**major spoilers** Speculation about a certain document...

Weird puzzles and encryptions and books locked away in (a variety of, presumably) long locked-up out of the way places are not how God and the Archangels communicate with the people of Safehold. They do so simply, clearly and in ways everyone can understand, by personal appearance and the Writ for all to read, not forgetting the testimonies. So you are not going to get people to buy that a cryptogram is a real message from God. Especially if it seems to need heretical information to decrypt it. The obvious CoGA responses would be that the purported decryption either showed the manifestly demonic origin of the book or was manifestly wrong and the real meaning awaited further light from the Archangels.

Keith_w wrote:1) Why couldn't Schueler (and all the other archangels) be living under assumed names and have children?

Given the status of Archangels as divine beings, precisely how could they do that? Having a "secret identity" as an Adam or Eve would be a non-trivial challenge, especially since many of them interacted with colonists (at least in the Zion enclave) before the War Against the Fallen.

2) Why couldn't they be married to other members of the command crew, have children who were then treated to the same memory modification as the rest of the colonists?

Possible, I suppose. There's precedent - Shan Wei and Kau Yung were married, though they apparently didn't produce offspring. My impression is that Langhorne and Bedard were an item too, but again, no kids as of when Kau Yung nuked them. But I can see resistance among command crew members to having their kids brain-wiped the way the rest of the colonists were.[/quote]

3) Why couldn't a reward for going on the mission be that your children get to go as well?

How old would the kids be? See my earlier comments about why cryo was a bad idea for kids. You might make a case for command crew members having grown children that might be colonists.

The question here is whether Paityr is directly descended from Schueler, or if there was another layer and the Wyllsyns were descended from one of Schueler's kids. This presumes Schueler had kids they could have been descended from, which I think is unlikely.

The other question is why Schueler gave Paityr's ancestors the Stone and the Key, with a recorded message to them calling upon them to be his followers and try to keep the CoGA on the right path, and this would be a question regardless of whether descent from him was direct or not.
______
Dennis

DMcCunney wrote:The question here is whether Paityr is directly descended from Schueler, or if there was another layer and the Wyllsyns were descended from one of Schueler's kids. This presumes Schueler had kids they could have been descended from, which I think is unlikely.

The other question is why Schueler gave Paityr's ancestors the Stone and the Key, with a recorded message to them calling upon them to be his followers and try to keep the CoGA on the right path, and this would be a question regardless of whether descent from him was direct or not.
______
Dennis

Dennis I'm sure the first para above is clear to you, but the rest of us are maybe struggling with it. The Wylsynns have to be descended from Scheuler through one of his kids however you look at it, that's the only way to be directly descended from Scheuler.

You maybe mean, "Were they descended from kids he had before he arrived on Safehold or from a child of his born on Safehold?", but that's sure not what you say.

As regards the first, a civilian in a senior role in a major project in a civilisation where people generally lived to be 300, could quite conceivably be 80 or so. That would give him plenty of time to have had kids back on earth, before the Gbabba were even heard of, let alone became an inescapable threat. We just don't know what policy was about adult kids of the higher echelons joining the project. Nor do we know how much corruption and nepotism went on. So it's conceivable he could have had descendants on Safehold through adult kids who joined the project.

I must admit the secrecy involved in the whole thing, the Wyllsyns heritage is only a family memory, it's not in the Schueler presentation on the Key, led me to assume he had indulged in a clandestine relationship while on Safehold. I still think that's more likely, as it's a simpler explanation, but RFC never said so.

The real shift in the Church began after Kau-yung assassinated Langhorne, Bedard and their cronies, leaving Chihiro and Schueler to control the church (rather than simply guide it). And it's equally clear that Bedard's death and the lack of her psychological expertise, forced them to institute the top-heavy church, with an emphasis on coercion and enforcement.

Moreover, as OWL postulates in OAR, they had to take steps to protect themselves from "disloyal" members of the military forces assigned to Safehold, something that was confirmed in HFQ when they translated Cody Cortazar's diary. And Staynair himself says in BSRA that the Brethren of Saint Zhernau opted not to reveal his diary because they did not believe the Church would settle for simply killing them and eliminating the evidence. That much of Langhorne's and Schueler's intolerance and "thoroughness" lingered in the Inquisition, even then. So I just can't see why a VR version of Schueler would operate so circumspectly, get his foot through the door so to speak before the Inner Circle unleashed whatever Stage 2 of the Nahrmahn Plan really is.

Also, if this was Schueler attempting to preempt Phase 2, why did he wait until after the end of the 1,000th year since the creation if the promised angelic visitation was to occur then? The Inner Circle only ordered Phase 2 when they felt safe to assume that said return wasn't planned for the millennial anniversary of the colony. For this VR Schueler to even be aware of Phase 2, he would have to be tapped into their communications somehow and know what they were planning. And regardless, arranging such a visitation at the site of Schueler's tomb rather than in the Temple itself (i.e. the center of government for all of Safehold, where the word of the "archangels" could be disseminated quickly) and leaving behind a document that somehow contradicts the truth that has been know for a millennia while still maintaining the anti-technology precepts of the Church, would require far more psychological sophistication and subtlety than Schueler seems to have been capable of.

[size=50]

Krenn wrote:
Which brings us back to the original thread question....

What might the Lost Testimony of Schueler actually SAY?

I’m most interested in ‘Schueler’s’ motivations for writing the Testimony in the first place, because I think those motives dictate exactly what his Testimony says.

I think the story is a lot more interesting in Schueler actually did write it. So I’ve made the assumption that he did, and will now speculate on four different motives he might have, and what he included in the testimony because of those motives.

So, motive #1. Schueler has a conscience, and it is guilty. What effect does this have on his Testimony? If he’s driven by, for example, guilt that he participated in Shan-wei’s murder and /or incited a thousand years of torture and oppression, then his Testimony is going to be about making what restitution he can. This means repudiating the Punishment, repudiating the Inquisition, rehabilitating the Fallen, and naming and shaming his accomplices. If he’s more concerned about confessing his sins and setting the record straight, he may go whole hog and declare that nobody, including him, was ever an archangel. In other words, guilt may drive him to pick a up an ax and swing it straight at the church’s face. In this scenario, Schueler is making a moral choice to deliberately reject a lie.

I doubt that this is what’s happening, because of the way he appeared. If he was really trying to make up for lying about being an archangel, he wouldn’t have appeared in a manner guaranteed to make everyone think ‘hey look, an Archangel!’ So if his conscience is guilty, it’s probably more guilty about smearing Shan-wei’s name and creating the inquisition than guilty about the whole Langhorn plan. And so his testimony will limit itself to correcting those two things.

Motive #2: He is still driven by his overriding responsibility to protect humanity from the Gbaba. However, the inquisition’s excesses so thoroughly discredited the Order of Schueler that he can no longer count on them having enough power to strangle technology. In that sense, Nahrman’s plan worked. Since technology is out of the bottle, the only safe thing to do is to push it as far and as fast as they can before the Gbaba notice. So his Testimony is going to not only bash Chihiro, but it’s going to nuke the Proscriptions. This is a likelier scenario if Schueler has control of the OBS, too. That would mean it’s his choice whether to push the button. That would mean he could openly encourage Safehold to use the Rakuri. In TFT, Merlin mentions about the book of Chihiro going on at length about proscribing the Rakuri, and if Schueler is attacking Chihiro, he could be executing an attack on the electricity proscription as well.

Such a testimony would probably include a copy of the scientific method, encourage questioning everything, and instructions to lay hands on the Rakuri.


Motive #3: Schueler is entertained by bloodshed and wants to stir up Safehold for his own amusement. There really is no textev to support this motive, and it doesn’t make very fun reading in a story that is all about individuals and their moral choices. But if this is true, he’s going to be very entertained by the fact that he just took 300 innocent people and sent them to war against the might and majesty of the church. Such a testimony would be heavily slanted towards encouraging people to risk martyrdom, glorifying proclaiming the ‘truth’ at any cost, and be heavy on the ‘do this because I said so, and ignore the other archangels.”

Motive #4: He is an innocent dupe manipulated by Chihiro, Bedard, and Langhorne, and is compelled by a sense of personal violation and honest outrage to fix the injustice perpetrated upon all Safeholdians. It occurred to me that Langhorne and Bedard already mind-screwed 8 million people. I don’t see any reason why Bedard couldn’t have adjusted Schueler’s personality to be more to her liking, especially since she would probably be the one who was supposed to treat you when you came down with a bad case of PTSD from having your entire world murdered. If that is what happened, his attack on the writ might include attacks on the mind control aspects of it, and include repudiation of Bedard’s definitions of heresy, a rejection of the inquisition and all it’s works, Chihiro’s War, and Langhorne’s Church. It might leave the proscriptions intact.

The way such a testimony would be written would be heavy on arguments that a just and loving god would abhor coercive methods, encouragement to judge even the archangels themselve by the fruits of their actions, and to be wary of anything proclaiming that you *must* believe a certain way.

Anyway, those are the top four motivations that come to mind for Schueler, and the potential effects those motivations have on what gets included in the Testimony.

thanatos wrote: For this VR Schueler to even be aware of Phase 2, he would have to be tapped into their communications somehow and know what they were planning. o

There is a potential weak spot... OWL is a military AI, taken from one of Operation Ark ships. His hardware might be build to include certain "backdoors", accessable only for high civilian and military ranks. What if Archangel wake up, noticed SNARC's and remotes flying around (and even PICA coming into the Temple, maybe), and managed to activate said backdoor?

DMcCunney wrote:

Keith_w wrote:1) Why couldn't Schueler (and all the other archangels) be living under assumed names and have children?

Given the status of Archangels as divine beings, precisely how could they do that? Having a "secret identity" as an Adam or Eve would be a non-trivial challenge, especially since many of them interacted with colonists (at least in the Zion enclave) before the War Against the Fallen.

Zeus managed to cross-breed divinity and human, as did other gods in virtually every pantheon -- including
Christianity. Why should the "Archangels" of Safehold be any different?

Randomiser wrote:Weird puzzles and encryptions and books locked away in (a variety of, presumably) long locked-up out of the way places are not how God and the Archangels communicate with the people of Safehold. They do so simply, clearly and in ways everyone can understand, by personal appearance and the Writ for all to read, not forgetting the testimonies. So you are not going to get people to buy that a cryptogram is a real message from God. Especially if it seems to need heretical information to decrypt it. The obvious CoGA responses would be that the purported decryption either showed the manifestly demonic origin of the book or was manifestly wrong and the real meaning awaited further light from the Archangels.

Good point. I still believe that you can't give them the whole truth in one big, undigested lump. But time to look for plan B.

A little bit of nookie with the natives would not seem difficult for semi-divine beings. In the Greek mythos, usually just being chosen for the honor was enough to convince most humans, and it would be easy to convince them to keep it a secret afterwards. And with all the 'be fruitful and multiply' going on, a few extra Archangel/human babies would hardly be noticed. So I don't see this as being a problem. Certainly no where near as difficult as getting the youngsters to stick to the 'family duty' for so many generations.

The SNARCs I believe were designed to be stealthy against their own level of technology. I can just see two planet wide groups of SNARCs hiding from each other while spying on everyone else. However, sooner or later one of them is likely to get close enough to observe one of the others and then it will get REALLY interesting.

Good catch on OWL, but the question remains who was more paranoid? The people on Earth who were afraid of someone else on Earth getting 'back door' access into a military fighter's AI, or Langhorne's group worryig about having a fighter that they can't backdoor into? Since Langhorne is probably not supposed to know that this one even existed, he may not have had a chance to program in his hooks. Or if he did know about, it would be in Kau Yung's department, and his military people would not be happy with letting others mess around with the security protocols of their fighters. But I would expect Schueler to be able to tie into the Temple computer/comm net. And yes, a PICA inside would seem like a big enough event to take notice of. He may operate at much lower power levels, but if he could passively sense that much shielded stuff inside, it seems hard to believe that their internal security sensors couldn't spot a PICA even at minimum emm-con. Just the mass of metal going through the doorway and neutrino emissions should be the first hint!

Randomiser wrote:

DMcCunney wrote:The question here is whether Paityr is directly descended from Schueler, or if there was another layer and the Wyllsyns were descended from one of Schueler's kids. This presumes Schueler had kids they could have been descended from, which I think is unlikely.

The other question is why Schueler gave Paityr's ancestors the Stone and the Key, with a recorded message to them calling upon them to be his followers and try to keep the CoGA on the right path, and this would be a question regardless of whether descent from him was direct or not.
______
Dennis

Dennis I'm sure the first para above is clear to you, but the rest of us are maybe struggling with it. The Wylsynns have to be descended from Scheuler through one of his kids however you look at it, that's the only way to be directly descended from Scheuler.

You maybe mean, "Were they descended from kids he had before he arrived on Safehold or from a child of his born on Safehold?", but that's sure not what you say.

As regards the first, a civilian in a senior role in a major project in a civilisation where people generally lived to be 300, could quite conceivably be 80 or so. That would give him plenty of time to have had kids back on earth, before the Gbabba were even heard of, let alone became an inescapable threat. We just don't know what policy was about adult kids of the higher echelons joining the project. Nor do we know how much corruption and nepotism went on. So it's conceivable he could have had descendants on Safehold through adult kids who joined the project.

I must admit the secrecy involved in the whole thing, the Wyllsyns heritage is only a family memory, it's not in the Schueler presentation on the Key, led me to assume he had indulged in a clandestine relationship while on Safehold. I still think that's more likely, as it's a simpler explanation, but RFC never said so.

My first thought was also, "How else could the the Wylsynns be descended from Schueler?" There is nothing saying that the command crew had to be young, there is nothing saying that children born before the Gbabba were discovered could not have been on the trip.

I would also like to remind you that it is not the Wylsynns family tradition that they are descended from Schueler, it is Owl's DNA testing that identified the connection, triggered by the tradition of the verifier being handed down.

Randomiser wrote:

DMcCunney wrote:The question here is whether Paityr is directly descended from Schueler, or if there was another layer and the Wyllsyns were descended from one of Schueler's kids. This presumes Schueler had kids they could have been descended from, which I think is unlikely.

The other question is why Schueler gave Paityr's ancestors the Stone and the Key, with a recorded message to them calling upon them to be his followers and try to keep the CoGA on the right path, and this would be a question regardless of whether descent from him was direct or not.

Dennis I'm sure the first para above is clear to you, but the rest of us are maybe struggling with it. The Wylsynns have to be descended from Scheuler through one of his kids however you look at it, that's the only way to be directly descended from Scheuler.

This is where we differ. I don't think it's the only possible way. The Wylsynns may be descended from one of Schueler's kids, but that raises the question of where the kids came from.

You maybe mean, "Were they descended from kids he had before he arrived on Safehold or from a child of his born on Safehold?", but that's sure not what you say.

I don't know one way or the other.

My bigger point is that whether the Wylsynns were directly descended from Schueler or from offspring he might have had on Safehold may not matter. He appeared to the Wylsynns, and left them the Stone and the Key with a personal message. The notion the Archangels would return in a thousand years was a personal communication, not written down anywhere, but preserved in the Wylsynn family memories. The IC couldn't simply dismiss it, and had to worry about a possible reappearance while having no idea what form it might take.

I must admit the secrecy involved in the whole thing, the Wyllsyns heritage is only a family memory, it's not in the Schueler presentation on the Key, led me to assume he had indulged in a clandestine relationship while on Safehold. I still think that's more likely, as it's a simpler explanation, but RFC never said so.

No, RFC carefully didn't say. But as mentioned, in a larger context, it may not matter. Schueler himself appeared to the Wylsynns and left the the Stone and the key, with a personal message enjoinng them to keep it secret, and didn't tell anyone else (IE, the rest of the command crew) that he had done so. The bigger question is why he did that in the first place, and it's one of the things I expect to learn down the road.
______
Dennis