Synopsis for At the Sign of Triumph

Expert snuggler wrote:Clyntahn could dig through Inquisition archives and find records of all the Inquisition victims run through the mill for waving magnets near wires or putting dissimilar metals in acid, then repeat their experiments.

Clyntahn has no idea that there's anything there that would be militarily useful--and there isn't, either. The war will be over before he could turn such beginnings into useful warfighting capability.

Rayno might have the imagination to ask "How can we turn Shan-Wei's arts against her?".

Electricity would have an immediate valuable application in field telephones. Even with embryonic electrical tech you can build spark-gap transmitters with some military utility. Or at least they would have military utility if they didn't have the side effect of summoning rocks from above.

Expert snuggler wrote:Rayno might have the imagination to ask "How can we turn Shan-Wei's arts against her?".

Electricity would have an immediate valuable application in field telephones. Even with embryonic electrical tech you can build spark-gap transmitters with some military utility. Or at least they would have military utility if they didn't have the side effect of summoning rocks from above.

There is actually no evidence...just a significant concern...that the OBS bombardment section is even turned on. The defenses are working, and it worked a really long time ago under human control, but does it work now?

phillies wrote:

Expert snuggler wrote:Rayno might have the imagination to ask "How can we turn Shan-Wei's arts against her?".

Electricity would have an immediate valuable application in field telephones. Even with embryonic electrical tech you can build spark-gap transmitters with some military utility. Or at least they would have military utility if they didn't have the side effect of summoning rocks from above.

There is actually no evidence...just a significant concern...that the OBS bombardment section is even turned on. The defenses are working, and it worked a really long time ago under human control, but does it work now?

Good point. There are really three possibilities. One is that the thing doesn't work at all which after a thousand years is a dtistinct possibility the odds of which are impossible to quantify. Two is that it runs on autonomous mode programed to react to specific violations of the proscriptions such as the introduction electricity. Three is that the sensors tied into the system inform an entity such as an AI, probably under the Temple, which then has to undergo a decision process about how to respond and then give a command.

My own hunch is probably no. 3.

Don

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n7axw wrote:Good point. There are really three possibilities. One is that the thing doesn't work at all which after a thousand years is a dtistinct possibility the odds of which are impossible to quantify. Two is that it runs on autonomous mode programed to react to specific violations of the proscriptions such as the introduction electricity. Three is that the sensors tied into the system inform an entity such as an AI, probably under the Temple, which then has to undergo a decision process about how to respond and then give a command.

My own hunch is probably no. 3.

Don

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My opinion is that number one is a very low possibility. The defenses worked quite well. The launchers probably do too since they have just been sitting there for nearly 1000 years doing nothing. Merlin's stuff in the cave worked perfectly, there is no reason that the OBS wouldn't work as well.

I have always thought that number 2 was a very low possibility, and that number 3 was the way that the angels went - there is textev of manual control of the OBS in both the original version (Anti-Alexandria) and the current version (Anti-SSK), and anecdotal textev of other strikes commanded by the angels.

thanatos wrote:Yet even a fight to a standstill would be a loss for the Church as their finances are in terrible shape (10-15 months tops according to Duchairn). They wouldn't be able to fund the army for long so unless they succeed outright and recapture territory lost to the heresy (that they control before HFQ) they're screwed.

I wonder if Duchairn's estimate includes an allowance for the fact that the Church's income wouldn't recover all that fast even if they pulled a victory out of the hat? Especially as Clyntahn and the Inquisition would be almost certain to go straight into killing the goose that lays the golden eggs when it comes to Siddermark and the Charisian Empire?

I'd expect it does, but his estimate of how badly the Inquisition would prevent an economic recovery (whilst at the same time keeping the occupation costs high) may well turn to be optimistic! (Personally I suspect Clyntahn's approach to an occupied Charis would make the Morgenthau Plan look like an economic stimulus package!)

PalmerSperry wrote:

thanatos wrote:Yet even a fight to a standstill would be a loss for the Church as their finances are in terrible shape (10-15 months tops according to Duchairn). They wouldn't be able to fund the army for long so unless they succeed outright and recapture territory lost to the heresy (that they control before HFQ) they're screwed.

I wonder if Duchairn's estimate includes an allowance for the fact that the Church's income wouldn't recover all that fast even if they pulled a victory out of the hat? Especially as Clyntahn and the Inquisition would be almost certain to go straight into killing the goose that lays the golden eggs when it comes to Siddermark and the Charisian Empire?

Yeah. What made them able to lay golden eggs is precisely what made both of them problems in the first place. Killing the goose isn't an unhappy accident of the jihad - it's the goal. I imagine that Duchairn didn't come to grips with that for a long while; that Trynair and Magwair do not exercise their imaginations that much; and that Clyntahn worked to conceal that as long as he had to while having no personal concern about the economic ramifications.

I'd expect it does, but his estimate of how badly the Inquisition would prevent an economic recovery (whilst at the same time keeping the occupation costs high) may well turn to be optimistic! (Personally I suspect Clyntahn's approach to an occupied Charis would make the Morgenthau Plan look like an economic stimulus package!)

I think it's more Rome's plan for Carthage's "stimulus package" writ very large. The tithes from the Out Islands and eastern Siddarmark in their entirety would be collected from the rats and vultures skulking around the burned-out ruins.

I keep wondering about vacuum welding. It has been claimed/stated, somewhere that I stumbled across but can't now find, that long periods in space tend to weld metal moving parts together so that they no longer function. So I ask: is this true, and if so is it why the ISS needs so many maintenance spacewalks? And leading on from that, why is Merlin so convinced that it hasn't happened to the dreaded bombardment station?
Cheers
John

n7axw wrote:...Three is that the sensors tied into the system inform an entity such as an AI, probably under the Temple, which then has to undergo a decision process about how to respond and then give a command.

My own hunch is probably no. 3.

Why would the AI running the detection algorithms need to defer to a ground-based (and therefore more vulnerable) AI?

John Prigent wrote:I keep wondering about vacuum welding. It has been claimed/stated, somewhere that I stumbled across but can't now find, that long periods in space tend to weld metal moving parts together so that they no longer function. So I ask: is this true, and if so is it why the ISS needs so many maintenance spacewalks? And leading on from that, why is Merlin so convinced that it hasn't happened to the dreaded bombardment station?
Cheers
John

Because Merlin also knows about possible automated maintenance systems that were available to the TF at the time of Operation Ark. Given that the Textev points to PICA construction being a matter of materials and construction-programmed nanites, I can easily imagine that the Temple and the OBS are both maintained with nanites crawling throughout their systems, replacing defective molecular circuitry, building replacements in situ, dumping the damaged components into recycling devices and collecting new raw materials from throughout the Kau-zhi System. If critical systems had broken down before without similar repairs, any competent member of the command crew would have taken the precaution of setting an emergency "wake up procedure" to fix said critical system.