Merlin's Upcoming Conversation with Thirsk

@CJK

Yes, Clyntahn was right about Charisian innovation. Unfortunately, to prove he is right he requires divine intervention. Absent that intervention he buttresses Charis' position. If Charisian innovation is Shan-wei's work, then God or the archangels MUST manifest somehow. Absent such manifestation, the Reformers are right. What is happening now is a corrupt abuse of power by the G4 including the jihad.

Armed with that logic and a Charisian Empire that can beat back the CoGA, Reform minded nations don't have to get the snott beat out of it to withdraw from the jihad. They can leave before they get the snott beat out of them confident that Charis won't be destroyed and will be there hammer future CoGA aggression.

Those KHs almost become God's shield defending righteous nations from CoGA corruption.

PeterZ wrote:@CJK

Yes, Clyntahn was right about Charisian innovation. Unfortunately, to prove he is right he requires divine intervention. Absent that intervention he buttresses Charis' position. If Charisian innovation is Shan-wei's work, then God or the archangels MUST manifest somehow. Absent such manifestation, the Reformers are right. What is happening now is a corrupt abuse of power by the G4 including the jihad.

Armed with that logic and a Charisian Empire that can beat back the CoGA, Reform minded nations don't have to get the snott beat out of it to withdraw from the jihad. They can leave before they get the snott beat out of them confident that Charis won't be destroyed and will be there hammer future CoGA aggression.

Those KHs almost become God's shield defending righteous nations from CoGA corruption.

I do think that's one element of thinking that nominally Loyalist nations can use to get out, and you're right to bring it out. But I think you may treat it as if it were the only strand in a decision to opt out of the jihad, and the KH VII's as the near-unique demonstration of it.

Thirsk's captured lighter can make the point too, in a couple ways. For one, it is itself a piece of casual, serious innovation that's not drawing divine wrath. For another, it represents how much capacity Charis has to build stuff that it can whip out and mass-produce things like that that it certainly does not need to survive, but does anyway.

The KH VII's will be visible, impossible-to-ignore demonstrations of Charisian innovations that the Intendant in the Sky is apparently approving, and they will be indications that Charisian industry is certainly not drawing divine wrath either when it is expanding by leaps and bounds. They have a role as being so in-your-face (at least along coasts) and directly applicable to the fighting, as Charisian demonstrations of being Rakurai-untargeted people go, but they are by no means alone that way - they're just a tip of one pyramid, an Everest in a Himalayan chain.

And even the "Approved by Langhorne, Looks Like" strand is only one argument for getting out of the jihad. They're offered plenty evidence that they're decent people and the men in Zion are not - you have to willfully ignore that to think you're fighting on the side of angels serving the Temple in the jihad, and that's getting harder and harder. If you suppose that Safehold's God is a God of Battles too, the Allies' successes in the jihad argue that they're the side of right. (I don't think much of that argument, but I'm sure many on Safehold do.) Lastly, responsible rulers do not want their people on a losing side, if they have to be in a war at all, and cynical individuals don't care to be on that side on their own. Fighting Charis does no one any good.

Not that Thirsk needs these reminders, of course, but even in this context, the fact that they can appeal to others may be appropriate, as can the suggestion that - finally! - he can exercise his oaths to serve Dohlar's interests without his family paying for it, and defend his people and the Church that serves them from the Church of Zion that betrays them.

TN4994 wrote:I should retain my sanity for about another 238 days, 6 hours, 33 minutes, and 5 seconds Earth time.

What happens then?

CJK wrote:@ PeterZ,

snip

(Quoting myself here)
There is nothing Charis could do to convince some people to surrender without a fight, the fanatical CoGA supporters or inquisitors will not give in without a fight.

snip.

Sorry I glossed over this earlier. This is the most important element in fighting the CoGA. The most fanatical supporters of the CoGA do so for doctrinal reasons. Other rabid supporters might have political or economical reasons for supporting the CoGA. Some might have their businesses tied to the current CoGA structure. Others like the power they wield in the current structure. For these sorts of supporters there is a pure cost benefit analysis going on constantly. If the cost of supporting outweighs the benefits of dumping the CoGA, they continue to support the CoGA. Otherwise, bye-bye.

The religious fanatics, however, support the CoGA because they believe in a doctrine. Undermine that doctrine and you undermine the support. In this case the CoGA has the authority to do as it does in the jihad. It also has the responsibilities given to it by the archangels. If it abrogates its divinely charged responsibilities, its legal and secular authority to act is as Nahrmahn states squandered along with its moral authority in the eyes of those fanatics.

Father Kuhnymychu is the perfect example of this. He never had a doubt prior to Stefyny confronting him. Yet that child's demand for help recalled to him his responsibilities. Responsibilities his fanatic faith could not evade. In living up to those responsibilities Father Kuhnymychu had to set aside the charge his superiors placed on him. That act of meeting his responsibilities that his fanatical faith recognized contradicted the charge his temporal superiors placed on him. Temporal superiors lost as they always will with fanatics.

So, I disagree with your statement. While fanatics will not give up their beliefs, their beliefs can lead them to give up the fight. They simply need the proper argument. Whether the courageous demand of a child for help or the inescapable proof that God doesn't hate innovations after all found in the form of a massive steel leviathan whose shells each have more destructive power than entire broadsides from lesser ships.

@JeffEngel

Its that capacity that will really sway Dohlar into rejecting the jihad. If Dohlar has a reasoned theological or doctrinal argument that supports Charisian innovations, the ability to produce as much steel and the goods that steel represents as Charis produces means immense wealth. Enough wealth that a nation barely 6%-8% (the EoC) of Safehold's population can out produce ~80% of the remainder. Out produce and still man armies and navies large enough to hammer that other 80% to bleeding pulps.

Mercantile wannabe Dohlar will see that capacity and drool. Mercantile South Harchong will likely see the prospects just as quickly. Both will find a way to step back from open hostilities and copy the innovations.

PeterZ wrote:Don,

If the Haaralds and Cities make the passage to the Gulf of Dohlar together, I wonder how they will be deployed? I suspect the Cities will take out the ports in South Hatching, while the Haaralds take out the Dolahran ports. I suppose it doesn't matter. Well, the Haaralds will likely be using smokeless powder and true high explosives and so would be much more effective.

I wonder if more than one city needs to receive the KH treatment before that nation offers to leave the jihad?

It could go this way. But I wonder. Once ICN has uncontested control of the Gulf, those ports lose their value... But maybe they will hit them anyway just to make the point...

With Dohlar the only port that really matters is Gorath. Take out the port and bring along enough infantry to control the city and you've pretty much knocked Dohlar out of the war. In fact that is probably easier than Hanth slogging away against Rychtyr who would certainly be in no position to contest the outcome in Gorath.

Don

jeremyr wrote:

TN4994 wrote:I should retain my sanity for about another 238 days, 6 hours, 33 minutes, and 5 seconds Earth time.

What happens then?

Nail Biting, Tantrums, Going Clyntahn on someone.
The usual.

PeterZ wrote:

CJK wrote:@ PeterZ,

snip

(Quoting myself here)
There is nothing Charis could do to convince some people to surrender without a fight, the fanatical CoGA supporters or inquisitors will not give in without a fight.

snip.

Sorry I glossed over this earlier. This is the most important element in fighting the CoGA. The most fanatical supporters of the CoGA do so for doctrinal reasons. Other rabid supporters might have political or economical reasons for supporting the CoGA. Some might have their businesses tied to the current CoGA structure. Others like the power they wield in the current structure. For these sorts of supporters there is a pure cost benefit analysis going on constantly. If the cost of supporting outweighs the benefits of dumping the CoGA, they continue to support the CoGA. Otherwise, bye-bye.

The religious fanatics, however, support the CoGA because they believe in a doctrine. Undermine that doctrine and you undermine the support. In this case the CoGA has the authority to do as it does in the jihad. It also has the responsibilities given to it by the archangels. If it abrogates its divinely charged responsibilities, its legal and secular authority to act is as Nahrmahn states squandered along with its moral authority in the eyes of those fanatics.

Father Kuhnymychu is the perfect example of this. He never had a doubt prior to Stefyny confronting him. Yet that child's demand for help recalled to him his responsibilities. Responsibilities his fanatic faith could not evade. In living up to those responsibilities Father Kuhnymychu had to set aside the charge his superiors placed on him. That act of meeting his responsibilities that his fanatical faith recognized contradicted the charge his temporal superiors placed on him. Temporal superiors lost as they always will with fanatics.

So, I disagree with your statement. While fanatics will not give up their beliefs, their beliefs can lead them to give up the fight. They simply need the proper argument. Whether the courageous demand of a child for help or the inescapable proof that God doesn't hate innovations after all found in the form of a massive steel leviathan whose shells each have more destructive power than entire broadsides from lesser ships.

I suspect people supporting the jihad for the most part do so for a complex of reasons: everyone around them is; their nation calls upon them to do so; they love their Church and feel it is threatened; they really believe Charisians are heretics and God and the Archangels call upon them to fight; or they can get money, power, and/or prestige doing so and/or stand to lose them otherwise. Even the religious fanatics can have a range of fanaticisms driving them: theology; rage that anyone would defy them/their Church; and the hunger for power and its exercise upon other human beings.

Father Kunhymychu, if I recall correctly, hadn't been without doubts til Stefyny asked for food - they were just stewing inside him without yet making a difference in his gross behavior. But a starving girl asking for food for her father, after risking her life fearlessly to make the request - well, he wasn't able to keep the doubts in check any more.

For most people, it's going to be the cumulative result of a lot of things they just can't abide any longer. Some of them will have their own Stefyny Moments - and certainly the sight of a KH VII could bring one on, for a variety of reasons - but some may just have a quiet time when they think about their values and situation on Safehold and decide they've got to make a change, and realize that they can do so and live, or simply aren't interested in living so much that that makes a commanding difference.

The first snippet from the next book is gonna be a doozie!

Randomiser wrote:The first snippet from the next book is gonna be a doozie!

Bless David, but I hope that if he does snippets, they happen on a predictable schedule.

Don