The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Eighty One Up

[[R_H]]

Weren't Abigor's tactics just a couple steps up from a Zerg rush?

Abigor's army worked by a carefully thought-out and highly disciplined operational art. Essentially it was the same kind of combined arms tactics that were used by Alexander (think of Abigor as Alexander in a strategic ability sense and you're not far out). The central phalanxes pinned down the hostile army while the heavy cavalry charged at the critical point and ripped a hole in the line. That would leave the rest of the enemy force pinned down with nowhere to go. One the hostile army started to disintegrate, the harpies and heavy cavalry would pursue and harrow it. For the kind of war and enemy Abigor was expecting to fight, it was a very deadly combination.

When he learned how his flanks had been destroyed, he realized the tactical implications almost immediately and spread his army out so he could envelop the enemy. Then, once the enemy line was enevloped it could be crushed by his cavalry. That's a major jump forward in tactical sense. The problem was, he had stretched his army outside his immediate range of control and that gave him a serious problem that he couldn't overcome.

The daemonic armies were never incompetent or their commanders stupid. For their time and technology level they were really good. As late as the American Civil War or even WW1, Abigor's Army would have given a human army a dreadful thrashing. They wree just a century too late.

Stuart, would you be so kind as to refresh my memory as to how effective the demons (and their weapons) were, or would have been against (no armour, intermediate cartridges/full power rifle cartridge resistant, HMG/light AC resistant, MBT level armour) vehicles?

Were there any machine guns rechambered to fire the same round as the M114 and M115?

[ehenders]

Hence all those poor people who got locked up for "hearing voices"

To clarify - is this only for some people who have heard voices, or is EVERYBODY who has ever heard voices in their head in the TSW-verse a sensitive?

Also...I'd like to see the reaction of Scientology to the idea of crazy people being vindicated like that. Especially with their radical views on psychology.

TRH

[darksoul]

I honestly didn't expect to spark off so much conversation
It almost seems a shame to me that I'm not in a good position to -make- the game...
too many demands on my time, and I'm strictly a programmer, not a modeller or animator.
I might play with it anyway though

It seems we sail in the same boat. I`m merely a programmer,
with absolutely no ability whatsoever in design or animation. I would like to see that game done, whatever the genre.

@ehendres
In Armageddon, the primary task of Randi is to find sensitives among the people that claim to listen voices. He investigates mediums and such, but he also dives into asylum to SELECT those whose voices are really a sign of demonic presence. Thus, all people that hear voices are not possesed. Some are merely... mad.

That could be a nice addition to restraining orders for demons: 50 feet away, no communication by phone, mail or any other physical, digital or psychical means in this dimensions or others under the jurisdiction of this court....

[Nematocyst]

Also...I'd like to see the reaction of Scientology to the idea of crazy people being vindicated like that. Especially with their radical views on psychology.

I remember reading that a girl was having a stroke or something else near a bunch of Scientologists. They surrounded her and started praying. The girl, obviously, died.
So, I guess they will do nothing useful...

[atheistcanuck]

Hi, I'm new, I'm another person that joined this forum just for this story. I've just got done reading all the threads for Armageddon and Pantheocide.

Anyway, a couple of things

I found an error in chapter 72 of Pantheocide

"Me? I'll be dead. Very ]did and probably crushed out of this and any other existence.

Also, I wanted to know, if a person has birth defects do they still have them in their Second Life bodies? Does it matter whether they were caused by environmental factors (like the thalidomide babies or fetal alcohol syndrome) rather then genetic factors like Cystic Fibrosis? Is a person that had Cystic Fibrosis or muscular dystrophy or some other nasty slowly lethal birth defect going to get stuck with it for eternity (or until the bubble worlds become unable to support them or whatever), without dying from it, or will they just end up dying from it again eventually? I have a tendency to obsesses over these random little details and I'd like an answer so I can stop thinking about it. Of course, depending on the answer I may end up having nightmares about it.......

[Nick79]

If it were me, I'd guess Daemonic and angelic mind powers work through microscopic, molecule sized or smaller portals. Both tiny electrical charges to fire synapses and, in the case of very powerful beings, perhaps even neurotransmitters could be portled through(could account for Uriel aging people fighting his Peace; if the initial dump shutting down the brain stem doesn't work, pump them full of horribly stressful, alien hormones to make them want to give up forcing their hindbrain to keep ticking).

Nephilim would be accessible to demons from hell for the same reason they serve as portal beacons. The portals needed would be truly sub-microscopic for the electrical charges, and open for such short periods of time anything moving any reasonable speed should be no more difficult to "target" than track with one's eyes(not necessarily literally using the eyes, of course), which makes sense as that seems to be the rules for local use.

Local use would require two microportals, one offplain and one nanometers away between offworld and the target. That part isn't a contradiction - both portals are simultaneously formed locally, one from the daemon, and one from the target.

The charges needed would also be minute, and demons have plenty of electricity to burn. Neurotransmitters would be harder, something the "big guys" use to bully humans and "small guys."

Everything works differently at vastly different scales, the fact that large portals aren't blocked by foil, but microportals are, is easily resolved - perhaps microportal physicists could find that exceptionally small portals open for microseconds will be thrown off randomly far too much by the foil caps to be effective. Metals do effect portal size and targeting, we've seen Naga use webs and poles of metal to enhance them. A whole field transmitting will still get some through, but the user would have too much interference to "shape" the field and produce an organized pattern of neural firing, making it annoying, but not full blown psychosis level.

The "one way only" thing can still fit just fine, any movements on the receiving end would require the user be getting a tiny drop of "feedback" indicating if they are hitting the right spots before that portal collapses - trying to pull feedback out and decide what it means might just take much much more time than such a portal could exist.

[Bayonet]

Were there any machine guns rechambered to fire the same round as the M114 and M115?

I suspect the favorite machineguns would become the HB M2 and the DShK.

The M60 and M240, being designed around the 7.62 x 51mm cartridge, are probably too short to feed .458.

The .30 M1918, The Vickers and the MG 08 series are recoil operated, so would require extensive redesign, probably ending up midway between an M1918 and an M2 in size. Too much work.

Possibly the MG42, (7.92 x 57) being gas operated, could be reworked if it is robust enough. I'm dubious.

The BAR and the BREN could potentially be reworked, but the idea of a .458 automatic rifle is ludicrous.

[Stuart]

(snip)This cannot be used to transmit any information, sadly. It being an electromagnetic effect, however, makes sense since the brain is at heart an electric device.

Quantum entanglement is used as an analogy not a description. It's "something like quantum entanglement". The power enables the caelis to produce a pattern in somebody's brain that is equivalent to input from the senses. So they can convince people they are seeing things (an image of a person for example), hearing things (voices), being touched (insects crawling on skin) smelling or tasting something. It's also based on the bioelectricity generated by Homo Caelis. It's not actually quantum entanglement, it's more like a picture projected onto a movie theater screen.

It's stressed in the books that the power levels used are extremely low (which is why aluminum is usable as a screen; it's actually a poor screening material but it's light, cheap and easily worked.) If they weren't extremely low, then they would have been detected a long time ago and poor Homo Caelis would have been in an even worse position. The emissions work in two ways, either they can act as a general field which influences averybody around them or they can be focussed on to a single person. In fact, humans can actually sense the field at levels where its too low to affect them (hence the general uneasy feeling "something isn't right") or where it is marginal (somebody takes a second look and says "jee, did I get that wrong, the road bends left, not right" and avoids an accident").

I settled on this mechanism because it requires some skill from the daemon to use properly and it can be used to explain all sorts of things. From visions to people making foolish mistakes because "they didn't see something" It also has to fit what we actually have in teh environment around us. For example, with our cities saturated with cameras, we've never picked up film of Homo Caelis walking down the street. We have to explain that. With highly capable ESM equipment, we've never picked up anomalous signals that are associated with, say, insanity. We have to explain that. The truthful explanation is that Gods, daemons, angels etc don't exist so neither do their powers. They are fictional constructs. So too are the Gods, daemons and angels in these novels, they're just as real as any other, ie not at all. It's just that I'm working much harder to find ways these things could work and why we haven't spotted them working.

[Ryan Thunder]

It's stressed in the books that the power levels used are extremely low (which is why aluminum is usable as a screen; it's actually a poor screening material but it's light, cheap and easily worked.) If they weren't extremely low, then they would have been detected a long time ago and poor Homo Caelis would have been in an even worse position.

About that; if it's that low-powered, wouldn't it be incapable of communicating anything detailed, much less influence an instrument as blunt as the human mind?

I mean it's interesting and all, I'm just curious.

[darksoul]

It's stressed in the books that the power levels used are extremely low (which is why aluminum is usable as a screen; it's actually a poor screening material but it's light, cheap and easily worked.) If they weren't extremely low, then they would have been detected a long time ago and poor Homo Caelis would have been in an even worse position.

About that; if it's that low-powered, wouldn't it be incapable of communicating anything detailed, much less influence an instrument as blunt as the human mind?

I mean it's interesting and all, I'm just curious.

even a hairpin, inserted in the right spot, can trip a car (although i would love to know the precise spot... just for the fun:) ). I mean, maybe there is no need to disrupt the whole brain, but rather a small part of it, maybe some special connection in the lizard brain or the corpus callopsum (not sure how that`s written) or the communication between brain and spine. that could work with a minimum of power, maybe.

[Stuart]

how effective the demons (and their weapons) were, or would have been against (no armour, intermediate cartridges/full power rifle cartridge resistant, HMG/light AC resistant, MBT level armour) vehicles? Were there any machine guns rechambered to fire the same round as the M114 and M115?

In terms of penetration almost completely ineffective against any sort of armor. However, they do have secondary effectiveness. Lightning bolts can take down computers and other electronics temporarily, fire-breathing can set fire to flammable equiment stowed outside or exposed engine compartments (quite a few tanks were lost those ways). If an armored vehicle is swarmed, it can have its exterior equipment ripped off or twisted and bent. In lighter vehicles, hatches could get ripped off to give access inside.

Machineguns will all be .50s or 14.5mm plus. LMGs will be virtually extinct along with SMGs. They just can't handle rounds big enough to do real damage. Probably the only .30 weapons left would be miniguns where rate of fire makes up for bullet power.

[darksoul]

I was thinking....
what is supposed to substitute Satan as the ultimate evil in human culture? and God, of course, as its adversary. there must be something to compare evil people or deeds against...
I wonder what that would be... other than Cthulhu...

[[R_H]]

Were there any machine guns rechambered to fire the same round as the M114 and M115?

I suspect the favorite machineguns would become the HB M2 and the DShK.

The M60 and M240, being designed around the 7.62 x 51mm cartridge, are probably too short to feed .458.

The .30 M1918, The Vickers and the MG 08 series are recoil operated, so would require extensive redesign, probably ending up midway between an M1918 and an M2 in size. Too much work.

Possibly the MG42, (7.92 x 57) being gas operated, could be reworked if it is robust enough. I'm dubious.

The BAR and the BREN could potentially be reworked, but the idea of a .458 automatic rifle is ludicrous.

Machineguns will all be .50s or 14.5mm plus. LMGs will be virtually extinct along with SMGs. They just can't handle rounds big enough to do real damage. Probably the only .30 weapons left would be miniguns where rate of fire makes up for bullet power.

So infantry are basically only left with mortars, grenade launchers and rockets for organic support weapons ?

In terms of penetration almost completely ineffective against any sort of armor. However, they do have secondary effectiveness. Lightning bolts can take down computers and other electronics temporarily, fire-breathing can set fire to flammable equiment stowed outside or exposed engine compartments (quite a few tanks were lost those ways). If an armored vehicle is swarmed, it can have its exterior equipment ripped off or twisted and bent. In lighter vehicles, hatches could get ripped off to give access inside.

Thank you for clarifying, I thought they were more effective against vehicles.

[Deebles]

I was thinking....
what is supposed to substitute Satan as the ultimate evil in human culture? and God, of course, as its adversary. there must be something to compare evil people or deeds against...
I wonder what that would be... other than Cthulhu...

The "standard" version of Satan was merely guilty of refusing to serve. This version tried to torture as many people as possible as horribly as possible for as long as possible in the false belief that it empowered him somehow. Cthulhu is a saint by comparison.

[atheistcanuck]

People can always compare evil people to Adolf Hitler,it isn't really necessary to have a "cosmic ultimate evil" (which is a silly idea in the first place frankly) to compare things to, humans have done enough evil things. And even if one was needed, just because Satan is dead doesn't mean he can't still be used for comparison.

[darksoul]

I was thinking....
what is supposed to substitute Satan as the ultimate evil in human culture? and God, of course, as its adversary. there must be something to compare evil people or deeds against...
I wonder what that would be... other than Cthulhu...

The "standard" version of Satan was merely guilty of refusing to serve. This version tried to torture as many people as possible as horribly as possible for as long as possible in the false belief that it empowered him somehow. Cthulhu is a saint by comparison.

yes, yes, of course, but what I mean is that when you want to stress the evil in someone or something you say he/it is devilish, demonic, hellish, and such. Similarly, angels are related to goodness and beauty. Beauty they can keep, but what about a new standard for Good?
What now?
i guess we always can say that someone is ugly as a baldrick or slimy as a Jelly, but now a murderer is as evil as.... ???

[Mayabird]

I cut the game talk to here and moved the thread to G & C. I think I got everything but if I missed a post, PM me.

[PaperJack]

why can't the powers of baldricks and angel use something totally new instead of microwaves and\or portals and\or radiation ?
The discovery of a new kind of energy or physical phenomena has happened before, I don't see why it couldn't happen again.
I mean, the scientific method has as a first step observation of the phenomena, and since nobody had ever seen or analyzed psychic phenomena before, I think it could be believable that nobody has ever peeked into it seriously (like radiation, sorta).

[Gil Hamilton]

Quantum entanglement is used as an analogy not a description. It's "something like quantum entanglement". The power enables the caelis to produce a pattern in somebody's brain that is equivalent to input from the senses. So they can convince people they are seeing things (an image of a person for example), hearing things (voices), being touched (insects crawling on skin) smelling or tasting something. It's also based on the bioelectricity generated by Homo Caelis. It's not actually quantum entanglement, it's more like a picture projected onto a movie theater screen.

(snip)

It doesn't work as an analogy because the only thing in common is that both are a weird sort of action-at-a-distance. What you've described is something like electromagnetic induction, but working on neurons to produce specific effects. Place the appropriate potential across a neuron and it will fire (for any given neuron, this potential is tiny). No need to hang a term like "quantum entanglement" on it, they just need to produce electric fields that shift ions around in the brain, like an electrode tricking a cell but by remote. How that works is a mystery in the same way that they can shoot lightning without it jumping to ground; they've got exquisite control of electric fields, that's all they need.

[Uncluttered]

EDIT: Double post. I erased it.

I suppose I should use this space to contribute something. Hmmmm

The birth defect question sounded interesting.

What also interests me is weather 2nd and first lifers can share organs, blood, bone maro etc.

[Uncluttered]

I had some notes on side stories that could exist in TSW sandbox. Just thought I'd shake the pages and see what drops out.
Intentionally silly. , but all some could actually be written without the silly.
Many of these could be combined.


1. The hunt for Jebus. Jebus is up to something. He is covered in cancer and looks gnarled like a tree because of it. He is pissed, and has been seen talking to popes. Added bonus: Pat Robertson gunned down before he suicide bombs.

2. Mysterys
Plot device:
2nd lifers can buy liver grafts from demons. The organ grows back on demons, but not second lifers. The organ allows the second lifer to exist on earth, for a few weeks at a time, though it will not regenerate.
The organ wears out on earth, and must be replaced, but this allows you to bring anyone back to earth for a short time.
However, an alternative is to use the heart of a first lifer (or maybe an angel), which lasts until the heart dies of natural causes in about a billion beats (or forever if it's an angel). The heart is installed next to the second lifer heart, making it detectable with a stethoscope.
Human corpses are now semi frozen upon death to cryogenically preserve the heart as long as possible, and the recovered 2nd life person can use their own heart if the recovery is fast enough. However there aren't enough hearts to go around, and the process isn't perfect. The tissues don't need to match, so there is an underground market for human hearts. Without needing to match tissue or blood, hearts are being harvested by very low tech means, though they need to reach the second lifer alive. Gangs of angels and demons are ripping hearts out of random people.
Bonus: Second lifers are time sharing hearts, and 2nd death last wills often leave hearts.
Twist: Instead of human hearts, the story is about humans and demons harvesting angel hearts. The murders take place in heaven among a growing insurgency.

2a. Police officer "Bob" was murdered when he ran into an angel in a dark alley. Bob has managed to buy or rent a demon liver, which will give him 8 weeks to find who is murdering people and harvesting their hearts. Set in new orleans to give a voodoo flare.

2b. Senators Wellstone and Carnahan believed they were murdered by the same group. They team up and try to solve their own murders. Guest stars. JFK, MLK, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Robert Bird.

2c. Ringo Star, Yoko Ono, and Paul McCartny have paid millions of dollars to reunite the beatles. However, finding the other two is another problem entirely.
Bonus: Yoko breaks up the beatles--again.

2d. A demon and angel detective team are trying to track down who is smuggling guns to the insurgents in heaven. Bonus: Pat Robertson caught lurking in peoples bedrooms.

4. Wild west frontier town in hell. New Sheriff in town. The Sheriff is a Demon veteran of Abigors new army. The human built railroad is comming through, and the demon bandits must be put down or the railroad passes by.
Bonus Scene: Pat Robertson preaching the gospil of Cthulu.

5. Stop Julius Ceaser from taking over the world(s) as a side project: Ceaser has been plotting for centuries, all for revenge on Cybil, whom he thinks betrayed him.

6. Since judeo christian religions have been debunked, the Scientologists have been recruiting like mad. They left in a portal start their own mad world, but woke up the old ones accidently. Now Tom Cruise worships Nyarlathotep, who is planning on unseating and killing Azathoth. Azathoth, who is blind and stupid, but responsible for evolution, is apparently the real God on earth.
Mission Impossible: Put the old ones back to sleep.
Bonus Scene: Tom Cruise jumping on a couch, professing his love for Nyarlathotep.

7. A stone in the sphinxt sings to nearby portal adept. If you open a portal, the other side isn't another klein bottle realm, but an alternate Egypt.
Mission: Vaccinate the egyptions, hook up with Cleopatras descendant.

8. An experimental space capable thorium reactor is connected to an angel to open portals. The Angel is doped up on LSD to focus and withstand the pain of a portal to mars. The Mars portal opens, but it's a portal to barsoom instead.
Mission: End the mars wars, hook up with the princess, catch the freaked out angel, get home in time.

10. A creature from hell is loose in the ocean. It's an apex predator, and it's feeding on boats. Whats worse of course, is that it is about to have babies. A Marine biologist and an aquatic demon intern team up to stop it before the earths oceans go to hell.....
Twist: The creature is really just another demon, so old and out of touch she didn't know about the wars, and all we had to do was ask for her to leave.

11. Dead Children don't go to the klein bottle afterlife. Nobody knows where they go.
However, an expedition through the Minos gate reveals a land where primitive humans ride dinosaurs. It seems like paradise, but is it?

12. Peace Corp workers in heaven are trying to start a self sufficient economy. However, they are constantly dealing with primitive cultural backlash. Meanwhile, their funding is being canceled.

13. The Zeppelin has made a comeback in hell. Ceaser has loaned money to Zeppelin to restart the industry.

14. A cartel of Angels is trying to control the portal industry.

[Eevin]

Yay! Silly story time!

Greenpeace protest against ocean portals. They fear that hell fauna and flora may invade Earth, causing an ecological disaster.
Twist: They are right.

Edit:
Actually, now that I think about it, it is a serious treat. While Heaven species will be extremely sensible to temperature changes Hell's are probably aggressive and resistant. The portals in the desert are kind of save, but the constant water exchange in the sea isn't. We don't want a repeat of the jellyfish invasion

[Uncluttered]

Yay! Silly story time!

Greenpeace protest against ocean portals. They fear that hell fauna and flora may invade Earth, causing an ecological disaster.
Twist: They are right.

Edit:
Actually, now that I think about it, it is a serious treat. While Heaven species will be extremely sensible to temperature changes Hell's are probably aggressive and resistant. The portals in the desert are kind of save, but the constant water exchange in the sea isn't. We don't want a repeat of the jellyfish invasion

This was the first thing I thought of when the water portals are mentioned. I suspect that damage was already done many times over when Yahweh opens the portals to smite us with weather every year.

With the exceptions of giant rhinolobsters, and other fauna, I would think the simple solution is to say that all life in the klein bottle worlds originally came from earth, or for some reason cannot survive on earth without hell/heaven energy.

[darksoul]

why can't the powers of baldricks and angel use something totally new instead of microwaves and\or portals and\or radiation ?
The discovery of a new kind of energy or physical phenomena has happened before, I don't see why it couldn't happen again.
I mean, the scientific method has as a first step observation of the phenomena, and since nobody had ever seen or analyzed psychic phenomena before, I think it could be believable that nobody has ever peeked into it seriously (like radiation, sorta).

I suppose the influence had to remain within the known radiations because it reduces the amount of unexplainable phenomena (and, if well justified, adds to the hardness of the work) and second because in order to counter it quickly and effectively it must be already known. it`s no easy to identify, conceptualize, and find practical solutions to this in a short time. We would be in trouble, or at least, in more trouble that we were at the beginning.

[OmegaChief]

People can always compare evil people to Adolf Hitler,it isn't really necessary to have a "cosmic ultimate evil" (which is a silly idea in the first place frankly) to compare things to, humans have done enough evil things. And even if one was needed, just because Satan is dead doesn't mean he can't still be used for comparison.

But then what happens when they dig Hitler out of the pit? Though that'd probably be somthing interesting to read about alright.