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[HFQ] SPOILERS -- Why didn't Merlin?

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Re: [HFQ] SPOILERS -- Why didn't Merlin?
Post by PeterZ   » Tue Nov 03, 2015 4:49 pm

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JeffEngel wrote:
n7axw wrote:I don't think that the Haarahlds are needed to impress the Dohlarians. If the Cities do as thorough a job on Gorath and the RDN as they did on the Desnairians at Geyra, even politicians are not going to be able to miss the point.

Don

There comes a point where, if someone is that insistent on other people dying because they won't recognize plain facts, that the other people quit obeying orders and may up and arrest or defenestrate the idiots.

I think that that tolerance for Thorast and Salthar will expire before the arrival of King Haarahlds at Gorath.

Ahbrahm Zhevons had very good luck with close, personal conversations with Gorjah of Tarot about his stance vis a vis Charis and the jihad. I'm sure Rahnahld has his moments sleeping alone too in which a fruitful interview could be scheduled for high level diplomacy. He may need to change pajamas right after the beginning, but hey, he's the kind, he's sure to have spares. One result of such discussions may be the king reconsidering some of his appointments, in the interests of international harmony and not having his pleasant palace reduced to rubble on top of him.


Its not just the recognition of their inferiority, but the justification to rebel against the G4/Inquisition. The KHs are obvious examples that the jihad was launched in error, because God is not offended by that tech. Absent the KHs, any dohlaran would have to make a MUCH bigger leap of faith to believe that God does not support the jihad.

With the King Haaralds it is obvious that either God approves the of them or they are demon inspired. If they are demon inspired, God will act to counter their operation in Safehold. God hasn't acted against Charis for creating them. AaMoF, there are TRUE seijin acting on Charis' side. There are many instances of jihadi forces observing these seijin in action.

That last bit is needed for Dohlaran politicians to make the final shift to surrendering on the best terms possible. Absent a plausible moral/religious argument, Dohlar would have to go down fighting.
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Re: [HFQ] SPOILERS -- Why didn't Merlin?
Post by JeffEngel   » Tue Nov 03, 2015 5:19 pm

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PeterZ wrote:Its not just the recognition of their inferiority, but the justification to rebel against the G4/Inquisition. The KHs are obvious examples that the jihad was launched in error, because God is not offended by that tech. Absent the KHs, any dohlaran would have to make a MUCH bigger leap of faith to believe that God does not support the jihad.

With the King Haaralds it is obvious that either God approves the of them or they are demon inspired. If they are demon inspired, God will act to counter their operation in Safehold. God hasn't acted against Charis for creating them. AaMoF, there are TRUE seijin acting on Charis' side. There are many instances of jihadi forces observing these seijin in action.

That last bit is needed for Dohlaran politicians to make the final shift to surrendering on the best terms possible. Absent a plausible moral/religious argument, Dohlar would have to go down fighting.

The KH VII's represent one specific large indication that God's okay with Charis. But that'd be on top of so much cumulative evidence of the same type - River ironclads, City ironclads, so much steel, gunpowder advances, breechloaders, Arabic numerals, all the way through cotton gins and schooner sail plans. And it'd be on top of so much cumulative moral evidence - the corruption of the Vicarate, the Sword of Schueler, the concentration camps for suspected heretics, marking off entire nations as heretics on the Temple's side, and Charis' honorable conduct and honesty on their side. And on top of all of that, there's the theological problem: they've got demons but we have no angels, or they have seijins and we're on the wrong side.

The Dohlarans who want to go on fighting are not waiting for more compelling reasons to settle an argument. They are simply very reluctant to contemplate the depth of mistakes in their world view that coming around to Charis' side would require, they are desperately blind to what is happening on Safehold, or they aren't appreciating just how much the Inquisition's reign of terror demands their support to go on. Even more reminders that their cause is both hopeless and wrong may do the trick, but they're not hurting for enough reasons as it stands if they can consider them with any fair judgment whatever.

The KH VII's are built to be a kind of brute force political argument: "look upon our guns, ye mighty, and despair!" Anyone who is well-informed and able to make a judgment on the basis of evidence is only waiting for the occasion to consider their political choices to decide that Clyntahn's jihad is an abomination. Sheer breathing room would do. Some people will, of course, require the club over the metaphorical head. When it comes to making a moral/religious judgment, I doubt Dohlaran ministers are that thick. They may be suffering from a refusal to consider it that way though. Desnairian ministers, for instance, probably haven't got the self-awareness to even frame it that way.
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Re: [HFQ] SPOILERS -- Why didn't Merlin?
Post by n7axw   » Tue Nov 03, 2015 10:01 pm

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I think that at the start if the Jihad Dohlar might have been willing to go down fighting. But Dohlar was no hot bed of fanaticism even then. After all the fact that Thirsk didn't go down fighting at Armageddon Reef was the thing that got Thirsk on Clyntahn's s**t list to start with.

But now? I doubt it. With Hanth pressing on Rychtar and Sharpfield at Claw Is with the ICN pressing on Dohlar with increasing assertiveness in the Gulf in spite of what happened in the narrows, I think the emphaasis has become survival rather than "going down fighting."

The difference has to do both with how the Jihad is going and with how much Clyntahn has used up his credit line. At the moment no one is inspired on the TL side.

Don
When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.
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Re: [HFQ] SPOILERS -- Why didn't Merlin?
Post by PeterZ   » Tue Nov 03, 2015 11:18 pm

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Does anyone on Safehold really believe that losing to Charis is to be completely destroyed? Not a chance. Certainly not on the mainland. They'll fight their hardest hoping to win, but knowing full well a loss won't mean the end of their way of life.....well for everyone but Inquisitors.

So why should Dohlar surrender quickly? No reason at all. Dohlar will fight until they can't and only seek terms when they are compelled to. Doing anything else risks truly being destroyed by the Inquisition. Clyntahn's bozos will destroy Dohlar.

The KHVIIs will hammer home just how ineffectual resistance will be. That if you piss off the ICN the effort it will take to lay waste the Dohlaran coastline with the KHVII is truly insignificant. So low that a petulant admiral could shatter Dohlar despite Cayleb's wishes. That will expedite surrender.
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Re: [HFQ] SPOILERS -- Why didn't Merlin?
Post by Expert snuggler   » Wed Nov 04, 2015 12:45 am

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>Petulant admiral

Come to think of it military discipline will have to be at its tightest to stop the ICN from taking revenge for the prisoners handed over to the Inquisition.
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Re: [HFQ] SPOILERS -- Why didn't Merlin?
Post by JeffEngel   » Wed Nov 04, 2015 7:55 am

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Expert snuggler wrote:>Petulant admiral

Come to think of it military discipline will have to be at its tightest to stop the ICN from taking revenge for the prisoners handed over to the Inquisition.

Yeah. That, and the general example of how warfare isn't ever precisely and finely calibrated application of violence til you reach a point where everyone's rational calculus agrees it's best to stop. That may be an ideal, and it may be one job (not the only one) of officers and officials to nudge war in that direction as much as is practical, but success is only ever partial.

Dohlar doesn't risk being rounded up into camps, tortured and killed fighting Charis, no. It does risk having every city in reach of a vengeful ICN, ICA, and RSA treated like Ferayd; every armed individual, every possible armed individual, and everyone in the blast radius of whatever is used on those possible combatants killed or maimed. That's war, and that's what they have as a prospect til they get out. The longer they make it, the likelier the terms of getting out will be worse too.

If Charis is charitable in peace and the Temple is not, well, that does help the moral argument about which is in the right, and - to a point - it argues that peace with Charis can be attractive.

If Dohlaran authorities don't think they can stop Charis, they shouldn't think the Temple without them can, and they should be planning on getting out of the war as soon as they can. That's likely to take arresting the Inquisition and being able to make the case to critical portions of Dohlar's army, navy, nobility, merchant class, and population generally that peace is tolerable and continued resistance is not.
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Re: [HFQ] SPOILERS -- Why didn't Merlin?
Post by CJK   » Wed Nov 04, 2015 10:59 am

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@ PeterZ one reason to surrender quickly is to get a better deal in that peace. Then there is the fallout of losing port cities or military forces to consider. Dohlar is far more active in sea going trade than any other mainland realm so it will probably hurt more to lose them.

The other reason to consider a fast peace deal is that the Charis army is larger than Dohlar's army, is pretty close by and the only CoGA force has to go into winter quarters. Dohlar is pretty close to the equator (similar distance as Charis) and it will be much easier for a winter campaign to be fought there.

Finally there is the small matter of how Dohlar has handed over Charis prisoners for torture. Twice. That is a compelling reason fro Charis to say no to a peace deal. Something that is more likely to happen when they can kick the crap out of Dohlar with no risk to themselves. At this point of the war Charis can afford to do this and it may not be worth letting Dohlar off the hook on this issue.
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Re: [HFQ] SPOILERS -- Why didn't Merlin?
Post by Louis R   » Wed Nov 04, 2015 2:32 pm

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While I don't disagree with the thrust of your argument, you might want to rethink the misquote of Ozymandias :D

That challenge leads into the closing lines: 'Nothing beside remains... boundless and bare [t]he lone and level sands stretch far away.' Not the quite way we want people thinking of Charis at this point.

JeffEngel wrote:< snip >
The KH VII's are built to be a kind of brute force political argument: "look upon our guns, ye mighty, and despair!"
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Re: [HFQ] SPOILERS -- Why didn't Merlin?
Post by n7axw   » Wed Nov 04, 2015 3:56 pm

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I have a somewhat different view of the situation than what has been presented here...

Does anyone seriously believe that the Manthyr's fate was the doing of anyone but the inquisition or that anyone in Dohlar could have prevented the second group of prisoners from being turned over short of putting themselves and their families at risk?

Well, they shouldn't have turned them over, you say. But the normal state of affairs on Safehold wouldn't be that Dohlar is sovereign and free to call its own shots. Mother Church has always had authority and has been deferred to and the inquisition is Mother Church's enforcement arm.

Now Safehold is in the midst of Jihad in which one of the primary issues is the Church's authority. Dohlar has been fighting to uphold that authority. Now how could Dohlar refuse to hand over the prisoners without putting themselves in the same camp as the heretics?

Bottom line is that the inquisition is responsible. It had the authority. It had the power to force the turn over of the prisoners. The only way that can change is for Dohlar to withdraw from the Jihad and get rid of of the inquisitors. In that context it would be a truly revolutionary move. In fact Charis didn't do it until she was attacked and faced with the threat of having their homes burned over their heads. Same with Siddarmark.

Without a collective decision on the part of Dohlar to withdraw from the Jihad, change its relationship to the church, and get rid of the inquisition, no individual is going to be able to intervene between the inquisition and the prisoners without placing himself and his family at risk. In fact unless events intervene, Thirsk is facing a trip to Zion for simply opposing the decision verbally.

Forcing that collective decision on Dohlar's part is the allies real war aim rather than punishing Dohlar. It is possible that the decision will be forced by military threat. Or perhaps it will be necessary for military force to be applied by Hanth and/or the ICN. I suspect that how it turns out will depend on whether or not Thirsk and possibly Ahlverez decide to act and if they can do so successfully.

Don
When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.
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Re: [HFQ] SPOILERS -- Why didn't Merlin?
Post by Louis R   » Thu Nov 05, 2015 12:15 pm

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Don,

What's happening here is that people are reacting from the viewpoint of the modern military concept of 'lawful command'. Many forget that this is a very recent invention - it was made up out of whole cloth for the Nuremberg and later trials of Germans defending themselves with the claim of 'just following orders'. And is, IMHO, a valid principle on which the acts of soldiers should be judged. It's also an extremely _fuzzy_ principle in application - the legality of many actions has to be tested in a court of law, which isn't practical when you're on ops. A really nice nasty example is the "Duty of Care" towards minors imposed by many jurisdictions these days, which, taken literally, would make combat operations in the presence of a civilian population impossible. Or not. TTBOMK, it's never been tested, although exiting, probably less stringent, military law protections for civilians have been. In any case, one thing that clearly _would_ be an unlawful command is one relating to the abuse or killing of POWs [one of the 'just obeying orders' situations]; that's what's at the backs of many minds when they say that Thirsk should not have surrendered his prisoners.

The problem with that position is twofold:

First, does the concept of lawful command even exist on Safehold? Almost certainly not, given what we see in HFQ. OTOH, it is clearly bubbling away beneath the surface, also given what we see in HFQ: people in the AoG deciding that they have been given orders that shouldn't be obeyed and acting accordingly.

Second, is the order to hand the prisoners to the Inquisition unlawful? On that, I think the situation is very clear indeed: no, it is not. On Safehold, Church law holds pride of place. In fact, I'm pretty sure that there _is_ no national law in the areas addressed in the Writ. The Writ defines not just the legal, but the moral standards by which Thirsk and Dohlar must be judged - and on neither ground do they have a leg to stand on when interfering in the Church's treatment of heretics. That's why they were reduced to pragmatic arguments, and why the fanatics hold those arguments in contempt.

Anybody saying that Thirsk should not have done what he did is demanding that he apply _their_ standards to the situation, not his own. People do that all the time, of course. It's really difficult to acknowledge that one's own standards may by other than complete and universal. Or, even worse, that you are misunderstanding and misapplying them!

What's really tearing Thirsk up, and a lot of his Navy with him, is the realisation that the Charisians are _not_ in reality heretics, by any objective evaluation of the Writ. That the Church is acting unjustly. And that, to jump to another issue, is why Sarmouth handed them the hot potato. They are now face to face with the application of that same injustice to the provably innocent. [Charis isn't provably innocent: the definition of heresy is, after all, the province of the Church]

n7axw wrote:I have a somewhat different view of the situation than what has been presented here...

Does anyone seriously believe that the Manthyr's fate was the doing of anyone but the inquisition or that anyone in Dohlar could have prevented the second group of prisoners from being turned over short of putting themselves and their families at risk?

Well, they shouldn't have turned them over, you say. But the normal state of affairs on Safehold wouldn't be that Dohlar is sovereign and free to call its own shots. Mother Church has always had authority and has been deferred to and the inquisition is Mother Church's enforcement arm.

Now Safehold is in the midst of Jihad in which one of the primary issues is the Church's authority. Dohlar has been fighting to uphold that authority. Now how could Dohlar refuse to hand over the prisoners without putting themselves in the same camp as the heretics?

Bottom line is that the inquisition is responsible. It had the authority. It had the power to force the turn over of the prisoners. The only way that can change is for Dohlar to withdraw from the Jihad and get rid of of the inquisitors. In that context it would be a truly revolutionary move. In fact Charis didn't do it until she was attacked and faced with the threat of having their homes burned over their heads. Same with Siddarmark.

Without a collective decision on the part of Dohlar to withdraw from the Jihad, change its relationship to the church, and get rid of the inquisition, no individual is going to be able to intervene between the inquisition and the prisoners without placing himself and his family at risk. In fact unless events intervene, Thirsk is facing a trip to Zion for simply opposing the decision verbally.

Forcing that collective decision on Dohlar's part is the allies real war aim rather than punishing Dohlar. It is possible that the decision will be forced by military threat. Or perhaps it will be necessary for military force to be applied by Hanth and/or the ICN. I suspect that how it turns out will depend on whether or not Thirsk and possibly Ahlverez decide to act and if they can do so successfully.

Don
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