When Merlin leads the Charge into Zion....

We know the Temple did not exist before the Alexandria strike. Not too long after the strike the War started. The rebels had access to fabbers and had an initial advantage in production. That advantage was overcome over time by the capacity of Heimlicar's fabbers. This sequence does not argue for the command crew having capacity to produce the massive amounts of battlesteel/armour the Temple was built with between the Alexandria strike and the early stages of the war.

Which leaves later in the war after the command crew gained their decisive advantage in production. At that time the Temple would have faced some modern tech threats but predominantly low tech challenges and threats. Fewer and fewer of the crew could have interfaced with the Temple's control systems and work would have still needed to be done. Just as they "made" seijin, I suspect they also provided interface tools like the Key for integral members of the Safehold born staff.

Randomiser wrote:It's easy to work out the problems in them getting access to the Temple, the hard bit is finding a plausible route that does get them in.

I think the old sanctuary/church that the Wylsynns and "The Circle" met in just might be one end of a secret tunnel connecting to the Temple Basement. One that has been forgotten by the Temple Hierarchy but possible known to "Helm Cleaver."

PeterZ wrote:We know the Temple did not exist before the Alexandria strike. Not too long after the strike the War started. The rebels had access to fabbers and had an initial advantage in production. That advantage was overcome over time by the capacity of Heimlicar's fabbers. This sequence does not argue for the command crew having capacity to produce the massive amounts of battlesteel/armour the Temple was built with between the Alexandria strike and the early stages of the war.

Which leaves later in the war after the command crew gained their decisive advantage in production. At that time the Temple would have faced some modern tech threats but predominantly low tech challenges and threats. Fewer and fewer of the crew could have interfaced with the Temple's control systems and work would have still needed to be done. Just as they "made" seijin, I suspect they also provided interface tools like the Key for integral members of the Safehold born staff.

As far as I remember most of that is supposition. I can:t remember any textev that says the Temple was built before the end of the war against the fallen, but I might be wrong. There just is no textev for computer access for colonists. That is mere speculation on your part. More likely the command crew designed the Temple from the start to need as little outside intervention as possible, particularly if it was designed late in or after the war.

We certainly do not know that the key "is one way to access to the Temple's controls". All we know is that it gives access to something Schueler thought would help in an emergency. It could well be entirely separate from the controls and should be for good data security. The key is not good evidence of any backdoors. For example it may awaken a recording of Schueler which then gives instruction in how to use the 'front door'. Or it may do something else entirely.

Randomiser wrote:XO, none of the flesh and blood members of the inner circle has neural implants, they have various gadgets (earpieces and contact lenses mainly). The chance of the Temple being able to detect them at a distance is negligible.

That distance would be five miles. Remember, Merlin doesn't dare to operate any remotes within 5 miles of the Temple because he'd certain that they'd be detected even under maximum stealth and emcon. Even remotes operating in Zion outside the 5 mile radius are operating indepedently under max emcon because any transmissions MIGHT be detected by the Temple.

Given those conditions, there's no way an Inner Circle spy is going to get close to the Temple without giving up all the fancy high tech communications gear. And even that may not be enough given that all the Inner Circle has been injected with medical nanotech (they transmit medical information).

Well there is one... well TWO high tech devices that everyone KNOWS won't trigger any Temple alarms: the Stone of Schueler and the Key.

Randomiser wrote:We certainly do not know that the key "is one way to access to the Temple's controls". All we know is that it gives access to something Schueler thought would help in an emergency. It could well be entirely separate from the controls and should be for good data security. The key is not good evidence of any backdoors. For example it may awaken a recording of Schueler which then gives instruction in how to use the 'front door'. Or it may do something else entirely.

I think the best guess (fan guess, not one done by anyone in-universe AFAIK) is that the Key holds a recording of Schueler's personality.

Even if that's true, God (aka Weber) only knows how Schueler would react to current events after he wakes up. And by using the Key the way he instructed his descendants to, he would potentially be in complete control of the entire Temple, the OBS, and whatever other high tech caches the "Archangels" left behind. And short of nuking Zion, there'd be no way for anyone to do anything to stop him from doing whatever he wants.

My own feeling is that the Temple was built at the end of the War, as a celebration of the triumph of Good, although a somewhat earlier start date can't be ruled out. That, BTW, raises a number of issues, but the key one here is that it is very doubtful that Chirhiro would have wanted any ordinary mortal - or any seijin, for that matter, assuming they were permitted to survive that long - to realise that there was anything _to_ interact with. There won't be anything in the way of general controls that has ever been accessible to any outside the command crew - the 'Angels'. By the same token, it's not likely that he [or he and Schueler, it's still not at all clear what the relationship between them was] would have declared the War over before verifying that there were no surviving command crew that weren't his supporters - by positive identification of remains or hard intel that they were at the impact points of rakurai strikes. That suggests that any paranoia on Chihiro's part would be directed against attempts to replace him as Big Cheese, not external threats that no longer existed. Which doesn't necessarily mean that the security systems aren't just as elaborate as people have been suggesting, but the evidence does suggest that there weren't any threats to his position to guard against - and people who dislike technology intensely do tend to want the tech they have to use to be as open as it can get.

I wouldn't find it at all implausible if it turns out that the only real challenge is gaining physical access to the control centre.

Randomiser wrote:

PeterZ wrote:We know the Temple did not exist before the Alexandria strike. Not too long after the strike the War started. The rebels had access to fabbers and had an initial advantage in production. That advantage was overcome over time by the capacity of Heimlicar's fabbers. This sequence does not argue for the command crew having capacity to produce the massive amounts of battlesteel/armour the Temple was built with between the Alexandria strike and the early stages of the war.

Which leaves later in the war after the command crew gained their decisive advantage in production. At that time the Temple would have faced some modern tech threats but predominantly low tech challenges and threats. Fewer and fewer of the crew could have interfaced with the Temple's control systems and work would have still needed to be done. Just as they "made" seijin, I suspect they also provided interface tools like the Key for integral members of the Safehold born staff.

As far as I remember most of that is supposition. I can:t remember any textev that says the Temple was built before the end of the war against the fallen, but I might be wrong. There just is no textev for computer access for colonists. That is mere speculation on your part. More likely the command crew designed the Temple from the start to need as little outside intervention as possible, particularly if it was designed late in or after the war.

We certainly do not know that the key "is one way to access to the Temple's controls". All we know is that it gives access to something Schueler thought would help in an emergency. It could well be entirely separate from the controls and should be for good data security. The key is not good evidence of any backdoors. For example it may awaken a recording of Schueler which then gives instruction in how to use the 'front door'. Or it may do something else entirely.

We know that the temple was built before the end of the war against the fallen because:

1. The original headquarters of the TF team in the Lake Pei Enclave was destroyed by Pei Kau-Yung.
2. After St. Kohdy was captured and educated as to the nature of the war, he went to the temple to talk to someone he trusted, and where he mysteriously died.

Therefore we know that the temple existed before the end of the War Against the Fallen, and that it was built by the remainder of Langhorne's adherents.

It may be that the construction began before the war did, as a new headquarters would be needed after Pei Kau-Yung's land clearing efforts, and the remainder of Langhorne's staff may have decided to build a palace of a temple, based on the idea of a Safehold version of the Vatican.

Considering the construction materials used, either they wished to contain any further land clearance efforts by Pei Kau-Yung's adherents or they used it as the headquarters of the "Angelic" side of the war which would suggest that somewhere within the temple, there is Terran Federation equipment waiting to be used.

Our favourite Runner after Celery has, as far as I recall, never mentioned the size of the temple which besides leaving him lots of flexibility as to how it works, also allows us a lot of speculative opportunities. Certainly it is much larger than your neighbourhood church, probably much larger than any cathedral here on Earth. Possibly even larger than the Vatican (44 hectares/110 acres).