[Spoiler] What else Operation Androcles could be

Thinking about this... these are all the quotes I could find about Nahrmahn's second-phase plan....

Nothing could be allowed to interfere with that process, and that was the reason, more even than the staggering potential casualties of a renewed Jihad, why any headlong assault on the Church of God Awaiting’s fundamental doctrine had to be avoided … or at least postponed. Nahrmahn was right about what looked like firing up in Harchong, no matter what else happened, but he was also right about the need to keep any doctrinal conflict out of the equation. They couldn’t afford to reawaken the charge that all of these innovations were the handiwork of Shan-wei, spreading her evil among humankind. If 915 came and went without any angelic reappearance, they’d have another eighty-five years to work on doctrinal revolutions.

I wonder what would happen if they deviated from the choreography? The question passed through Karstayrs’ mind. The ceremony for the investiture of a Grand Vicar’s never changed since the day Chihiro himself instituted it. How completely are the Temple’s computers locked into observing it? Would that spotlight even be able to find the new Grand Vicar if he wasn’t exactly where the ceremony laid down by Chihiro puts him? It was an intriguing thought. And if it were to happen, how would Safeholdians react? If the very things which made this so effective at maintaining their faith and their awareness of the sanctity of Mother Church and the Grand Vicar were suddenly out of sequence— if that circle of light followed someone else, instead of the Council of Vicars’ chosen successor to Langhorne— how would that set with Safehold?


Too bad we won’t have the chance to find out, he reflected. Talk about the Nahrmahn Plan! If I thought Owl could hack the Temple, break into the system and reprogram all this … pageantry and turn it around on them.… He put the temptation behind him and focused on the ceremony unfolding all around him.

“You’re right,” Nahrmahn agreed. “And, speaking of archangels that haven’t turned up yet, Owl and I would like to show you what we’ve been working on with Paityr and Nynian to kick off the final phase of the ‘Nahrmahn Plan.’” His avatar’s smile was remarkably broad … and evil. “Somehow, I think the real Schueler’s going to be spinning in his grave.”

“So I suppose it’s time to initiate the second stage of the nefarious Nahrmahn Plan?” he said out loud.
“You suppose correctly,” Cayleb said, and he and Sharleyan both looked at Nahrmahn. “You and Owl are cleared for Operation Androcles.”
“Oh goody!” Nahrmahn replied with a huge smile, and punched Owl on the shoulder. “I told you they’d let us!”
“And I did not dispute your prediction,” the AI pointed out. “I simply fail to share your indecent pleasure and anticipation.”

Now, admittedly, those quotes COULD be read as implying that the Lost Testament of Schueler may have been Nahrmahn's work. However, if we're assuming that Nahrmahn's plan is something ELSE, I can think of a few possibilities...


Plan A: Just Like the Lost Testament of Schueler, only different.

Do whatever it takes to 'discover' 'lost' evidence of what the original archangels were thinking, how they acted, what their goals were, how 'human' they could be... without TECHNICALLY proposing that the Archangels were, in fact, human. Merely provide evidence indirectly suggesting that each Archangel may have been subject to certain slight human foibles.

The Argument here would be something like : We have been told that Shan-Wei and other (Arch)Angels Fell, because she was not a perfect Arch-Angel, took too much pride in her own goals versus God's Vision, etc....

What if that means that ALL Angels and Arch-Angels are hypothetically subject to certain limited human foibles, such as pride, laziness, misdirection, bad puns... and Shan-Wei just happens to have been the only one who let her minor flaws get so out of hand as to provoke a civil war?

If, say, a miniature shrine-bunker, extremely similar to a smaller, hidden version of the Temple in Zion, were to be discovered somewhere in the middle of nowhere...

And If, say, that shrine-bunker contained highly plausible, historically accurate, 'lost' video records from around the time of the War of the Fallen, showing things like Archangels in boring committee meetings, Archangel's picking their noses or telling really bad puns, Archangels discussing the pros and cons of certain enclave placements, or discussing how MANY tips and tricks for designing good sailing vessels they want to leave with the Adams and Eves...

Those records, while not DIRECTLY contradicting anything the Archangels had ever said or done, and which might even be presented as "miraculous gifts repeating the Archangel's messages..."

Would also have the various interesting side-effect of subtly humanizing the Arch-Angels, and getting people to quietly start questioning why the Arch-Angels chose to leave exactly the messages they did, and not to leave other, different messages.

The problem with this plan is that it's actually awfully close to what just happened with the Lost Testament of Schueler, and it seems really odd that there would be TWO such plans, from two different factions, being trigger at the same time, using much the same methods.

Krenn wrote:Thinking about this... these are all the quotes I could find about Nahrmahn's second-phase plan....


Now, admittedly, those quotes COULD be read as implying that the Lost Testament of Schueler may have been Nahrmahn's work. However, if we're assuming that Nahrmahn's plan is something ELSE, I can think of a few possibilities...


Plan A: Just Like the Lost Testament of Schueler, only different....

Plan B: As I mentioned before, get people to start thinking of the various proscriptions and curses less as "The Way God Wants it" and more as "Polite, poetic warnings for idiots, left behind by the Archangels to give us a hand."

Some of Seijen Khody's less controversial journal entries might work for that, and there are lots of theological and academic methods of pushing that narrative...

But the best way of getting people to think that way might be a combination of humourous warning publications, plus "new" Seijen-based warnings and consequences which are equally true, not covered by the proscriptions, and obviously useful.

something like...

"Seijin Turing's book of basic mechanical and fluidic logic"

"And thus, my children, a universal logic machine is any machine which can eventually perform the same calculations as any other universal logic machine. Three examples of such are given in three liturgies, and the remaining designs are left as an exercise for the student..."


"Seijin Murphy's Book of Tautologies."
"And thou shalt not set thineself on fire, lest thou be burnt"
"Likewise, Poking thyself in the eye with a stick is discouraged, on pain of blindness"
"Pounding thine own head into a brick wall is an insult to the bricks, which will retaliate by giving thee a headache"

"Seijin Strongman's guide to weight-lifting and strength training"

"Seijin Centurion's rules of combat"

"My children, beware, for Friendly fire isn't..."
"And Exercise Caution always, for the Easy Way is usually heavily mined..."

Krenn wrote:

Krenn wrote:Thinking about this... these are all the quotes I could find about Nahrmahn's second-phase plan....


Now, admittedly, those quotes COULD be read as implying that the Lost Testament of Schueler may have been Nahrmahn's work. However, if we're assuming that Nahrmahn's plan is something ELSE, I can think of a few possibilities...


Plan A: Just Like the Lost Testament of Schueler, only different....

Plan B: As I mentioned before, get people to start thinking of the various proscriptions and curses less as "The Way God Wants it" and more as "Polite, poetic warnings for idiots, left behind by the Archangels to give us a hand."

Plan C is trickier, and dangerously heretical....

Start finding ways to openly and officially mimic as many routine Arch-Angel miracles as possible... WITHOUT violating the proscriptions, and without hiding what you are doing.

for example... Building acytelene-powered spotlights, and using them in theatrical morality plays telling the stories of the Archangels, or to provide each Archbishop's cathedral with the same spotlight effect that occurs in the Temple of Zion for the Grand Vicar. Openly and officially... "We're mimicing God's Gift's to better praise him..."

Or using wired stunt harnesses to show men flying up into the sky, or maybe encouraging Priests to start taking up skydiving to better appreciate the Archangel's perspective.

there must be hundred of tried-and-trued technology demonstrations or classic stage magician tricks, which could easily be adapted to 'mimicking' historic miracles.

As long as you're extremely careful to claim that you're doing this to 'honor' the Arch-angels, it might take 70-80 years for people to start forgetting the alleged holy difference BETWEEN a 'true' archangel's miracle, and the routine circus stunts they see every month...

50 years from now, you could start dropping hints that an Archangel's miracles, a Seijin's gifts, and a Circus performer's stunts are all matters of degree, in relation to each other...

Krenn wrote:Thinking about this... these are all the quotes I could find about Nahrmahn's second-phase plan....

Krenn wrote:Plan C is trickier, and dangerously heretical....

Start finding ways to openly and officially mimic as many routine Arch-Angel miracles as possible... WITHOUT violating the proscriptions, and without hiding what you are doing.

Plan D is... audacious.

Find someway to honestly, openly, inevitably, and 'piously'... outright explicitly disprove one or two fundamental tenets of the Writ.

I believe Langhorne used a Safehold-centric model of the solar system, with prevention of people falling down from the bottom of the Safehold Sphere being listed as being one of God's miracles, rather than a basic law of gravity.

It might be possible to flat-out disprove, or at least heavily modify, Safehold's understanding of the Solar System and Gravity.

High-powered telescopes, photographic image plates, and detailed astronomic records would help, of course...

But with 70 years to work with, and a reliable supply of kerosene, hydrogen, oxygen, and various acids and phosphours...

It just might be doable to put a non-electric rocket into Low Safehold Orbit. not to mention all sorts of interim, ground-to-ground rocketry projects.

Which would raise two interesting questions... If the orbit stays low enough, would the orbital defense network fire on it...?

If it's NOT fired upon, things get interesting, since you can clearly demonstrate things like a theory of gravity...


And if the rocket IS fired upon, but was previously attested as being in obedience to the proscriptions prior to launch, how do you square that circle? Are the Archangels punishing things they never said you couldn't do, now?

Krenn wrote:

Krenn wrote:Thinking about this... these are all the quotes I could find about Nahrmahn's second-phase plan....

Plan D is... audacious.

Find someway to honestly, openly, inevitably, and 'piously'... outright explicitly disprove one or two fundamental tenets of the Writ.

Plan E would be pure Chutzpah, and is unlikely to work, or at least not without extensive prior groundwork having been laid by one of the prior plans...

But can you imagine someone daring to publicly accuse the PHYSICAL TEMPLE OF ZION of being a blatant violation of the proscriptions? Electric Lighting! Subtle radio signatures!

You would need to lay some MAJOR theological groundwork, decades in advance, before anyone could possibly take that seriously enough to debate it... but if you COULD get senior churchmen to place themselves in the position of arguing about whether or not electricity is being used in the temple, and whether or not the Temple technically has an exemption to allow that, and whether or not that exemption is truly valid...

having that sort of public debate at ALL would be ruinous to the idea of continuing to take the Archangel's perfectly literally seriously in all cases. At that point, you're asking all SORTS of interesting questions about how the Writ and the Archangels really work, and how they should really be interpreted....

Actually, the introduction of photography would now, in a steam based non electric society, be possible - that was when it was introduced on earth, after all. Not sure how (or if) that could be tied into a Plan Androcles, but it's an interesting possibility for thread drift(and possibly plot development)!

Krenn wrote:
But can you imagine someone daring to publicly accuse the PHYSICAL TEMPLE OF ZION of being a blatant violation of the proscriptions? Electric Lighting! Subtle radio signatures!

Er, what violation? Prosctiptions were written for mortals, not Archangels, and the Temple is Archangels creation.

Dilandu wrote:

Krenn wrote:
But can you imagine someone daring to publicly accuse the PHYSICAL TEMPLE OF ZION of being a blatant violation of the proscriptions? Electric Lighting! Subtle radio signatures!

Er, what violation? Prosctiptions were written for mortals, not Archangels, and the Temple is Archangels creation.

Like i said, it would take a ridiculous level of chutzpah. And the ensuing debates would be nearly as much of a farce as the old "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" debate...

But the sort of questions people might ask would include...

DO the proscriptions apply to the Archangels? Do Archangels achieve the same effect using pure divine power, or do they simply have an exemption allowing them to handle proscribed things? Does that mean that electricity IS divine power? If I can harness electricity, am I divine?

Did the Archangels ever SAY that the Temple violated the proscriptions? Did they ever say that it DIDN'T? do our crude instruments REALLY detect forbidden electricity here, or are our instruments somehow lying to us? WOULD God force otherwise reliable instruments, made by skilled and pious craftsmen, to start lying to their users when brought inside the Temple?

If the Temple DOES violate the proscriptions, but Archangels are ALLOWED to violate the proscriptions, what does that mean for US? even if Archangels were allowed to use the Temple, are we mere mortals really allowed to still be here once they've stopped using it?

But wait... if the punishments for using electricity still apply to US, and if one of us were to, say, drill into a light fixture and electrocute himself... that would be a just punishment, right? But then why wouldn't the light fixture repair itself afterwards, to continue it's original divine mission...? And why would the Archangels have left such a temptation behind in the first place...?

If I were to find an abandoned Shan-Wei bunker, which appeared to have the SAME lights, what are the rules about touching or using THOSE???


Those sorts of arguments could last FOREVER. and the entire point of the exercise isn't to find useful answers... it's to develop the habit of trying to apply historic and theological reasoning, unto the actions and remnants of the Archangels themselves... which will inevitably make the Archangel's legacy much more vulnerable.

Krenn wrote:
But the sort of questions people might ask would include...

DO the proscriptions apply to the Archangels? Do Archangels achieve the same effect using pure divine power, or do they simply have an exemption allowing them to handle proscribed things? Does that mean that electricity IS divine power?

You misunderstood the idea of Proscription. They were created for mortals and for mortals only - they describe technology, that is allowed for mortals plus specifically note that electricity is not allowed.

If I can harness electricity, am I divine?

Nah, you are heretic and Shain-Wei worshipper. Proscriptions do not describe electricity as IMPOSSIBLE for mortals. They describe it as NOT ALLOWED for mortals for divine reasons. And so if you harnessed Rakurai, you are obviously under demonic influence.

Did the Archangels ever SAY that the Temple violated the proscriptions? Did they ever say that it DIDN'T? do our crude instruments REALLY detect forbidden electricity here,

Again: the Prosccription forbade electricity for mortals. Archangels are not included.

WOULD God force otherwise reliable instruments, made by skilled and pious craftsmen, to start lying to their users when brought inside the Temple?

Lie about what? About the fact that there is divine power, forbidden for mortals in the Temple?

If the Temple DOES violate the proscriptions, but Archangels are ALLOWED to violate the proscriptions, what does that mean for US?

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Again: Proscriptions are ONLY for mortals. They are NOT for Archangels. There is no technical way Archangels could "violate" something that is not forbidden for them.

Krenn, you seems to be making a serious mistake. You assume that Proscriptions describe electricity of some sort of demonic power. But they arent. According to Proscription - as TFT stated pretty clearly - electricity is a divine power, that God decreed as not allowed for mortals to use. Archangels have their (sacred) ways of using that power, and Shain-Wei may tempt mortals with promises of knowledge how to use it. If you harnessed electricity, you are a sinner NOT because its electricity, but because you used forbidden knowledge for that.

Krenn wrote:

Those sorts of arguments could last FOREVER. and the entire point of the exercise isn't to find useful answers... it's to develop the habit of trying to apply historic and theological reasoning, unto the actions and remnants of the Archangels themselves... which will inevitably make the Archangel's legacy much more vulnerable.

Nah. You forgot, that Holy Writ was DESIGNED to have as little internal contradictions as possible. Her authors have all humanity cultural and religious experience to work with, not to mention - extremely developed computing capabilities to search exactly for such contradiction.