UH SPOILERS Harrington family history

n7axw wrote:I think there are a couple of problems with this. Your notion of Detweiler working with Benton seems a bit improbable. We do know, or at least the Wiki asserts, that the Detweiler Consortium moved to Mesa in 1460. I think there is textev that says that it was Leneord (sp) who arranged that move. There was no prolong at that point, so Benton and Detweiler would have been in seperate eras, roughly three plus centuries apart.

And, of course, that means that the Alignment has to be dated in Detweiler's era, or perhaps by his descendants afterwards. My suspicion is the later, but I don't have a peg to hang that hat on.

Don

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I make my assumptions based on David's comments of late. He stated that Detweiler and George Benton worked to fix the FW mess. He further stated that trauma of the FW caused much of the problems that got Leonard so ticked off. Also that Leonard moved to Mesa after founding Manpower inc.

Not sure which of my assumptions is incorrect and which the Wiki got wrong. Based on the Final War timeline and Leonard's contribution to it, I am more comfortable with my assumptions than that Mesa was founded in 1460, well after the Final War's after effects have been established as "fact" and not going through the process for heated argument.

PeterZ wrote:

n7axw wrote:I think there are a couple of problems with this. Your notion of Detweiler working with Benton seems a bit improbable. We do know, or at least the Wiki asserts, that the Detweiler Consortium moved to Mesa in 1460. I think there is textev that says that it was Leneord (sp) who arranged that move. There was no prolong at that point, so Benton and Detweiler would have been in seperate eras, roughly three plus centuries apart.

And, of course, that means that the Alignment has to be dated in Detweiler's era, or perhaps by his descendants afterwards. My suspicion is the later, but I don't have a peg to hang that hat on.

Don

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I make my assumptions based on David's comments of late. He stated that Detweiler and George Benton worked to fix the FW mess. He further stated that trauma of the FW caused much of the problems that got Leonard so ticked off. Also that Leonard moved to Mesa after founding Manpower inc.

Not sure which of my assumptions is incorrect and which the Wiki got wrong. Based on the Final War timeline and Leonard's contribution to it, I am more comfortable with my assumptions than that Mesa was founded in 1460, well after the Final War's after effects have been established as "fact" and not going through the process for heated argument.

Far be it from me to argue with the author, but I would need more to go on to budge on this one. At bare minimum we have a rather glaring discontinuity here. It wouldn't be the first time. When the wiki detailed the Axelrod attack, what it said about how Manticore discovered Axelrod's role is completely different than Call to Arms and Call to Vengeance. It turns out that Wiki's sourse was House of Steel. Sooo... I'm going to poke around in the citations Wiki gave for that 1460 date. Will report back...

I wonder if David might have slipped up here. Something in that rather foggy entity I have normally call a memory remembers that Benton teamed up with a lady doctor with the last name of Rameriz and that they married, establishing the Benton-Rameriz line who became Allisons anestors. That doesn't prevent Detweiler from being present, of course. But perhaps that is who he was really thinking about when he dropped Detweiler's name.

Another hint: IIRC, one of Detweilers arguments against the medical orthodoxy of his time was that the Final War was far enough in the past for humanity to be over the trauma by now. That would be more supportive of my view of the timeline than yours.

Well, I am going to poke around in some primary sourse material and see what I come up with. If I come by something enlightening, I'll post.

Don

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n7axw wrote:Far be it from me to argue with the author, but I would need more to go on to budge on this one. At bare minimum we have a rather glaring discontinuity here. It wouldn't be the first time. When the wiki detailed the Axelrod attack, what it said about how Manticore discovered Axelrod's role is completely different than Call to Arms and Call to Vengeance. It turns out that Wiki's sourse was House of Steel. Sooo... I'm going to poke around in the citations Wiki gave for that 1460 date. Will report back...

I wonder if David might have slipped up here. Something in that rather foggy entity I have normally call a memory remembers that Benton teamed up with a lady doctor with the last name of Rameriz and that they married, establishing the Benton-Rameriz line who became Allisons anestors. That doesn't prevent Detweiler from being present, of course. But perhaps that is who he was really thinking about when he dropped Detweiler's name.

Another hint: IIRC, one of Detweilers arguments against the medical orthodoxy of his time was that the Final War was far enough in the past for humanity to be over the trauma by now. That would be more supportive of my view of the timeline than yours.

Well, I am going to poke around in some primary sourse material and see what I come up with. If I come by something enlightening, I'll post.

Don -

Assuming that the Detweiller Consortium was started after the Final War by Leonard Detweiller and he never made it to Mesa, it follows that the MAlign was started on Beowulf. Their progression from something akin to the Good Mesan Alignment to the core of the Onion would have happened over several centuries. This would have left much of the beginnings of their eugenics work back on Beowulf. It would have also enabled centuries of hatred to develop without the ability to get away from the cause of that animus. When Mesa became available, they would have left gladly. They would also have been much more willing to adopt very extreme strategies after the centuries exchanged vitriol but no real dialogue. It would also explain how quickly indentured servants because second class citizens when they arrived on Mesa. Leonard would never have tollerated it.

So, assuming your timeline is right, Don, my premise still holds. The Harringtons could have been a product of centuries of genetic engineering by folks working under the radar on Beowulf. They would have hidden their work in things like the Meyerdahl Beta modeifications.

All in all, I am more comfortable with your timeline after all.

n7axw wrote:Stephanie Harrington was born on Meyerdahl in 1509. Detweiler moved his Detweiler Consortium to Mesa in 1460. Figure a bare minimum of 30 years difference in the ages of Stephanie and her parents allowing for family planning due to education and getting established factors. That places Richard and Marjorie's birthdate at about 1480 plus or minus. Since IIRC Richard and Marjorie were also genies, that would push back whoever received the Meyerdahl mods back another generation, unless they were the originals which doesn't strike me as likely.

1: Richard Harrington was probably second generation Alpha Genome -- His parents were probably the ones recruited by Mesa to add the Meyerdahl B mods to the Mesa population.

2: Mesa is a heavy gravity world that requires extensive modification to live anywhere except on the high plateaus (called Mesas, in the American Southwest.) Detweiler modified the original Mesa colonists to fit the planet, and recruited Meyerdahl genies as part of the source material for those modifications.

3: Richards parents are the "Alpha Line" and Richard is where it got lost -- he wasn't interested or acceptable for inclusion in the "proto-onion."

3a: Marjorie was probably NOT associated with Mesa and may have been the reason Richard was not "brought in from the cold."

4: The ~~500 years of intermarriage, treecat adoptions, and isolation from any contact with the MAlign or Mesa makes any Alpha Line connection meaningless.

5: Alfred and Allison are both empathic and bonded; Honor quite likely got as much of her inherited abilities from Allison (and Beowulf) as from the Meyerdahl/Mesa line.

6: The Detweiler Clone's lament over Honor's connection to a lost Alpha Line is simply wishful thinking/rationalization; They didn't really lose to "normals" they lost to an "ubermensch" their founder had a hand in creating.

Weird Harold wrote:

n7axw wrote:Stephanie Harrington was born on Meyerdahl in 1509. Detweiler moved his Detweiler Consortium to Mesa in 1460. Figure a bare minimum of 30 years difference in the ages of Stephanie and her parents allowing for family planning due to education and getting established factors. That places Richard and Marjorie's birthdate at about 1480 plus or minus. Since IIRC Richard and Marjorie were also genies, that would push back whoever received the Meyerdahl mods back another generation, unless they were the originals which doesn't strike me as likely.

1: Richard Harrington was probably second generation Alpha Genome -- His parents were probably the ones recruited by Mesa to add the Meyerdahl B mods to the Mesa population.

2: Mesa is a heavy gravity world that requires extensive modification to live anywhere except on the high plateaus (called Mesas, in the American Southwest.) Detweiler modified the original Mesa colonists to fit the planet, and recruited Meyerdahl genies as part of the source material for those modifications.

3: Richards parents are the "Alpha Line" and Richard is where it got lost -- he wasn't interested or acceptable for inclusion in the "proto-onion."

3a: Marjorie was probably NOT associated with Mesa and may have been the reason Richard was not "brought in from the cold."

4: The ~~500 years of intermarriage, treecat adoptions, and isolation from any contact with the MAlign or Mesa makes any Alpha Line connection meaningless.

5: Alfred and Allison are both empathic and bonded; Honor quite likely got as much of her inherited abilities from Allison (and Beowulf) as from the Meyerdahl/Mesa line.

6: The Detweiler Clone's lament over Honor's connection to a lost Alpha Line is simply wishful thinking/rationalization; They didn't really lose to "normals" they lost to an "ubermensch" their founder had a hand in creating.

At one point Stephanie referred to her "Great, great,... Grand Parent's decision" to move to Meyerdahl, indicating that at least 5 generations of one line of her ancestors had been on Meyerdahl. One can assume that you got the Heavy world adaptation before you went to Meyerdahl, not several generations on the ground later.

Theemile wrote:At one point Stephanie referred to her "Great, great,... Grand Parent's decision" to move to Meyerdahl, indicating that at least 5 generations of one line of her ancestors had been on Meyerdahl. One can assume that you got the Heavy world adaptation before you went to Meyerdahl, not several generations on the ground later.

True, the Meyerdahl mods greatly predate the establishment of Mesa by the Detweiler Combine. That's why the Alignment sought to bring Meyerdahl characteristics into the Mesan modifications (and Alignment Alpha Lines.)

The Meyerdahl modifications were NOT part of the Alignment's developments, because the textev says they "brought the Meyerdahl modifications INTO the alpha lines. It does NOT say that the Meyerdahl mods were alpha lines.

The MAlign had nothing to do with the development of the Harrington genome after Richard, Marjorie and Stephanie moved to Sphinx.

Ok, everybody, eureka, I have found it.

Look in Storm from the Shadows, chapter 10. There is a very nice infodump there about Detweiler, Mesa, and the Alignment.

The salient points are as follows.

1. The date in the Wiki, 1460 pd, holds for the establishment of the Detweiler Consortium on Mesa.

2. Leonard Detweiler was involved organizing that, placing him in that time frame.

3. Detweiler was indeed the founder of the Alignment whose deeper purposes were a bit nefarious from the start.

4. I see no textev estabishing when the heavy world Meyerdahl b mods were established, neither is there any evidence of which I am aware that tells us when the Harringtons received the mods which frees all of us to speculate, I suppose.

5.Depending on when the mods were established, Detweiler's Consortium could have involved with it, but it seems probable to me that if so, it would have been prior to the move to Mesa. Dunno.

Don

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n7axw wrote:1. The date in the Wiki, 1460 pd, holds for the establishment of the Detweiler Consortium on Mesa.

2. Leonard Detweiler was involved organizing that, placing him in that time frame.

I'll add here that the author's comment that Detweiler was involved in the genetic cleanup after the Final War does not necessarily mean that he was around at the time of the Final War. Maybe the "horror" surrounding genetic tampering is partly due to the length of the time that geneticists had to work to eradicate the "bad" genetic mods from humanity as a whole.

Also, as far as Stephanie Harrington's thoughts about her "Great, great,... Grand Parent's decision to move to Meyerdahl", that is only what she believes to be true, perhaps even what her parents believe to be true - it's not necessarily what actually happened.

n7axw wrote:Ok, everybody, eureka, I have found it.

Look in Storm from the Shadows, chapter 10. There is a very nice infodump there about Detweiler, Mesa, and the Alignment.

The salient points are as follows.

1. The date in the Wiki, 1460 pd, holds for the establishment of the Detweiler Consortium on Mesa.

2. Leonard Detweiler was involved organizing that, placing him in that time frame.

3. Detweiler was indeed the founder of the Alignment whose deeper purposes were a bit nefarious from the start.

4. I see no textev estabishing when the heavy world Meyerdahl b mods were established, neither is there any evidence of which I am aware that tells us when the Harringtons received the mods which frees all of us to speculate, I suppose.

5.Depending on when the mods were established, Detweiler's Consortium could have involved with it, but it seems probable to me that if so, it would have been prior to the move to Mesa. Dunno.

Don

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Leonard Detweiler already had a massively successful medical and Genetic engineering company prior to leaving Beowulf - It's how he got the money to bid on Mesa. So 1460 PD would be the date the consortium was founded on Mesa, or more importantly, when Detweiler moved the company HQ to Mesa.

We know Detweiler's decision to turn his back on Beowulf had to predate buying Mesa, and he had a successful business in Genetic repairs, so most likely his company's activities (and his attracting others with similar mindsets) probably date from the 1420s.

He had already recruited many to his cause prior to the decision to found his own world. You don't form a company capable of buying a planet, just by doing work on the planet with the best genetic researchers, so his company's probably had clinics on many worlds. In this time period, his company could have done genetic work on the Harrington ancestors at Meyerdahl, bringing them (and their genetic makeup) into the outer layers of the onion.

Which Stephanie's ancestors probably abandoned well before she was born.

Ok, so George Benton and Sabastiana Ramirez began the cleanup of Earth. Leonard Detweiler was trying to liberalize the stagnant and in many ways irrational interpretation of the ethical code of Beowulf with the Loarian League. He wanted to change the legal system especially. Chou Keng-ju argued against him in large part not on moral grounds as much as not changing what is legally allowed. I recall RFC stating that the actual Beowulf Code was not as limiting as SL legal interpretation. Mesa was founded when Solarian law remained unreasonably restrictive.

At All Cost, chapter 16 wrote:Of all the medical "dynasties" of Beowulf, acknowledged throughout explored space as the preeminent queen of the life-sciences, the Benton-Ramirez and Chou families stood at the very pinnacle. They were Beowulf, with a multigenerational commitment to the field of genetic medicine which stretched back to well before Old Earth's Final War. George Benton and Sebastiana Ramirez y Moyano had actually led the Beowulf teams to Old Earth to battle the hideous consequences of the Final War's bioweapons, and Chou Keng-ju had led the bioethics fight against Leonard Detweiler and the other "progressive eugenics" advocates six centuries ago. Among the many jewels in the crown of their families' achievements since was a leading role in the development of the prolong process itself.

The Harrington beta mod could well have been the initial Alpha line genotype. The Meyerdal mods were older, but the beta mod given to the Harringtons may not have been the standard Meyerdahl beta. Centainly the success of the Harrington mod was remarkable since they arrived on Sphynx. That genotype remains dominant despite centuries of cross breeding and selection for specific telepathic traits found in the general population.

That does fit. That could also be completely wrong.