The Salvation War: Pantheocide Epilogue Up

[GrayAnderson]

Nicely done. It's good to see who we have to face in the future...and thanks for including the Olympians, too. I know a lot of people might well have been disappointed by not having them.

Mikey did a nice job of telling honest facts while not telling the truth there...which is always fun to see. He's good at that. One nitpick: At one point he refers to "Jeshua" as "Joshua". I'm guessing a typo.

One other thing, Stuart: Obviously, there's some ability to give a command to the folks on the 'other side' of the gate, but how that works is still hazy. Is there any chance you enlighten us a bit more (i.e. Did Yahweh pick up the proverbial phone, shout really loudly, etc.)? Also, seeing as no communication was formally issued that I can tell this time...how in the blue blazes does the sorting happen, and who is coming through in Heaven vs. Hell?

[Guardsman Bass]

We know there are at least three other groups up there. The Aesir, the Baals and the Olympians.

Interesting stuff - I guess that probably came out of the interrogations. Did the HEA also get any information on how to contact those groups, or are they off in their own bubble universes a la parts unknown?

[nobody_really]

Minor nit:

Michael shook his head. "He never turned up; I suppose he's down in Hell somewhere. He was only a tool you know, he was possessed by an angel called Elhmas. Once he'd finished with Joshua, he just abandoned him."

I guess you meant Jeshua here instead of Joshua (his human/step dad, according to the story.)

I also find it interesting that the reconstruction gates in both Heaven and Hell are called Minos Gates, as my memory of Armageddon??? had the gate in Hell called the Minos Gate because that was the name of the plateau it was on, and also of the Demon that actually managed it. Is that because of the magic language translation machinery that goes on with second lifers/H. caelis?

We know there are at least three other groups up there. The Aesir, the Baals and the Olympians.

Great--The goddamn Olympians. Just. Fucking. Marvelous. Is there no place we don't deal with them? Even fucking Star Trek had to include those pricks.
/rant

Edit: I see GrayAnderson also noticed the Joshua thing.

[Simon_Jester]

If the Minos gate does act as a disintigrator, does that mean it would be emitting Hawking Radiation?

Uh... almost certainly not?

Not sure I like the drunken jesus version of history. Stuart has made a big deal of sticking as closely as possible to biblical literalism as a basis for otherworld reality. Rewriting a huge chunk of the new testiment whole cloth does undermine that position a little. From a secular point of view, we have enough on bible jesus without adding slander to the mix.

There is that. It's amusing as a jest, but it does undermine the core premise of "unsympathetic Biblical literalism."

[Highlord Laan]

If the Minos gate does act as a disintigrator, does that mean it would be emitting Hawking Radiation?

Uh... almost certainly not?

Not sure I like the drunken jesus version of history. Stuart has made a big deal of sticking as closely as possible to biblical literalism as a basis for otherworld reality. Rewriting a huge chunk of the new testiment whole cloth does undermine that position a little. From a secular point of view, we have enough on bible jesus without adding slander to the mix.

There is that. It's amusing as a jest, but it does undermine the core premise of "unsympathetic Biblical literalism."

Who says that Jesus was a drunken sot though? Smart businessmen don't hit their own product, after all.

[Sophie]

hmm.... would a polygraph work on Homo Caelis ?

Since as far as I know they don't work with any real reliability on humans, I see no reason to assume they'd work on our distant cousins.

I was using polygraph to refer to all lie detection methods, rather than just the specific test. Whilst still relativly unreliable, methods involving brain scans. Together with other, traditional methods can give a more accurate reading, and given the emergence of nethilim in-universe, it's likely that a lot more research time is being given to the way the brain functions.

of course, thats hypothetical and could just be BS, it was just a thought.

[Junghalli]

I'm curious... as an exercise in constructive criticism, which one thing have you liked best about the Armageddon War/Salvation War

If I had to pick a favorite moment it would be the bit with Memnon and Appolyon in Armageddon. It had the kind of feel that I thought would be appropriate for a story like this. I also liked the bit with the guys watching footage of the demons army coming out of the Hellraq portal. I thought it nicely got through some of the concept behind the story, with people watching the giant demon army coming out and instead of freaking out keeping their cool and trying to figure out its strengths and weaknesses, and did it without being anvilicious. I think Cancer Man ragged on the people in that scene making too many unwarranted assumptions about how the demon army would work from what they were seeing, but I rather liked it nevertheless.

and which has grated the most?

For the most part it was impossible for me to take the Angels and Demons seriously as opponents, and watching primitives get mowed down got old really fast for me. I get it, humanity and science is awesome, stop hitting me over the head with it, I don't need to watch another poor Angel/Demon realize he isn't hot shit anymore and then get shot in the face, I got it the third time, it just looks nauseatingly self-congradulatory now.

If I had to pick a low point it would be the whole Uriel thing. It got to the point where I just wanted him to die so the whole pathetic farce could be over.

YMMV of course.

[wickeddyno]

I think Stuart's revised history of the life of Jesus deserves defense based on The Rule of Funny.

[The Vortex Empire]

My favorite part so far was when that demon (Drippy maybe) was fighting angels in the pillbox. Not sure exactly what it was about that, but it struck a chord with me.

[Tiwaz]

Last time that I looked the Hostilities didn't end until Heaven's forces surrendered.

But have you noticed that despite this, humans were setting up infrastructure to run Minos gate in permanent sense.

This is because it is far better to do system from beginning which is not totally ad hoc in nature. Removing it and replacing it is far more troublesome than trying to figure out how to do it more or less right straight away.

There is lots of legal questions swirling around here about contract(s). However if legally you are not the first life person when you die then what becomes of jail sentences? If I am 20 years into a 100 year sentence and I die then when I wake up in Hell reception area I am no longer legally that person so am I free and clear to walk away?

To put it simply, letting people continue as same person as they were in first life is completely insane. They will not settle to anything but full rights and privileges and that means you pay their pensions for rest of eternity.

I remember in the first book the Israeli's going after a Nazi from the first life. If he isn't the first life person legally then they have no cause in his second life to go after him.

And do you remember anywhere in the story this guy being mentioned again? No. He was taken away and most likely shot to second death and buried. Never to be heard of again. It was more along lines of revenge than justice, with lack of trial and all.

Also my question still stands. In the first-life people are being forced into military service, so why not forcing the second life people in service? For example is the USAF going to give up a pilot that they have spent millions in training on just because he died?

You again forget that there are limits of authority. If first-lifer and second lifer are considered same person, they are citizens of that nation and they have ALL the privileges that come with it.

INCLUDING PENSIONS! (I can't repeat this often enough to make it sink to everyone that this would be massive issue. Those who have to pay the pensions would have no way to find enough money to cover first and second lifers all)
And voting rights.

In the novel there was mention of a collision between planes where several people died and hours later the same dead people where back to flying with their original countries again.

Did they volunteer for service like Kim?

In some ways they are going to have to in some ways to treat the first person legally as the second person. If not you could have a flood of people with long prison sentences or life without parole sentences committing suicide and then do you just let them walk away from the hell reception area free and clear?

Again, offer alternative which does not mean financial ruin through eternal pensions, massive dead voting block and so forth.

Remember, once that criminal kills himself, he can no longer ever set foot on Earth.

We also see mention of the dead partners in Goldmans-Sachs suing the SEC for canceling there trading licenses. At some point all these legal issues will need to be dealt with and it will be a issue in regards to what courts have jurisdiction.

If it is not your territory, it is not bound by your laws is rule of thumb.
If it is not your territory, you cannot readily declare your laws to apply. If it is your territory and your laws apply, be ready to start running your own version of welfare system there as well (as those tend to apply to ALL of your territories).

Try to treat the second lifers as less-than-full-citizens and they flock even more readily to Caesar.

Variety of cans of worms coming from declaring first lifer = second lifer.

[Simon_Jester]

Who says that Jesus was a drunken sot though? Smart businessmen don't hit their own product, after all.

Thing is, the Biblical narrative of Jesus has him being killed mostly because of the political disruptions his movement causes. The idea that he was killed for avoiding taxes on liquor manufacture just... it really strips that idea away.

In the process, it essentially declares the Biblical narrative of Jesus's life to be false- he was never a serious political contender, people never really took him that seriously; he just tried rum-running in a state with unsympathetic authorities. It also detracts from Ehlmas's significance, if the human he 'ran' was killed over something like that.

[For that matter, I'm not sure stills had been invented in classical times...]

[Ryan Thunder]

Who says that Jesus was a drunken sot though? Smart businessmen don't hit their own product, after all.

Thing is, the Biblical narrative of Jesus has him being killed mostly because of the political disruptions his movement causes. The idea that he was killed for avoiding taxes on liquor manufacture just... it really strips that idea away.

In the process, it essentially declares the Biblical narrative of Jesus's life to be false- he was never a serious political contender, people never really took him that seriously; he just tried rum-running in a state with unsympathetic authorities. It also detracts from Ehlmas's significance, if the human he 'ran' was killed over something like that.

[For that matter, I'm not sure stills had been invented in classical times...]

Par for the course, really. Neither Yahweh nor Satan were particularly intelligent nor personally powerful, more fighters were killed by other human fighters than by the Angel of Death, Jesus and Michael are stoners--hell, he couldn't even leave Heaven alone and just had to make it all some kind of glitzy illusion of glamour concealing ancient decay instead of anything genuinely impressive, and even put the pearly gates in a goddamned crummy hut, looked after by a crackhead.

That he'd have Jesus taken down for something as mundane as tax evasion doesn't surprise me at all.

But I digress, because I kinda liked how Elhmas pulled a fast one on Michael back there. Oh, and cutting off the narrative as the body flopped out of the Heaven gate was brilliantly evil. XD

[Razor One]

Who says that Jesus was a drunken sot though? Smart businessmen don't hit their own product, after all.

Thing is, the Biblical narrative of Jesus has him being killed mostly because of the political disruptions his movement causes. The idea that he was killed for avoiding taxes on liquor manufacture just... it really strips that idea away.

In the process, it essentially declares the Biblical narrative of Jesus's life to be false- he was never a serious political contender, people never really took him that seriously; he just tried rum-running in a state with unsympathetic authorities. It also detracts from Ehlmas's significance, if the human he 'ran' was killed over something like that.

[For that matter, I'm not sure stills had been invented in classical times...]

Consider that it wasn't Jesus running the rum, it was his disciples. Jesus took the fall for them. Guess who wrote the New Testament? Do you honestly think the disciples would incriminate themselves by writing about how their hooch selling business effectively killed the messiah?

The biblical narrative is not at all robbed of anything, nor rewritten. Things still go down roughly the same way, we're just getting the unedited, un-re-translated-umpteen-zillion times version for the first time.

And never forget. Al Capone was never thrown in jail for selling alcohol, being a gangster or murdering people. He was tossed into the slammer for... Tax Evasion.

Some things never change

[Nematocyst]

Peter may have been just lying.

Also, why is DIMO(N) disbanded? Their task may be done against Heaven and Hell, but there's still Valhalla, Olympus and wherever the Baals reside, and we may need battle plans against them.

[Kodiak]

Minor nit:

Michael shook his head. "He never turned up; I suppose he's down in Hell somewhere. He was only a tool you know, he was possessed by an angel called Elhmas. Once he'd finished with Joshua, he just abandoned him."

I guess you meant Jeshua here instead of Joshua (his human/step dad, according to the story.)

Jeshua is the Hebrew spelling/pronunciation of Joshua, also translated as Jesus. It's not s typo, its Michael using two of Elhmas' many names.

[Junghalli]

Par for the course, really. Neither Yahweh nor Satan were particularly intelligent nor personally powerful, more fighters were killed by other human fighters than by the Angel of Death, Jesus and Michael are stoners--hell, he couldn't even leave Heaven alone and just had to make it all some kind of glitzy illusion of glamour concealing ancient decay instead of anything genuinely impressive, and even put the pearly gates in a goddamned crummy hut, looked after by a crackhead.

That he'd have Jesus taken down for something as mundane as tax evasion doesn't surprise me at all.

But I digress, because I kinda liked how Elhmas pulled a fast one on Michael back there. Oh, and cutting off the narrative as the body flopped out of the Heaven gate was brilliantly evil. XD

One part I did like was where Elhmas had a line about how Jesus died asking why he'd abandoned him. It nicely conveyed the abusive and deceptive nature of TSW Heaven and gave the character complexity by implying he felt guilty over what he'd done to the poor man, while at the same time not hitting you over the head with the point the way I think the story has a tendency to do. That generally goes for the whole idea that Jesus was actually some kind of puppet for an Angel who was probably rewarded for his lifetime of obedience with a painful death and then probably getting sent to Hell and tortured for the next 2000 years (even as millions of people were worshipping him) just to shut him up. It's beautifully grotesque but that's something that's shown rather than told.

Personally I think the story could have benefitted from more of a dark touch. Go back to TSW-verse 1000 years ago and this really is quite a fucked up horrible grimdark universe that Stuart has created. If you're a human your fate is to be born, probably live a shit life full of suffering, and if you're real lucky you'll then get to spend the next 100,000 years as a slave until you finally die for good, but much more likely instead you'll get to spend it swimming in flaming notlava with maybe the occassional break to be raped in the ass by some demon's 12 inch barbed wang for variety. I think the story would probably be more emotionally moving if it brought this point home a bit more, but I rarely really felt it. Even the guys who'd spend hundreds or thousands of years swimming around in notlava in Hell didn't really seem all that adversely effected by it besides it making them mad (granted I've probably missed a bunch of chapters but I'm talking about in Armageddon).

[GrayAnderson]

Junghalli,
That's actually...quite an interesting way I hadn't quite thought of. For some reason, this does seem to be (in so many words) Lovecraft without the technological disparity or 40K with modern humans.

[Land Phish]

So now that we've got heaven and all the land that goes with it, what's the wildlife like? When I go to heaven can I take my sword, wade into some tall grass and fight randomly encountered monsters just like in one of my Japanese RPGs?

Also I recognize the Aesir and the Olympians, but who are the Baals?

[Deebles]

and which has grated the most?

For the most part it was impossible for me to take the Angels and Demons seriously as opponents, and watching primitives get mowed down got old really fast for me. I get it, humanity and science is awesome, stop hitting me over the head with it, I don't need to watch another poor Angel/Demon realize he isn't hot shit anymore and then get shot in the face, I got it the third time, it just looks nauseatingly self-congradulatory now.

If I had to pick a low point it would be the whole Uriel thing. It got to the point where I just wanted him to die so the whole pathetic farce could be over.

YMMV of course.

Yeah, I'd agree with all that - in a way, Kim et al. was just another subcategory of this phenomenon; it just grated a bit more with me that humans were still winning easily without all our fancy toys (size, strength, natural body armour, and thousands of years of experience in melee are huge advantages if you take away the guns, tanks and missiles).

[GrayAnderson]

So now that we've got heaven and all the land that goes with it, what's the wildlife like? When I go to heaven can I take my sword, wade into some tall grass and fight randomly encountered monsters just like in one of my Japanese RPGs?

Also I recognize the Aesir and the Olympians, but who are the Baals?

The "bad guys" in a lot of the Old Testament. Basically, the Phonecian deities if I recall rightly (and I think later Carthaginian).

Edit: Went and did a double-check, and this is about right. So for big groups, you have the Greco-Roman group (Cybele falls in this group, albeit tangentially), the "Semitic" group (this covers the Judeo-Christian folks as well as, I think somewhat obviously via the text, Islam), the Phonecian-Carthaginian group (Baals), and the Norse group (Aesir). This is who we know exist. Most of the "tribal" ones are probably getting slid off into the "made up" category, as likely are some other races. I suspect we might see at least one other show up, too.

Now, for the guessing games:
1) Are these various races (the gods being the "big dogs" in the race, with large numbers of servants a la the angels) or all of the same race as the angels? I'm going to presume a common origin at some point millions of years ago, or at least some degree of inter-breeding. As rare as Stuart has implied intelligent life to be, I'm guessing that multiple cases of species coming up with similar abilities falls under "highly unlikely".
2) Who else might we run into or hear exist? Obviously, there's room for others to exist (Egyptians, etc.), but I think it's also a given that not all are going to be found to exist (that would be getting far too cheesy).
3) Also, who might overlap with whom (and for that matter, might there be cases where a syncretic pantheon emerged)? It's quite plausible that there was some mixing of sorts in Babylon and some other Middle Eastern cultures (there seems to be at least some evidence of some theological traffic between the various ME cultures...Abram/Abraham is said to have come from Ur, and it's also worth noting that "El" was the name for a major deity in several groups in the region.

My guesses are:
1) Same race, albeit with possible differentiation among the resulting groups of angels. This strikes me as almost a given with the Baals, though it's possible that the Aesir and Olympians were in different groups.
2) It's possible we'll see someone from the Persian groups show up as "known to exist", and the Egyptians are possible as well. I'm guessing, though, not many others will show up at the risk of overcrowding the story.
3) Babylon seems to be a more cluttered theology, but this might be a case of "everyone conquers this area" causing the mixing. However, it is early enough that you might have seen a group project here go sour as Yahweh and Co. went off the deep end and muscled everyone else out.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Also, why is DIMO(N) disbanded? Their task may be done against Heaven and Hell, but there's still Valhalla, Olympus and wherever the Baals reside, and we may need battle plans against them.

For the same reason that the Manhattan Project was broken down after WWII. DIMO(N) existed as an inteligence and technology pressure-cooker, to expedite work during a time of war. And it succeeded. DIMO(N) developed not only the technology to detect and track portals, but to target and open new ones. They also pioneered research into h.caelis biology and countermeasures against their inherent strength. DIMO(N) coordinated psyops, resupply, reconnaissance, and exobiology for the war effort.

This was done because in a time of crisis it was necessary to concentrate all our resources where they would do the maximum good. We didn't have the luxury of turf wars, budget meetings, and grant proposals, so we took every mad scientist and oddball theoretician and locked them in a large room with extra caffeinne and unlimited funding. A lot of what they tried I'm sure didn't work, but they didn't have time to do things 'by the book' so it had to be an energetic and free-thinking environment. Having three days of lag for a lab report to get from the department of demonic neurobiology to Aperture Science is unacceptable when you're fighting an enemy that uses a category five hurricane as an offensive weapon.

If I could draw a parallel to World War Two, while the United States had a single program for nuclear weapons, Stuart can correct me if I'm wrong but I believe Nazi Germany had more than EIGHT separate programs, all competing for funding and resources. This compartmentalization and politicization is what led to the German conclusion in 1941 that fission would never be a viable energy process.

But, now that the war is over, DIMO(N) is a monster and its too big to live. To contain ALL American expertise related to bubble universes is dangerous. It creates a super-bureaucracy which can only grow bigger and eventually crowd out the others. It would be similar to ONLY the air force being allowed jet aircraft. Also, by breaking down DIMO(N) and spreading it around you can more easily integrate the technical expertise into various branches of society, which makes for more rapid advancement.

There will be portal research conducted by the navy, by the army, by the air force, and by NASA. The Department of Agriculture will create a few 'laboratory farms' to experiment on transferring crops between worlds. The US Geologic Survey is already mapping the hellpit, and the State Department I'm sure already has a diplomatic mission in New Rome. The Pentagon will talk to DIMO(N)'s theological tacticians (a new science, I believe) and put together contigency plans to deal with the other pantheons, and when they need expertise they'll call in the other daughter programs. DIMO(N) may continue to exist as a facillitator and clearing-house of information, but it will have all its greatest programs gutted and spun off into bigger and better things.

No, the key to making the most of knowledge isn't locking it up, its showing it to everyone. The Pentagon will talk to DIMO(N)'s theological tacticians (a new science, I believe) and put together contigency plans to deal with

[CaptainChewbacca]

So now that we've got heaven and all the land that goes with it, what's the wildlife like? When I go to heaven can I take my sword, wade into some tall grass and fight randomly encountered monsters just like in one of my Japanese RPGs?

Also I recognize the Aesir and the Olympians, but who are the Baals?

The "bad guys" in a lot of the Old Testament. Basically, the Phonecian deities if I recall rightly (and I think later Carthaginian).

'Ba'al' is actually a generic term that was used to refer to a bunch of different entities in the ancient semitic world. It literally means 'Lord' or 'God' and in TSW-verse probably refers to a pantheon of beings which ruled over the mideast prior to the introduction of Judaism and Christianity. You wouldn't just say 'I pray to Ba'al' but the Ba'al of a given location. It was almost titular.

Makes you wonder what really happened to Elijah's altar on that mountain.

[GrayAnderson]

Chewie: Edited in a bit dealing with that above. Though your comment makes me think: Might some of the "more crowded" pantheons simply be cases where you didn't get an overly-powerful being or small group in charge of things?

[CaptainChewbacca]

Chewie: Edited in a bit dealing with that above. Though your comment makes me think: Might some of the "more crowded" pantheons simply be cases where you didn't get an overly-powerful being or small group in charge of things?

I think we'll find that a lot of 'gods' were the same being deliberately disguising his appearance or latter inventions by worshippers who didn't want to have his religion seem less powerful. A diety race to invent the most and strongest gods in your local area. Also remember the line between 'household god' and 'spirit of my grandfather's grandfather' gets blurry after a while.

I would also posit that many of the 'tribal' gods were transitory visitations of beings 'on the run'. I confess part of me would like to see the West-African trickster god Anansi, legendary for his ability to trick and evade other gods, is still alive and wandering.

[GrayAnderson]

Chewie: Edited in a bit dealing with that above. Though your comment makes me think: Might some of the "more crowded" pantheons simply be cases where you didn't get an overly-powerful being or small group in charge of things?

I think we'll find that a lot of 'gods' were the same being deliberately disguising his appearance or latter inventions by worshippers who didn't want to have his religion seem less powerful. A diety race to invent the most and strongest gods in your local area. Also remember the line between 'household god' and 'spirit of my grandfather's grandfather' gets blurry after a while.

I would also posit that many of the 'tribal' gods were transitory visitations of beings 'on the run'. I confess part of me would like to see the West-African trickster god Anansi, legendary for his ability to trick and evade other gods, is still alive and wandering.

Hmmm...I know a Nephilim can punch through from either side of things. Can a deceased Nephilim do anything like that? I ask in part because while it's obvious that the dead can't come back on any sort of permanent basis, it's also quite plausible that you've had cases where the dead have come back over very briefly (i.e. for a few minutes to show up at some occasion).

And of course, I would like to know how the resurrection was pulled off. I know angels showing up in the tomb and pulling the body out deals with that, but what about the actual public appearances? Can a dead body be used much as a living one was by an angel?