At one point in an early book Merlin makes comment that he'd happily kill the Grand Inquisitor if he ever stepped out of the temple.
But Clyntahn did. More than once.
So why didn't Merlin kill him?
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Really?????? Mk2
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by Annachie
» Wed Aug 15, 2018 5:00 am
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Annachie
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You are so going to die. :p ~~~~ runsforcelery ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ still not dead.  |
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by runsforcelery
» Wed Aug 15, 2018 8:55 am
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runsforcelery
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Because he never stepped outside the distance limit around the Temple itself that Merlin had established as his "no-high-tech-wake-up-alarms" zone. Merlin might have been able to assassinate Clyntahn by any of several means, but he really couldn't do it by "unnatural" means in the middle of a religious war without turning Clyntahn into a martyr struck down by "demonic powers." So to kill him off in a way that worked, the lethal agent would have to be an obviously natural, physical weapon (like a dagger or, I dunno, a katana, maybe), which would have to have been delivered in some obviously natural fashion. Packing his ear canal with Thermit and setting it off, for example, would be considered a Bad Idea. For that matter, even a genuinely natural disease would have run the risk of being seen as the fallen archangel Grimaldi's intervention on behald of Shan-wei. So what Merlin is really talking about when he says "outside the Temple" isn't just the physical building(s); it's a bubble around the entire Temple complex in which he dares not use active high-tech systems. And he is also talking about being physically close enough when Clyntahn does step out into the open to take the shot he's been offered, whether it's as a sniper or a dagger-wielding assassin who then makes his getaway in the confusion and without using obviously "demonic powers" in the process. Getting all those factors to align at an opportune moment, especially getting him or Nimue physically close enough, was simply never possible. "Oh, bother!" said Pooh, as Piglet came back from the dead. |
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by Annachie
» Wed Aug 15, 2018 9:32 am
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Annachie
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I agree, up until the point that the church started making rifles.
At that point Merlin should have been able to just shoot him (possibly with an OWL made rifle) and disapeer while leaving a (previously fired) church made rifle behind. Not even Merlin, Nynian had all the organisation to do it too. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You are so going to die. :p ~~~~ runsforcelery ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ still not dead. |
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by Kufat
» Wed Aug 15, 2018 9:45 am
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Kufat
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My thought on how to handle this was to have the Cave produce some non-airborne heart attack nanotech smart enough to kill only Clyntahn and get it into some of the fancy grub he has his bailiff import for him. Would that have been within Merlin's capabilities? It seems like it would've been less technologically difficult than the killer nanotech he did deploy in that prison. |
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by Dauntless
» Wed Aug 15, 2018 10:09 am
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Dauntless
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but the prison was outside the temple zone of control. so while still risky it was not much riskier then the tractor beam outside the Bordello in OAR.
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by Dilandu
» Wed Aug 15, 2018 10:43 am
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Dilandu
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It seems that Grimaldi really did something extraordinary?  ------------------------------
Oh well, if shortening the front is what the Germans crave, Let's shorten it to very end - the length of Fuhrer's grave. (Red Army lyrics from 1945) |
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by Dilandu
» Wed Aug 15, 2018 10:45 am
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Dilandu
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Please. Personalized virus, designed to activate specifically on Clyntahn DNA would be simpler and more elegant solution. ------------------------------
Oh well, if shortening the front is what the Germans crave, Let's shorten it to very end - the length of Fuhrer's grave. (Red Army lyrics from 1945) |
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by runsforcelery
» Wed Aug 15, 2018 1:54 pm
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runsforcelery
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Um. You did see my "never stepped outside the distance limit around the Temple itself that Merlin had established as his 'no-high-tech-wake-up-alarms' zone"? He's allowed a pretty generous zone, for several reasons, and it would take a pretty miraculous rifle shot (even for him) to take Clyntahn down at 5 km or so. But that really doesn't affect things, because the number of times Clyntahn stepped outside the immediate Temple precincts during the Jihad could be counted on the fingers of one hand without using all your fingers. I don't think I was clear enough in responding to your original post, because what I meant to imply was that he never came into the open where Merlin (or even one of Owl's remotes) could get a shot at him. The fact is that, despite the way you posed your original question, I don't believe the reader ever saw him anywhere outside the Temple proper. You certainly weren't supposed to see him outside it, at any rate. That was his Fuhrer Bunker, and he never stepped outside it unless he absolutely had to. The auto da faes you saw him attending were all in the Plaza of Martyrs, which is basically Vatican Square --- it is actually inside the outer wall of the Temple's grounds --- and that was as far as he got. One of the huge differences between him and Duchairn was that Duchairn did spend time in the streets and in the homeless shelters. That probably did as much as his known efforts to aid the poor to make him the "human face of the Vicarate," and it was --- and was meant to be seen as --- a critical failure/blind spot on Clyntahn's part. And it was also a major factor in his ability to ignore/reject all the bad news coming from the front. He had no contact with any of the people from the sharp end who really knew what was happening, and he flat out rejected anything Maigwair and Duchairn said that had a "defeatist" cast because his world and environs were exactly what they had always been: the miraculous realm in which God's daily miracles validated his position every single five-day. "Oh, bother!" said Pooh, as Piglet came back from the dead. |
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by runsforcelery
» Wed Aug 15, 2018 1:58 pm
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runsforcelery
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The prison was outside Merlin's "No PICA May Enter Ever (Even If It's Active Emissions Are All Shut Down, Stupid ") Zone. Even so, neither he nor Nimue could attack it using their PICAs' capabilities without risking setting of alarms all over the Temple basement. So they used the nanotech, which was far. far stealthier (and carried even more ominous overtones for the Inquisition's upper echelons) but took longer."Oh, bother!" said Pooh, as Piglet came back from the dead. |
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by runsforcelery
» Wed Aug 15, 2018 2:07 pm
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runsforcelery
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Dilandu is completely correct about the best way to get rid of Clyntahn. Introducing, say, nanotech which would give him a completely "natural" heart attack --- especially given his self-indulgent life style, which violated several of Pasquale's Laws --- into the Temple would have been the best way to take him out. Unfortunately, Merlin had no way of knowing if he could have gotten away with that sort of attack actually inside the Temple. The odds were probably pretty good that he could have, but "pretty good" wasn't good enough considering the downside of giving any watchdog inside the Temple proof that someone was using high tech to pick off vicars. I might point out the references to Grimaldi. Now, Grimaldi never actually did anything particularly nasty to the Archangels (he was killed along with Shan-wei in Act I of the War Against the Fallen), but that didn't keep Bad Things from being attributed to him. And one of those Bad Things was what amounted to a bio-war attack on the Archangels who remained loyal to the Temple. But if you'll also notice, Rayno and Clyntahn specifically discuss the fact that nothing like that ever happened on the Temple grounds. Now, I ain't a'sayin' (at this point, at least) that Chihiro built in systems to protect against exactly that sort of attack, but, well . . . .  "Oh, bother!" said Pooh, as Piglet came back from the dead. |
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