The (not so) welcome Archangels

niethil wrote:I thought the caves were part of the official terraforming effort. Weren't they supposed to house facilities for the restricted use of technology allowed by the original chart, and built deep under iron ore deposits for concealment purposes or something ?

Which is very strange, now that I think about it : how is iron ore supposed to stop the neutrinos the Gbabas use to detect technology when the main property of neutrinos is almost inexistent interaction with matter ?

No, Merlin's cave was built to house resources that Shan-Wei and her allies had managed to "lose" during the terraforming process, so that Nimue's PICA would have supplies for whatever purpose she might need them for. At the time, Shan-Wei and Pei Kau-Yung did not know what Langhorne's plans might be--they only knew that they wanted a backup plan just in case. The caves, their resources, and the PICA were that backup plan.

It was built deep under the mountain to hide it from Langhorne, not from the Gbaba. If the Gbaba came to the planet, all was lost anyway. If they got close enough to even try to scan with neutrinos or whatever, then they would be close enough to actually see the colony and would not need such esoteric search methods. The planet would be destroyed and humanity's last hope would be gone.

SWM wrote:. . .. that Nimue's PICA would have supplies for whatever purpose she might need them for. At the time, Shan-Wei and Pei Kau-Yung did not know what Langhorne's plans might be--they only knew that they wanted a backup plan just in case. The caves, their resources, and the PICA were that backup plan.

Writing about PICAs. Don't forget the "archangels" bodies were subject to old age, although very slowly by our standards. Any return of one would likely, tho not certainly, be a PICA.

DDHv wrote:
Writing about PICAs. Don't forget the "archangels" bodies were subject to old age, although very slowly by our standards. Any return of one would likely, tho not certainly, be a PICA.

Well, they may also try the sublight ship, accelerated to relativistic velocities.

Search Pyramids with muons The first application of Muon Radiography Search for hidden chambers in the Chephren’s Pyramid L.W. Alvarez et al. Science 167 (1970) 832

For planets, you might need muon cannon as sources.

DDHv wrote:

SWM wrote:. . .. that Nimue's PICA would have supplies for whatever purpose she might need them for. At the time, Shan-Wei and Pei Kau-Yung did not know what Langhorne's plans might be--they only knew that they wanted a backup plan just in case. The caves, their resources, and the PICA were that backup plan.

Writing about PICAs. Don't forget the "archangels" bodies were subject to old age, although very slowly by our standards. Any return of one would likely, tho not certainly, be a PICA.

DDHv: I've been wondering about tje PICA thing. Did PICA technology negate any cloning? Do the Archangels have clones scheduled to grow under the Temple proper? Merlin spoke about some type of interface when he put Nahrmahn into VR. Did Langhorne set up some memory bank that could be fed into clones that were engineered with the data-links?
Today is November 27th. The release date countdown continues.

Dilandu wrote:

DDHv wrote:
Writing about PICAs. Don't forget the "archangels" bodies were subject to old age, although very slowly by our standards. Any return of one would likely, tho not certainly, be a PICA.

Well, they may also try the sublight ship, accelerated to relativistic velocities.

Ships traveling at those speeds tend to very visible.

Joat42 wrote:

DDHv wrote:
Writing about PICAs. Don't forget the "archangels" bodies were subject to old age, although very slowly by our standards. Any return of one would likely, tho not certainly, be a PICA.

Dilandu wrote:
Well, they may also try the sublight ship, accelerated to relativistic velocities.

Ships traveling at those speeds tend to very visible.

And totally against the principles of Langhorne - who wanted to dig a hole, put all of mankind into it, and pull it shut behind them. A ship running around the galaxy at high relativistic speeds is not hiding in a hole. It has too high a chance of being spotted by the Gbaba, which then tells them that there are still some humans running around, even if the ship doesn't lead them back to Safehold. Not gonna happen.

fallsfromtrees wrote:And totally against the principles of Langhorne - who wanted to dig a hole, put all of mankind into it, and pull it shut behind them.

I agree that a ship going around is not a likely development. On the other hand, let's not forget that whatever is under the Temple might not be Langhorn's idea, it could be Chihiro/Schueler/Another Survivor 's idea.

I always had an issue with the assumption that Langhorn's hardliners were the ones who won the war. I find it much more likely that the ones left at the end were the ones who chose to obey orders for whatever reason from the lower ranks, and those might have been less extreme. And as I have already said in other threads (I have, haven't I ?), once Langhorn's plan was set in motion, there was no way to stop it before the end of the Hidding without losing the trust of the Safeholdians and thus failing to ensure they would stick to the plan.

"Aha, know what ? There is an evil alien race out there searching for us, so you should not develop the tech base necessary to fight against them for the next centuries or so. It's true, I promise ! That's why we wiped out all your memories and made you believe that we were gods. But trust us, we are telling the truth."

See what I mean ?

IIRC David Weber has said that the survivors of Pei's nuke were generally in favor of Langhorne's general plan.

While there may have been survivors of Shan-wei's followers involved in the War of the Archangels, from what David Weber has said there wasn't that much differences between the sides of the War.

Mind you, I could be wrong.

As for the winners of the War thinking that Langhorne was mistaken in continuing to hide and couldn't figure out how to tell the "mortals", I strongly disagree.

Remember that the winners kept the Proscriptions and the "ban on messing with electricity" which were how Langhorne decided were the key to "continuing to hide".

No, while I've suspected that one of the surviving Archangels may have been a "Good Guy", it is obvious that the Archangels in control after the War continued Langhorne's Plan concerning High Tech.

niethil wrote:I agree that a ship going around is not a likely development. On the other hand, let's not forget that whatever is under the Temple might not be Langhorn's idea, it could be Chihiro/Schueler/Another Survivor 's idea.

I always had an issue with the assumption that Langhorn's hardliners were the ones who won the war. I find it much more likely that the ones left at the end were the ones who chose to obey orders for whatever reason from the lower ranks, and those might have been less extreme. And as I have already said in other threads (I have, haven't I ?), once Langhorn's plan was set in motion, there was no way to stop it before the end of the Hidding without losing the trust of the Safeholdians and thus failing to ensure they would stick to the plan.

"Aha, know what ? There is an evil alien race out there searching for us, so you should not develop the tech base necessary to fight against them for the next centuries or so. It's true, I promise ! That's why we wiped out all your memories and made you believe that we were gods. But trust us, we are telling the truth."

See what I mean ?

DrakBibliophile wrote:snip
Remember that the winners kept the Proscriptions and the "ban on messing with electricity" which were how Langhorne decided were the key to "continuing to hide".

No, while I've suspected that one of the surviving Archangels may have been a "Good Guy", it is obvious that the Archangels in control after the War continued Langhorne's Plan concerning High Tech.

Also the textev is that the Book of Schueler (and therefore the punishments for violating the proscriptions) was added after the War. This is an indication of strong support for the policies of Langhorne.