Through Fiery Trials, Snippet #1

SYED wrote:Fake an old map depicting these possible secret enterances, so the church it sel is actively trying to get access. Claim these tunnels were used by the inquisition.

Joat42 wrote:

thanatos wrote:If it's been 5 years since Nahrmahn's death than the year is 900 or 901. It's probably a typo, along with the 0 instead of an "o" in the "Year of God" line.

I have wondered about the Gbaba on occasion and thought that perhaps their motives, alien though they might be, are also essentially religious. It is possible that they view themselves as the most perfect beings in creation and seek to eliminate all other "demons" in the cosmos. It could equally be a desire to eliminate evolutionary competition as well, but RFC has done that theme in the past (the Kanga/Shirmaksu in the Apocalypse Troll stand alone). I also doubt he'll use the Achuultanni example from the Dahak series (i.e. aliens controlled by a computer that wishes to maintain control over them and is thought to be a god to them). He could of course come up with something truly alien but given the centrality of religion as a force for good and evil in the Safehold series, something tells me the Gbaba's motives might also be religious.

Alien is alien.

Maybe they are an honorable (in an alien way) warrior society where they have decided that their current technological level should be the same as they had millennia ago when they battled an alien race and won and anything else would be dishonorable.

Maybe they are crude space faring barbarians that stumbled onto automated factories that build their ships and they don't understand the technology so they can change the designs.

Maybe their species are biological constructs from an older extinct race and they are hardwired to react to threats, almost like an immune system for a space faring empire.

Maybe the Gbaba is a slave race and the real leaders doesn't allow them to have more advanced tech for fear of being overthrown and the Gbaba is used to eradicate any perceived threats to the leadership.

Maybe the Gbaba is just a fanatically xenophobic race that has become extremely stratified, both socially and technologically.

Maybe the Gbaba has been infected with a parasite or virus that made them aggressive at cost of not being able to innovate.

Maybe the Gbaba is an ant-like society who have lost all their queens who was supposed to imprint new behavior and what's left is just breeders or cloning facilities producing beings with the same behavior for millennia.

And maybe they are just so alien that we cannot understand their reasoning at all because we lack the frame of reference.

DrakBibliophile wrote:I suspect that very long ago, the Gbaba feel victim to an internal group that believed that they had the "perfect" system thus they "programmed" their fellow Gbaba so that they would never deviate from this "perfect" system.

The Gbaba's actions against other intelligent species is part of the programming as their "programmers" understood that outsiders could threaten their "perfect" system.

Since technological change could endanger the perfect system, the Gbaba's technology hasn't changed.

I also suspect the internal group also programmed their own descendants and thus no non-programmed Gbaba exist.

Joat42 wrote:

DrakBibliophile wrote:I suspect that very long ago, the Gbaba feel victim to an internal group that believed that they had the "perfect" system thus they "programmed" their fellow Gbaba so that they would never deviate from this "perfect" system.

The Gbaba's actions against other intelligent species is part of the programming as their "programmers" understood that outsiders could threaten their "perfect" system.

Since technological change could endanger the perfect system, the Gbaba's technology hasn't changed.

I also suspect the internal group also programmed their own descendants and thus no non-programmed Gbaba exist.

So what you are saying that what happened with the colonists on Safehold is what happened to the Gbaba except that the goal differs?

SYED wrote:Just because they are unable to open those doors, does not mean to locate them? Will they totally be secured or sealed?

Undercover Fat Kid wrote:I have noticed an inconsistency between the published works and the snippet, though. The snippet implies that the majority of public opinion, which was encouraged by the government, was that the murdered pocket empire fell victim to some internal strife and essentially suicided. The opening sequence of OAR has Captain Fofāo reflecting that he was where he was because of the widespread belief that there existed a malevolent alien empire, which also explained the existence of a genuine, and growing, federation navy. If memory serves, the people who held the position that they died in a suicidal spasm were a distinct minority as of the fall of Crestwell’s world.

Joat42 wrote:

Undercover Fat Kid wrote:I have noticed an inconsistency between the published works and the snippet, though. The snippet implies that the majority of public opinion, which was encouraged by the government, was that the murdered pocket empire fell victim to some internal strife and essentially suicided. The opening sequence of OAR has Captain Fofāo reflecting that he was where he was because of the widespread belief that there existed a malevolent alien empire, which also explained the existence of a genuine, and growing, federation navy. If memory serves, the people who held the position that they died in a suicidal spasm were a distinct minority as of the fall of Crestwell’s world.

It was 9 years between the discovery of the destroyed 3 star alien empire and the attack on Crestwell. Sugawara who suggested that it was an action of an alien menace was belittled until he was appointed Navy Minister.

I guess that during those 9 years they went from disbelief to suppression to mobilization. So from what I know it doesn't seem to be any inconsistences, since otherwise there wouldn't be any reason for a SDF to be placed in Crestwell especially since they had also setup Spyglass (a ring of surveillance of satellites around Crestwell) and Watchman (standby high speed courier to Earth) to deliver information.