You know, guys, interspersing replies makes snipping without misattribution extremely difficult. In fact, I gave up
Anyway, ISTR that Himself said that the current OBS is a replacement of the original used on Alexandria, and little can be deduced about one from what we know about the other. The current system's degree of autonomy has been a subject of debate, in-universe and on the boards, for a very long time now. All possible positions have been staked out - often by multiple parties - and are being defended to the death. In fact, I suspect that the main reason that we still know so little about it is Himself not wanting to deal with all the "but you said"s.
There was indeed a rumour cited in text that the Inquisition could listen to every conversation in the Temple, and I'm inclined to think that it is true. Or, rather, that it _was_ true: if Clyntahn had that ability now, he would be exploiting it ruthlessly, and I rather doubt that Duchairn, at least, would still be alive. One must recall that the Inquisition was not originally an arm of the Order of Schueler, and that its absorption by the Order along with the Order of Jwo Jeng would likely not have been universally welcomed. The ability to conduct internal surveillance would certainly have been tightly restricted - after all, it was never more than a rumour - and if the few who had access agreed that the ambitions of the Schuelerite leadership were getting out of hand it wouldn't have been difficult for them to 'lose the keys', so to speak.
DMcCunney wrote:Joat42 wrote:I got the impression that the first Rakurai was a totally manual affair, it was much later they constructed many more to cover the whole of Safehold that they where automated.
Yes to the first, but I'm not sure about the second.
David mentioned elsewhere the OBS was manufactured on Hamilcar in secret by Angels loyal to Chihiro, and deployed hours before it was actually used, to prevent Commodore Pei from being able to do anything about it. (With his warships already discarded, it's not clear what he could have done in any case.)
I suspect the full array was deployed at that time, and it's likely Chihiro thought the Alexandria Enclave might not be the only target it might get used on.
DMcCunney wrote:Automated point defense to zap something that got too close is one thing. An automated strike against something it detected on the ground is another matter. That strikes me as the sort of thing it would be programmed to phone home about instead of acting on its own.
It's possible it was like that from the beginning, but when the angels went away they most likely just switched it over to automatic operation with a set of parameters for triggering.
You may well be right. I assume there is still a ground based controller (and the device under the Temple revealed to Father Paityr by the vision of Schueler might be it), but with the angels gone, they might have decided that providing control to the locals, leaders of Mother Church or not, was a bad idea,
DMcCunney wrote:One question I had when Merlin was conducting his test on the barren islands out in the Great Western Ocean to see what it might do if it detected steam power was what might have happened if it did detect something. Would it phone home to the Temple to say it had done so? What would answer the call? It if was something like an AI stashed under the Temple, how would that alert the humans in the Temple of what the OBS had done and why? The fact that Merlin's test continued for a while with no reaction indicated the OBS either didn't notice, or what it detected was below the level it was instructed to take action on.
As it stands, there is no need for human intervention from anyone in the temple. There is no need to inform them in any way either, it's much better from the standpoint of the plan to have them find out from witnesses that a strike has happened. Fear of god and all that jazz.[/quote]
Good point. And that was likely part of Merlin's thinking in picking the location for his test. If the OBS was totally automated and
didn't phone home, the location was remote enough no one was likely to see the strike if it
did toss rocks.
DMcCunney wrote:Textev so far is that the Vicars living in the Temple simply accept the things it provides as gifts of the Archangels. Things Just Work, and they neither know nor care how that is managed. There are likely various interfaces to the Temple systems in the Temple, but it's not clear the Vicarate would know what they were if they saw them, and they probably aren't where the residents would ordinarily go.
Wasn't there something about a rumor among the vicars that said the Inquisition had a "divine tool" which they could use to listen in to anyone inside the temple?[/quote]
There were suggestions of rumors to that effect. Whether they are true is another matter. I can certainly see the Inquisition encouraging the notion, and even planting the rumor to begin with.
Anyway, from the archangels standpoint it would be bad to leave working interfaces which can be accessed easily since they couldn't be sure they got everyone during the war. Just imagine what a fifth-column priest could do if he could access a working interface and hack it.
A working interface easily accessible would be a bad idea in any case, simply because of what might occur after all the angels were gone. The last thing you want is an ignorant colonist who has been carefully prevented from learning anything about technology to find it. Disaster could occur by accident.
_______
Dennis[/quote]
