The SSK without Nynian and Sandaria (SPOILERS)

Dilandu wrote:Hm. Taking into account both the SSK and Brotherhood of St. Zherneau we already have TWO secret societies, working in conspiracy for centuries - and no one knew around them. Which bring another question - HOW MANY ELSE secret societies eixst? In comparsion with two know, even the "mason plots" seems child games...

Good point. Also, for me at least, it calls into doubt the historical effectiveness of the Inquisition. I mean, they let multiple secret organizations who are opposed to the CoG flourish for centuries. And not only did the Inquisition fail to stop them, it never even detected the conspiracies. Isn't detecting and stopping that kind of thing one of the chief purposed of an inquisition? Rather large failures IMO.

Nor should we forget they were edited by the last lying archangel.

Poker

EdThomas wrote:

kbus888 wrote:=2015/02/18=

Hi

I define a LIAR as someone who
knowingly tells things that are not true.

And I define as MISTAKEN someone
who does not realize that his/her
statements are not true.

Using these definitions,
the WRIT is indeed a lie
but the TESTIMONIES are simply
incorrect.

?? Am I right to make this distinction ??

Comments welcome !!

R
.

Seems reasonable. Some of the Testimonies might be a bit grayer though if the writer was saying what he thought others wanted him to say. We need to know a lot more about the Testimonies before we could even begin to look at the writer's intentions though.

kbus888 wrote:

I define a LIAR as someone who
knowingly tells things that are not true.

I think we're in general agreement, but I did want to mention a couple of specifics that are dissonant with your statement. I claim a liar is someone who 1) knows something is false, 2) conveys that something to someone else, 3) intends for the recipient to believe it to be true, and 4) isn't doing so for humorous or pedagogical reasons.

The reason for 3) is for things like liars' contests or similar entertainment where someone will tell a whopper knowing full well that no one will believe it. The reason for 4) is for things like jokes. For example, if I were to say a priest, a minister, and a rabbi walk into a bar together...I wouldn't want to be branded a liar merely because I believed that none ever did. It's also for things like teaching. It's a good idea to give general principals without all of the specific exceptions mentioned at first. This gives the student a chance to assimilate the new knowledge without being inundated with too many facts. Donald Knuth uses this to good effect in a couple of his books.

~Tonto

PeterZ wrote:

Believing that something is true after seeing proof that it is true, requires belief but no faith.

I think that's true in theory. In practice, however, things tend to get a little grey around the edges. Did I really see what I thought I saw? Did the feather really hit the bottom of the jar at the same time as the bowling ball did? Are the stars really circling the center of the galaxy at the rate they appear to? Did the policeman really hit the suspect before the accused raised his fists? Did the scientist really base his conclusion on the data he had? Did the priest really translate the scripture into what it means in English? Is peer review really a good way to verify scientific papers? Is the scientific method a good way to learn about the universe? Is skepticism a good way to approach life? Sometimes, ya just has to pay yer money and take yer chances.

~Tonto

I had a similar thought, from the other side: how would the Inquisition have developed the full panoply of the Thought Police, if nobody had any notion that there were people thinking things that had to be policed?

However many secret societies there may be now, it's virtually certain that there aren't as many as there once were. Quite likely the first one or two to go were blown by their own overconfidence or carelessness, either in recruiting or taking action. Once the threat is proven to exist, of course, further examples start to be searched for. By the current day, I would say that most or all of the Inquisition's actions, as exemplified by the 'cleansing' of Siddarmark, are in the nature of self-fulfilling prophecies, but at some point it must have run into a real, and effective, opponent. The contest probably went on for quite some time, given the institutional skills the Inquisition has developed, and must have been in the fairly recent past, given that those skills haven't atrophied in the mean time.

And there's a problem with that idea: why, if that is the case, hasn't Rayno at least _thought_ about them in relation to the Hand? Or, for that matter, why didn't Clyntahn at least fling that history in Duchairn's and Trynair's faces during the early days when they were still effectively restraining his ardour? I dunno, but I can't see the Inquisition's skills being handed down all the way from Chihiro or Jwo Jeng, or whoever actually created it. Secret or open, combat skills are honed by use, not by rote learning.

As for the effectiveness of the Inquisition: you are assuming that the SSK were a) truly opposed to the CoGA, other than by their very existence and b) active in that opposition much before their current generation. They went deep underground and were determined to stay there - and won't have arranged very many accidents for failed postulants, simply by not inviting all that many inside in the first place. With no visible waves being made and no betrayals, there was nothing to catch the eye. You are also assuming that the Inquisition missed the BSZ - they didn't. The Brethren _were_ making waves, and the Inquisition has very much noticed. If Clyntahn wasn't the blunt-instrument type, the investigation might well have reached the point of deducing the existence of something like the BSZ by now.

Henry Brown wrote:

Dilandu wrote:Hm. Taking into account both the SSK and Brotherhood of St. Zherneau we already have TWO secret societies, working in conspiracy for centuries - and no one knew around them. Which bring another question - HOW MANY ELSE secret societies eixst? In comparsion with two know, even the "mason plots" seems child games...

Good point. Also, for me at least, it calls into doubt the historical effectiveness of the Inquisition. I mean, they let multiple secret organizations who are opposed to the CoG flourish for centuries. And not only did the Inquisition fail to stop them, it never even detected the conspiracies. Isn't detecting and stopping that kind of thing one of the chief purposed of an inquisition? Rather large failures IMO.

Louis R wrote:I had a similar thought, from the other side: how would the Inquisition have developed the full panoply of the Thought Police, if nobody had any notion that there were people thinking things that had to be policed?

However many secret societies there may be now, it's virtually certain that there aren't as many as there once were. Quite likely the first one or two to go were blown by their own overconfidence or carelessness, either in recruiting or taking action. Once the threat is proven to exist, of course, further examples start to be searched for. By the current day, I would say that most or all of the Inquisition's actions, as exemplified by the 'cleansing' of Siddarmark, are in the nature of self-fulfilling prophecies, but at some point it must have run into a real, and effective, opponent. The contest probably went on for quite some time, given the institutional skills the Inquisition has developed, and must have been in the fairly recent past, given that those skills haven't atrophied in the mean time.

And there's a problem with that idea: why, if that is the case, hasn't Rayno at least _thought_ about them in relation to the Hand? Or, for that matter, why didn't Clyntahn at least fling that history in Duchairn's and Trynair's faces during the early days when they were still effectively restraining his ardour? I dunno, but I can't see the Inquisition's skills being handed down all the way from Chihiro or Jwo Jeng, or whoever actually created it. Secret or open, combat skills are honed by use, not by rote learning.

Until relatively recently, the Inquisition was about monitoring the doctrinal soundness of the priesthood, and that presumably with an emphasis on those who are preaching or leading the Church locally or in the vicarate. The SSK and BSZ have lived among monastic orders, which aren't thought leaders. They're just sources of income, some peripheral teaching, and status. There simply aren't Inquisitors enough to try to find out what isolated people out on farms and vineyards (who happen to be associated with the Church) are doing or thinking.

The organizations that matter to the Inquisition are things like the Circle - a cabal of archbishops and vicars conspiring against the rightful leadership of the Church, considering compromise with heretics! There the Inquisition did its work very well, and knew perfectly well how much they had to monitor wolves in the fold like the Wylsynns.

What the Inquisition does likely has to be kept secret too often to be available for boasts. All the dirty laundry Rayno had to get Clyntahn nominally elected, for instance, is just the sort of "vicars behaving badly" that the Inquisition is there to prevent, so they've certainly been doing a good job of detecting it. (Exposing it and purging the vicarate of corruption, not so much - but then, no one wants to bring that up. What the Inquisition should be preventing, the Inquisition has become.)

As for the effectiveness of the Inquisition: you are assuming that the SSK were a) truly opposed to the CoGA, other than by their very existence and b) active in that opposition much before their current generation. They went deep underground and were determined to stay there - and won't have arranged very many accidents for failed postulants, simply by not inviting all that many inside in the first place. With no visible waves being made and no betrayals, there was nothing to catch the eye. You are also assuming that the Inquisition missed the BSZ - they didn't. The Brethren _were_ making waves, and the Inquisition has very much noticed. If Clyntahn wasn't the blunt-instrument type, the investigation might well have reached the point of deducing the existence of something like the BSZ by now.

Out Islands, who cares? You can't keep tabs on everything everywhere, and where you don't have definitely orthodox priests to assist you in rooting it out, heterodoxy is certain to be on a low simmer all the time. So you punch back at King Hahrald with the Hanth Succession and you get the Archbishop, Bishop Executor and (to the extent you can - damn Wylsynn!!) Intendent out there to poke around Staynair's orthodoxy when he goes being suspect. For how much it looks like it matters, for how much you can spare for influence out there, for how much backing the lily-livered vicarate will give you... it was all appropriate response to what was known at the time.

Rooting around some obscure local order for the roots of Staynair's worrisome independence of mind - when it's just a bit more pronounced than you have come to expect from any Out Islander, especially on Charis - is a whole lot more than they had the means to do or should have summoned up the means to do on the basis of what they knew before things went totally off the rails.

It's also important to remember that Charis' orthodoxy wasn't alone in being suspect. To some degree all of the island kingdoms were far enough away from Zion to be under suspicion. Sharleyan and Hector were both very sensitive to that.

Two things caused the temple, specifically Clyntahn, to focus on Charis. The first is that Charis was far too sucessful with its merchant marine providing the majority of the world's commercial shipping and its manufactories selling its products all over Safehold which allowed Charis to accumulate an uncomfortable amount of power economically while its navy roled the waves. Even worse, Haarahld never owed the temple any money, which denied the Temple which denied the vicarate that particular crow bar in influencing his actions.

The second thing was the Royal College which the Temple saw as encouraging people to skirt the edges of, if not outright violate the proscriptions.

Don

I was rereading a few of the spoilers to try and cope with my addiction, and in Snippet 5 RFC mentioned how the Abbess knew of the abbey being ordered to disband before it was officially proclaimed, because of her family relations in the vicarate. I did not read through all the pages of responses ,so this may have been speculated already, but my question is, was the Abbess a Wylsyn? And if so, would Paityr know anything about what had happened to the abbey through information passed down through the family?

ChaChaCharms wrote:I was rereading a few of the spoilers to try and cope with my addiction, and in Snippet 5 RFC mentioned how the Abbess knew of the abbey being ordered to disband before it was officially proclaimed, because of her family relations in the vicarate. I did not read through all the pages of responses ,so this may have been speculated already, but my question is, was the Abbess a Wylsyn? And if so, would Paityr know anything about what had happened to the abbey through information passed down through the family?

There is no indicater that the Abbess was a Wylsyn. What we do know was that a higly placed vicar who was a family member, her brother IIRC, warned her what was coming down. That's what was in one of the earlier snippets.

what you overlook is that those things, it turns out, are a result of the influence of the BSZ on the Charisian crown.

which is what I meant when I said they were starting to draw attention to themselves.

n7axw wrote:It's also important to remember that Charis' orthodoxy wasn't alone in being suspect. To some degree all of the island kingdoms were far enough away from Zion to be under suspicion. Sharleyan and Hector were both very sensitive to that.

Two things caused the temple, specifically Clyntahn, to focus on Charis. The first is that Charis was far too sucessful with its merchant marine providing the majority of the world's commercial shipping and its manufactories selling its products all over Safehold which allowed Charis to accumulate an uncomfortable amount of power economically while its navy roled the waves. Even worse, Haarahld never owed the temple any money, which denied the Temple which denied the vicarate that particular crow bar in influencing his actions.

The second thing was the Royal College which the Temple saw as encouraging people to skirt the edges of, if not outright violate the proscriptions.

Don