the Angel or Demon telepathically gives you a glimpse of what Hell is like, so you know exactly what the consequences will be for your child if you refuse the offer. How many people would accept an offer like that? Especially in a universe where we aren't absolutely wiping the floor with the Demons, so it looks entirely possible that we'll lose or that it could be a while before Hell is liberated? I'm going to guess quite a few.

It should be pathetically easy for the Demons and Angels to suborn people with promises of being let into Heaven or special treatment in Hell for themselves and/or their loved ones. Even good people could easily be tempted by something like that, as the example above demonstrates. That would be a really interesting angle and is left totally unexplored in Armageddon, partly because the Demons don't have time to capitalize on this before they're brutally curbstomped (and probably mostly wouldn't have the brains anyway if the rest of their conduct is any indication), and with the threat of Hell gone "I'll let you into Heaven if you help me" becomes a worthless offer.

While this is a fine idea, there's just one problem with it. There's no f***ing way that the human can get any sort of proof that the angel/demon is living up to its promises. It takes a major idiot ball on the humanity's part to make a deal to betray their country without some sort of way of making sure that they're deal is lived up to, or inflicting serious damage if it isn't. After all, what would stop the demon from torturing the kid anyway once it dies, demons are known for lieing a lot after all. Of course fiction is full of people making VERY stupid decisions, but at least in Stuart's work most of the stupid decisions have been made based off of bad intel rather than bad critical thinking as anyone who was willing to accept such of the above offer would have to posses.


Also doing this would require two things.

1: The ability to portal anywhere so that they can reach the person and contact them.

2: An inate understanding of how humanity works so that they would know who would be important enough to make such an offering to.

If we give "2" to the demons in the Salvation War then we're already on a different story entirely since they in turn would obviously know about the general effectiveness of human weapons and what not. So if you're making this suggestion as something that could be "lightly" slipped into the Salvation War universe then you're wrong, and there's a reason why Stuart didn't go into it.



That said, Micheal has been doing something similar is Pantheocide on earth, but he's been doing it only with those who were about to starve to death after the message and thus having an angel come down and tell them that God has god has greater plans for them, which makes sense as such a person who would listen to the message would already be prone to believing anything an angel said.


EDIT: Oh also, the other obvious way to defeat this attempt at suborning would be to have the kid cryogenically frozen. He'd still technically be alive so his soul wouldn't go to hell, and have him thawed out to die when the war is won. Easy peasy.

[Stark]

Yeah, nobody ever got blackmailed or made a poor decision for possible profit, right? This is both unrealistic and not dramatic.

Because... you said so. Turns out people betray things (even themselves) for possible, unprovable future benefits, just not in zero-personality world.

[Junghalli]

While this is a fine idea, there's just one problem with it. There's no f***ing way that the human can get any sort of proof that the angel/demon is living up to its promises. It takes a major idiot ball on the humanity's part to make a deal to betray their country without some sort of way of making sure that they're deal is lived up to, or inflicting serious damage if it isn't.

The deal could always include a stipulation of being able to meet with the child after they die to verify they actually aren't being tortured or aren't in Hell. Of course that could concievably be faked too (especially by creatures with considerable powers of illusion), but you need to consider the desperation factor. A world that is full of people who've been told they all can look forward to endless torture after they die is going to be a world full of really fucking desperate people, many of whom are going to eagerly grab any straw that promises salvation for themselves or their loved ones from this fate, however tenuous. To some people a promise from the people who actually run the afterlife is going to look like a better bet than that maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to blow up God with sufficient nukz mizzulez. That's not idiot ball plotting, it's taking into account realistic human behavior.

Also doing this would require two things.

1: The ability to portal anywhere so that they can reach the person and contact them.

2: An inate understanding of how humanity works so that they would know who would be important enough to make such an offering to.

If we give "2" to the demons in the Salvation War then we're already on a different story entirely since they in turn would obviously know about the general effectiveness of human weapons and what not. So if you're making this suggestion as something that could be "lightly" slipped into the Salvation War universe then you're wrong.

Yes, and? I frankly dislike the entire approach that TSW has taken to the issue, and I've made no secret of that in this thread. The fact that it can't be "lightly slipped into" the present story is a matter of complete indifference to me, because I think the story would be improved by massive revision at the fundamental conceptual level.

That said, Micheal has been doing something similar is Pantheocide on earth, but he's been doing it only with those who were about to starve to death after the message and thus having an angel come down and tell them that God has god has greater plans for them, which makes sense as such a person who would listen to the message would already be prone to believing anything an angel said.

Honestly, I didn't like that so much. It means that all these people would be naturally pretty much totally unsympathetic*, especially to people like the average SDN denizen. I think part of the appeal of what I'm talking about is the pressure of a situation like this could easily make good people "crack" and agree to help the enemy in exchange for the promise of themselves or their loved ones being spared some Demon arseraping them with a hot poker for the next 10,000 years straight.

* Actually, somebody like Branch could be sympathetic, but she isn't because roughly zero effort is spent on her characterization.

Oh also, the other obvious way to defeat this attempt at suborning would be to have the kid cryogenically frozen. He'd still technically be alive so his soul wouldn't go to hell, and have him thawed out to die when the war is won. Easy peasy.

That isn't even certain in TSW, for all we know cryogenic freezing might result in the ressurrection system tagging you as "dead" and while you could theoretically be thawed later there would still be a version of you that would end up in Hell. In this hypothetical alternate TSW where the rules of the afterlife could be totally different, of course, this can be dealt with pretty easily. And even if cryogenic freezing does save you, how would you know? Maybe some people might think the word of an Angel (or even a Demon) was a better bet than than the possibility that maybe being frozen will keep you out of Hell, but then again maybe it won't.

Also cryogenics cost $30,000 low end so not everybody would necessarily be able to afford it.

[Jamesfirecat]

Yeah, nobody ever got blackmailed or made a poor decision for possible profit, right? This is both unrealistic and not dramatic.

Because... you said so. Turns out people betray things (even themselves) for possible, unprovable future benefits, just not in zero-personality world.

Okay fair enough, but like I said, I'd argue that the intelligent action would be for the person in question to have his son cryogenically frozen (it prevents his son from being tortured in hell plus he doesn't have to betray his government/race win/win). Now there's no reason that characters have to act intelligently in fiction (or in real life) I just find it more irritating when they don't make good decisions based on the info they have than a lack of overall tension.

The deal could always include a stipulation of being able to meet with the child after they die to verify they actually aren't being tortured or aren't in Hell.

There would have to be frequent meetings and the human still has no effective way to harm the angel if at any point they break the deal not to mention they'd be in too deep by that point to turn things around.

Also see above point on cryo freezing as it presents an obvious "take third option" between letting the child be tormented, and betraying their nation.

On the cost issue, we're assuming that the angel/deamon is going for someone important and there are only going to be so many important people with children/loved ones who are going to die very very soon. They could probably get some kind of government subsidy set up so that these people could have their loved ones frozen rather than suffer the punishments of hell.

Now if the deamon presented the person with the spirit/soul/momentairly on earth (since they can survive for about 10 min) soul/spirit/secondary life form of an already dead loved one who they'll promise to stop torturing if he betrays, then the guy is more or less up s*** creek without an easy paddle.

That said with an idea as broad as the Salvation War, there are countless ways that it could have been handled, and while I like Stuart's I can understand why some people wouldn't. I've got no defense for your statement that you'd handle things differently, I'm only here to try and give my thoughts on how and why things happened the way they did once Stuart chose his rules to right by not what might have happened if he'd gone for a different set.

[Junghalli]

There would have to be frequent meetings and the human still has no effective way to harm the angel if at any point they break the deal not to mention they'd be in too deep by that point to turn things around.

Which a reasonably decent and intelligent person might still consider a better bet than that maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to blow up God with nukes. I am assuming a scenario where everybody hasn't realized that God is nothing more than the petty dictator of Heavenstan and the Angels are little better than tall guys with wings who are tall (or maybe even that's not actually true, I think that would make things so much better).

Also see above point on cryo freezing as it presents an obvious "take third option" between letting the child be tormented, and betraying their nation.

And see my point (I assume you missed the edit, that's understandable) that even in TSW proper we don't know that this would effectively save somebody from Hell. For all we know what would happen is the resurrection system tags you as dead, one version of yourself wakes up in 200 years when we develop sufficient nanotech to revive frozen corpses, and the other version ends up in Hell. In this hypothetical alternate TSW the rules of the afterlife could be completely different so, say, what happens is in 200 years the kid wakes up a PTSD-riddled victim of 200 years of continuous torture. And besides, it's not like you're likely to actually know either way, so even if cryo-freezing could save the kid I can easily see a desperate but non-idiot person thinking that maybe a deal with the people who actually run the afterlife is a better bet than "well, if we freeze him maybe he won't go to Hell, but then again maybe he will". Especially since, after all, a cryo-frozen corpse is no less dead than a non-frozen fresh corpse, so wouldn't that mean people only go to Hell after they start to decompose or something? Yeah, I can easily see how an intelligent person would have massive doubts about the viability of saving somebody by freezing them.

You also pointed out an angle that can be used on somebody who answers with "lol i'll just freeze him"; present them with your dear old grandad after he's had his nutsack flayed with a cheese grater for the last 15 years straight and promise to stop torturing him if you cooperate.

[Jamesfirecat]

That's why I mentioned the bring up someone already dead idea. Tension works well as a series of rises and falls, correct? Have the angel/demon make the offer, have the person think it over, realize cryo freezing and walk in ready to tell the other entity to stick their offer where the sun don't shine and explain why. Then the other entity listens, smiles and produces the already in hell relative who pleadingly tells them all of what has happened while they've been in hell.

No more effective way to wipe the smug look off the guys face and leave him so broken that he'll agree to do it.

[Formless]

The former is easier to write, and better in my opinion. The latter can have its possibilities, but it's also a gamble - what might strike some as terrifying and alien would strike others as cheesy.

What's wrong with taking risks? I'd personally take that risk rather than write the copious helpings of military wanking and nerd crushes over how awesome human technology is that we have now.

Plus, there's always the risk that it will descend into wanking super-weapons and technologies. Stuart, at least, has constrained himself a bit on that by limiting it to stuff that exists today, and describing the actual effects of it (which is something that most people don't actually know -hell, I didn't know the effects of much of these weapons until Stuart started writing it into the story).

Fucking please. In the current story every human weapon is a super-weapon by virtue of the antagonists being so pathetic. My proposal would eliminate the wank without eliminating the superweapons because it would mean humanity actually has to work to achieve its advantage. Easy is not good.

What, are they Made of Magic/Warp/Unobtainium? You're getting awfully close to fantasy there, and that's not the intention of story, AFAIK.

And its not dangerously close to fantasy now? I'll give you a hint, technobable bullshit involving quantum physics does not keep it from being fantasy. I mean, really? What is this, Star Trek?

Moreover, that really runs the risk of turning into super-weapon wanking.

You keep on using the word wank, but I do not think it means what you think it means. In what I proposed the use of super weapons would become a turning point, rather than the norm for half the story. Furthermore, I also proposed how it is in fact an opportunity to increase the drama by bringing up the consequences of using them. This is wank how?

Some did, or stayed around but blamed it on others (in Armageddon, Richard Dawkins gets killed by one such person).

One example. One measly example, and its never brought up again.

Besides, from what we've picked up the Message basically said something along the lines of "Lay down and embrace death." Why would the faithful interpret that as a reason not to do so?

Read:

creatively interpret it to mean they should become more fanatical, decide to take a few people down with them,

Emphasis added. I mean, imagine if you are one of these fanatical zealots and you are going out to lay down and follow your orders. You go out to gather up people from the community to get them to lay down with you, only to find out that Bob down the street doesn't really want to die. Try as you might to convince him, he just won't budge. Now your pastor suggests shooting him. Its for his own good...

And the rest follows from there. In a setting where majority of people decided to choose life, you should expect there to be groups who want to rectify that defiance of god by force.

Personally, I find the demons/angels to be quite fascinating without feeling the need to make them into Scary Uber-Monsters to create "tension".

What does this have to do with the fact that the Succubi have been fatally underutilized? And really, that's a ridiculous black white fallacy you have constructed: according to you, the legions of heaven/hell must either be unstoppable monsters or fucking bronze age peasants. There is a third option and it is the one I am advocating: they are monsters like nothing we have seen before, but they DO have weaknesses. They just aren't the kinds of weaknesses that can be exploited by any idiot with 50 IQ points so long as they have access to the big red button that says "missile spam."

[Junghalli]

Emphasis added. I mean, imagine if you are one of these fanatical zealots and you are going out to lay down and follow your orders. You go out to gather up people from the community to get them to lay down with you, only to find out that Bob down the street doesn't really want to die. Try as you might to convince him, he just won't budge. Now your pastor suggests shooting him. Its for his own good...

And the rest follows from there. In a setting where majority of people decided to choose life, you should expect there to be groups who want to rectify that defiance of god by force.

God might actually suggest and/or encourage such behavior. There's precedent for it in the Bible.

Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies. 26 So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, "Whoever is for the LORD, come to me." And all the Levites rallied to him.

27 Then he said to them, "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.' " 28 The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. 29 Then Moses said, "You have been set apart to the LORD today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day."

It'd be pretty horrific if you had Angels going around telepathically commanding people to do this. If they could do this on a similar scale to Uriel attacks it'd be pretty freaky. Just imagine one day you're on the bus and you get this sudden almost irresistable mental command to kill the guy next to you, and it's all you can do just to resist, and meanwhile some of the passengers are are going around strangling and bludgeoning people to death while screaming gruesome Bible verses and "VENGEANCE IS MINE SAYETH THE LORD!"

Even if it was not much more effective than the Uriel attack on LA in TSW it'd be much more gruesome, because while everybody's struggling to resist the command the people who failed are going around stabbing, shooting, beating, and strangling people to death, and it's difficult to stop them when everybody's energy is totally focused on just preventing themselves from joining them. As people try to defend themselves or run away they become distracted and their own resistance falters and they join the killers themselves. Meanwhile there are groups of cockhead fundies who don't even try to resist but rather enthusiastically embrace the divine command and start hunting down the people they blame for the Message like gays, atheists etc. in an intelligent and organized fashion. Then when the Air Force blows up or chases away the Angel that's doing it you'd have poor guys suddenly realizing they've killed their spouses, children, parents, friends etc. while under its influence, and thanks to their actions those people are now being tortured in Hell.

[Guardsman Bass]

The former is easier to write, and better in my opinion. The latter can have its possibilities, but it's also a gamble - what might strike some as terrifying and alien would strike others as cheesy.

What's wrong with taking risks? I'd personally take that risk rather than write the copious helpings of military wanking and nerd crushes over how awesome human technology is that we have now.

No one's forcing you to read it.

Plus, there's always the risk that it will descend into wanking super-weapons and technologies. Stuart, at least, has constrained himself a bit on that by limiting it to stuff that exists today, and describing the actual effects of it (which is something that most people don't actually know -hell, I didn't know the effects of much of these weapons until Stuart started writing it into the story).

Fucking please. In the current story every human weapon is a super-weapon by virtue of the antagonists being so pathetic. My proposal would eliminate the wank without eliminating the superweapons because it would mean humanity actually has to work to achieve its advantage. Easy is not good.

Bullshit. As has been shown in the story numerous times, the angels/demons can be killed by conventional (and nuclear weaponry), but that doesn't mean they aren't fucking tough. Look at all the shit it took just to bring down Uriel - if "every human weapon is a super-weapon", then why was it portrayed as so fucking difficult? Why were conventional rifles near useless against angels/demons?

You keep arguing that the story is wank. Why? Because a group of super-tough humanoids with Bronze Age technology (which they have for understandable and logical reasons) gets owned by a significantly more advanced civilization? That type of tech imbalance has actually happened in human history. Moreover, the imbalance is what makes the story so interesting in some ways - it's basically trying to flesh as much of the Old Testament theology out as much as possible, and a big theme of the story is the unraveling of the myths and creatures that haunted human nightmares for centuries in-universe.

Then compare it to your idea, "what if, for example, the creatures could only be harmed by a type of chemical/biological weapon?" Have you even thought through the implications of what that means, in the way Stuart has with his scenario? How does that universe even interact with a normal universe, if the creatures are walking No Limits Fallacies except for their One Achilles Heel? Yes, I know you proposed some type of "science mystery" story, where the challenge is figuring out their scientific weakness, but to be honest, that type of thing sounds even lamer than what Stuart's doing.

What, are they Made of Magic/Warp/Unobtainium? You're getting awfully close to fantasy there, and that's not the intention of story, AFAIK.

And its not dangerously close to fantasy now? I'll give you a hint, technobable bullshit involving quantum physics does not keep it from being fantasy. I mean, really? What is this, Star Trek?

I never questioned the fact that there are elements there that obviously are fantastical (or at least Plot Created), but at least Stuart's idea tries to put them in some type of framework that ties into the world with its natural laws and so forth. As opposed to proposing No Limits Fallacy creatures except for the One Achilles Heel.

Moreover, that really runs the risk of turning into super-weapon wanking.

You keep on using the word wank, but I do not think it means what you think it means. In what I proposed the use of super weapons would become a turning point, rather than the norm for half the story. Furthermore, I also proposed how it is in fact an opportunity to increase the drama by bringing up the consequences of using them. This is wank how?

Ah, so you're basically turning them into a plot coupon.

Some did, or stayed around but blamed it on others (in Armageddon, Richard Dawkins gets killed by one such person).

One example. One measly example, and its never brought up again.

It's there. What, are you pissed because he didn't feel the need to base the entire story around them?

Besides, from what we've picked up the Message basically said something along the lines of "Lay down and embrace death." Why would the faithful interpret that as a reason not to do so?

Read:

creatively interpret it to mean they should become more fanatical, decide to take a few people down with them,

Emphasis added. I mean, imagine if you are one of these fanatical zealots and you are going out to lay down and follow your orders. You go out to gather up people from the community to get them to lay down with you, only to find out that Bob down the street doesn't really want to die. Try as you might to convince him, he just won't budge. Now your pastor suggests shooting him. Its for his own good...

And the rest follows from there. In a setting where majority of people decided to choose life, you should expect there to be groups who want to rectify that defiance of god by force.

Ah, so instead of embracing death immediately as God himself just told you to do, you decide to put it off until you can get others to do so with you, even though everybody else heard the Message? It's possible, so what the hell? I'll let you have it.

[RedImperator]

I think you (badly) need to read the story. Michael-Lan is Using drugs to subvert the ruling structure of Heaven and as part of his long-term plan to remove Yahweh and establish what he considers to be a more reasonable regime.

For me, that's as big a problem as Michael being a pusher. The fact that the angels can actually be subverted with sex, blow, and Glenn Miller sucks a huge chunk of the mystery and the menace out of them. They're already bronze age primitives (they have to be, or it makes no sense the demons could fight them to a standstill) and helpless before our weapons. Now they're helpless before our vices, too.

It just plays into the impression that we're reading an elaborate exercise in "Humans are awesome at everything". These creatures are ancient, powerful, and, judging by the hints you've dropped, they've seen a lot more of the universe than we have. Surely they've encountered sights, sounds, and even drugs that are more interesting than anything we could provide.

That is in fact exactly the situation. The only defense against Uriel was to kill him or drive him off before people started dying. Humans had learned to resist his attack but they were only buying time until the human defense forces arrived. It was made quite clear that their resistance was steadily weakening and would collapse in time. Uriel had wiped out (or severely mauled) a lot of towns before he arrived in the United States. Once in the U.S. he was deliberately and very ruthlessly steered by Michael-Lan to the targets that were most likely to get him killed. Michael-Lan wasn't powerful enough to take Uriel down on his own, he needed humans to do it for him. So he shepherded Uriel to cities that were ringed by defenses and had airbases in close proximity. In a very real sense, Uriel was killed by humans but he was murdered by Michael. Uriel could have achieved a lot more in terms of death if he'd picked small towns somewhere well-removed from military bases and concentrated on them. That would have accommodated his ends but not those of Michael-Lan.

There's no story reason why Uriel couldn't have been effective and ultimately vulnerable to human weapons. It's not like it doesn't serve Michael's purpose if Uriel depopulates San Deigo before he takes a missile up his ass. You did a really effective job building Uriel up as a terrifying threat in the first book, and then Pantheocide comes around and dogs can resist him.

I know one of your themes is that rational modernity gives humans the tools to resist the superstitions that gave the gods their powers, but, 1) I feel like it would have made Uriel scarier if he could still inflict massive casualties despite this resistance (especially since unlike most deaths in this book, if Uriel gets you, there's no condo on the Styx waiting for you), 2) it would have been more poignant if the people he attacked were able to slow down Uriel long enough for the Air Force to get him, but not long enough to live, and 3) but you made that point pretty thoroughly when you killed Satan with missiles. You have some flexibility with the magic now.

I've been writing professionally for around 35 years but nearly all of that is producing dry reports and technical documents. Even so, remember what you see here is very much a first draft document. Not only that, it is a first draft assembled from multiple authors whose work has to be smoothed to the same style and arranged in logic order with the dead ends and plot distractions deleted. Polishing TSW:A is really hard work. It's taking a lot longer than I thought. By the way, you'd be amazed at the difference the editing makes - there's a reason why authors and copy editors are different people. PS if you are doing a collection, a bottle of 18 year old Laphroig would probably be more inspirational.

Yeah, editing's a bitch under the best of circumstances. Armageddon must be a cast-iron motherfucker.

This is a military situation, one does resolve them by shooting at things. However, remember the background this story came from. The premise was that the netherworld, as laid down more or less in Biblical text, is condemning humanity and humanity fights back. I then looked at the kind of weaponry was described and the sort of societies represented, compared it to what we have now and sort of sat back stunned. Two thousand years ago, the authors of those texts gave their gods the most powerful weapons they could think of and to us, they're pathetic jokes. We could walk all over them.

"Biblical demons are shit against modern technology" presents all kinds of fun possibilities, but there's only so many times you can read about demons getting massacred. It's a fine premise for a short story, but it just get tedious when it happens over and over. I don't think you need more than a short story--or a prologue to a much longer work about the aftermath--to make that point.

And it doesn't help that in this story, we're not only merely told about potential disasters (like the ammo supply), we're told about it in the sequel. Why not let the humans run out of ammunition or fuel (or both) mid-battle once and get massacred in return? It only has to happen once, and every battle after that, the reader is constantly worried it it's going to happen again.

Two things came out of that, what would walking all over the opposition like that do to us as a people? And doing so would bring hope to Hell, what would that do?

These are interesting questions. Unfortunately, it's going to take something like 600,000 words before we start answering them in earnest. There's only a few times when we doubt the humans will win, and really, at this point I don't even doubt we're going to get through it without any serious damage--at this point, we've been let down by Belial's sky volcanoes (too little, too late, and he hit secondary targets at best), the logistics situation (it hasn't affected the outcome of a single battle), Hell's weird topography (you had a genuinely scary moment with the tank platoon that couldn't find the portal again...but then they did find it, and after that, the problem was only a nuisance), the first plagues (the "seas of blood" were fixed by dying them blue, and for all the damage they probably did to the fisheries, nobody we like is in danger of starving), and Uriel, so I just don't take the story seriously when it starts foreshadowing grave threats in the future. So...what's left to read about? How they get into Heaven? This is all made-up physics; I'm not interested in the mechanics of reaching Heaven any more than I'm interested in the mechanics of a warp core. What they'll do when they get there? That's obvious. Michael's machinations? If I thought there was any chance whatsoever of Heaven winning, or Michael getting out of this with his empire intact, maybe, but right now, I look at it the same way I look at the palace intrigue in Hell--a bunch of jockeying for position that came to nothing when the humans installed Abigor.

The "omniscience" viewpoint was kind of forced on me. I have no intention of taking this storyline beyond the initial trilogy so it had to be a self-contained package. Normally, my preferred way of doing things is to pick out a couple of intertwined paths and follow them so the fictional universe is shaded in as the stories add up. I would much have preferred to have worked from a singular (or two or three related) positions as well. The limited run of the TSW stories doesn't allow that. I had to try and accommodate the whole world in a single panning shot so to speak. Even so, this grew from one volume to three (a growth that itself caused problems) yet is still a limited canvas.

Yeah, space limits are a bitch. Try fitting an entire interplanetary war into 110,000 words sometime (no fair doing it in an established setting, either).

Anyway, yeah, I recognize that unless you want to write an entire epic series, you're going to have to cram a shitton into three books. And I'm assuming part of your editing process will involve dropping some of the subplots, simplifying the narrative. Still, this is a huge story, and I stand by my position that I think it tries to do too much. I'd rather see a less ambitious story with more attention paid to the characters and themes within it than a gargantuan story that doesn't give all its ideas their due.

The fact that Uriel gets killed (neglecting for a moment that he was effectively murdered by Michael) is the turning point of the story - and it's deliberately symbolic that he was killed by a laser. Uriel is the old school, the old way of doing things, the mainstay of Yahweh's rule and society. He was seen as the sword of the light so he is killed by a sword of pure light. His death is the exact half-way point through the story. His death at the hands of a laser marks the handing of the torch on from the Universe-Two beings to us. We're now the deadly ones, we're the ones that can inflict mass death and destruction and make creation bow down to our will. The war will have to be fought on our terms now - Michael-Lan knew that all along and that is what he has been trying to maneuver, a way that Heaven can fight us on our terms and still survive. Hell never saw that, hence the curb-stomping. And yes, the humans are powerful. I'm a humanist, I rather like humans which is why i think it's a pity we're not going to survive much longer.

I don't think you've really addressed Ford's point here. To the extent that he (and I) accept the story for what it is, there's no problem with Uriel dying of acute laser poisoning. And I (and he, presumably) get the symbolic value of Uriel dying. The problem is by the time Uriel dies, nobody takes him seriously. Every time he shows his face over the United States, he gets chased back into Heaven, bleeding, after having killed only a relative handful of people (he can't even kill all their pets, for Christ's sake). We're told he's the biggest threat we face, he's built up as the biggest threat we face, maybe he is the biggest threat we face...and he's a joke. Belial, a two-bit nobody by comparison, killed more people.

This is Drama 101 stuff. You build up the threat the heroes face before they triumph (while leaving just enough of a gap in its armor for the heroes to win without a deus ex machina). Uriel's menace goes down every time we see him. He starts out mysterious and terrifying, and gets weaker as we go, until there's no doubt the attack on Los Angeles will fail, and this time, he'll be laser-bait.

Fortunately, this is a pretty easy problem to fix. All he really needs to do is succeed in killing people, even if they can resist long enough to slow him down for the Air Force to catch him. And I don't mean some goat-herders or a shantytown somewhere; I mean, before the Navy shoots him down (or better yet, drives him off with the radar after he'd dodged or deflected or tanked all the missiles they throw at him), he turns San Deigo into a boneyard. All of Southern California. Or more--maybe so much that another attack on that scale knocks the United States out of the war. Whatever. Just so that the audience is left thinking, "This thing is the scariest motherfucker anyone's ever seen. How will the humans ever stop him? Maybe they won't--maybe Stuart's about to sucker-punch us and let the humans on Earth lose, and the only survivors will have to retreat to Hell."

They're much more than that actually. They're stopping a lot of things happening and become critically important very shortly. They haven't been too significant up to this point because the war is deadlocked and there are no major operations going on.

I hope so, but I have to be frank here: every other "big problem" has turned out to be a disappointment.

What I did was take the described "powers" and try and find some sort of rational explanation for them. The First Law of the Salvationverse is that the physical laws have to be similar enough for interaction to occur. If the divergence is too great, then interaction becomes impossible. As a corollary, if they can interact with us, we can with them. Thus, if they can hurt us with a thunderbolt, we can hurt them with a shot from a tank. I tried to give the netherworlders every power listed (throwing thunderbolts, possessing minds, invisibility, suppressing life etc etc etc). Don;t blame me if they're so feeble, blame the ancient scribes who didn't have enough imagination to think of all the ways humans can find to kill each other.

Oh, come on, now. You're the writer. Even within the parameters you set for yourself, there's room for the plagues of Revelation to be much more disastrous than they were. Junghalii made some suggestions; I'll add another. Make the "blood" a bacterium that kills all life in the ocean, including photosynthetic plankton. It's no less believable than kaiju, and we are fucked; and it's closer to the spirit of "the seas turned to blood" than "there was a huge red tide".