Adrian Laguna wrote:Many of greats from human history are probably not even in Hell anymore. I brought up Alexander the Great during the previous story. The guy was a tough bastard, very driven and single minded, had such an gigantic ego he considered himself a living God, and was arguably exceedingly reckless. With qualities like that, he probably got loose soon after arriving in Hell, tried to pull something, and got himself killed. I expect there's no Megas Alexandros in Hell, he's gone. The same is probably the case for other great conquerors like Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, and Tamerlane. They won't even crop up shovelling shit somewhere, they all probably got themselves killed at some point or another.
If one of the Spartans at Thermopylae could end up stuck in the lava river for two thousand years, so could a lot of other historical tough bastards.
On the other hand, you have a good point, especially when we're talking about the historical figures who were legendary for being dauntless and egotistical. Churchill would be a modern example.
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Pelranius wrote:I think that we should be fairly careful about probing into those little bubble universes. Some of them might come equipped with something that could easily beyond our capability to handle, much as Hell found humanity to be too much (of course, that begs the question why haven't they been going around the "multiverses" already).
I agree.
If Stas Bush's spinoff story counts, they have gone multiverse-exploring, to some extent. And they started running into things they couldn't cope with long before humanity got dangerous on them. About the only thing seriously more dangerous than Leviathan would be drilling into a bubble universe that had Cthulhu bottled up inside it; the fact that Yahweh actually managed to kill another of its species is rather alarming, given that a nuclear strike appears to have made it
stronger.
Again, this all refers to Stas Bush's spinoff story "Don't Wake Me When I'm Quiet." It may not be canonical, but it's at least worth considering. We don't know how much of Earth's mythology is based off of entities that don't come from the "Heaven" or "Hell" bubble universes.
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Stas Bush wrote:But that's about it. I fully agree with Stuart. The idea that rescued deaders do something great on Earth is ridiculous at all; the idea that they rise to greatness in Hell is also pathetic. All they can do is be sidekicks of humans, manpower for the humans, and such (all undead knowledgeables in my story are basically that). And it simply follows from the environment and facts.
But things like organizational talent, the gift of persuasive speaking, and so on still exist. On the one hand, many people who succeeded because of circumstances will be nobodies in Hell. On the other hand, many people who failed because of circumstances will have a somewhat better shot of success in Hell. There's no reason to assume that there weren't thousands of random peasants who could have done just as good a job as Peter the Great
if they'd been born in a similar position. With the playing field leveled in a way that neutralizes the advantages of wealth, birth, and surroundings, those peasants might do as well as he does. And for them, being a sad old man running a castle would be a big step up from what they had in life.
But in general, I agree; the people whose skills are obsolete won't matter much for decades
at least. In the indefinite long term that might change, because even adults can retrain given time and motivation.
Prominent historical figures often rise to greatness via circumstances. In Hell, the field is levelled again - there are no circumstances, and the knowledge of the undead is decades if not centuries obsolete. They are just no-name undeads. No one cares about them. No one knows who they are. And most of them are utterly, completely useless except from being the manpower resource for the ever rising industrialization of Hell to feed the human furnaces of war. I can't believe people cling to "great undead stories in Hell".
Simple statistics leads me to think that at least
some of the liberated dead will achieve things that any normal person would consider impressive- and that's especially true of people who died relatively recently and can more or less comprehend modernity. But I agree that most of the undead population is irrelevant except in statistical terms, and that most of the "greats" in Hell would be useless or nearly so for any major purpose.
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Darth Wong wrote:CypherLH wrote:But they'll also have new, youthful, bodies that are extremely resilient. Even in war, actual second-death would be kinda rare. Especially with the sorts of more primitive weapons they'll be using.
Not really. You just need to do severe damage to the skull (ie- crush the brain), and plenty of primitive weapons are capable of that. The primitive club can be used to conclusively crush someone's skull if you just keep using it on him after he's fallen.
Yes. But you really have to
want someone dead to be willing to do that. Not everyone will be doing that, so I'd still expect the overall death rate to be lower. Almost everything
except dismemberment or massive head trauma leaves you as a "walking wounded" who can escape and heal up over time.
