The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Eighty One Up

[Nematocyst]

If an Angel asked that, he'd reply 'Thomas-Lan-Elizabeth II, you bastard' before pumping that Angel's face full of .50

[impatrick4life]

If an Angel asked that, he'd reply 'Thomas-Lan-Elizabeth II, you bastard' before pumping that Angel's face full of .50

Because that totally wouldn't blow his cover or anything >_>

[xthetenth]

If an Angel asked that, he'd reply 'Thomas-Lan-Elizabeth II, you bastard' before pumping that Angel's face full of .50

Because that totally wouldn't blow his cover or anything >_>

The real trick is to not have to do that. Also, all you have to do is be somewhat familiar with the naming conventions of angels and they'll just assume you're a servant of yet another of the lower ranked angels. There are a ton of them after all, they can't have heard of everybody. Still, if you're unobtrusive and act like you're on urgent business, it's amazing how seldom people will try to interact with you, and angels consider themselves superior to humans, so they likely just acted like they knew what they were doing. The real problem is language, so I have a sneaking suspicion that they're using previously-deceased operators.

[Arachnidus]

If an Angel asked that, he'd reply 'Thomas-Lan-Elizabeth II, you bastard' before pumping that Angel's face full of .50

Somewhere in the world, a writer from Infinity Ward killed himself for not putting that in Modern Warfare 2.

[Nematocyst]

If an Angel asked that, he'd reply 'Thomas-Lan-Elizabeth II, you bastard' before pumping that Angel's face full of .50

Because that totally wouldn't blow his cover or anything >_>

The City is big. They can run operations for a long time before being discovered.

[darksoul]

If an Angel asked that, he'd reply 'Thomas-Lan-Elizabeth II, you bastard' before pumping that Angel's face full of .50

Because that totally wouldn't blow his cover or anything >_>

The City is big. They can run operations for a long time before being discovered.

I guess they just sneaked in. Going in as a human is not probable, unless they had a Rahab to relay information about the local lord, habits and were not to speak or walk. Besides, firepower would rise questions, and while angels are likely to ignore well behaved humans, other humans are not, and we have seen that humans in Heaven are quite the loyalists.
So, all things considered, I would bet for a sneaky in, a couple dead humans, maybe one or two incapacitated angels, and an observation post inside a castle. with all the things going on in the city, a couple angels not showing up in the streets is not out of the ordinary.

2nd lifers and some portalling can be a very good tactic, too.

also, first lifers shouldn't be able to impersonate 2nd lifers, because when talking directly to an angel the first lifer would have to, either wear the hat (thus making obvious to the angel that he is not a mere servant) or don't wear it, thus making himself vulnerable to mind control. They would have to avoid all direct contact with angels and a lot of curiosity from fellow humans. Very tricky. not to mention the idiomatic barrier, meaning by this not the language, but rather the choice of words, idioms and mannerisms.

[Ryan Thunder]

If an Angel asked that, he'd reply 'Thomas-Lan-Elizabeth II, you bastard' before pumping that Angel's face full of .50

Somewhere in the world, a writer from Infinity Ward killed himself for not putting that in Modern Warfare 2.

Doing us all a favour, then. Good for him.

[JBG]

Meh. To hear the Brits tell it, once you're in the SAS, they make you retroactively British, like it or not. That way, the Empire can take credit for everything you achieve. Of course, fail, and you're just another bloody colonial f***-up...



Ed.

But whose SAS?, besides, if they want to play the colonial fuck up game, all one needs to do is remind them of all the times us colonials had to show them how to fight properly from 1840 onwards.

Good point Stuart Mackey.

It does not appear to be widely appreciated that there are 4 SAS Regiments. The British one is of course well known. The Australian and NZ ones less so. Then there is the Belgian Regiment of which I frankly know little.

The Aussie and Kiwi units have been active in Afganistan, collecting a Victoria Cross apiece so far. Apart from their classic deep reccon role, god (used figuratively) only knows how many Taliban are dead due to the SAS's other mission - hunting and killing Taliban on their home turf.

[Edward Yee]

Not to mention the time before that that *us* colonials (with a little help from the French that we don't like to admit to) managed to kick their collective butts out... and then were begged to help save them with manpower and equipment a couple of times in the last century...

There are WAY worse cockups than that, like the incident recounted in Task Force Black where allegedly MoD refused to sign off on a SAS rescue op -- of their own -- which the book and the Daily Mail blamed on such going against the image of "it's all fine in Basra, only the Americans are having problems!"... *facepalm* (If you've seen "burning British armor" or British armor basically bulldozing a police station, the latter was actually cover for this operation.)

According to the Daily Mail as well, they were also doing the manhunting job (first the "old men" of Saddam's regime), then assisting... a certain unit... working with Maj. Gen. McChrystal in Iraq, against the insurgency, along the way successfully rescuing Norman Kember of Christian "We won't give the military his cell phone info to track him!" Peacemakers...

TSW's Mike Jackson also refused to allow the Director Special Forces to remove the new regimental commander for supporting McChrystal, and in one of the other two he's quoted as supporting the TFB account of the SAS rescue, so I wouldn't be surprised if this is all part of his pre-Message history.

I wonder if Taken's writers heard about the Norman Kember rescue (in the third article) when they gave Liam Neeson his lines to say over the phone?

Funny thing is, I actually thought that the fourth regiment is Zimbabwean.

Note re: the Kiwi VC recipient -- he went back. Apparently he may or may not still be there, but there was an uproar in New Zealand after he was photographed and his photograph (with "in AO" look, as opposed to his "VC recipient" look) published.

According to an old article, the SBS were actually the "sole" (probably just lead) British SOF in Afghanistan during the middle of the 00's, with the probable exception of the multi-national task forces that inspired MW2's Task Force 141.

[Manthor]

So a quick recap:
(?) refers to conjecture requiring Word of Stuart to confirm.

-Yahweh, Satan and Uriel were brothers, from eldest to youngest in that order. Ehlmas was of the same order of being as Yahweh's son.

-The psyche of angels are possibly affecting their size and power. Need confirmation on this.

-Minos Gate leads to a superuniverse 'higher' up than both Heaven, Hell or Earth,of which that itself is the base pair of another universe,with a link to a higher level verse.Ad infinatum.

-Hell and Heaven are realms with Klein bottle n-dimensional topologies that are planet equivalents in a far larger universe with similar realms. They can be used as slingshots to move around the universe of Earth.

-Earth universe and Otherverse are both base pairs with one expanding and the other contracting, due to some mechanism causing an exchange of energy. Black holes anyone? Stuart has said the best representation of such a verse is the Tao symbol

-A higher level species/entity/group exists that possibly dicks around with other species exists,from which Yahweh comes from.And the Minos gate leads to their home universe (?).

-Angels,demons and humans descend from a single hominid species that was exported to alternate realities and were used as breeding stock to create new species via eugenics by the likes of Yahweh or other Elder Beings (?)

-Michael is an anti-villain, a reverse hero whose consequences have been largely for the greater good of the angels and Heaven. But he is going to be facing a great challenge dealing with everything else now that Lemuel has discovered his duplicity and manipulations as well as abuse of Maion. So a possible subversion in that either he gets karmic justice or he escapes it,depending on how he plays out.But odds are that Michael will escape,going by his past record.

Congratulations Stuart.You have created a villain protagonist that I want to actually survive.


Personal comments:
Maybe Stuart could include Buddha as a sort of trickster god.Don't know about the Hindu pantheon but having a trickster god like that around sounds fun.According to some Hindu doctrine on Buddha,he is an incarnation of Krishna who took upon the appearance of the atheistic/agnostic sage to trick atheists into worshiping Gid (i.e. himself).

Since worship/emotion/music seems to generate some form of energy that empowers them,some of the other pantheons or individual beings out there could be trying that approach to draw energy away from other pantheons,as a form of guerilla warfare.

http://srimadbhagavatam.com/1/3/en1

"Then, in the beginning of Kali-yuga, the Lord will appear as Lord Buddha, the son of Anjana, in the province of Gaya, just for the purpose of deluding those who are envious of the faithful theist." ... SB 1.3.28: "All of the above-mentioned incarnations [avatars] are either plenary portions or portions of the plenary portions of the Lord [Krishna or Vishnu]"

[MysteriousDarkLordv3]

I thought the Hindu pantheon's trickster god was Hanuman the Monkey God.

[Nematocyst]

I thought Buddha didn't want to be a God, nor is considered one by Buddhists.

[darksoul]

I thought Buddha didn't want to be a God, nor is considered one by Buddhists.

Ditto. Buddha is the Enlightened One, the first man to escape the wheel of rebirths and return to help others escape as well. but it was always a man.

then again, Hindi gods are annoyingly fond of creating avatars, so who is to say that Buddha wasn't a big lie like Jesus?

[Manthor]

Besides,it fits right into the universe with the confirmation of the existence of the Nordic Pantheon by Stuart. This sounds exactly like a job for Loki.And who better to keep an eye on the enemies who forced their pantheon from Earth than Loki the God of Mischief?

And as for Gautama Buddha,while he did not want to be considered a god nor did he comment on the existence of deities,being quite atheistic on the matter at hand as, over time the doctrines were spread in the form of stories and the teachings of Buddhism were disseminated into the various religions of East Asia across the Himalayas. That was how Buddhism was spread,with Buddha elevated to godhood,something he didn't want in the first place.Buddhism adapted to the local cultures present at the time.

The idea of Buddha being an avatar of Krishna designed to trick atheists into worshiping him as a god came from the Internal Society for Krishna Consciousness, aka the Hare Krishna's. And I just find that idea hilarious and something that could easily fit into the story,given how we know other pantheons exist,with the confirmation of the Norse gods.

[Uncluttered]

I thought Buddha didn't want to be a God, nor is considered one by Buddhists.

I think that would make him a more intersting character.

Still. I think that Stuart is trying to ignore the whole STARGATE: every mythology is a real alien trope.

I suspect the Others might turn out to be some obscure pagan gods, or even humans from atlantis.
Damn it: it's hard not to invoke stargate whenever you do things like this. He's been going for 76 chapters, without so much as a MyGyver joke.

[xthetenth]

I guess they just sneaked in. Going in as a human is not probable, unless they had a Rahab to relay information about the local lord, habits and were not to speak or walk. Besides, firepower would rise questions, and while angels are likely to ignore well behaved humans, other humans are not, and we have seen that humans in Heaven are quite the loyalists.

The ones working outside the Eternal City are quite the loyalists, the ones working inside not so much. Remember the market scene talking about how the humans had an under the table system set up to get each other some money? That kind of thing is not the action of mindless loyalists. Humans inside the city seem to be watching out for each other.

also, first lifers shouldn't be able to impersonate 2nd lifers, because when talking directly to an angel the first lifer would have to, either wear the hat (thus making obvious to the angel that he is not a mere servant) or don't wear it, thus making himself vulnerable to mind control. They would have to avoid all direct contact with angels and a lot of curiosity from fellow humans. Very tricky. not to mention the idiomatic barrier, meaning by this not the language, but rather the choice of words, idioms and mannerisms.

This is the real problem, but I'm pretty sure that most angels wouldn't deign to talk to a random human, and it is amazing what a busy expression can do. However, they don't really have much to fear from mind control seeing as they are just another random human until their cover gets blown.

[Pelranius]

Does Heaven have sewer systems or underground tunnels for a particularly paranoid archangel? It seems like a good way for Special Forces to do some impromptu sneaking?

[Atlan]

This is the real problem, but I'm pretty sure that most angels wouldn't deign to talk to a random human, and it is amazing what a busy expression can do. However, they don't really have much to fear from mind control seeing as they are just another random human until their cover gets blown.

I've got this horrible idea of some SAS guys having their tinfoil implanted just for missions like these...

[yaque]

This gets me to thinking about the SCALE of the "Eternal" city. 1500 kms on a side? WTF?
(FWIW I do city planning)
There has to be at least a couple of billion or so human staff to run the city
for 200 million angels.
I'm guessing an average of 10 servants per angel, including maintenance, gardeners,
bureaucracy, police, education, builders, plumbers, bakers, transport, you name it.
Most human workers would never have any personal contact with an angel.
Actual servants would have to be quite a small minority.
(Think of it like an army, how many truck drivers, MP's, paper shufflers, cooks, mechanics, etc.
all absolutely necessary, per actual fighting soldier? In Vietnam, I was told, it was 7 to 1)

It can be reduced somewhat because the humans are 2nd lifers with no actual physical needs
(food, water, sewage, etc.), but still.

I understand that the human servants live in slums outside the walls.
But how do you commute (on foot?) up to 750 km daily? how do you bring in supplies?
There would have to be quite an elaborate and fast public transportation system for the humans,
underground of course.
Either that or humans live in the city underneath the angels in a whole subterranean city.
Either way, I'll bet you could infiltrate whole divisions of infantry, with some decent intel.

[yaque]

I think now that Yah-yah is (damp) toast we should start to think "what now?"
I'll repost my first post

(I thought at the time that it was ignored! (tear trickles down cheek)
but then I understood that it was just delayed in moderation, and nobody saw it)

---------

Heh, some people upthread were decrying the lack of basic narrative tension in the story.

Looks to me like humanity is having to rush headlong into a situation that looks like another curbstomp, but with almost complete ignorance regarding the larger context.

Not that we have much choice.

I'm sure that Patraeus and the council of fifteen (what was it called?) are deeply worried about what's really behind the whole Heaven, Hell, Yahweh and Satan setup and what else there is.

For the first time in at least three hundred years the "map" of the world humanity has to deal with is not closed and finite and more or less known.
Now it's "here be dragons" all around us. "Unknown unknowns". Heh.

I think that must be part of why the conquest of Heaven seems so rushed.
Patraeus is worried about what might intervene.

First, there's some kind of ongoing mechanism that "scans" humans at death (or from birth?) and "prints" them out through Minos gate in an "improved" form. Kinda like Riverworld.
Creepy.
Is it automatic or directed by "Somebody" in the "C" universes?
Benevolent, Malevolent, Indifferent, Inattentive or Gone?

Second, What for?
The present "Catholic"-like rationale doesn't seem to make much sense.
(and really hasn't for a thousand years)
So who's really in charge? Yahweh? Uh...
I think the whole setup was established as something completely different
(an attempt at mass immortality?) and over eons with the gradual degeneration of Yahweh, became the perversion we see now.

Third, There are any number of other powers, species, worlds and universes who are still "out there". Or were. And who might suddenly get involved. Or are already involved.
Are they friendly? Or not? How powerful are they?

Fourth, Hell is a big place, and it was mentioned that the Demons have been trashing
"A" Universe worlds for millennia. I'll bet there might be remnants, colonies or whole civilizations of complete aliens out there in Hell that we haven't noticed yet.
(Probably less in Heaven, it seems they've mostly kept to themselves, except for Yahweh's pet collection)

So, I rather think that, parallel to the invasion of Heaven and the consolidation of the Demon realm in Hell, there must be a large number of research groups frantically probing Minos gate, interrogating Demons about their history in detail, interrogating the few uninjured angels they have, researching the physics of the Multiverse, surveying Hell and Heaven.

Looking for the next Boojum that's sure to jump out at us.

I wouldn't be in the shoes of the Human leadership for anything.

----------

Another thing, with regard to those other pantheons,
I wouldn't make the mistake of thinking that they're all about us.
Their "interventions" didn't have to be them trying to be gods,
even though that's how we understood them at the time.

They could have been in contact with us for any number of reasons,
trading posts(selling trinkets to the natives),
transit stations between other planets or bubble universes, and more or less ignoring us,
attempts at education, or training for jobs elsewhere
(there could be whole populations of humans in other places!)
harvesting us for snacks (Cthulhu!) or pets.
mining or harvesting,
vacation villages, with protohuman servants,
... anything!

And when they went away, or were pushed out by Yahweh
(not necessarily because he was stronger, maybe by lawsuit! or he was too unpleasant)
The humans left behind remembered them as gods or whatever.

Think of cargo cults in the Pacific when WW2 was over.

(sorry if this post is a bit long, some thoughts I saved up, I don't often have much time to write)

[Uncluttered]

As a reader, I'm not sure If I would be excited or disapointed to find out that the Others are Cthulhu. The reason is, that it's been done.

What would be fucking hillarious, would be a sendup of the scientology mythos. Except, make Xenu the good guy, and Cruise et all actually pawns of cosmic evil.

[westrim]

So a quick recap:
(?) refers to conjecture requiring Word of Stuart to confirm.

1Yahweh, Satan and Uriel were brothers, from eldest to youngest in that order. Ehlmas was of the same order of being as Yahweh's son.

2The psyche of angels are possibly affecting their size and power. Need confirmation on this.

3Minos Gate leads to a superuniverse 'higher' up than both Heaven, Hell or Earth,of which that itself is the base pair of another universe,with a link to a higher level verse.Ad infinatum.

4Hell and Heaven are realms with Klein bottle n-dimensional topologies that are planet equivalents in a far larger universe with similar realms. They can be used as slingshots to move around the universe of Earth.

5Earth universe and Otherverse are both base pairs with one expanding and the other contracting, due to some mechanism causing an exchange of energy. Black holes anyone? Stuart has said the best representation of such a verse is the Tao symbol.

6A higher level species/entity/group exists that possibly dicks around with other species exists,from which Yahweh comes from.And the Minos gate leads to their home universe (?).

7Angels,demons and humans descend from a single hominid species that was exported to alternate realities and were used as breeding stock to create new species via eugenics by the likes of Yahweh or other Elder Beings (?)

8Michael is an anti-villain, a reverse hero whose consequences have been largely for the greater good of the angels and Heaven. But he is going to be facing a great challenge dealing with everything else now that Lemuel has discovered his duplicity and manipulations as well as abuse of Maion. So a possible subversion in that either he gets karmic justice or he escapes it,depending on how he plays out.But odds are that Michael will escape,going by his past record.

I believe you got a couple things incorrect:
3 The gate would be lower- the B verses are lower than our A verse, so through the Minos gate is a lower C verse.
4. No, they are universes unto themselves, "billions and billions" as Sagan once said. Heaven and Hell are completely different verses that are composed roughly the same way.
5.Black holes still contain all then energy put into them, save the minuscule portion that may be released as Hawking radiation.
6. To my understanding, definitely not. Yahweh was still some form of a angel, if perhaps a subspecies.
7. Again, no. Humans are definitely from this verse, for one.

[Nematocyst]

Except, make Xenu the good guy, and Cruise et all actually pawns of cosmic evil.

I don't think we can punch a portal to Xenu. Scientology doesn't strike me as being a serious religion.

Or perhaps we can. Perhaps it exists whether it is part of a serious religion or not. There are millions, possible even an infinite number of universes. Every possibility may be real. Everything we consider 'fictional' may actually exist, and, what's more, we may be able to interact with those things or beings.

[RowanE]

One thought i've had... how are the bubble universes dispersed, both in the yin side and the yang side, as it were?

If our universe, let's say it's on the "yin" side of the tao symbol, is the only one on this side, and the yang side is composed entirely of bubble universes like hell and heaven, then that implies the number of bubble universes is inconceivably vast - given the rate of expansion of the universe, the amount of earth-volumes it would be expanding into in a few months is huge, and in the time humans have been studying hell and heaven, they don't seem to have shrunk noticeably (i would expect two inhabited worlds shrinking significantly would be important enough to be mentioned in-story). Also, in the thousands of years of demonic habitation, it doesn't seem like hell has shrunk by a vast amount, or even the demons would notice it. Both these factors imply the bubble universes are shrinking very slowly, and so
a) there's a lot of space for our universe to expand into
b) there are a number of bubble universes roughly equivalent to the earth's volume divided into that much space.

I'm not sure if it's said in-story, but the light/heat source for the bubble universes seems to be derived from their shrinking - you couldn't have any star large enough for fusion that close while keeping the universe habitable. Thus, if the universes are about the same size, then they'll all be at the right temperature range. It might even work out that the energy output increases with the size of the bubble world, meaning all such universes on the yang side are in a habitable zone (by analogy with the ideal distance from a star for liquid water).
- Correct me if i'm wrong about the power source for the bubble universes, or about the rate of shrinkage - maybe 4,000 years ago hell and heaven were much, much bigger than earth? Even then, though, the number of universes must still be vast.
Now, if this is the case, then a big fraction of the universes that come with land, like hell and heaven, will be habitable or terraformable. And the empty ones will be perfect for space habitats - no gravity wells, the right amount of sunlight - all you need is tiny station-keeping thrusters. Or, if the gravity goes outwards from the center even in the vacuum ones, you can build dyson-sphere-like structures and have as many new worlds as you like.
- or does the geometry work differently? i'm picturing the universes as like inverted globes, weird source of light at the center.

Now, i could go on for ages about the implications of that, but there's an alternative i need to talk about first - varying universe sizes.
There's a wide variety of different universe sizes on each side - a few big bubbles, some little bubbles, and teeming multitudes of infinitesimal (meaning "world-sized") bubbles. Let's assume, so that we don't feel smaller than we need to feel, that this universe is the largest "yin" universe - there'll still be billions of bubble universes on this side, and there'll be a few universe-sized universes on the yang side. If this is the case, the tao-universe/meta-universe is even bigger than otherwise, and there's worlds like our own on the other side.
Either way, though... the universes are incredibly huge, and we can use a portal network to travel anywhere almost instantly. So what are the limitations of portals?

[Night_stalker]

As a reader, I'm not sure If I would be excited or disapointed to find out that the Others are Cthulhu. The reason is, that it's been done.

What would be fucking hillarious, would be a sendup of the scientology mythos. Except, make Xenu the good guy, and Cruise et all actually pawns of cosmic evil.

If it turns out that the Others are actually the Eldar Gods, we're boned. That is, unlesss we get really, really lucky.