[SPOILERS] Lost Testament of Schueler

Julia Minor wrote:

However, none of this means the Inquisition is using any of those mystic devices for general record keeping. They're probably operating everything by rote, and the simple fact that they're "sacred" should mean that inserting "worldly" matters into the records (such as how many heretics were burned last month in province X) would be seen as offensive.

Except that burning heretics is their sacred duty and about as far away from a "worldly matter" as any old-style Inquisitor could imagine. But, with many others, I think it's much more likely that the clearly referenced surveillance systems within the Temple are more than enough to explain a good knowledge of past and current events, as known to the CoGA, on the part of any system under the Temple.

evilauthor wrote:
Actually, if anything did wake up, it probably wasn't in the Temple. After all, why deliver the Testament to a (relatively) remote Church instead of right into the halls of the Temple itself? Unless of course the author for some reason didn't have Temple access or couldn't hide the delivery system in the Temple ahead of time...

And who says the Fallen and Shan Wei were the only one to create secret hidden bunkers and tech caches?

We know that Schueler is "buried in the crypt of this very cathedral, which had been raised for the specific purpose of guarding and sanctifying his tomb". But that doesn't tell us whether the Cathedral of the Holy Archangel Schueler was built after Schueler's death, around his tomb, or before his death as his eventual tomb -- much the same way Egyptian pharaohs ordered their tombs built early in their reigns. If it's the latter, Schueler could have ordered all sorts of extra stuff installed in the sub-basement.

Julia Minor wrote:We know that Schueler is "buried in the crypt of this very cathedral, which had been raised for the specific purpose of guarding and sanctifying his tomb". But that doesn't tell us whether the Cathedral of the Holy Archangel Schueler was built after Schueler's death, around his tomb, or before his death as his eventual tomb -- much the same way Egyptian pharaohs ordered their tombs built early in their reigns. If it's the latter, Schueler could have ordered all sorts of extra stuff installed in the sub-basement.

Not sure it matters. As OWL shows, you can use remotes to deliver stuff (in this case, a hologram of Schueler and a book made of high tech materials) to other places. and those remotes can be invisible. So Schueler's bunker doesn't necessarily have to be under Schueler's cathedral. Or even on the same continent!

There seem to be two obvious possibilities. The first being that Schueler was part of Shan-Wei's resistance who remained embedded as a sleeper agent without suspicion. One of the contingency plans, in the case the war failed. He may be the one responsible for tampering with the orbital bombardment platforms, which is why the technological development on Safehold hasn't triggered a response from them. If his personality was recorded before he died, he may be a recently awakened ghost in the machine who could pop up again in the Temple, or anywhere else on Church grounds where Federation systems are installed. Or it could be just a facsimile. An AI below the level of sentience, with preset parameters governing when it activates and what it does.

The thinking may be similar to Nimue's activation protocol. Wait long enough to be well past the window for Gbaba patrols detecting a high tech presence on Safehold, and also beyond the time when any "angels" remain or the church is still wary of holdovers from the War Against the Fallen. In fact if Schueler was on Team Shan-Wei after all, Nimue's wake up call may have been coordinated with his appearance in the cathedral. Give her enough time to make some serious headway, then appear in all your glory and provide a little angelic backup.

Or of course, this could be Operation Androcles. It's been the Inner Circle's general practice not to tell overt lies. Merlin and Nimue impersonating seijins borders on it, especially since they gave up on the evasive approach of never specifically claiming they were seijins. But this would be a sharp break from the policy of avoiding blatant fabrication or - especially - staging miraculous "divine" events to manipulate people. It's that much harder later on to take the moral high ground against Langhorne when you've pulled some of the same kinds of tricks. Even if the average person agrees you aren't anywhere near as brutal and self-serving in your motives.

I guess it comes down to your predictions of how many lives a deception like this might save. If you can avoid another Safeholdian World War (which is basically what the Jihad was) maybe it's worth it. A little trickery versus millions of dead - which do you choose? The new testimony exonerating Shan-Wei provides an opening for Charis to stop beating around the bush and tell the whole planet the full truth. Some people will believe in the visitation and the text. Others will decide it wasn't the Archangel Schueler in the cathedral but rather Shan-Wei, appearing as Schueler to poison the minds of the faithful with her fake testimony. It'll still provide a window of opportunity for the Inner Circle even if only half the population is convinced. Without this "fortuitous" visitation it might be several more generations before you could reasonably consider telling the whole story.

Or maybe there's a third option. Given the way it barreled toward that critical date, especially in the second half, this book certainly didn't end the way I expected. Probably the next one won't start that way either.

FriarBob wrote:

phillies wrote:FriarBob observes "But he did. Oh not specifically. But "enough time has passed" is VERY hard to explain any other way. There is literally NO WAY a recording made 800-odd years ago could possibly know A) the evil deeds would happen (predict it, yes, *know* it, no), and that B) the deeds would have been stopped and rejected."

However, some of us, including the illustrious athor,a re old enough to have met Isaac Asimov and read the Foundation series, including in particular the return of Hari Seldon from the grave via a recording to predict the failure of Bel Riose. Except of course, that Bel Riose is never named, because psychohistory predicted what would happen to warlord generals, not that Bel Riose would be one. That bit of the speech is a remarkable literary tribute.

Yeah. Good point. Of course, I thought the Foundation series was utter putrid garbage. But I read it. I just tried to forget it, so the parallel didn't come to mind instantly.

I still want to be wrong. I really do. But right now the only thing that's truly giving me hope here is not people's arguments against it. The thing that's giving me hope is Weber. He's sneaky. He is (almost) NEVER straightforward or obvious.

By that standard, this is obviously something other than what it appears.

It just appears very very bad.

You should read "Astounding" the biography of the magazine, John W. Campbell, Robert A. Heinlein, Issac Asimov, and, unfortunately, L. Ron Hubbard. It covers the interactions of the authors and Mr. Campbell in the writing of many of the stories that appeared in Astounding including Dr. Asimov's Foundation series. It's very interesting, and has caused a massive change in my opinion of 3 of the 4 to "massive jerks". Nothing could improve my opinion of L. Ron.

ecortez wrote:
I guess it comes down to your predictions of how many lives a deception like this might save.

Problem is, that it could very well kill so many, that even Clyntahn would turn pale. Just think about that: this is a binary solution.

A - Schueller is right, and the Holy Writ is wrong (which means that anyone who does not believe Schueller are damned).

B - Holy Writ is right, and Schueller is wrong (which means that anyone who believe "Schueller" - actually a Shain-Wei manifestation, of course! - are damned).

There is no middle ground, because for Safeholdians, the Archangles are infallible, perfect creatures. They could not be "partially right". The whole Safeholdian society would be broken apart - and this time, without respect to national borders or something. It would be the analogue of Siddarmark civil war - but on global, world-enveloping scale.

Dilandu wrote:

ecortez wrote:
I guess it comes down to your predictions of how many lives a deception like this might save.

Problem is, that it could very well kill so many, that even Clyntahn would turn pale. Just think about that: this is a binary solution.

A - Schueller is right, and the Holy Writ is wrong (which means that anyone who does not believe Schueller are damned).

B - Holy Writ is right, and Schueller is wrong (which means that anyone who believe "Schueller" - actually a Shain-Wei manifestation, of course! - are damned).

There is no middle ground, because for Safeholdians, the Archangles are infallible, perfect creatures. They could not be "partially right". The whole Safeholdian society would be broken apart - and this time, without respect to national borders or something. It would be the analogue of Siddarmark civil war - but on global, world-enveloping scale.

Toppling the Proscriptions is going to be messy no matter how they do it. At least the Schueler visitation will convince those who saw it and many other true believers. And that book he left, with metal foil pages that magically flatten themselves out if you crinkle them, like the original documents in the Temple, can't just be shrugged off as a forgery. Church leadership will recognize it as a genuine artifact of the Archangels.

Yes, it's going to create a crisis. For the first time they'll have credible documentation that contradicts parts of the Writ. We don't actually know yet what's in there, other than the Chihiro revelation. But at least this didn't come from the Charisians (or it doesn't appear that way as the case may be). So if Staynair now comes out and tells the world yes, we already knew that, but were afraid to say anything because we were being accused of heresy as things stood, many more people are going to believe them.

Not everyone of course. There will undoubtedly be another conflict with those who reject the revised doctrines as false. It's just better this way than having all the "heresies" originate in Tellesberg.

In the first chapter (Merlin and Nahrman talking) they mentioned that something had clearly gone wrong with the Chihiro plan.

My take is that Schuleur agreed with Shan Wei that technology would eventually arise again on the planet, but that the 300 years was far too short a time to ensure that they would not be detected Gbaba. So he allied himself with Chihiro, but sabotaged the system to allow steam (probably couldn;t get electricity past Chihiro), and set things up to come back in a 1000 years, which was a safer delay time.

fallsfromtrees wrote:In the first chapter (Merlin and Nahrman talking) they mentioned that something had clearly gone wrong with the Chihiro plan.

My take is that Schuleur agreed with Shan Wei that technology would eventually arise again on the planet, but that the 300 years was far too short a time to ensure that they would not be detected Gbaba. So he allied himself with Chihiro, but sabotaged the system to allow steam (probably couldn;t get electricity past Chihiro), and set things up to come back in a 1000 years, which was a safer delay time.

Yes, it will be interesting to see if Schueler was operating on his own or coordinating with Shan-Wei. Langhorne and his allies were never 100% sure Kau-Yung was on their side, however they had no reason at all to suspect Schueler. Either is possible. They did mention at one point (earlier in the series) that concerns about Langhorne were brought to the Federation brass before the mission. Perhaps they sent along someone to keep an eye on him, who didn't get involved with the insurrection so he could serve as a failsafe in the event it was ultimately crushed.

I'm inclined to think the mention of Operation Androcles before the Archangel visitation was just a tease to make you think Nahrmahn and Owl might've been behind it. This is so counter to the way the Inner Circle has operated from the beginning that it's hard to believe they'd just chuck their principles out the window. Especially when it seemed like they'd dodged the bullet and now had plenty of time to work with.

ecortez wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:In the first chapter (Merlin and Nahrman talking) they mentioned that something had clearly gone wrong with the Chihiro plan.

My take is that Schuleur agreed with Shan Wei that technology would eventually arise again on the planet, but that the 300 years was far too short a time to ensure that they would not be detected Gbaba. So he allied himself with Chihiro, but sabotaged the system to allow steam (probably couldn;t get electricity past Chihiro), and set things up to come back in a 1000 years, which was a safer delay time.

Yes, it will be interesting to see if Schueler was operating on his own or coordinating with Shan-Wei. Langhorne and his allies were never 100% sure Kau-Yung was on their side, however they had no reason at all to suspect Schueler. Either is possible. They did mention at one point (earlier in the series) that concerns about Langhorne were brought to the Federation brass before the mission. Perhaps they sent along someone to keep an eye on him, who didn't get involved with the insurrection so he could serve as a failsafe in the event it was ultimately crushed.

I'm inclined to think the mention of Operation Androcles before the Archangel visitation was just a tease to make you think Nahrmahn and Owl might've been behind it. This is so counter to the way the Inner Circle has operated from the beginning that it's hard to believe they'd just chuck their principles out the window. Especially when it seemed like they'd dodged the bullet and now had plenty of time to work with.

I must remind again: there is a obvious difference between Langhorne staff and Chichiro staff. The War against the Fallen was not between Shain-Wei and Langhorne fraction, but between Langhorne former loyalists (including much of former military, which was stated to be loyal to old administration) and Chichiro faction.