Current Arc Ending Scenarios (Spoilers?)

Isilith wrote:I honestly can't see how he can wrap up the war in less than two books. Without a lot of handwavium it happens. Even if the allies totally routed the MH, they couldn't march far enough and fast enough though enemy territory, to actually take Zion. Within the span of one book that is.

Methinks you are correct and besides we have all those lovely story arcs to complete - Iry's twins, a backup heir for the Empire, the new battleships, Thirsk, and on and on. Given that much of HFQ is about St Khody, that shows how our Mad Wizard Webber (MWW) keeps opening new threads, not closing them. Fasten your seatbelts ...

Clyntahn, I think, would definitely kill himself if he could ever be truly convinced that he had lost. What the odds of that happening are, I don't have a clue.

Duchairn's another interesting question, and one I've been wondering about for a while. We currently have two conflicting views on Duchairn's beliefs - Duchairn thinks he has to try to salvage as much as he can from the war he started, and so it's his moral duty to not let himself be killed uselessly. Clyntahn, as far as I remember, believes Duchairn is simply deceiving himself that it's a moral issue when he's really just too scared to risk his life standing up to Clyntahn.

This makes me wonder if MWW isn't setting up a scenario where Duchairn is finally going to have to choose. Something will come up - something big enough to be worth Duchairn's life and the shifting balance of power among the Go4 that will result if he dies. And then he'll have to decide whether all his moral courage is just a delusion, or whether he does have the courage to face that his life and exalted position in the church were meant "for such a time as this."

And I'm pretty sure I know what that something might be. Wouldn't it make sense that if anyone knows for sure what's underneath the Temple it would be the members of the Go4? With Charis on Zion's doorstep, Duchairn might realize that, from what he's learned of the protections that the Archangels left behind, there's about to be a bloodbath (either because of automatic protections, or because Clyntahn would rather pull down a Rakurai strike on top of himself and all of Zion than possibly let the heretics win).

I'm not sure what he'd choose at that point - whether he really would have the courage of his convictions in that final extremity, or whether he'd have spent to long bending to Clyntahn and been too invested in Mother Church to decide otherwise. I hope he'd do the right thing. Particularly as there are a couple of scenarios I'd *love* to see.

Option 1, Duchairn decides to make for the Charisian encampments to tell them about what's under the Temple, even though he knows his own life is probably forfeit once they get all the information they need from him. Along the way, he gives his cloak to a starving prostitute and suggests she join him in heading to the Charisians since she'll be safer there. Cue Clyntahn's assassins arriving to prevent that and the "prostitute" turning out to be Nimue C, sent there to make sure Duchairn got to the Charisian camp in one piece.

Option 2, Duchairn confronts Clyntahn privately, or otherwise prevents the Temple power sources from blowing up the allied army without informing anyone that that's what he's done. A year or two later, Merlin shows up at this extremely remote monastery to talk to "Brother Langhorne". He proceeds to inform Duchairn that he knows exactly who he is, but he didn't actually come to assassinate him. He's there to thank Duchairn for preventing the whatever-it-was underneath the Temple from activating, and he's willing to let Duchairn retire in peace because of it - at least so long as Duchairn is willing to stay anonymously retired!

Charybdis wrote:

Isilith wrote:I honestly can't see how he can wrap up the war in less than two books. Without a lot of handwavium it happens. Even if the allies totally routed the MH, they couldn't march far enough and fast enough though enemy territory, to actually take Zion. Within the span of one book that is.

Methinks you are correct and besides we have all those lovely story arcs to complete - Iry's twins, a backup heir for the Empire, the new battleships, Thirsk, and on and on. Given that much of HFQ is about St Khody, that shows how our Mad Wizard Webber (MWW) keeps opening new threads, not closing them. Fasten your seatbelts ...

My (and several other people's) prior observations show me that RFC/MWW does not write war porn. It is my opinion that the discussion of the defeat of the Mighty Host et. al. in the book will be fairly general in nature. My template for this discussion would be along the lines of a western produced 200 page survey history of World War II discussing the Japanese final offenses in China or the Soviet offenses against Japan, both in 1945. Hundreds of thousands of casualties and unbelievable human suffering tossed off in a page or two, if it is even mentioned. (And some people wonder why our youth are ill-informed about world events.) This leaves plenty of room for the human interactions that make his books so enjoyable to me.

(Although I admit that I would like to see RFC/MWW's detailed discussion of those actions as a forum entry much like the one he provided several years ago that gave a detailed breakdown of the various Safehold militaries. I am more than a little twisted in that I like studying detailed military history and love discovering military trivia previously unknown to me. For example this short week I found out the contributions of the Fiji Army (three infantry battalions) in the Southwest Pacific Theater and that the Mexican Air Force had a P-51 fighter squadron that participated in the liberation of the Philippines.)

Thank you for that factoid about the Mexican Air Force. They flew 25 new P-47D-30-RA aircraft.

3! Good grief! That may well be the 1st- or 2nd-biggest per-capita contribution of the entire war. Not counting the Gurkhas, of course, but the Fijians weren't pros.

USMA74 wrote:(Although I admit that I would like to see RFC/MWW's detailed discussion of those actions as a forum entry much like the one he provided several years ago that gave a detailed breakdown of the various Safehold militaries. I am more than a little twisted in that I like studying detailed military history and love discovering military trivia previously unknown to me. For example this short week I found out the contributions of the Fiji Army (three infantry battalions) in the Southwest Pacific Theater and that the Mexican Air Force had a P-51 fighter squadron that participated in the liberation of the Philippines.)

Zarz wrote:Clyntahn, I think, would definitely kill himself if he could ever be truly convinced that he had lost. What the odds of that happening are, I don't have a clue.

Duchairn's another interesting question, and one I've been wondering about for a while. We currently have two conflicting views on Duchairn's beliefs - Duchairn thinks he has to try to salvage as much as he can from the war he started, and so it's his moral duty to not let himself be killed uselessly. Clyntahn, as far as I remember, believes Duchairn is simply deceiving himself that it's a moral issue when he's really just too scared to risk his life standing up to Clyntahn.

This makes me wonder if MWW isn't setting up a scenario where Duchairn is finally going to have to choose. Something will come up - something big enough to be worth Duchairn's life and the shifting balance of power among the Go4 that will result if he dies. And then he'll have to decide whether all his moral courage is just a delusion, or whether he does have the courage to face that his life and exalted position in the church were meant "for such a time as this."

And I'm pretty sure I know what that something might be. Wouldn't it make sense that if anyone knows for sure what's underneath the Temple it would be the members of the Go4? With Charis on Zion's doorstep, Duchairn might realize that, from what he's learned of the protections that the Archangels left behind, there's about to be a bloodbath (either because of automatic protections, or because Clyntahn would rather pull down a Rakurai strike on top of himself and all of Zion than possibly let the heretics win).

I'm not sure what he'd choose at that point - whether he really would have the courage of his convictions in that final extremity, or whether he'd have spent to long bending to Clyntahn and been too invested in Mother Church to decide otherwise. I hope he'd do the right thing. Particularly as there are a couple of scenarios I'd *love* to see.

Option 1, Duchairn decides to make for the Charisian encampments to tell them about what's under the Temple, even though he knows his own life is probably forfeit once they get all the information they need from him. Along the way, he gives his cloak to a starving prostitute and suggests she join him in heading to the Charisians since she'll be safer there. Cue Clyntahn's assassins arriving to prevent that and the "prostitute" turning out to be Nimue C, sent there to make sure Duchairn got to the Charisian camp in one piece.

Option 2, Duchairn confronts Clyntahn privately, or otherwise prevents the Temple power sources from blowing up the allied army without informing anyone that that's what he's done. A year or two later, Merlin shows up at this extremely remote monastery to talk to "Brother Langhorne". He proceeds to inform Duchairn that he knows exactly who he is, but he didn't actually come to assassinate him. He's there to thank Duchairn for preventing the whatever-it-was underneath the Temple from activating, and he's willing to let Duchairn retire in peace because of it - at least so long as Duchairn is willing to stay anonymously retired!

Mumm...Clyntahn suiciding?? Maybe. I think it's more likely that the more desperate he becomes, the more people he'll kill for "failing the Jihad." We'll see...

Don

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n7axw wrote:

Mumm...Clyntahn suiciding?? Maybe. I think it's more likely that the more desperate he becomes, the more people he'll kill for "failing the Jihad." We'll see...

Don

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I agree, I think our celery chaser has set Clyntahn up with very Hitler like personality. Where if they end up being too weak to defend "god's church", then they deserve to die... ALL of them.

Just like Hitler tried to destroy Germany since they proved too weak to hold the Reich.

Isilith wrote:
I agree, I think our celery chaser has set Clyntahn up with very Hitler like personality. Where if they end up being too weak to defend "god's church", then they deserve to die... ALL of them.

Just like Hitler tried to destroy Germany since they proved too weak to hold the Reich.

I agree - as long as there's the smallest possibility of God miraculously saving the Church, Clyntahn will continue to rant and rave and order the deaths of anyone who might be getting in the way of that glorious victory.

But, again like Hitler, if it finally comes down to heretics at the doors of the Temple, I don't think Clyntahn would let them take him alive. (Even better if it was a method that took them out with him.)

What I'm not quite sure about is whether there'd be any moment before the heretics arriving at the doors in which Clyntahn would recognize that he needed to flee to save himself. He's nasty enough that I could totally see him abandoning everyone to do so, but he's also fanatic enough that I'm not sure he'd ever get to a point where he could admit even to himself that he'd need to save himself - at least not before it was too late for him to actually do so.

Zarz wrote:

Isilith wrote:
I agree, I think our celery chaser has set Clyntahn up with very Hitler like personality. Where if they end up being too weak to defend "god's church", then they deserve to die... ALL of them.

Just like Hitler tried to destroy Germany since they proved too weak to hold the Reich.

I agree - as long as there's the smallest possibility of God miraculously saving the Church, Clyntahn will continue to rant and rave and order the deaths of anyone who might be getting in the way of that glorious victory.

But, again like Hitler, if it finally comes down to heretics at the doors of the Temple, I don't think Clyntahn would let them take him alive. (Even better if it was a method that took them out with him.)

What I'm not quite sure about is whether there'd be any moment before the heretics arriving at the doors in which Clyntahn would recognize that he needed to flee to save himself. He's nasty enough that I could totally see him abandoning everyone to do so, but he's also fanatic enough that I'm not sure he'd ever get to a point where he could admit even to himself that he'd need to save himself - at least not before it was too late for him to actually do so.

All of us might want to remember that when capture by the Soviets became inevitable, Hitler did suicide.

Don

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n7axw wrote:
All of us might want to remember that when capture by the Soviets became inevitable, Hitler did suicide.

Don

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Or did he? Not sure if you have heard, but "Hitler's skull", that the Russians took from the grave outside the bunker... well, DNA testing has proven that the skull belonged to a woman.