SPOILER: Go4 Discussions after AoS and IHA defeats

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.

for your second point Randomiser.

The best way to counter any possible demonstration of KEW is Merlin himself, after all IF they carried out such a strike he (or Nimue) has good odds of surviving it. It would take TIME to nuke every location that has heresy and OWL will report the instant he sees activity from the orbital platform. At which point the one who ordered such a strike is on borrowed time because with the toys in Nimue's cave he can just go nuts on the Temple of Zion and obliterate every person involved.

Nimue DID have this option in OAR and will be far more likely to go through with it if a large portion of Safehold is killed because of a few megalomaniacs. At which point the situation is bad for the continued innovation, there WILL however be no CoGA or archangel to keep on stopping innovation should Merlin or Nimue have any say over it.

CJK wrote:for your second point Randomiser.

The best way to counter any possible demonstration of KEW is Merlin himself, after all IF they carried out such a strike he (or Nimue) has good odds of surviving it. It would take TIME to nuke every location that has heresy and OWL will report the instant he sees activity from the orbital platform. At which point the one who ordered such a strike is on borrowed time because with the toys in Nimue's cave he can just go nuts on the Temple of Zion and obliterate every person involved.

Nimue DID have this option in OAR and will be far more likely to go through with it if a large portion of Safehold is killed because of a few megalomaniacs. At which point the situation is bad for the continued innovation, there WILL however be no CoGA or archangel to keep on stopping innovation should Merlin or Nimue have any say over it.

I was writing the second point from the POV of a sleeper cwho hadn't spotted Merlin, I suppose. Merlin may have had the option to go postal in OAR, I'm not sure he would have it with an awakened sleeper in the Temple. IIRC the main dome of the Temple is made of a ridiculous thickness of battle steel. If someone who knew what he was about secured it, I doubt that Merlin's assault shuttle would be able to penetrate it.

Plus your scenario assumes Merlin survives, which will be a matter of dumb luck. I don't think he keeps the skimmer hanging around when he doesn't intend to use it, for security reasons. Could OWL give him enough time to escape the blast radius of a big KEW under his own power, if the skimmer wasn't handy?

In reality it is all fairly academic, I'm pretty sure DW isn't going to write it like that.

True, would lose far too many characters for one, with the added difficulty of explaining the sleeper presence. Forget where in the book it was mentioned but outside of another pica or some kind of AI there is no practical way for command staff to be present in 20 years.

As for how Nimue would survive? well for one there are 2 of them and if the theoretical sleeper nuked Charis possibly Siddarmark first (as those are the biggest threat) then the second Nimue would definitely be able to get to a shuttle. The orbital platform is if read OAR quite high up, likely in a geosynchronous orbit. This means that the satellite to be in position to nuke Charis AND Siddarmark will not be able to cover the Islands that are literally on the other side of the globe. Gives Nimue number 2 several hours to vanish. works in reverse too, nuke all the Islands then Siddarmark will not be covered for the same reason.

Randomiser wrote:
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.

I understand your concerns here. It strikes me though that there are two broad ways to deal with the CoGA. Destroy the leadership asap and then allow time to gradually shape Safehold society into somthing less constraining. The alternative is to slwoly destroy the CoGA so that all vestige of trust in that institution is destroyed, then destroy the OBS. Arguments may be made for both approaches.

The advantages of the slow destruction is completeness. By letting the CoGA destroy its credibility, Safeholders are persuaded to look elsewhere for guidance. The disadvantage is that more time is spent in the low tech stage than would be otherwise.

The advantage of taking Zion quickly is the ability to start at higher tech almost immdeiately. This assumes the Temple can be taken before the sleeper wakes. If not, all the gains might be lost. The disadvantage is lack of completeness. The CoGA will still have the trust of far too many Safeholdians if it ios defeated within a year or two. There will always be a significant number of people who believe everything being done to meet the Gbaba will be evil and must be resisted.

That the Sleeper might wake is another risk to be considered. There might well be protocols to wake them or automatically activate the OBS should Zion be under threat by hostile armies. If that happens and a few tactical strikes rain down on the ICA/ICN contingents marching to Zion, Charis is toast. Everyone not in the inner circle will KNOW that God is still supporting the CoGA. Everything of and from Charis will be anathema. Even Old Charisians will abandon their monarchs. At this point the OBS doesn't have to destroy more, the citizens will do the destroying all by themselves.

I believe that's the true risk of going in quickly. If technology and innovative thought is disseminated more thoroughly, there will be at least a decade or two of becomming accustomed to tech. There will be more questions about why tech must be rejected after the benefits have been shown to Safeholdians. The Sleeper will have a more difficult job in stuffing the genie back in the bottle.

The trouble with this discussion is that we really don't know what is under the temple apart from Father Paityr's description of it, nor do we really have more than a vague timetable for return of arch-angels, or, for that matter how said arch-angels would react to what is currently going on. That means that this discussion spins on endlessly since only RFC can resolve it. I suppose that's ok as long as we are enjoying ourselves at it.

I think that RFC has set us up for SOMETHING to happen. But I bet that it will be a surprise.

My own favored solution, I have mentioned before. Have Merlin (or Nimue, now) go back to the cave and construct a vest pocket nuke powerful enough to obliterate everything inside the temple without being so powerful as to compromise the outside shell, hand it to someone dressed as an inquisitor, have them confidently walk into the temple and place the thing in a janitor's closet, set the timer and walk back out.

Kaboom! Name it in honor of Pei Kauyung and call it the wrath of God.

Don

And all the pilgrims, servants etc inside the Temple at the time? Just "collateral damage"? Come on, Don. They are trying to oppose that kind of thinking.

Aside from which I suspect you now have to check your bag in the cloakroom outside the Temple. Your cloak, too since it is climate controlled inside

Randomiser wrote:And all the pilgrims, servants etc inside the Temple at the time? Just "collateral damage"? Come on, Don. They are trying to oppose that kind of thinking.

Yep. Doubt that there a whole lot of pilgims given the current state of affairs.

But you still have a valid point from a moral perspective. But does anyone believe that there is a moral way to wage war? Can we ever say that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were moral? Or the fire bombing of Tokyo? I don't. Yet it has been argued, probably rightly, that the loss of life would have been much worse on the Japanese side had the nukes not been used and we had gone ahead with a conventional invasion.

Now, would it be "more moral" to leave the temple unmolested and leave Charis at risk to a rakurai strike engineered by whatever lies under the temple? I don't believe that any AI programed by Langhorne and his cronies would be any more restrained than Langhorne was when he pulled the trigger on the Alexandrian Enclave.

I tend to agree with you that if the Temple's current managment had access to whatever lies under it, they would have acted long ago, probably after Darcos Sound. But there could still be some automatic triggers that would be set off. You say that I don't know that and you would be right. But the thing is, neither do you. So how is the choice to be made?

Sometimes there are no "moral choices," but only greater or lesser evils. So do we blow the temple or not? There will be colateral damage, yes. But how much innocent life is being lost every day this monstrosity of a war continues? How many more starve as guests in Temple concentration camps? If there is any such thing as a moral choice, I would think that it would be to take the path that led to the least loss of life. So how do we accomplish that? That is the question at the heart of Merlin's struggle.

Don

Another aspect is how deep are the "sleeping archangels" (or what ever) under the Temple and how well are they protected.

IMO the "carry a nuke into the Temple" is a last ditch sort of thing.

My guess would be that Merlin or Nimue (not both) would lead a team into the Temple and attempt to sneak into the Lower Levels. I suspect that Father Paityr and his key would be part of the team.

They might have a pocket nuke in case they get trapped under the Temple but again IMO it's only "just in case weapon".

If I were putting something secret in the Temple that had to stay safe and hidden for centuries, I put it deep in the Temple away from the normally habited areas and make sure it was very well protected in case somebody else attempted the Kauyung maneuver.

In short, the moral objection, while strong, against putting the nuke in a heavily traveled area of the Temple isn't the only consideration.

You don't want a situation where innocents are killed and you just made the sleepers extremely mad.

n7axw wrote:

Randomiser wrote:And all the pilgrims, servants etc inside the Temple at the time? Just "collateral damage"? Come on, Don. They are trying to oppose that kind of thinking.

Yep. Doubt that there a whole lot of pilgims given the current state of affairs.

But you still have a valid point from a moral perspective. But does anyone believe that there is a moral way to wage war? Can we ever say that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were moral? Or the fire bombing of Tokyo? I don't. Yet it has been argued, probably rightly, that the loss of life would have been much worse on the Japanese side had the nukes not been used and we had gone ahead with a conventional invasion.

Now, would it be "more moral" to leave the temple unmolested and leave Charis at risk to a rakurai strike engineered by whatever lies under the temple? I don't believe that any AI programed by Langhorne and his cronies would be any more restrained than Langhorne was when he pulled the trigger on the Alexandrian Enclave.

I tend to agree with you that if the Temple's current managment had access to whatever lies under it, they would have acted long ago, probably after Darcos Sound. But there could still be some automatic triggers that would be set off. You say that I don't know that and you would be right. But the thing is, neither do you. So how is the choice to be made?

Sometimes there are no "moral choices," but only greater or lesser evils. So do we blow the temple or not? There will be colateral damage, yes. But how much innocent life is being lost every day this monstrosity of a war continues? How many more starve as guests in Temple concentration camps? If there is any such thing as a moral choice, I would think that it would be to take the path that led to the least loss of life. So how do we accomplish that? That is the question at the heart of Merlin's struggle.

Don

n7axw wrote:
But you still have a valid point from a moral perspective. But does anyone believe that there is a moral way to wage war? Can we ever say that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were moral? Or the fire bombing of Tokyo? I don't. Yet it has been argued, probably rightly, that the loss of life would have been much worse on the Japanese side had the nukes not been used and we had gone ahead with a conventional invasion.

Don

It always amazes me that people forget that approximately 100,000 Allied civilians and combatants (mostly civilians) a month were being killed in the Pacific theater at the time the bombs were used. So, what is the moral choice: use weapons that will kill less than two a month's casualties (and all of them your enemy's) and end the war in a week, or not use them and accept the 100,000/month casualties on your own side for at least six months, plus the additional million or so expected in the various invasion plans as well as who knows how many Japanese casualties.