(SPOILERS) The reasons for the Archangel's return

OrlandoNative wrote:One possibility, though, is that this knowledge of the Archangel's "re-awakening" wasn't "wide spread" within the Temple hierarchy. The Wylsynns knew, but that could have been passed down only within their family line, like the Key and the Stone.

It appears to be a secret that was given exclusively to the Wylsynn family and maintained as a secret since Schueler shared it.

A major problem that we face in trying to read the few available tea leaves is that Clyntahn's Order isn't the Order of Schueler the last Angels left behind, never mind being a part of the Church Langhorne and Bedard created. It wasn't part of the plan [Chihiro's?] that the Order of Schueler be judge, jury _and_ executioner - they were strictly the executioners until centuries later. It's not even certain that the Wylsynns were Schuelerites before then; the Order could have inherited them along with the Inquisition. That change may mark the first of the long series of defeats the Wylsynns have suffered in their struggle to preserve the spirit of the Church, but it's not clear how it affected them personally. We really do need a lot more info on what Schueler actually _did_ before we can hope to guess what he intended.

OrlandoNative wrote:< snip >

One possibility, though, is that this knowledge of the Archangel's "re-awakening" wasn't "wide spread" within the Temple hierarchy. The Wylsynns knew, but that could have been passed down only within their family line, like the Key and the Stone. We don't know (at least at this point) who was killed and who survived the vest pocket nuke; all we know is that it apparently didn't kill *enough* of the command staff that was committed to Langhorne's and Bedard's modified plan for the surviving part of the human race to enable those who weren't to take over. There's an obvious oddity between the "old" Schuler - the one who gave them the Key and Stone and made the hologram; and the "new" Schuler that allegedly wrote his book for the "Writ". So far that's never been explained. Perhaps he, and a few others, still had doubts, but realized they couldn't be open about them. The best way to hide heresy in any religious hierarchy is to appear "ultra-orthodox" to the rest. Maybe Schuler did that; thus allowing his descendants some control over the Inquistion in the beginning; and possibly also giving him some control over just who might have been put into stasis. If so, then Merlin and the rest of the "heretics" just might find allies in whomever "awakes".

One important question is why on earth would this millennium return of the archangels be so secret. I mean if this is supposed to be some sort of check up on the church then you would think that the command crew would have told everyone it was happening so that the church could be ready for them and to encourage people to behave. I mean do we really think that this war would have started if everyone knew that the archangels would be along in 30 ish years to check up on things? At the minimum I would expect that fact to have put a fairly massive damper on the rate of invention in Charis because I would imagine that everyone would be very busy marketing sure that they look like good servants of mother church for the return of the archangels.

So the only reason I can think of for the return to be kept secret was that it would be something that the majority of the command crew would not approve of if they knew about it. Also because the Langhorn supporters won the war of the fallen why would they set up any sort of return when the whole reason they set things up the way things are is because the matrix they made would never ever break according to Langhorn.

captinjoehenry wrote:One important question is why on earth would this millennium return of the archangels be so secret. I mean if this is supposed to be some sort of check up on the church then you would think that the command crew would have told everyone it was happening so that the church could be ready for them and to encourage people to behave. I mean do we really think that this war would have started if everyone knew that the archangels would be along in 30 ish years to check up on things? At the minimum I would expect that fact to have put a fairly massive damper on the rate of invention in Charis because I would imagine that everyone would be very busy marketing sure that they look like good servants of mother church for the return of the archangels.

So the only reason I can think of for the return to be kept secret was that it would be something that the majority of the command crew would not approve of if they knew about it. Also because the Langhorn supporters won the war of the fallen why would they set up any sort of return when the whole reason they set things up the way things are is because the matrix they made would never ever break according to Langhorn.

That is one possible explanation. Here is another: Perhaps they won't announce themselves if everything looks good. They might "wake up" or whatever, take a look around, and decide whether they need to do anything. If they don't have to do anything, they "go back to sleep" or whatever, to wake up again later. If they want to limit how much time they are awake, they would not want to tell anyone they were coming back. Perhaps there is a limit to the total amount of time they can stay "awake", and they want to portion it out as many times as they can, unless they have to intervene.

Good point.

Another is that the method chosen could have been something with a large-enough risk of failure that they wouldn't want people getting ready for a return that didn't happen. The Temple, presumably, is hugely redundant as well as self-repairing, so it could be expected to be around a good long time - although whoever built it was taking an awful chance unless they also left indications that eventually 'the Divine Grace' or whatever might be withdrawn. Was it perhaps not possible to provide that level of reliability for the "Return"? If the Archangels missed their appointment, you can bet that somebody would wonder what else they might have missed.

I dunno.

SWM wrote:

captinjoehenry wrote:One important question is why on earth would this millennium return of the archangels be so secret. I mean if this is supposed to be some sort of check up on the church then you would think that the command crew would have told everyone it was happening so that the church could be ready for them and to encourage people to behave. I mean do we really think that this war would have started if everyone knew that the archangels would be along in 30 ish years to check up on things? At the minimum I would expect that fact to have put a fairly massive damper on the rate of invention in Charis because I would imagine that everyone would be very busy marketing sure that they look like good servants of mother church for the return of the archangels.

So the only reason I can think of for the return to be kept secret was that it would be something that the majority of the command crew would not approve of if they knew about it. Also because the Langhorn supporters won the war of the fallen why would they set up any sort of return when the whole reason they set things up the way things are is because the matrix they made would never ever break according to Langhorn.

That is one possible explanation. Here is another: Perhaps they won't announce themselves if everything looks good. They might "wake up" or whatever, take a look around, and decide whether they need to do anything. If they don't have to do anything, they "go back to sleep" or whatever, to wake up again later. If they want to limit how much time they are awake, they would not want to tell anyone they were coming back. Perhaps there is a limit to the total amount of time they can stay "awake", and they want to portion it out as many times as they can, unless they have to intervene.

SWM wrote:

OrlandoNative wrote:One possibility, though, is that this knowledge of the Archangel's "re-awakening" wasn't "wide spread" within the Temple hierarchy. The Wylsynns knew, but that could have been passed down only within their family line, like the Key and the Stone.

It appears to be a secret that was given exclusively to the Wylsynn family and maintained as a secret since Schueler shared it.

We don't know that. Paityr said himself that he didn't know if anyone else might have artifacts or knowledge similar to that passed down in his family. All we *do* know is that the Wylsynn family kept the knowledge (and artifacts) to themselves.

Not that doing that saved them. I suspect if Clyntynn had known about Schuler giving them their "special" status it would merely have given him added incentive to get rid of them. No one seeking absolute power is going to like the idea of having "guardians" outside if their own control. Just like corrupt people dislike ones that can't - or won't - allow themselves to be corrupted.

SWM wrote:

OrlandoNative wrote:Except it's clearly noted when this subject was first mentioned in the story plot that NO ONE previously had ever been in stasis for more than about 10% of the period mentioned here. Even in the Terran Federation, where one would assume there were sufficient technicians and advanced medical capabilities to at least attempt recovery in case of failure or some other problem.

I never said that the Archangels were in cryogenic stasis. You are making unwarranted assumptions about the nature of the Return.

I didn't say you did. However, the novels to this point clearly point to an "awakening". Assuming they aren't off on some relativistic, slower than light speed journey (which would be hard if they're allegedly located somewhere under the Temple complex); that pretty much leaves cryonic suspension - unless they, too, are PICA's. However, while the story line doesn't explicitly say one way or the other, I can't see where there would have been a *need* to "hide" Nimue's PICA from the inventory if PICA's were available in abundance in the breakaway fleet. They would have been too useful, and I'm reasonably sure that many could have been destroyed by various accidents in the course of terraforming an entire new planet. Just because the person whose personality they were programmed with was no longer alive wouldn't have changed the fact that the artificial personality in the PICA wouldn't have wanted to help out as much as possible.

Also, given Dr Proctor's programming skills, if there had been an abundance of available PICA's, the "fallen" could have utilized reprogrammed PICA's to overcome the rest of the Archangels, since allegedly they didn't have anyone capable of doing the same in reverse.

OrlandoNative wrote:

SWM wrote:I never said that the Archangels were in cryogenic stasis. You are making unwarranted assumptions about the nature of the Return.

I didn't say you did. However, the novels to this point clearly point to an "awakening". Assuming they aren't off on some relativistic, slower than light speed journey (which would be hard if they're allegedly located somewhere under the Temple complex); that pretty much leaves cryonic suspension - unless they, too, are PICA's.

You are fairly new to this forum. In the past we have come up with half a dozen possible mechanisms to explain the Return. It does not have to be cryogenics. Also, there is absolutely no evidence that "they're allegedly located somewhere under the Temple complex". That is entirely speculation by posters on this forum. We don't know where the returning Angels are coming from.

However, while the story line doesn't explicitly say one way or the other, I can't see where there would have been a *need* to "hide" Nimue's PICA from the inventory if PICA's were available in abundance in the breakaway fleet. They would have been too useful, and I'm reasonably sure that many could have been destroyed by various accidents in the course of terraforming an entire new planet. Just because the person whose personality they were programmed with was no longer alive wouldn't have changed the fact that the artificial personality in the PICA wouldn't have wanted to help out as much as possible.

Also, given Dr Proctor's programming skills, if there had been an abundance of available PICA's, the "fallen" could have utilized reprogrammed PICA's to overcome the rest of the Archangels, since allegedly they didn't have anyone capable of doing the same in reverse.

We know for absolute fact that there were no other PICAs aboard the breakaway fleet. In fact, PICAs were specifically prohibited. Nimue's PICA was the only one, and it snuck through the rules as personal baggage. David has said there were no others. However, we know that the Archangels had all the resources and instructions to build a new PICA. In addition, building a new PICA from scratch without the built-in time limit is a whole lot easier than reprogramming an existing PICA. It would not require someone of Dr. Proctor's skills to modify the design.

Possible Spoilers:

We have to remember a number of things to address this question. First of all, RFC stated that the original plan had been for the command crew to be more "hands on" in guiding the church and that having access to anti-gerone treatments and booster shots, they would have outlived all the Adams and Eves. Second, Commodore Pei's suicide attack apparently killed off a sizable chuck of the command crew (according to the text). This in turn, altered the plan radically. Since neither Chihiro nor Schueler were psychologists - and certainly not equal to Adoree Bedard - they were forced to adapt the plan to include the CoGA's version of Paradise Lost and create a more top-heavy political structure for the church. These and other changes contributed to an "unbalancing" of the original plan and has led to the current situation. Then there's the text from the Holy Writ that states that the appearance of demons in the mortal world trigger a divine response. Finally, RFC has stated that the coercive power of the Church, where examining and assessing innovations, was purposefully divided between the Inquisition (which was originally under the Order of Bedard), the Order of Schueler (which merely dealt with law enforcement) and the now-defunct Order of Jwo-Jeng (which consisted mainly of librarians and researchers). The unification of these branches under the inquisition and it's transfer to the Order of Schueler was definitely not in the original plan.

With all that in mind, we must approach the millennial visit as the winners of the War Against the Fallen would have approached it. In point of fact, they could see two major problems with the plan once the command crew finally died off. The first would be deviations from the plan. Given the medieval nature of Safeholdian society, large scale disruptions and changes would not occur. Remember that they are not living in the fast pace world we live in and even in that in which our parents and grandparents lived. Things change slowly in non-industrialized societies and the natural aversion to any changes that might disrupt the status quo would go a long way towards combating the limited number of bright, innovative people who might be willing to aggressively explore new possibilities. Add to that the fact that most of the perceivable universe is readily explained to Safeholdians via the Holy Writ itself, thus further discouraging the drive towards exploration and understanding of the natural world. Yet deviations are still likely to occur over a prolonged period of time, especially when the original social matrix had been unbalanced by Commodore Pei's vest pocket nuke and the subsequent years of warfare. Therefore, 1,000 years seems like a reasonable amount of time for such checks and corrections, especially given Merlin's theory about the presence of other PICAs under the temple who are bound by the 10-day shutdown limit.

But the second, and frankly more terrifying (to Chihiro and Schueler at least), problem would be the possibility that they hadn't found all of the missing technology and that Shan-wei's supporters were simply hiding some of it and waiting for conditions to improve to reveal themselves and start the war again (this time without any "angels" to assist the church). And as the most recent snippet indicate, they had servitors that returned to the "Dawn Star" (a possible orbital depot for various armed vehicles) along with the OBS. Given what Merlin has said to Nynian, it is entirely possible that whoever remains under the temple would prefer not to use the Big Guns (the OBS) unless they had no other choice. Yet armed vehicles and smaller scale kinetic strikes would still require human authorization (of humans who understand the technology) and dealing with any technology that remained in the hands of any remaining Shan-wei loyalists would require a "divine intervention". And it is not inconceivable that Chihiro and Schueler would assume that any such "delayed attack" would have to be launched with everything that's left (assuming they were very thorough in cleaning out whatever technology that remained). This therefore, might explain the purpose of the Key as well, since the Wylsynns were told it could only be used once at mother church's most desperate hour of need.

thanatos wrote:Possible Spoilers:

<SNIP>
Then there's the text from the Holy Writ that states that the appearance of demons in the mortal world trigger a divine response.
<SNIP>

This therefore, might explain the purpose of the Key as well, since the Wylsynns were told it could only be used once at mother church's most desperate hour of need.

You know I keep thinking about that and I wonder. Was there any reason for Schuler or the others to think that it would actually be the technologists that would be the ultimate threat to the church? That wasn't actually the boogeyman that was the focus of their trauma. The actual boogeyman that they would have been most paranoid about would be the one that they had been running from all their life, the one that had destroyed Earth and killed everyone. The one they were ultimately afraid was the greatest threat to the church. What if the OBS actually points, not inward but outward. Or if it points inwards was only supposed to be used as a doomsday device to kill as many Gbaba as possible after everything but the temple had fallen. After all didn't Merlin say (at some point in the text) that the temple was built more solidly than some planetary defense centers he had seen? Certainly much more strongly than mere human resistance would require. Maybe the point was to devastate the planet killing all the Gbaba that were there and leaving only a few chosen children alive in the temple. The command crew were thinking in religious terms so perhaps a Noah's ark scenario? We know that it's the Charisians that are threatening but what if it was aliens that the Archangels were actually paranoid about and not renegade technophiles, which the church would be more than adequate to deal with in the minds of Langhorne, et al. What if beneath the temple are concealed terraforming banks intended to repopulate a planet after a Gbaba strike. Just a thought I had as I asked myself what paranoia the Command crew would really have been worried about.

Larry