The Return

IIRC the return has always been Archangel's' plural.
Since this info came from Paityr The plurality of it has
piqued my interest. If the info is by way of Scheuler
and/or the 'key', the plurality implies a long term
project by some of the command crew. I wonder how many are due,. Read broadly enough it could mean all of them.
Narrowly it could be just Scheuler and Chihiro.
Fun times ahead,.

TangoLima wrote:IIRC the return has always been Archangel's' plural.

Since this info came from Paityr The plurality of it has piqued my interest. If the info is by way of Scheuler and/or the 'key', the plurality implies a long term project by some of the command crew. I wonder how many are due,. Read broadly enough it could mean all of them. Narrowly it could be just Scheuler and Chihiro. Fun times ahead,.

A lot of that depends on just how they might return.

My own suspicion involves something like the appearance of Schueler in the cathedral built to house his crypt and commemorate the day his soul departed his worn out body and returned to God. If that isn't a devious Narhmann inspired IC trick, there's likely a VR unit stashed somewhere with a copy of Schueler's personality resident, and I mused elsewhere on what others might be stashed in one place or another.

We don't know what happened to Hamilcar, either - only that the Dawn Star disappeared from Safehold's skies. If it's programmed to reappear a thousand years later, and stored personalities in VR units have control over it, the Archangels don't need to return in physical bodies to be problems. (And how many of those stored personalities might be in VR units aboard Hamilcar?)

Another question is the timing of when this plan was hatched. If after Kau Yung nuked Langhorne's HQ, Langhorne and Bedard might not be among the returnees, as they didn't get stored.

(If my suspicions are true. I rather hope they did get stored. It would highly satisfying if Langhorne and Bedard reappeared to discover what happened in their absence and get told "Congratulations! You are officially the greatest megalomaniac psychotics and mass murderers in human history history. Aren't you proud of yourselves?" )

Have we passed the time-limit for the necessary SPOILER tagging of posts?

Otherwise, please tag spoilers!

If you didn't notice, ***SPOILERS***

I want to know what the goal of Schueler's visitation was. If this was truly him, he must have known his visit and Testimony would cause the CoGA to splinter. There is no way the inerrency of the Writ would have survived as a central tennet for ALL of the CoGA. Some would have retained the doctrine regardless of the testimony of an archangel and some would have rejected it because there WAS divine proof.

There is no way the creator of the visitation would have NOT known this. So, if this was indeed Schueler, he wanted to destroy the CoGA's moral primacy. Why?

If it was Schueler, he wanted to destroy the CoGA as Chihiro shaped it. His statement pretty much stated that. What I want to know is why he changed his mind from being the staunch Chihiro supporter Khody described. Why did he wait so long before he presented his Testimony?

Had this been Operation Androcles, the answers are self evident. No point in asking them.

PeterZ wrote:If you didn't notice, ***SPOILERS***

...What I want to know is why he changed his mind from being the staunch Chihiro supporter Khody described. Why did he wait so long before he presented his Testimony?...

The death of Khody may well have rubbed his nose in Chihiro's madness.

As for waiting, finally realizing that Chihiro intended to make the technology Proscription permanent, wouldn't have changed his basic disagreement with Shan Wei on how long technology should be banned. IIRC, Shan Wei felt the original 300 T-Year Proscription was adequate. Schueler may well have settled on 1,000 Safehold years as propitious timing; tied in with some earth religions' beliefs in a Thousand Year Return.

Weird Harold wrote:

PeterZ wrote:If you didn't notice, ***SPOILERS***

...What I want to know is why he changed his mind from being the staunch Chihiro supporter Khody described. Why did he wait so long before he presented his Testimony?...

The death of Khody may well have rubbed his nose in Chihiro's madness.

As for waiting, finally realizing that Chihiro intended to make the technology Proscription permanent, wouldn't have changed his basic disagreement with Shan Wei on how long technology should be banned. IIRC, Shan Wei felt the original 300 T-Year Proscription was adequate. Schueler may well have settled on 1,000 Safehold years as propitious timing; tied in with some earth religions' beliefs in a Thousand Year Return.

I can see that. However, how does he justify that wait to the CoGA? They will wonder why he waited so long. Why not just tell the CoGA not allow tech for 1,000 years? Why did Schueler support Chihiro for as long as he did? I am curious to find out just how much Schueler wants to reveal.

PeterZ wrote:If you didn't notice, ***SPOILERS***

Weird Harold wrote:As for waiting, finally realizing that Chihiro intended to make the technology Proscription permanent, wouldn't have changed his basic disagreement with Shan Wei on how long technology should be banned. IIRC, Shan Wei felt the original 300 T-Year Proscription was adequate. Schueler may well have settled on 1,000 Safehold years as propitious timing; tied in with some earth religions' beliefs in a Thousand Year Return.

I can see that. However, how does he justify that wait to the CoGA? They will wonder why he waited so long.

Why would they? Other than those who will feel betrayed and wonder why there was any delay, a millennium is a nice round number so why not.

PeterZ wrote:Why not just tell the CoGA not allow tech for 1,000 years?

For the same reason that the original Operation Ark plan included wiping the Adams' and Eves' memory of all technology and replaced the memory with anti-technology bias. If the colonists remember TF Tech, they will miss TF Tech, and they will chafe at the necessary Proscriptions.

Nobody, Shan Wei included, doubted the need to wipe colonists' memories, they only disagreed on how long to wait before removing the Proscriptions (and in the original plan, jump-starting technology from the high-tech enclaves.)

PeterZ wrote:Why did Schueler support Chihiro for as long as he did?

Chihiro was Langhorne's legal heir. Until Khody'd death, there was probably little difference of opinion between Chihiro and Schueler.

PeterZ wrote:I am curious to find out just how much Schueler wants to reveal.

You've only got a couple of years to satisfy that curiosity.