Official HFQ Snippet #24

I'm still trying for a chronolog. By the way, I thank all of you for the information you have provided; I'm now convinced that it's more likely Proctor died in the Rakurai of the Alexandria enclave.

1. Upon learning that Langhorne is appointed leader of Ark, Nimue Alban, Pei Shan-wei, Pei Kau-yung, and Elias Proctor create a scheme to assure technology comes back to humanity.

2. One of the conspirators, probably Pei Kau-yung, brings Pei Kau-zhi and however many others into the scheme necessary to accomplish it. This includes transferring Nimue Alban to the battleship.

3. With the exception of Pei Shan-wei, Pei Kau-yung, and Elias Proctor, all of the conspirators are killed by the Gbaba.

4. Pei Shan-wei brings enough more conspirators into the scheme to restore 112 memories and move those people to other enclaves. During this, Jeremiah Knowles accidentally learns of the scheme, and is moved to Tellesberg. Pei Kau-yung doctors the records so Langhorne doesn't discover the movement.

5. Pei Shan-wei confronts Langhorne, who destroys Alexandria after her return. This kills her, Proctor, and all or most of the conspirators enlisted there.

6. Pei Kau-yung makes a recording for Nimue, and sets her PICA to activate after 750 years.

7. Pei Kau-yung and his only living conspirator, to his knowledge, kill Langhorne and all of his upper leadership, killing himself and the other conspirator in the process.

At this point knowledge of Nimue's existence is limited to four potential pools. One pool is Nimue's PICA and the records in the cave in the Mountain of Light. One pool is Jeremiah Knowles and his records in Tellesberg. One potential pool is anyone from the Alexandria enclave admitted to the conspiracy, but who escaped destruction during the Rakurai of Alexandria. And the final potential pool and anyone that Pei Kau-yung, or his co-conspirator, revealed that information to before Kau-yung's death. I suppose there's a fifth potential pool, and that is anyone who, like Jeremiah, was an Adam and learned accidentally.

What holes can you poke into my chronolog?

~Tonto

At present, it is only an assumption that Kau-yung's "only other person" died with him and Langhorne in the pocket nuke attack.

It's possible that they were running late doing something else, and so weren't there, or were far enough away to survive when the nuke went off.


It's probably the case that they died, but we can't definitively rule out that they didn't.

A thought that I had, while reading all this is that Shan-wei and Kau-yung could not have done this themselves. Just the digging of the cave would have been a tremendous effort, not to mention the hidden entrance. And once they had their great big hole, they filled it with all manner of goodies, like skimmers and assault craft larger than a 747, and 200 assault rifles and 2,000,000 rounds of ammo, computers and basketball size memory units, a med unit and last but not least, a pica. Either a lot of people on the terraforming team were in on the scheme or they demonstrated an amazing lack of interest in what they were doing.
Definitely none of the fallen knew about the cave, since that equipment would have been irresistible to those in the middle of a battle for both survival and the souls of Safeholdians for generations to come.

Keith_w wrote:A thought that I had, while reading all this is that Shan-wei and Kau-yung could not have done this themselves. Just the digging of the cave would have been a tremendous effort, not to mention the hidden entrance. And once they had their great big hole, they filled it with all manner of goodies, like skimmers and assault craft larger than a 747, and 200 assault rifles and 2,000,000 rounds of ammo, computers and basketball size memory units, a med unit and last but not least, a pica. Either a lot of people on the terraforming team were in on the scheme or they demonstrated an amazing lack of interest in what they were doing.
Definitely none of the fallen knew about the cave, since that equipment would have been irresistible to those in the middle of a battle for both survival and the souls of Safeholdians for generations to come.

An interesting observation. One of Pei Shan-wei's terraforming teams would have to have built the cave. Since it is apparent that no one on the other side discovered it, I find myself wondering if that team died in the OBS strike on the Alexandria enclave.

Don

Keith_w wrote:A thought that I had, while reading all this is that Shan-wei and Kau-yung could not have done this themselves. Just the digging of the cave would have been a tremendous effort, not to mention the hidden entrance. And once they had their great big hole, they filled it with all manner of goodies, like skimmers and assault craft larger than a 747, and 200 assault rifles and 2,000,000 rounds of ammo, computers and basketball size memory units, a med unit and last but not least, a pica. Either a lot of people on the terraforming team were in on the scheme or they demonstrated an amazing lack of interest in what they were doing.

It could be that they left the digging to OWL or a similar precursor - some automated terraforming unit that could get unusual instructions, carry them out, then forget about them. (Or get hauled into the cave itself and never bother to mention it, in case it was OWL - "he" isn't much still for volunteering information, if no one's asked.)

Similarly, the diversion of resources into the Cave by Pei Kau-yung (I take it he took point on that, or did it all, from the specific military-surplus contents) could also be handled by incurious artificial entities.

It doesn't mean that no one else had a hand in it, but it does mean we're entitled to suppose that maybe no other human had the beans to spill or had to resist the urge to tap the depot for the War. And between the Alexandria Strike, Kau-yung's nuclear protest, and the sheer accidents a few decades can inflict, the conspiracy had a lot of opportunity to lose people. (And allied artificial intelligences too, for that matter.)

Definitely none of the fallen knew about the cave, since that equipment would have been irresistible to those in the middle of a battle for both survival and the souls of Safeholdians for generations to come.

Probably. It's a bit of evidence that the "Fallen" were entirely or primarily not close confidants of either Pei - or at least, that the Peis had their own "Inner Circle" privy to Nimue or somewhat privy, and others ignorant of that secret. Zherneau caught a whiff of Nimue that was probably more than was at all safe or intended.

Still, there's some chance that someone could have known about the Cave and fought and died a losing war without revealing it or opening it up for material. If they opened it up, there would be no second-chance for humanity if they still lost the War, and I doubt the War would have certainly been won with the gear in the Cave. Plenty of goodies, yes, but the other side had goodies too, and the Cave had exactly one more potential soldier. That would be an awful choice for someone to make, and the temptation to open Pandora's Arms Depot would be huge - just not necessarily overwhelming for anyone under the circumstances.

JeffEngel wrote:

Keith_w wrote:A thought that I had, while reading all this is that Shan-wei and Kau-yung could not have done this themselves. Just the digging of the cave would have been a tremendous effort, not to mention the hidden entrance. And once they had their great big hole, they filled it with all manner of goodies, like skimmers and assault craft larger than a 747, and 200 assault rifles and 2,000,000 rounds of ammo, computers and basketball size memory units, a med unit and last but not least, a pica. Either a lot of people on the terraforming team were in on the scheme or they demonstrated an amazing lack of interest in what they were doing.

It could be that they left the digging to OWL or a similar precursor - some automated terraforming unit that could get unusual instructions, carry them out, then forget about them. (Or get hauled into the cave itself and never bother to mention it, in case it was OWL - "he" isn't much still for volunteering information, if no one's asked.)

Similarly, the diversion of resources into the Cave by Pei Kau-yung (I take it he took point on that, or did it all, from the specific military-surplus contents) could also be handled by incurious artificial entities.

It doesn't mean that no one else had a hand in it, but it does mean we're entitled to suppose that maybe no other human had the beans to spill or had to resist the urge to tap the depot for the War. And between the Alexandria Strike, Kau-yung's nuclear protest, and the sheer accidents a few decades can inflict, the conspiracy had a lot of opportunity to lose people. (And allied artificial intelligences too, for that matter.)

Definitely none of the fallen knew about the cave, since that equipment would have been irresistible to those in the middle of a battle for both survival and the souls of Safeholdians for generations to come.

Probably. It's a bit of evidence that the "Fallen" were entirely or primarily not close confidants of either Pei - or at least, that the Peis had their own "Inner Circle" privy to Nimue or somewhat privy, and others ignorant of that secret. Zherneau caught a whiff of Nimue that was probably more than was at all safe or intended.

Still, there's some chance that someone could have known about the Cave and fought and died a losing war without revealing it or opening it up for material. If they opened it up, there would be no second-chance for humanity if they still lost the War, and I doubt the War would have certainly been won with the gear in the Cave. Plenty of goodies, yes, but the other side had goodies too, and the Cave had exactly one more potential soldier. That would be an awful choice for someone to make, and the temptation to open Pandora's Arms Depot would be huge - just not necessarily overwhelming for anyone under the circumstances.

By the time the War Against the Fallen started, I 'd be inclined to believe that there was no one living who knew about the cave.

Don

n7axw wrote:By the time the War Against the Fallen started, I 'd be inclined to believe that there was no one living who knew about the cave.

Don

It depends on how many people were involved and who they were. The smaller the head count, the easier it'd be (1) for all of them to be dead by then anyway, or (2) for the secret to hold despite some of them still being alive. I'm just arguing that it's plausible the head count was small enough to leave no survivors by the time of the War, and that even if there were, they would have some reason to leave the Cave alone even then.

Another point occurs to me: anyone in on the Nimue Plan would know that it was a contingency for use in case the Alexandria Enclave did not survive and Langhorne did jigger the mission plan. So the War that came out of the Alexandria Strike and Kau-yung's extreme interview with Langhorne would represent not a surprise in kind that would justify a change in plans to crack open the Cave, but just the sort of thing (albeit in a more extreme form) against which Nimue was stashed as insurance.

JeffEngel wrote:

Keith_w wrote:A thought that I had, while reading all this is that Shan-wei and Kau-yung could not have done this themselves. Just the digging of the cave would have been a tremendous effort, not to mention the hidden entrance. And once they had their great big hole, they filled it with all manner of goodies, like skimmers and assault craft larger than a 747, and 200 assault rifles and 2,000,000 rounds of ammo, computers and basketball size memory units, a med unit and last but not least, a pica. Either a lot of people on the terraforming team were in on the scheme or they demonstrated an amazing lack of interest in what they were doing.

It could be that they left the digging to OWL or a similar precursor - some automated terraforming unit that could get unusual instructions, carry them out, then forget about them. (Or get hauled into the cave itself and never bother to mention it, in case it was OWL - "he" isn't much still for volunteering information, if no one's asked.)

Similarly, the diversion of resources into the Cave by Pei Kau-yung (I take it he took point on that, or did it all, from the specific military-surplus contents) could also be handled by incurious artificial entities.

It doesn't mean that no one else had a hand in it, but it does mean we're entitled to suppose that maybe no other human had the beans to spill or had to resist the urge to tap the depot for the War. And between the Alexandria Strike, Kau-yung's nuclear protest, and the sheer accidents a few decades can inflict, the conspiracy had a lot of opportunity to lose people. (And allied artificial intelligences too, for that matter.)

Definitely none of the fallen knew about the cave, since that equipment would have been irresistible to those in the middle of a battle for both survival and the souls of Safeholdians for generations to come.

Probably. It's a bit of evidence that the "Fallen" were entirely or primarily not close confidants of either Pei - or at least, that the Peis had their own "Inner Circle" privy to Nimue or somewhat privy, and others ignorant of that secret. Zherneau caught a whiff of Nimue that was probably more than was at all safe or intended.

Still, there's some chance that someone could have known about the Cave and fought and died a losing war without revealing it or opening it up for material. If they opened it up, there would be no second-chance for humanity if they still lost the War, and I doubt the War would have certainly been won with the gear in the Cave. Plenty of goodies, yes, but the other side had goodies too, and the Cave had exactly one more potential soldier. That would be an awful choice for someone to make, and the temptation to open Pandora's Arms Depot would be huge - just not necessarily overwhelming for anyone under the circumstances.

There is also a high probability that the cave was constructed and stocked after the surveying was complete. It would be easy to "lose" the work if only humans were keeping records of it, but it would be a lot riskier to avoid notice by computers backed up by humans when teams were actually examining the geography and geology. I suspect also that construction would have to be done after the surveying and during the terraforming – possibly under a misleading job description. Mining for rarer ores and minerals, maybe?

However it was done, I think it's virtually certain that some computer records would have to be doctored so that Langhorne and his successors wouldn't spot it. I wonder which of the conspirators would be in a position to do that?

Peter2 wrote:snbip
However it was done, I think it's virtually certain that some computer records would have to be doctored so that Langhorne and his successors wouldn't spot it. I wonder which of the conspirators would be in a position to do that?

Inventory systems would seem to be fairly stable systems that only drew attention when they broke. The systems that had to be doctored/played with were most likely the same systems used by the TFN in the war against the Gbaba. There was probably no black marketeering or selling of military material to civilians. Supply personnel wouldn't want to have to monitor daily transaction activity when they were busting their proverbials to to get stuff moved out to the troops. The systems would certainly be able to generate reports on transaction activity but IMHO such reports would only be created when specifically requested. Monitoring transaction activity would have a very low priority during the Gbaba wars. I'll go so far to say the supply personnel might not even have known about that sort of report.

runsforcelery wrote:For example, there’s the one on page ninety which certainly seems to be a memory of a video call. He never actually calls it a communicator or a com — he uses the term keitai, which is apparently the word the Order of Chihiro used when it issued coms to the newly created seijins — but Owl and I agree that has to be what he was talking about. His memory simply wasn’t clear enough to describe it fully.”

“I remember the passage you’re talking about,” Sandaria said. “You mean the one where he’s writing about his wife’s ghost, don’t you?”

“Exactly.” Nahrmahn nodded. “From the way he describes seeing her ‘as if in a mirror that lived and spoke’ it’s obvious he wasn’t speaking to her face-to-face, and the only thing we could think of to explain it was a videoconference of some sort. We also checked the original passenger manifests, and we found Cody Cortazar and his wife Sandra listed as colonists in the Zion Enclave. According to Shan-wei’s documentation, however, Sandra was killed less than three years after the colonists were awakened.”

Is anyone else intrigued by this particular quote? From Sandaria's comment, it sounds like Cody had the videoconference call with his wife after she was already dead. How do we explain that? I assume there must be plenty of ways for TF technology to fake a video call with someone, or perhaps someone really did take personality recordings of at least some of the colonists and then put Sandra's into a VR where it could interact with Cody. But if so, why? And did they do it with others? And might any of those VPs still be around somewhere?

Of course, there could be some much simpler explanation. It would certainly have seemed miraculous enough to Seijin Cody to have been talking to his wife in a "mirror" at all. Or perhaps "speaking" is relative and he was only seeing a recording of her. But the way Sandaria says "ghost" I really have to wonder if there's maybe something deeper going on here.

Thoughts, anyone?