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Also, one thing that occurred to me is that the credit card companies will probably challenge the current procedure when dealing with hell-people so that they can collect from them on unpaid debts when they die. This may be especially prompted when some very deeply in debt people decide to kill themselves rather than spend the rest of their lives with liens on their income.

Stuart wrote:

Can a dead person and a living person be married? Sounds like a new hit sit-com!

Again, if they wish but it must be pointed out that necrophilia is dead boring.

Stuart, that pun was physically painful to read.

Regarding the itchy skin, I'm almost 99% sure it's radar because of two reasons:
1. It was mentioned that it started around 60 years ago, which is when radar was invented.
2. It was also mentioned in Armageddon??? that the high-powered search radar on fighters caused itching at long distances and death close up, due to the Baldrick/Angel physiology being so attuned to electromagnetic radiaton.

Though it does occur to me that to get the desired characteristics (allowing it to be used as a crew-served weapon for hell humans in addition to a personal weapon for Baldricks), we'd have to include the automatic ejector from the Werder, but the Werder and the Martini-Henry were actually both relatively similar rifles in terms of action and so this shouldn't be a problem. The level action is probably necessary for simplicity and strength, still, but on a tripod that won't be to much of an issue, and I don't see the Baldricks firing prone all that much yet anyway.

Incidentally, it seems that the surviving populations of the Arab world, Indonesia, etc, could make a livelihood simply salvaging guns from the campsites of the dead and selling them to traders, who would then arrange for them to be sent through the Hellmouth to arm people like Caesar's legions. There's something like an estimated 30,000 old Gras rifles floating around in Yemen, which I could see enterprising bedouin who survived collecting, selling in Aden, and then having all of them end up eqiupping Caesar's army. It's better than a spear...

Also things like Lee-Metfords, even some Martini-Henry imitations from Afghanistan and the Northwest Frontier, and generally pretty much any blackpowder rifle which can be acquired like that, since blackpowder can be readily made in Hell. I'd also see a bunch of Philippine/Indonesian Lantakas ending up in Hell as well, the 0.5 - 3pdr cannon of the Malays, used as currency and trading and dowries and so on into the present; at one time, every single longhouse in the region used to have a couple, or more, as symbols of status, and those bronze guns for the most part remain serviceable, I've seen them for sell before, and being fired. They aren't confiscated and destroyed by the governments, really, since they're seen as large ornamental history-pieces in the present era, but I'll bet they'd be inordinately popular now, bought up enmasse and sold out into Hell, because the guns are small enough that teams of hell-humans could haul them into position, when pack animals aren't available (though Hell has some, of course, and I'm sure they'd come into fairly rapid use).

I'd suggest a rifle on similar pattern to the M116, provisionally the M117, using the .600 Nitro Express (I'm not sure if even hell-humans could handle sustained firing of the .700 NE?) most definitely or even a stronger cartridge, for equipping hell-humans with a personal weapon, beyond the hordes of Gras rifles and other unconsciable things collected by third world survivors and sold to military collectors for redistribution. Alternatively a Lee-Medford equivalent (with rifling intended for blackpowder) chambered for the .600 Nitro Express cartridge might be feasable and pretty damned deadly, but I suspect that would eat into the machining of rifles for human troops in a way the Martini-Henry based models doesn't.

Another thing which comes to mind is that we're simply going to be having everyone with a lathe in the world out producing 4-bore elephant guns for the hell humans to use, who might well be able to handle the regular recoil of putting three rounds a minute through one. Otherwise scale down to the 6-bore. Those would be ridiculously easy to make in large quantities by modern standards, and could simply be dropped to little groups of humans whenever we find them.

Crayz9000 wrote:Regarding the itchy skin, I'm almost 99% sure it's radar because of two reasons:
1. It was mentioned that it started around 60 years ago, which is when radar was invented.
2. It was also mentioned in Armageddon??? that the high-powered search radar on fighters caused itching at long distances and death close up, due to the Baldrick/Angel physiology being so attuned to electromagnetic radiaton.

Well, radar isn't that different from all of the other forms of radiation we pump into the atmosphere these days. That said, it's possibly likely, since he's only attacking small towns in the Third World; the big cities would have powerful radars fully equivalent to anything in the western world for their international airports. I just think cellphone towers are just as much a likelihood, and hell, it could be both.

CaptainChewbacca wrote:I think I know why people were more resistant, and it has to do with:

The change had started some sixty years before, a small change then and beneath Uriel's notice. The humans had invented something that made his skin itch and revealed his presence known to those below. From those small beginnings, the things had spread across the world, covering it with small spots where his skin had become uncomfortable. Then, the humans had linked those spots into great sheets that covered whole countries and they had built weapons that could threaten even Uriel himself.

Now, it seems to me that the only thing that would cover countries in SHEETS would be either radio waves or, more broadly, electromagnetic fields.

That explains why he avoids certain parts of the world, but it doesn't necessarily explain why certain people in a targeted area survive while others don't. Not without more detailed data.

This doesn't quite jive with the '60 years' thing, but I think that broad-spectrum EM fields either deflect or deform Uriel's influence. The poor-rich is a red herring, as it hasn't anything to do with socioeconomics or beliefs, but rather their proximity to electricity. The poor slums of a town might have SOME power, but its the rich that live in homes with wiring in every wall and lights in every room. We've seen tinfoil block demonic influence, and we've seen that there is SOME connection between mental influence and electronic devices (like when we let our psychics attack demons), so I don't think this is too much of a stretch.

The fact that the servants in rich houses live is important, but we don't yet know whether it's due to electricity or aluminum. Wealthier homeowners might have been able to fully insulate their homes with foil. It would be interesting to see whether any poor people lived if they happened to be near electrical transmission equipment, or working with such equipment.

It's also worth noting that electromagnetic field strength does not necessarily go up because you have a lot of electrical equipment. In field tests, Ontario Hydro researchers found that it was possible for EM field strength in residential homes to go up when you turn the main power off, depending on where you were in the home. After all, there are much larger EM fields present (like the one generated by the Earth), and the ones inside a house can often cancel each other out. Also keep in mind that unless you're actually using power then all of those power lines don't do anything, so it seems unlikely that an entire house would be shielded.

Wireless phones, microwave ovens, and wifi would fit with Uriel not being able to effect the more well off parts of the third world.

Ha, from a naval standpoint I bet we're going to start seeing NFGS-vessels that are essentially large container ships converted to hold a shitload of ATACMs. The environment means they wouldn't have to stick everything and the kitchen sink on the ships....just a shitload of ATACMS.

Seabasing might also find a niche in the waters off Hell, as well.

Heh. The word "environment" in the above post reminded me of global warming. I've got a question, could a factory (or any other area that creates lots of pollutants that would normally be carried into the atmosphere) simply have their smoke stacks lead into a portal into Hell? The people there don't seem to mind that the atmosphere causes lung problems in living humans, and no living humans would be in Hell for any appreciable amount of time so would them mind pollutants? Or would those cause environmental problems that even Hell and its inhabitants can't cope with?

It would be just a lot cheaper to simply build factories in Hell.

Yeah, opening portals from hell is a problem of resources, and small portals tend to require energy to keep open. Its only the BIG portals that stay open on their own.

Oh right. I had forgotten that small portals require a person to undergo extreme pain just to keep it open. And big portals probably need alot of energy just to be made in the first place. You are right, it would be cheaper to just build in Hell.

Just out of curiosity, is there going to be any more on this conflict the Russians were having with hostile hellish lifeforms?

Froma couple of pages back:

Darth Wong wrote:Based on the precedent established so far in the story:

a) Life insurance would still pay out.
b) No, he would not be married to his wife. She is deceased, and the person in Hell is legally a new person.
c) He would not appear to have any financial responsibility to the new family, as they seem to be legally defined as new people.

I'm saying this because the woman in the latest chapter had to will her possessions to herself. This means two things:

1) It means that her death is still legally considered death. Otherwise, the will should not trigger.
2) It means that she is considered a new person after death, hence the will can name her as the beneficiary.

I can imagine there must have been rather raucous arguments in courtrooms before these precedents were set. But they make sense. If you do not consider earthly death to be legal death at all, then you open yourself up for all kinds of legal and financial actions back and forth between the two sides: it would be a legal wrangling nightmare. If you consider the deceased person to be the same person as the original living person, then that opens up a lot of problems with the fact that you're treating their deaths as legal deaths.

But the very first precedent set in this story was that dead soldiers (cf. Broomstick) are still employed by the military and still receive paychecks. Has there been any expansion on that? And if there are, in fact, two separate ways of dealing with the dead, one for civilians and one for the military, what kind of problems would that cause.

Robert Jordan can, in fact, finish the wheel of time

Ooh, this kind of thing really opens the floodgates. The Canterbury Tales, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Dune, the sequels to The Brothers Karamazov; there's really a ton of famous works that were derailed by the death of the author.

Peptuck wrote:Just out of curiosity, is there going to be any more on this conflict the Russians were having with hostile hellish lifeforms?

I doubt Stuart would show us Checkov's gun without having it go off.

Morilore wrote:But the very first precedent set in this story was that dead soldiers (cf. Broomstick) are still employed by the military and still receive paychecks.

That is not a legal precedent. That was a bureaucratic decision. The judges and lawyers would have to think of the long-term ramifications of any precedent they set.

Darth Wong wrote:

Morilore wrote:But the very first precedent set in this story was that dead soldiers (cf. Broomstick) are still employed by the military and still receive paychecks.

That is not a legal precedent. That was a bureaucratic decision. The judges and lawyers would have to think of the long-term ramifications of any precedent they set.

And it can easily be justified by the fact the inviduals concerned were still actively working for their respective armed forces. Since death is now no barrier to employment, it could be legally retconned as re-employment.

Mike? Please start posting the chapters in C&C now. I get a headache looking for new chapters.

A question about the Baldrick guns: Could they become a new demonic mark of rank and status? I mean, we know how obsessed demons are about that sort of thing, and despite the new administration I doubt that's gonna change too soon.

I ask, because I remember Abigor has a 30mm RARDEN converted into an automatic assault rifle. The grunts have essentially up-scaled Martini-Henry rifles (which is an awesome choice, BTW. I always had a soft spot for that gun ever since I saw Zulu), a single-shot rifle. Would this mean higher ranking demons get automatics, mid-ranks semi, and lower ranks get single-shot weapons? Or is the Martini-Henry up-scale as the Baldrick standard purely an artifact of logistics? They'd be easier to mass produce than massive automatic rifles, that's for sure.

CaptainChewbacca wrote:

Peptuck wrote:Just out of curiosity, is there going to be any more on this conflict the Russians were having with hostile hellish lifeforms?

I doubt Stuart would show us Checkov's gun without having it go off.

Stas Bush already wrote this before Pantheocide came out. To summarize... an undead Russian noble (with French title) and his jaeger regiment went and killed both a number of demon prisoners and their Earth-French guards. Said regiment went off in effect seeking (he thinks siloviki Vladimir Putin of all people is weak!!) a leader of noble blood to serve... and came upon Peter the First. Moreover, an undead officer sent by Earth-Russia to dispatch him has instead defected.

Finally, you've got recently dead Russian ex-military officers who, complaining of Russia's decline in the 1990s, flocked to the banner of Marshal of the Soviet Union Kliment Voroshilov who has set up the Union of Voroshilov Republics. This situation is less problematic so long as the UVR doesn't try to get in the way of Earth-Russia militarily.

Since Stas' bits are canon, are they going to be included in the dead tree versions?

Also, on Uriel thinking about times he was attacked: is he the source of many of those UFO stories and classified "alien" encounters?

Personally, I'm more interested in what manner of support weapons they'll end up with.

Rifles chambered for .94 Nitro Express are BFG enough, I can only shudder to imagine what kind of firepower a baldrick weapons platoon would lug around.

Mayabird wrote:Since Stas' bits are canon, are they going to be included in the dead tree versions?

I've downloaded the whole story and I'll be cleaning it up and reworking a few bits so that it fits in. However, by and large its canon, hence the mention of the problems the Russians are having. Eventually, it'll form part of the third book.

Also, on Uriel thinking about times he was attacked: is he the source of many of those UFO stories and classified "alien" encounters?

Yes; by the way, the fact that missiles and fighters went up to say hi is a pointer to what the system that is confusing him really is (hint, remember what I do for a living).

So there's... THREE competing Russian/soviet states in the Russian occupation zone?