The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Eighty One Up

[Nematocyst]

But there are day and night cycles, aren't there?

[Stuart]

There are; the light waxes and wanes in a set cycle.

[Pelranius]

Stuart: No seasons or weatherzones... that seems to suggest that there's some sort of equilibrating mechanism in the bubble worlds that stops the formation of meteorological phenomena (of course, my knowledge of the weather isn't very good, I only took one class on global climates in college). Making me wonder if that equilibrating mechanism is set to run on autopilot, or if Yahweh and Satan had something to do with it (Yahweh does have the ability to tamper with storms on Earth, it stands to reason that he can do the same in Heaven).

Uncluttered: The question about Yahweh and his family sharing ancestry with hominids is that how did all those other species (like the choir) get into Universe 2 (it seems rather odd that Yahweh would be leaving Earth (seems like he's the sort to completely purge a planet before leaving it) and coming back)?

And what happened to the aliens who created the gateways?

[Uncluttered]

Yahweh himself becomes the most powerful, because he's an asexual savant with the celestial mojo. (He's basically an antisocial basement dwelling nerd without the curiousity. With no comic books, or internet, the only thing to placate him was power.)

That's the best description of Yahweh we've had to date.

Thank you. I'm enjoying your book.
I just imagined Yahweh as some of the worst science and engineering managers I've ever met.
(Or a forum moderator with too much time)
We should meetup when we get sent to hell for blasphemy.

The rest of your story works pretty well. There are no seasons or weather zones in Heaven (or Hell). The climate is temperate/calm everywhere. This means that the amount of livable area in Heaven and Hell is immense - in raw surface area it's about 50 percent bigger than the land area of Earth. Earth, Heaven and Hell are all the same size more or less but Earth is 60 percent water, 40 percent land while Heaven and Hell are 60 percent land, 40 percent water. Also, only about 30 percent of earth's land is habitable while all of Heaven and Hell's is.

I understand the sizes. I'm glad you made them very big, because there is lots to explore and discover.

The reason I asked about seasons, is because you can at least get a sense of time passing with them.
With no seasons it's a giant waiting room without pop muzak.

Now. There is chance that some species of celestial buffalo will migrate from one zone to another when they eat the majority of the grasses in the area. They would stay close to drinking water, so they might migrate along a river, or around a sea. This mass migration, eating of grash, shitting on fields, will have a noticable effect on the entire eco system. Maybe after they leave, flowers bloom in the fields, bees go wild, etc.
The migration would be an inaccurate clock, but at least give a sense of time passing.

Instead of seasons due to sun intensity, the "seasons" in heaven and hell could be due to movements of biomass.


If you want an accurate clock in heaven with low tech, you use a radioactive material. You have an unlucky human place the radioactive material on a scale with a half weight of gold, or lead or whatever on the other side.
When the scale balances true, the half life has radiated.
Of course, you still need another time keeping method to reference this. If the only other clock you have for reference is a giant water clock, you need to use a highly radioactive material. Angels are going to get cancer.

[Uncluttered]

Uncluttered: The question about Yahweh and his family sharing ancestry with hominids is that how did all those other species (like the choir) get into Universe 2 (it seems rather odd that Yahweh would be leaving Earth (seems like he's the sort to completely purge a planet before leaving it) and coming back)?

Fortunately we have the writer here, so things can be clarified, changed, or whatever.
Why couldn't the choir be a birth defect?
In our modern day, humans come in all shapes and sizes.

And what happened to the aliens who created the gateways?

I'm the wrong person to ask, but I can guess they were unfortunately very delicious.

[Uncluttered]

There are; the light waxes and wanes in a set cycle.

Please tell me how you made this to work. It's a solution I've been looking for.

I've had a story kicking around for years in which the protaganists live weightless in a bubble universe filled with air. ( I want steampunk air pirates)

One option for a pinpoint light source was having the day night cycle come through a wormhole from the old universe. The day night cycle was caused by a hot jupiter eclipsing the wormhole.

Very rube goldberg.

A spread out diffuse light like yours can be "light of creation" coming from the walls of the baby universe itself.

This won't explain the cycle, but it will explain the light.

The day night cycle could be because the universe is a baby universe inside a black hole. Items falling into it from another universe are seen as light on the inside.

You still have to use handwavium to explain why matter falls in on a 24 hour cycle. I suggest the matter is politicians, walking off a plank.

[kulervo]

Here's a story....
...
Humans get reincarnated in heaven, and over time slowly morph into angelic beings. Life is good. They get clear skin, don't go hungry, eventually grow wings and can fly, have lots of sex without consequence.
.....

The rest of your story works pretty well.

So... If this is the portion that works well, Angels are really old second lifers? Off the bat we know that angels don't have sex without consequence. They do reproduce. That's been stated. Can second lifers? That's going to have a serious consequence on inheritance laws. Maybe Angels are descended from second lifers?

Once again we have the issue of the age of Angels being in excess of 4.5 Million years. Hominids on earth were of the genus Australopithecus, upright walking great apes with the option of being arboreal. They had thumbs on their feet.

Finally - we need to be careful using the word mutation. Mutation does not describe the difference between Angels and Demons. Satan and Yah Yah are not different because of a mutation. Mutations are changes in genetics, not outward appearance. The odds of random changes to the genetics of each individual having the same result on each member, or even most members, plus changing the genes in the body and in the eggs and sperm, of all individuals of a large population are astronomically low.

If and unless Stuart plainly states that genetic mutation was responsible for the differences between Angel and Daemon, then the term is wrong.

[Pelranius]

Uncluttered: The question about Yahweh and his family sharing ancestry with hominids is that how did all those other species (like the choir) get into Universe 2 (it seems rather odd that Yahweh would be leaving Earth (seems like he's the sort to completely purge a planet before leaving it) and coming back)?

Fortunately we have the writer here, so things can be clarified, changed, or whatever.
Why couldn't the choir be a birth defect?
In our modern day, humans come in all shapes and sizes.

I think Stuart mentioned in one of the Armaggaedon posts that Yahweh had found another race of beings on another world to replace humanity with. And a lot of the Celestial City's decorations are apparently from other planets.

[Chamale]

If you want an accurate clock in heaven with low tech, you use a radioactive material. You have an unlucky human place the radioactive material on a scale with a half weight of gold, or lead or whatever on the other side.
When the scale balances true, the half life has radiated.

That's a clever idea, but it would only work for certain substances. Some solids, such as Thorium-231 (25.5 hour half-life) become other solids through radioactive decay (in this case, Protactinium-231). This is like the story of Archimedes' golden crown. It would be impossible for primitives to measure the moment 50% of the radioactive material had radiated, because it would still be there, as Protactinium-231 instead of Thorium-231.

Other solids, such as Iodine-131 (192.5 hour half-life) become gases through radioactive decay (in this case, Xenon-131). In this case, however, much of the gas might be contained inside the block of material, and it would continue to add to the total weight of the radioactive material. I suspect that this would significantly reduce the accuracy of the clock.

The solution, at least the one that occurs to me, is to have a liquid that turns into a gas through radioactive decay. The only substance that comes to mind, at standard temperature and pressure, would be bromine. Bromine-82 (35.3 hour half-life) and Bromine-83 (2.40 hour half-life) reliably decay into stable isotopes of krypton. Over 2.40 hours, 2 kilograms of Bromine-83 would become 1 kilogram, with the krypton harmlessly going into the air, at which point a human slave could quickly pour another pure fluid kilogram (about 310 mL, if I did the math right) into the jar. 10 jars would approximately equal 1 Earth day.

Of course, there's an obvious problem with this system. Unless Yahweh can synthesize a kilogram of Bromine-83 on a regular basis, they'd run out of the stuff as it decays. On Earth, I think it only occurs artificially, in nuclear reactors, labs, and so forth. I like the idea of this radioactive clock, but I can't imagine the Percies acquiring the necessary materials to keep it going. A more modern system might use something other than bromine, but Flappers wouldn't be able to measure the proportion of radioactive material.

[Deebles]

I've made a slang poll, btw. Although naturally, it's ultimately Stuart's call anyway, there's been a fair bit of demand for this so I thought I might as well supply it.

[Junghalli]

Stuart: No seasons or weatherzones... that seems to suggest that there's some sort of equilibrating mechanism in the bubble worlds that stops the formation of meteorological phenomena (of course, my knowledge of the weather isn't very good, I only took one class on global climates in college).

Something very funky is certainly going on for the bubble worlds to have no dry zones despite being 60% land, unless that land is either divided up into a large number of quite small landmasses or the continents are all long and skinny. As I remember Hell is supposed to have a single large Pangaea-like landmass, which should certainly have large dry regions in its center. This isn't a factor of climate or seasons but the simple fact that moisture will have a hard time penetrating to the center of large land masses.

Perhaps both worlds are warmer than Earth, that would certainly help moisture carry inland better, and it would fit with traditional ideas of Hell as hot and Heaven as fertile.

[darksoul]

Stuart: No seasons or weatherzones... that seems to suggest that there's some sort of equilibrating mechanism in the bubble worlds that stops the formation of meteorological phenomena (of course, my knowledge of the weather isn't very good, I only took one class on global climates in college).

Something very funky is certainly going on for the bubble worlds to have no dry zones despite being 60% land, unless that land is either divided up into a large number of quite small landmasses or the continents are all long and skinny. As I remember Hell is supposed to have a single large Pangaea-like landmass, which should certainly have large dry regions in its center. This isn't a factor of climate or seasons but the simple fact that moisture will have a hard time penetrating to the center of large land masses.

Perhaps both worlds are warmer than Earth, that would certainly help moisture carry inland better, and it would fit with traditional ideas of Hell as hot and Heaven as fertile.

Yeah, if both worlds are warmer than earth it would make a lot of sense, with the shrinking, the eternal light of heaven and the volcanoes of Hell. And the moisture, of course.

[darksoul]

If you want an accurate clock in heaven with low tech, you use a radioactive material. You have an unlucky human place the radioactive material on a scale with a half weight of gold, or lead or whatever on the other side.
When the scale balances true, the half life has radiated.

nah, I like the water clock. is good and consistent with the heavenly tech. Maybe it even causes timezones, I don`t know, but it sounds plausible. I don`t see the need for time keeping in Heaven, though, except for the most direct works related to farming and harvesting. Maybe there is a calendar with days as the basic unit, as opposite to seconds for us. After all, they have the eternity to worry about. Taking a human calendar for them, is then just logical to keep track of crops and planning, etc.

Now, on the angels descending from humans... There is still the issue that angels are older than humans. You can think of a million years as a long time ago, but even if so...

besides, we are talking about a radical evolution of one side of a species which has another side that didn`t move in evolution. Sorry, but the angels from second lifers is not feasible. At least I don`t see it.

There is also the issue of the Minos machinery exit on heaven. Is it closed? does it even exist? How was it that Yahwe closed it? Did he even closed it at all?

we can summarize some points around which we must get a consistent history/timeline:
1 - angels are older than humans. That modern humans, at least.
2 - daemons are/were angels. They (de)evolved, not mutated, as was rightly pointed before.
3 - humans evolved from the known path of ancestors as per the fossil record.
4 - Angels are not native to heaven, but should be portal-capable and (probably)sentient in their homeworld in order to flee/exit it. Notice that they didn`t conquer heaven to take as a colony, they migrate to it, whether fleeing some threat, disaster, or more powerful beings. Or merely some other faction of their own tribe (making yahwe the satan of his generation... ah, the irony. better to rule in heaven that to serve in Ryleh, so to speak).

All these are facts. We now need to work around these or to deny one or some of it with thorough explanations, in order to come up with something that doesn`t fall apart under the weight of a fly`s thought.

[Uncluttered]

Maybe there is a calendar with days as the basic unit, as opposite to seconds for us. After all, they have the eternity to worry about. Taking a human calendar for them, is then just logical to keep track of crops and planning, etc.

Another Gedanken experiment. Lock youself in a room with a skylight for several years with a calendar. See if you can accurately keep time. You start by scratching the days on the wall. Over time though, you might get bored, accidently scratch an extra day or two, think you just scratched off a day, but didn't etc.
If you are extremely dedicated, you might be able to keep going for years. If you are a bit haphazard, you can kiss accuracy goodbye.
Also. This assumes that both heaven and hell have the same day/night cycle speed as earth--23 hours 56 minutes 04. 09053 seconds.
Even if they did match this , earths rotation has been slowing. The heaven hell day/night cycle would have to slow to match this.
If angels were around for millions of years, the day night cycle on earth would slow enough to make a difference with time keeping. The errors in heaven/hell time keeping would compound non-linearly.

Now, on the angels descending from humans... There is still the issue that angels are older than humans. You can think of a million years as a long time ago, but even if so...

I'm just going to say, that if this was about startrek, and you claimed that angels look like humans because of sheer coincidence, someone would go apeshit.

The plot doesn't need angels to be older than humans for any of this to work. What the plot needs, is for angels to look like pretty humans, barring telepathic disguise. It's much easier to make a homosapien look like a homocelestial, than make Australopithecus afarensis look like a homocelestrial.

There is a quick save for this. Stuart just has to claim that the human who made the comment about Micheal-lan being beautiful, was a furry!!

It's much easier to claim Angels look like humans because heaven activates wing genes in our "junk" DNA, than claim convergent evolution, even after diverging from a common ancestor.

There is also the issue of the Minos machinery exit on heaven. Is it closed? does it even exist? How was it that Yahwe closed it? Did he even closed it at all?

I'd like to see the HEA run a "malp" through it. It would be a gentle cliffhanger to end the book on.

we can summarize some points around which we must get a consistent history/timeline:
1 - angels are older than humans. That modern humans, at least.

I'd really like to see this resolved.

2 - daemons are/were angels. They (de)evolved, not mutated, as was rightly pointed before.

I'm assume you wrote (de)evolved because you know evolution only works one way. Maybe mutated is the wrong word. The idea is that the environment of hell, somehow changed some of their gene expression. Something caused them to grow horns, barbs, turn red, etc. I said mutation, because I don't really think this is necessarily an adaptation for survival. It's pretty clear that humans survive in hell just fine.
Can someone inform me of the right word or concept here? I'm an expert in several things, but evolutionary biology is not one of them. My toddler knows more dinosaur names by rote than I do.

3 - humans evolved from the known path of ancestors as per the fossil record.

If angels are an offshoot of a common ancestor, there might be a lot of intermediate steps to get where they are now. Those intermediate steps would have wings, and most likely found by now. Also. If the offshoot evolved on earth, with the ability to fly, and perform weaponized trumpeting. They would quickly have become the dominant species.

4 - Angels are not native to heaven, but should be portal-capable and (probably)sentient in their homeworld in order to flee/exit it. Notice that they didn`t conquer heaven to take as a colony, they migrate to it, whether fleeing some threat, disaster, or more powerful beings. Or merely some other faction of their own tribe (making yahwe the satan of his generation... ah, the irony. better to rule in heaven that to serve in Ryleh, so to speak).

All I can say is: cthulhu fhtagn!

All these are facts. We now need to work around these or to deny one or some of it with thorough explanations, in order to come up with something that doesn`t fall apart under the weight of a fly`s thought.

That's gotta be one goddamn smart fly!

Frankly the book is almost baked. A little more editing, and some bitchin cover art and it's ready.

At some point the Author has to say. "Meh, good enough."

I'm not joking. The magic words "Meh, good enough" are one ingredient in the spell known as "summon publisher". The other ingredients are: Thick skin, persistence, free time, and marketability.

IIRC Stuart is both retired, and a warfare expert. Thats freetime and marketability. To a publisher, this means he has time to do book signings, speak at conventions, and not turn to mush on CSPANbooks.

So, whatever you are feeding flys to make them hyperintellegent, please stop. I do not welcome my new insect overlords!

[darksoul]

Another Gedanken experiment. Lock youself in a room with a skylight for several years with a calendar. See if you can accurately keep time. You start by scratching the days on the wall. Over time though, you might get bored, accidently scratch an extra day or two, think you just scratched off a day, but didn't etc.
If you are extremely dedicated, you might be able to keep going for years. If you are a bit haphazard, you can kiss accuracy goodbye.
Also. This assumes that both heaven and hell have the same day/night cycle speed as earth--23 hours 56 minutes 04. 09053 seconds.
Even if they did match this , earths rotation has been slowing. The heaven hell day/night cycle would have to slow to match this.
If angels were around for millions of years, the day night cycle on earth would slow enough to make a difference with time keeping. The errors in heaven/hell time keeping would compound non-linearly.

yes, of course. The curse of relativity. However we are talking about 4.5 million years to account for. Those are a lot of years, taking into consideration that angels managed to submit quite a few worlds before they encountered humans, or their ancestors, that point is not clear.
That would take a lot of years. there is also the stablishment in heaven, the war with hell, etc. My point is, the time angels dedicate to this, even if they didn`t account for it, must be greater than the time humans has been around. this is subjective, but I would bet on it very strongly.

I'm just going to say, that if this was about startrek, and you claimed that angels look like humans because of sheer coincidence, someone would go apeshit.

Not a trekkie, actually. As a matter of fact, I`m quite an outsider to the whole star wars/star trek/stargate/star- whatever subculture Americans seem to be familiar with. So any reference on the matter was entirely unintentional

The plot doesn't need angels to be older than humans for any of this to work. What the plot needs, is for angels to look like pretty humans, barring telepathic disguise. It's much easier to make a homosapien look like a homocelestial, than make Australopithecus afarensis look like a homocelestrial.

As a matter of fact, this is the true problem with all these theories. At least at the moment, the plot couldn`t care less if angels are older or younger than humanity, as long as they fulfill their powers and characteristics. that shouldn`t stop us from wondering, now, should it?

There is a quick save for this. Stuart just has to claim that the human who made the comment about Micheal-lan being beautiful, was a furry!!

It's much easier to claim Angels look like humans because heaven activates wing genes in our "junk" DNA, than claim convergent evolution, even after diverging from a common ancestor.

yes, of course. the problem is that angels shouldn`t be descendants of humans, because they are older, blah blah blah... you heard all that already.
i actually like the idea of human DNA being gifted with adaptability to any environment. I just don`t like angels coming from modern humans. It`s troublesome.
Luckily, human DNA is not privy to homo sapiens alone, but to other Homos as well.

There is also the issue of the Minos machinery exit on heaven. Is it closed? does it even exist? How was it that Yahwe closed it? Did he even closed it at all?

I'd like to see the HEA run a "malp" through it. It would be a gentle cliffhanger to end the book on.

Dude, no idea what a malp is. Forgive my ignorance on that one. It would be a nice cliffhanger to have the HEA merely found the gate, and see how it differs from hell. Even more interesting if deceased humans start pouring out again all of the sudden. as if we hadn`t enough to explain already.

I'm assume you wrote (de)evolved because you know evolution only works one way. Maybe mutated is the wrong word. The idea is that the environment of hell, somehow changed some of their gene expression. Something caused them to grow horns, barbs, turn red, etc. I said mutation, because I don't really think this is necessarily an adaptation for survival. It's pretty clear that humans survive in hell just fine.
Can someone inform me of the right word or concept here? I'm an expert in several things, but evolutionary biology is not one of them. My toddler knows more dinosaur names by rote than I do.

Yes, that is the exact idea I expressed. I wrote "devolved" without pretense of scientific exactitude. I meant that this particular adaptation didn`t seem to improve the overall power of daemons. Maybe they sacrificed their powers for an boost in internal physiology to help them in the harsher environment of Hell. Who knows.
That said, I believe devolution is not a word I invented, although I wouldn`t bet on that.

If angels are an offshoot of a common ancestor, there might be a lot of intermediate steps to get where they are now. Those intermediate steps would have wings, and most likely found by now. Also. If the offshoot evolved on earth, with the ability to fly, and perform weaponized trumpeting. They would quickly have become the dominant species.

bear in mind here that I`m talking about an OLD, OLD, OLD ancestor in another world, not on earth. On Earth there would at least be a angel fossil somewhere, or we would all be angels... or dead.
The problem is, how OUR ancestors came to Earth from there. And there is, of course, the divergent evolution thing to consider. although is better to diverge from one source than to converge from different sources, which is several orders of magnitude more unlikely.
Also, we haven`t rule out some angelic-hominid sex(naughty, naughty angels) leading to interspersed injection of angelic dna in specific points of human evolution, leading it to our current phenotype. So maybe humans are descendants of angels, in a way.

That's gotta be one goddamn smart fly!

Frankly the book is almost baked. A little more editing, and some bitchin cover art and it's ready.

At some point the Author has to say. "Meh, good enough."

I'm not joking. The magic words "Meh, good enough" are one ingredient in the spell known as "summon publisher". The other ingredients are: Thick skin, persistence, free time, and marketability.

IIRC Stuart is both retired, and a warfare expert. Thats freetime and marketability. To a publisher, this means he has time to do book signings, speak at conventions, and not turn to mush on CSPANbooks.

So, whatever you are feeding flys to make them hyperintellegent, please stop. I do not welcome my new insect overlords!

if i understand correctly, what you say here is "Perfect is the enemy of good enough". I agree. To sell the book is true that the author can`t get into this much detail. As a software developer this is a very real problem for me ("Software is never done" is one of our mantras) so I know that for experience. However, I`m not the author here, so I`m left to wonder and build crazy theories with/against others like me. It`s just for the fun of it, I suppose .And if we get to something solid, hey, so we aid to build a very cool story. That for me it`s awesome.

Because, when you think about it, what is life if not art, and what is art, if not the best way possible to tell a story? We are story tellers, all of us. And I for one like it.

Sorry about the long post. I like your style though.

[Simon_Jester]

That's gotta be one goddamn smart fly!

Frankly the book is almost baked. A little more editing, and some bitchin cover art and it's ready.

At some point the Author has to say. "Meh, good enough."

I'm not joking. The magic words "Meh, good enough" are one ingredient in the spell known as "summon publisher". The other ingredients are: Thick skin, persistence, free time, and marketability.

IIRC Stuart is both retired, and a warfare expert. Thats freetime and marketability. To a publisher, this means he has time to do book signings, speak at conventions, and not turn to mush on CSPANbooks.

So, whatever you are feeding flys to make them hyperintellegent, please stop. I do not welcome my new insect overlords!

if i understand correctly, what you say here is "Perfect is the enemy of good enough". I agree. To sell the book is true that the author can`t get into this much detail. As a software developer this is a very real problem for me ("Software is never done" is one of our mantras) so I know that for experience. However, I`m not the author here, so I`m left to wonder and build crazy theories with/against others like me. It`s just for the fun of it, I suppose .And if we get to something solid, hey, so we aid to build a very cool story. That for me it`s awesome.

Because, when you think about it, what is life if not art, and what is art, if not the best way possible to tell a story? We are story tellers, all of us. And I for one like it.

Sorry about the long post. I like your style though.

The trick is that the usual reason the perfect becomes the enemy of the good is that people waste time optimizing one area when their time and energy would better be spent on something else. For example, at this point spending four hours inventing more details for the deep backstory of Armageddon would do Stuart no good in terms of improving his sales. Spending those same four hours tracking down a better piece of cover art... that would probably help sales quite a bit.

[Emerson33260]

....There are no seasons or weather zones in Heaven (or Hell). The climate is temperate/calm everywhere. This means that the amount of livable area in Heaven and Hell is immense - in raw surface area it's about 50 percent bigger than the land area of Earth. Earth, Heaven and Hell are all the same size more or less but Earth is 60 percent water, 40 percent land while Heaven and Hell are 60 percent land, 40 percent water. Also, only about 30 percent of earth's land is habitable while all of Heaven and Hell's is.

It was a surprise to find out that the bubble worlds of Two are so small. I could have sworn that at some earlier point, Hell, at least, was established as being many multiples of the size of the earth. Since I can't find it now, perhaps it was a commentator who made the same assumptions I did.

[wickeddyno]

....There are no seasons or weather zones in Heaven (or Hell). The climate is temperate/calm everywhere. This means that the amount of livable area in Heaven and Hell is immense - in raw surface area it's about 50 percent bigger than the land area of Earth. Earth, Heaven and Hell are all the same size more or less but Earth is 60 percent water, 40 percent land while Heaven and Hell are 60 percent land, 40 percent water. Also, only about 30 percent of earth's land is habitable while all of Heaven and Hell's is.

It was a surprise to find out that the bubble worlds of Two are so small. I could have sworn that at some earlier point, Hell, at least, was established as being many multiples of the size of the earth. Since I can't find it now, perhaps it was a commentator who made the same assumptions I did.

Although the absolute size of hell and heaven is only a little larger than earth, from what I recall, the absolute size in terms of the amount of surface that's useful to humans/daemons/angels is much larger as Stuart has been explaining.

[Crayz9000]

Well, if plate tectonics doesn't apply ( which i'm unsure of to be honest) we know that Hell contains massive oil deposits, which suggests these worlds still have something akin to normal rock strata, so its a good bet that they still have radioactive elements somewhere in them. As such the heat from the decay could produce a mantle plume (this is how the Hawaiian volcanoes work, by the way) and assuming that plate tectonics don't work here, the plume would be in one place, so its certainly possible. Although it could possibly also be explained by absorbing into certain strata of the energy these bubble worlds produce that sustains second life humans, and this absorption translating it into thermal energy, which then provides your magma. of course it could be something else entirely.

Just a minor remark... if I recall, the oil deposits remark came from the river of burning pitch in Hell, which once you put it out makes a nice useful source of hydrocarbons.

Whether the Hell bubble has the rock strata to support subterranean oil is another question entirely.

[Guardsman Bass]

All I can say is: cthulhu fhtagn!

Heh. That's what I thought for a while - that the Angels/Demons were a group of hominids that somehow ended up in Universe-Two, where they were within the influence of the beings in Universe-Three (the same creatures that created the resurrection process*). Said beings then screwed around with their evolution and genetics until we got winged humanoids with ultra-long life spans and special capabilities.

It'd be interesting to see what the angelic/demonic myths of their origins are. They're likely wrong, of course, like most religious origin myth stories.

* I like "River of Souls", myself.

[Sophie]

Well, if plate tectonics doesn't apply ( which i'm unsure of to be honest) we know that Hell contains massive oil deposits, which suggests these worlds still have something akin to normal rock strata, so its a good bet that they still have radioactive elements somewhere in them. As such the heat from the decay could produce a mantle plume (this is how the Hawaiian volcanoes work, by the way) and assuming that plate tectonics don't work here, the plume would be in one place, so its certainly possible. Although it could possibly also be explained by absorbing into certain strata of the energy these bubble worlds produce that sustains second life humans, and this absorption translating it into thermal energy, which then provides your magma. of course it could be something else entirely.

Just a minor remark... if I recall, the oil deposits remark came from the river of burning pitch in Hell, which once you put it out makes a nice useful source of hydrocarbons.

Whether the Hell bubble has the rock strata to support subterranean oil is another question entirely.

True enough, as I said. I was tired. However, since Hell has volcanism and bodies of water, it almost certainly has strata of some kind, since sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic processes are pretty much accounted for there. If at some point in the past, the ocean(s?) of hell supported sufficient life, that would explain the oil. Not really so sure where it is going to come from if not laid down inside sedimentary beds though, and this formation in the normal (earth) way, implies strata.

[Deebles]

So:
- demons are descended from angels,
- the origins of angels, orcs, the choir's race, and the other unnamed but mentioned hominids are unknown.
- there's a pretty good fossil record pointing to humans evolving on earth.
- humans can interbreed with demons and angels
- dead humans, but not other earth species, pop into a second life in either heaven or hell, and this may be selected by their denizens in a precise but as-yet-unspecified manner.
- angels seem to grow in physical power according to their political status. Maybe their access to the energy they feed on from their world grows in respect to this somehow.
- second-life humans look human, but do not age, do not need to eat, and heal fast.
- angels also look human, but have many abilities even second-life humans lack
- no records or memory of any pre-Yahweh power structure seem to survive

Possible fixes for the prehistory:

Star Trek fix

Some progenitor humanoid race seeded different worlds with genetic material that should eventual create more races very similar to them tens or hundreds of millions of years ago, before ascending to some further universe beyond the first two. Possibly they also set up the mechanism for dead humans to pass into other worlds and gain immortality. Angels and orcs either evolved in bubble worlds or are the second-life forms of some humanoid species which evolved on another earth-like world.

Ancient earthly humanoids fix

Humanoids on earth got smart much earlier than we have records of, and their second-life forms became the angels and orcs. The angels were tinkered with by someone, and this someone added abilities not present in their base second-life forms. Possibly this was the same someone as enabled humans to get a second life and/or the same someone as set up Yahweh as the leader while erasing any memory of prior history.

Just messing with ideas, really.

[tortieconspiracy]

Stuart: No seasons or weatherzones... that seems to suggest that there's some sort of equilibrating mechanism in the bubble worlds that stops the formation of meteorological phenomena (of course, my knowledge of the weather isn't very good, I only took one class on global climates in college). Making me wonder if that equilibrating mechanism is set to run on autopilot, or if Yahweh and Satan had something to do with it (Yahweh does have the ability to tamper with storms on Earth, it stands to reason that he can do the same in Heaven).

Why you would need any such mechanism? Heaven and Hell appear to lack two of Earth's major drivers of weather (and to a lesser extent, climate): the Coriolis effect and differential solar heating.

[Arachnidus]

Stuart: No seasons or weatherzones... that seems to suggest that there's some sort of equilibrating mechanism in the bubble worlds that stops the formation of meteorological phenomena (of course, my knowledge of the weather isn't very good, I only took one class on global climates in college). Making me wonder if that equilibrating mechanism is set to run on autopilot, or if Yahweh and Satan had something to do with it (Yahweh does have the ability to tamper with storms on Earth, it stands to reason that he can do the same in Heaven).

Why you would need any such mechanism? Heaven and Hell appear to lack two of Earth's major drivers of weather (and to a lesser extent, climate): the Coriolis effect and differential solar heating.

So, in essence, Heaven and Hell are their own landmasses sitting on a noneuclidean plane in a bubble of space? They're not merely planets in a noneuclidean bubble universe? I always liked the idea that Heaven and Hell were separate planets in the same universe(possibly even galaxy), but with the portal physics involved, that seems unlikely.

[Bayonet]

nah, I like the water clock. is good and consistent with the heavenly tech. Maybe it even causes timezones, I don`t know, but it sounds plausible.

In the US in @, standard time and time zones were the outgrowth of the railroads and the telegraph. They needed a way to make the trains run on time and not crash into each other on time. Prior to that, each town had it's own time, generally derived in some way from solar time. It just didn't matter what time it was.

I don`t see the need for time keeping in Heaven, though, except for the most direct works related to farming and harvesting.

Date keeping and the intricacies of the terran calendar were driven by the interaction of the terran seasons and the needs of farming. It was important to know when it was safe to plant in the Spring. With no seasons, it doesn't matter. You plant when you feel like it, and harvest when the crop is ripe, an observable condition. I would expect harvests to be staggered with relation to each other, at random.

Until relatively modern times, years were named rather than numbered. "It happened when Porcus the Flatulent was Duke." When you're eternal, who cares what year it is?