The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Eighty One Up

[Jamesfirecat]

Thanks for your help Stuart, glad to know you've got my back/are as forthcomming with answers as always.

By the way, though it's a little OT here's a little report I wrote up that a Succubus might have sent back to Hell durring her investigation of Earth before the Message was sent....

"If we are to truly bring suffering, pain and torment to the humans while at the same time breaking their will to resist then it is clearly necessary that we attack the great human palace resides upon 'Mount Ever-Rest' and burn it to the ground, making completely certain to slay the human ruler who resides within, for the humans revere him as they no longer do Yahweh, offering prayers to him at every turn and calling forth his name as they charge into battle!"


Sound about right?

[Stuart]

By the way, though it's a little OT here's a little report I wrote up that a Succubus might have sent back to Hell durring her investigation of Earth before the Message was sent....

"If we are to truly bring suffering, pain and torment to the humans while at the same time breaking their will to resist then it is clearly necessary that we attack the great human palace resides upon 'Mount Ever-Rest' and burn it to the ground, making completely certain to slay the human ruler who resides within, for the humans revere him as they no longer do Yahweh, offering prayers to him at every turn and calling forth his name as they charge into battle!"

Sound about right?

Sounds exactly right. It's a serious point; perople collect information that is colored by theri own preconceptions and prejudices. Somebody sent to collect political information interprets everything from a political viewpoint and so on. I'm a good example, I made my bones working on command systems so I tend to view everything in those terms. Re-reading Armageddon, that actually comes out quite strongly, the story is pitched at the command level and looks largely at the impact of command concepts.

By the way, you're doing a fantastic job on TVtropes.

[Jamesfirecat]

Thanks, I used to just lurk around those pages on TVtropes for kicks watching other people give the trolls the well deserved bashing over the head they had coming, but then I decided "hey finals are due in a week, that means I still have another 168 hours between now and then, its time for 101st chairborn to deploy to the front lines of the battle against trolls!

Also I'm playing the worlds smallest violin over how the page has gotten so large that his computer is having trouble handling it due to how long our argument has gotten.

By the way, I revised the above post a few times, but I trust that the Warhammer 40K reference is both subtle enough to be "funny" slash not painfully blatant while at the same time still obvious enough that someone familiar with the setting would get it. Did I hit the right balance?

[Valiran]

Thanks, I used to just lurk around those pages on TVtropes for kicks watching other people give the trolls the well deserved bashing over the head they had coming, but then I decided "hey finals are due in a week, that means I still have another 168 hours between now and then, its time for 101st chairborn to deploy to the front lines of the battle against trolls!

Also I'm playing the worlds smallest violin over how the page has gotten so large that his computer is having trouble handling it due to how long our argument has gotten.

By the way, I revised the above post a few times, but I trust that the Warhammer 40K reference is both subtle enough to be "funny" slash not painfully blatant while at the same time still obvious enough that someone familiar with the setting would get it. Did I hit the right balance?

Heh, 101st Chairborne, that's a good one.

Got the 40k reference too, though I'm not sure if that's where His throne room is. I only remember reading about gene-labs being located in the Himalayan Mountains.

[Jamesfirecat]

I didn't know where it was either, but then I whipped out my mighty google-fu (one of the most potent forms of comp to comp combat taught in the 101rst Chairborn) and discovered http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Golden_Throne and assumed it was canon what with it being the Warhammer wiki and all...

[Blayne]

For the Emperor! May his hand guide and protect!

[Darth Wong]

By the way, though it's a little OT here's a little report I wrote up that a Succubus might have sent back to Hell durring her investigation of Earth before the Message was sent....

"If we are to truly bring suffering, pain and torment to the humans while at the same time breaking their will to resist then it is clearly necessary that we attack the great human palace resides upon 'Mount Ever-Rest' and burn it to the ground, making completely certain to slay the human ruler who resides within, for the humans revere him as they no longer do Yahweh, offering prayers to him at every turn and calling forth his name as they charge into battle!"

Sound about right?

Sounds exactly right. It's a serious point; perople collect information that is colored by theri own preconceptions and prejudices. Somebody sent to collect political information interprets everything from a political viewpoint and so on. I'm a good example, I made my bones working on command systems so I tend to view everything in those terms. Re-reading Armageddon, that actually comes out quite strongly, the story is pitched at the command level and looks largely at the impact of command concepts.

By the way, you're doing a fantastic job on TVtropes.

I can't help but think that denizens of Hell or Heaven would have a hard time believing that President Obama is a man of great power and influence. He allows such widespread disrespect and dissent that they would no doubt consider him to be a weak and inconsequential man at best. It would be completely alien to their world-view to imagine a society which actually places great value on dissent and the freedom to publicly criticize one's own leaders, and they would interpret his failure to harshly control such behaviour, throw his weight around, lift his leg on foreign leaders, and generally act like an arrogant ass as proof of weakness.

Interestingly enough, given all of the right-wing hyper-ventilating over the massive loss of national prestige associated with Obama bowing to China's leaders, the kind of people who watch FOXNews seem to have the same mindset.

[Blayne]

Uum, Obama bowed to the Emperor of Japan, he only shook hands with Hu Jintao.

[Darth Wong]

Thank you for that very enlightening trivial nitpick.

[Blayne]

Thank you for that very enlightening trivial nitpick.

To be fair China is perceived through the lenses of Yellow Peril or the next big bad, the idea of the president of the United States bowing to Chinese leaders I think is on several orders of magnitude worse and kinda like bending over to your loan shark. While Japan is currently a close American ally, a friend and IS a monarchy and a traditional way of showing respect to their culture, to me its not trivial.

I of course mean absolutely no disrespect but I had to nitpick.

[Jamesfirecat]

I can't help but think that denizens of Hell or Heaven would have a hard time believing that President Obama is a man of great power and influence. He allows such widespread disrespect and dissent that they would no doubt consider him to be a weak and inconsequential man at best. It would be completely alien to their world-view to imagine a society which actually places great value on dissent and the freedom to publicly criticize one's own leaders, and they would interpret his failure to harshly control such behaviour, throw his weight around, lift his leg on foreign leaders, and generally act like an arrogant ass as proof of weakness.

Interestingly enough, given all of the right-wing hyper-ventilating over the massive loss of national prestige associated with Obama bowing to China's leaders, the kind of people who watch FOXNews seem to have the same mindset.

That's an interesting idea and all, but how did you get it from what I said? It's important to remember that the Salvation War Universe is more or less drawn to time scale, so the Baldricks would have done all their planning to invade (or at least all their last minute planning to invade) under W. As for the report, I was trying to subtely describe the God Emperor of Mankind from Warhammer 40K, not Obama, who as we all know is actually Tzeentch, chaos god of hope and change.

[Darth Wong]

That's an interesting idea and all, but how did you get it from what I said?

It just set me to thinking of their perception. I'm not saying it follows directly from what you said.

[Simon_Jester]

Interestingly enough, given all of the right-wing hyper-ventilating over the massive loss of national prestige associated with Obama bowing to China's leaders, the kind of people who watch FOXNews seem to have the same mindset.

Where do you think they got it from? In this setting, it's like the cloistering of women in the Middle East; they probably learned it from the extraplanar types.

In reality, of course, they only think they did.

[Stuart]

I can't help but think that denizens of Hell or Heaven would have a hard time believing that President Obama is a man of great power and influence. He allows such widespread disrespect and dissent that they would no doubt consider him to be a weak and inconsequential man at best. It would be completely alien to their world-view to imagine a society which actually places great value on dissent and the freedom to publicly criticize one's own leaders, and they would interpret his failure to harshly control such behaviour, throw his weight around, lift his leg on foreign leaders, and generally act like an arrogant ass as proof of weakness.

Remember people always modify perceptions to meet their preconceptions. That's one of the horrible flaws that comes up in intelligence analysis all the time. So, let's assume for some reason Obama gets a study by the daemons of Hell. They'll look at him and more or less say. "He's the head of an extraordinarily powerful nation but he's behaving like this. We wonder why? It can't be that he's really so weak or he would have been deposed by now. Aha! He's only acting weak so that his enemies will become emboldened and come out into the open where they can be identified and disposed of."

Which, come to think of it, might well be exactly what he's up to

[CDurham]

Its good to see you back at this, I was going through serious withdrawls having been lurking here since Chapter 14 of Armageddon???.

I was on another forum and a discussion about this story came up after someone asked what would happen if a portal to Dante's hell was to suddenly open (apparantly if it happens in Newark nobody will notice unless it blocks the Lincoln Tunnel) and I found myself defending the story but someone asked a question I couldn't readily answer so here is the the relevant parts of the discussion:

Foryn: I think that the idea of a military expedition into Hell in order to free trapped souls and all is a good idea, in a high-fantasy "Let's go kick the evil god's ass!" type way, but I dislike the meta-plot of God saying,
"Yeaaaaaaahhhh... all ya'lls are damned now... have a nice day." And that the response to this is "Hey, let's go kill Him."

And that demons are basically a sub-species of humanity. The demon armies are still at bronze age tech, haven't paid any attention to the corporeal plane to know that they're outmatched. Are ROFLstomped and Satan is killed by a cruise missile. And if any of that is 'spoiler' worthy, I'm sorry but discussions of the topic kinda have to hit those points.

Me: I will have to say I am hoping Part 2 is less of a curbstomp and more of an actual War, and at least the Archangel Michael seems to have been paying attention recently. As for Yahweh, he seems to be in a "believes his own propoganda" thing that would make Kim Jong Il seem sane and frankly seems to be high on his own awsomeness.

And now for the question:

Foryn: Which is one of my other problems, situations:

1) If Yahweh is God, capital G, plagues, fire, brimstone, rivers of blood => humanity is well and justly screwed. And Yahweh is rightly high on himself.

2) If Yahweh is not God, capital G, => what the hell is the war about? he wouldn't be able to actually damn anyone. And most likely the real God is waiting in the wings somewhere, watching.

If you want to read the thread, its at alternatehistory.com/discussion, in the Alien Space Bats forum with the title Hell ISOT and the Salvation War isn't mentioned until about 3/4 down the first page.

[Jamesfirecat]

The answer to the question that CDurham seems fairly obvious to me.

Yahweh can have the power to direct the river through which dead human energy takes (and thus determining if they show up at the Minos portal or its heavenly version) without having unlimited power.

In fact I find it hard to believe that someone would even bring it up, since to me it seems like a pretty large leap to go from the power to control the destination human souls take must be unavoidably bound with omnipotence!

I'd go correct the guy over there but I only just signed up for an account and it takes a while for it to be activated...

[Stuart]

[quote="CDurham") If Yahweh is God, capital G, plagues, fire, brimstone, rivers of blood => humanity is well and justly screwed. And Yahweh is rightly high on himself.[/quote]

Lets look at thus

Plagues - done. Big Pharma makes a fortune.

Fire - done. Humans hit back with napalm, mass bombing raids and artillery barrages

Brimstone - done. Humans hit back with Sarin. Much more effective (what's the big fuss about burning sulphur anyway,

Rivers of Blood - done. Countermeasures in hand and reasonably effective.

Humanity well and justly screwed - NOT

Yahweh rightly high on himself. - NOT

Frankly Foryn sounds like another fundie nutcase who can't stomach the idea that the capabilities of a god devised in the Bronze Age are not at all impressive when compared with what humans are capable of now. By the standards of THEN, we are gods. It's interesting that fundie nutcases are violently opposed to TSW without actually reading it while the book actually has quite a number of fans who are 'professional religious" of different denominations

If Yahweh is not God, capital G, => what the hell is the war about? he wouldn't be able to actually damn anyone.

That's completely irrational nonsense

And most likely the real God is waiting in the wings somewhere, watching.

That's a possibility that has explicitly not been ruled out. Although any "real" god introducing itself after The Salvation War would be well advised to be extremely circumspect in how he introduces himself. Otherwise it would be a case of.

Prospective Deity "I am God. Bow down and worsh . . . . . ." WHAM. "ARRRGGGHHHHHH" THUD

Humanity (collectively). "Next?"

[Darth Wong]

Foryn: I think that the idea of a military expedition into Hell in order to free trapped souls and all is a good idea, in a high-fantasy "Let's go kick the evil god's ass!" type way, but I dislike the meta-plot of God saying,
"Yeaaaaaaahhhh... all ya'lls are damned now... have a nice day."

How is that any more unreasonable than "I will kill every single one of you except for one guy and his family?" Or "Monarch of one particular nation, release one particular group of slaves that I have arbitrarily chosen to favour even though they don't know me yet, or else I will kill all of the innocent male children in your land"? I think this stems from the problem that many religious people have such reflexive reverence for their Sky Fairy that they instinctively recoil at any story which does not treat him with the proper reverence.

And that the response to this is "Hey, let's go kill Him."

What kind of response would he find more realistic, in the face of someone who wants to destroy you? Beg him to change his mind? Constant prayer? Seriously, is this guy retarded or something?

And that demons are basically a sub-species of humanity. The demon armies are still at bronze age tech, haven't paid any attention to the corporeal plane to know that they're outmatched. Are ROFLstomped and Satan is killed by a cruise missile. And if any of that is 'spoiler' worthy, I'm sorry but discussions of the topic kinda have to hit those points.

Why wouldn't they stay at bronze age tech? Many tribes on Earth remained at Stone Age tech right up until the point that they were crushed by European invaders, and they had more motive to develop technology than demons and angels who are exempt from most of our material needs and who have an unlimited slave supply. Hero of Alexandria developed a primitive steam engine, but nobody ever bothered using it because they had slave labour. The idea didn't get used until the fucking nineteenth century, more than two thousand years later.

It's also worth pointing out that tyrannical despots who rely on huge lies in order to keep their own followers in line are not exactly predisposed to let critical thinking skills flourish among their subjects, so I can't see the scientific method gaining any traction in such an environment.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Earth/Humanity's first response to The Message wasn't 'lets go kill them!'. The Liberation of Hell began with several defensive actions, including the Second Battle of Fallujah and the Battle of the Gateway. Only after it became clear that Hell would not stop attacking Earth was an invasion assembled and launched. Similarly, if Heaven had just left us alone I doubt we would be so keen (I won't say 'hell-bent') on invading/conquering/destroying it.

We have discovered the nature of our existence has changed, and we are taking steps to safeguard that existence.

[Stuart]

I think this stems from the problem that many religious people have such reflexive reverence for their Sky Fairy that they instinctively recoil at any story which does not treat him with the proper reverence.

Also with the suggestion that an all-powerful god might not be so all-powerful after all. What Armageddon did was take the characteristics of daemons, gods etc, and pitch them against modern military equipment. And, as we all saw, the divine comes up really short when measured against modern technology. The fundies just couldn't get their minds around the fact that modern humans outgun ancient gods. Outgun by a terrifying margin.

Seriously, is this guy retarded or something?

In a way, yes. He, like most fundies, is so used to grovelling in front of his god that he literally can't imagine anybody doing anything else. The idea that somebody would prefer to go down swinging (or shooting) is incomprehensible to him. He cannot imagine it happening, its my god, there it is, of course everybody grovels. (Personally, I have a feeling that any god worthy of the name faced with somebody who stands up, stares him in the eye and tells him to drop dead would be to welcome the guy with open arms as a fellow-spirit. But, then, I'm weird that way). This guy is a classic failure to launch. Instead of stepping out on his own and living his life, he remains in a child-like dependency on a surrogate for his parents.

Hero of Alexandria developed a primitive steam engine, but nobody ever bothered using it because they had slave labour. The idea didn't get used until the fucking nineteenth century, more than two thousand years later.

I'd suggest that human military technology was essentially bronze age as late as the 17th century. If we do a casual comparison of the elements we get this,

Basic combat element 17th century - blocks of pike. 3rd century BC - Macedonian Phalanx. Conclusion - no change, possible regression.
Battlefield maneuver element 17th century - heavy shock cavalry 3rd century BC - Companion cavalry. Conclusion - no change.
Scouting element 17th century - light cavalry 3rd century BC - light cavalry Conclusion - no change
Ranged element 17th century - musketeers 3rd century BC - archers and slingers Conclusion - no change, possible regression, possible advance
Siege element 17th century - heavy cannon 3rd century BC - trebuchet etc Conclusion - small advance
Command element 17th century - King 3rd century BC - king Conclusion - no change

In other words, in 2,000 years, human military technology advanced by a relatively insignificant amount. Pitch (say) 50,000 men from Alexander's Army in 330BC up against 50,000 men from Gustavus Adolphus's Army in 1632 and it's an open bet who will win. Sure, the 17th century Army has gunpowder but that's all and it has shock value only. The difference between musketeers and an archer/slinger combo isn't actually that great. The battle is decided by the push of pike and the charge of heavy cavalry. In both areas, no difference. In an odd way, Armageddon told the same story as Flint's 1632 but with the difference that it's the far past that tried to come into our world, not a tiny segment of our world into the far past. In both cases, the modernists make mincemeat of the ancients. Nobody would reasonably expect them to do otherwise.

By the way, if you look at rates of population increase, your description of the 19th century is literally correct.

[NecronLord]

By the way, I revised the above post a few times, but I trust that the Warhammer 40K reference is both subtle enough to be "funny" slash not painfully blatant while at the same time still obvious enough that someone familiar with the setting would get it. Did I hit the right balance?

Heh, 101st Chairborne, that's a good one.

Got the 40k reference too, though I'm not sure if that's where His throne room is. I only remember reading about gene-labs being located in the Himalayan Mountains.

I'm not savvy enough with TVtropes to find James' post among that endless list there, but in Warhammer 40,000, the Emperor's Palace is located where the Europe once was, covering much the same area, and the Golden Throne is located in what was once Nottingham (a reference to the company HQ's location). The Himalayas are the home of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica (main telepathic organisation), and the Astronomicon (psychic beacon that acts as a reference point for FTL travel) itself is based in what was once Mount Everest.

[Jamesfirecat]

I'm not savvy enough with TVtropes to find James' post among that endless list there, but in Warhammer 40,000, the Emperor's Palace is located where the Europe once was, covering much the same area, and the Golden Throne is located in what was once Nottingham (a reference to the company HQ's location). The Himalayas are the home of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica (main telepathic organisation), and the Astronomicon (psychic beacon that acts as a reference point for FTL travel) itself is based in what was once Mount Everest.

Once again.... http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Golden_Throne I'm no stranger to wikipedias being wrong but I'd appreciate it if you cited your sources, I'm not trying to be pushy about it, as the furthest I've gone into Warhammer 40K is reading the Comissar Cain books.

[Blayne]

Commissar Ciaphas Cain... HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!

Get it right man.

[NecronLord]

I'm not savvy enough with TVtropes to find James' post among that endless list there, but in Warhammer 40,000, the Emperor's Palace is located where the Europe once was, covering much the same area, and the Golden Throne is located in what was once Nottingham (a reference to the company HQ's location). The Himalayas are the home of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica (main telepathic organisation), and the Astronomicon (psychic beacon that acts as a reference point for FTL travel) itself is based in what was once Mount Everest.

Once again.... http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Golden_Throne I'm no stranger to wikipedias being wrong but I'd appreciate it if you cited your sources, I'm not trying to be pushy about it, as the furthest I've gone into Warhammer 40K is reading the Comissar Cain books.

It's flat dead wrong. The Astronomicon and Adeptus Astra Telepathica are based in the Himalayas according to the Inquisition War trilogy and one of the short stories in the Horus Heresy series. The Imperial Palace is in a northerly latitude, and seemingly over England, according to the diagram of 'Holy Terra' displayed in the third edition rulebook. These have never been contradicted. They're just assuming the throne is physically proximate to the Astronomicon (not unreasonably) which it is not. EDIT: I can't cite for the Throne being in Nottingham, I think it's from some old WD or some such.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Of course, a succubus could easily make the mistake of assuming that (like in hell) the most prominent geographic feature in the world is home to its' most formidible fortress.