PeterZ wrote:Trouble is with the revelation of the Stone of Schueler the Inner Circle doesn't know if there is another mechanism to manually control the OBS. That mechanism might be used to call forth KEW strikes on an attacking army or navy appeoaching Zion. If that happens all of Safehold will know God is truly protecting the CoGA.
At that point is it better to ensure that innovation is spread as far as possible before the awakening or to risk the KEW strike and take Zion ASAP? A strike now would destroy the Reformation before Innovation as a mind set has truly been ingrained.
I would argue for the surer course and wait. Allow the CoGA to implement innovative meathods on its own before the Awakening. Should the acceptence of innovation be spread far enough, the Sleepers would have to destroy too much to push Safehold back to pre jihad levels.
If attacking Zion triggers a KEW strike or awakens the sleepers now, Merlin's cause is lost for generations and maybe forever.
I'm deeply sceptical about most of this.
Firstly, If I were on the CoGA side and had some way of 'defending the church in its deepest need', or whatever, I would have used it by now. Why would I have let the proscriptions be distorted by so many dispensations, the authority and prestige of Mother Church be so undermined and so many of her loyal sons get killed if I had the means in my hand to call for the Archangels' aid? No one who puts up the FUD 'Oh what if?' scenarios ever addresses this 'Elephant in the room' issue.
Secondly, 'The sleepers would have to destroy too much to push Safehold back to pre jihad levels' is a complacent and unsubstantiated argument, which discounts how ruthless the sleepers may be prepared to be. If the Rakurai destroys Charis and the main industrial centre of every other nation as a first strike, then the Church, or even better an Archangel, makes it clear there will be plenty of second strikes if people don't abandon their godless ways, and sends in Inquisition enforcers backed up by Harchongese troops to execute the leaders of the heretical movements and root out every taint of Shan Wei they can find, I can't believe the scientific mind set is going to be more than a tiny aberration in 20 years, because the challenge to the Church's authority will have been shown to be deeply wrong, in the most graphic way possible.
If push comes to shove, the original population was what? 5 million? There are a lot more people than that just in North Harchong. Wonder what the sleepers' bio-warfare capabilities are?
In other words, the threat is hypothetical and receding by the day, and the protection delay would provide is illusory, so they might as well go for the Temple when they get the chance.