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Safehold post-Jihad

This fascinating series is a combination of historical seafaring, swashbuckling adventure, and high technological science-fiction. Join us in a discussion!
Re: Safehold post-Jihad
Post by PeterZ   » Wed Jan 04, 2017 11:06 am

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Nature abhors a vacuum.

When the CoGA was reduced to simply the moral guarantor of the souls of Safehold's residents, there no longer exists a political force with sufficient military might to impose a universal peace. Charis has the military might, but not the universally accepted authority. Siddermark is rebuilding and recovering. Dohlar is largely intact and in great position to impose its will upon neigbors not allied with Charis. South Harchong is in a similar position. North Harchng and Desnair are basket cases and will grow even more troubled.

Desnair just got its butt handed to it by a nation barely a sixth its size. Desnair wasn't simply defeated, it was destroyed militarily. Destroyed with innovations and a general philosophy that threatens everything Desnair is built on. How many aristocrats in Desnair will stomach that? The current emperor's inability to secure the blessings granted to those aristocrats is enough to drive some of them to seek alternate leadership. Civil war is unavoidable unless the emperor industrializes immediately. Industrialization will make the aristos even more restive, but far less able to defeat the emperor. Absent industrialization the aristos will feel compelled to seek anyone strong enough to turn back the advance of change.

North Harchong is so hosed its not even funny. They cannot industrialize without totally over turning their entire society. Unless they industrialize, they cannot defeat an industrial nation. The Temple Lands can industrialize, but in doping so they will weaken the bedrock that binds the several episcopates. Innovation and industrialization at the pace Charis will set is anathema to CoGA doctrine that change begets more change which might threaten man's ability to live the life God wants of him. If they industrialize more slowly, they will need a large numeric advantage to threaten Charis, Dohlar or South Harchong.

All of this beings us back to Desnair. South Harchong and Dohlar will feel compelled to bring the incipient civil war there to a halt for many valid reasons. North Harchong and the Temple lands will want to influence who takes over in Desnair in the hopes of slowing down the innovations that are rapidly changing the world. To exert any influence they will have to work together. Charis and Siddermark will be interested in ensuring that Silkiah is safe.

South Harchong will ask the Grand Vicar to support sending the Mighty Host to South Harchong in anticipation of Desnair disintegrating to chaos. North Harchong will gladly agree. Siddermark will be happy to see them leave East Haven. That movement will speed up the Desnari decline into civil war as nervous aristos seek to prepare for threats to their power and privilege.

The second story arc will take place on Safehold gone crazy in a worldwide secular war. The conflict will start in Desnair with all the other nations being slowly drawn in. At one point North Harchong will fail under the strain of waging an industrial war with an agrarian economy. If this is the stage that whoever/whatever Awakens walks into, the story will be interesting indeed.
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Re: Safehold post-Jihad
Post by MrZero   » Wed Jan 04, 2017 1:33 pm

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I've wondered about what Safehold was going to throw at them.
What about what suppressed Safehold lifeforms are going to take advantage of the ecological devastation on the war? There may be a upsurge of parasites and barely-noticed stuff. I'm not talking facehuggers and zombies, but people suddenly growing snails in their intestines might give someone pause. I just think Weber's Recreationist Love might need a dash of more sci-fi inventiveness then "just give them another round of dysentery and stuff that happened in the 1700's."
PeterZ raises some good points. I thought that after the war the rest of SH would fall in line one way or another. Some petulant brats and foot-dragging to be expected, but still joining the new world order. With the way that things played out, there may be enough idiots left that Merlin may have to stamp out a new war before it starts. Not that a war would start, there's not enough left to do so! But that he'd have some secret societies and spy rings to go action hero on.
It'd be funny to see some of how much the church needs the new money from Charis to pay off it's debts. Charis-run mines aside, Merlin's mining drones's efforts in creating new money could buy him a few people in the church. And what sort of reaction would a hardline anti-Charis priest have when he's caught between choosing Merlin and his bag of sapphires, or the loan sharks who just blocked off all the exits?
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Re: Safehold post-Jihad
Post by Weird Harold   » Wed Jan 04, 2017 2:03 pm

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MrZero wrote:PeterZ raises some good points. I thought that after the war the rest of SH would fall in line one way or another. Some petulant brats and foot-dragging to be expected, but still joining the new world order. With the way that things played out, there may be enough idiots left that Merlin may have to stamp out a new war before it starts. Not that a war would start, there's not enough left to do so! But that he'd have some secret societies and spy rings to go action hero on.


I think we should remember that along with the hint that the next series starts twenty years after the end of atSoT, there is also the "Twenty years of Cold War" qualifier.

I suspect that there will be a few "proxy wars" and lots of commercial and technological competition between the EOC and the Temple's mainstays. North Harchong especially seems to be the logical center for a movement to restart a Jihad -- but it's going to take every bit of twenty years for NH to come up with some compromise between conservatism and industrialization.

We aren't going to see or hear much about the interregnum other than a brief outline to set the scene for the second series.
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Re: Safehold post-Jihad
Post by thanatos   » Thu Jan 05, 2017 4:23 pm

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PeterZ wrote:Nature abhors a vacuum.

When the CoGA was reduced to simply the moral guarantor of the souls of Safehold's residents, there no longer exists a political force with sufficient military might to impose a universal peace. Charis has the military might, but not the universally accepted authority. Siddermark is rebuilding and recovering. Dohlar is largely intact and in great position to impose its will upon neigbors not allied with Charis. South Harchong is in a similar position. North Harchng and Desnair are basket cases and will grow even more troubled.

...

The second story arc will take place on Safehold gone crazy in a worldwide secular war. The conflict will start in Desnair with all the other nations being slowly drawn in. At one point North Harchong will fail under the strain of waging an industrial war with an agrarian economy. If this is the stage that whoever/whatever Awakens walks into, the story will be interesting indeed.


PeterZ raises a good point. RFC stated that the CoGA was always intended to serve as a global government under which all of the various nations must exist. It's essentially the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages writ large, with a formal authority that encompasses large areas of life backed by real science and legal enforcement mechanisms (namely the Inquisition) that supercede local authority on various issues. It was only in the last 200-300 local years that the Vicarite got so corrupt and the last 400 years since the Church's power was consolidated (whereby control of the Inquisition was transferred from the Order of Bedard to the Order of Schueler, the Order of Jwo-Jeng was absorbed by the Order of Scueler, and the latter's superseding the Order of Langhorne in the Church hierarchy).

But now the situation is radically changed. Only a third of the pre-Jihad Vicarite remains, with the rest either purged, assassinated, forced to retire, on trial, in jail or executed. Far too many inquisitors have been assassinated or executed over the last 5 local years, including Clyntahn himself, and its power has been greatly diminished both by this and by Duchairn's reforms. Moreover, the Inquisition has even less moral authority than the Church at the moment, especially given the expediency with which Clyntahn permitted certain innovations for the sake of survival. So how does the Church suppress "dangerous thought" and innovations? It cannot be with the Inquisition - Not at first at least.

But PeterZ's point about the Church's role in ensuring peace and stability throughout Safehold is also telling. In the 17th century, the Peace of Westphalia ended the religious wars in Europe but also ended the Catholic Church's authority over those European realms. It created the basic tenets of today's international law, which was supposed to supercede even the law of God. Nor was the legitimacy of rule granted by the Catholic Church - Rather it was a matter of having "blue blood". So extrapolating upon this and assuming Merlin and Nimue can be trusted to avoid the obvious mistakes of history, what will follow is likely to be a series of civil wars within places like Harchong and Desnair, with the CoGA forced to choose sides or else lose the trust of those people. We may even see a Cold War-style proxy wars, with Charis and Siddarmark supporting the rebelling slaves and serfs and the Church forced to choose either the aristocracy or "neutrality". Moreover, neither they, nor realms like Trellheim, Sodar and Delfarahk, could trust the Church to protect them from the threat of Siddarmark and Charis. And it will be Silkiah that becomes a more interesting place, as their security is now guaranteed by Siddarmark and Charis rather than by the Church itself.
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Re: Safehold post-Jihad
Post by PeterZ   » Thu Jan 05, 2017 5:27 pm

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thanatos wrote:snip
And it will be Silkiah that becomes a more interesting place, as their security is now guaranteed by Siddarmark and Charis rather than by the Church itself.


The geography would argue against Silkiah suffering interesting times. Do you want to bet as part of any settlement with Desnair, Silkiah's border with Desnair is pushed far enough south to include most if not all of the Northern coast of the Gulf of Jahras? I would be shocked if that was not the case.

Defending the North Watch isthmus is much simpler if Silkiah owns all the land above Jahras Island. If Desnair can stage troops in Khreos, things get more difficult.
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Re: Safehold post-Jihad
Post by Jeff   » Thu Jan 05, 2017 8:30 pm

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Personally, I'm going for the Leveler Scenario.

Something like many of the Might Host end up returning to North Harchong just to return to their families .. and suddenly realise they don't want to take it anymore. Harchong version of Mao arises, emperor loses his mandate and we have instant Red Menace. The two Harchongs could 'North/South Korea' it.

Desnair could go the same way and I believe there has been several mentions of Leveler activity in Siddarmark.

No clue though, how the 'thing under the temple' would play out in this scenario.
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Re: Safehold post-Jihad
Post by Michae   » Thu Jan 05, 2017 8:55 pm

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Looking at the situation: I think North Harchong is heading for a very nasty serf revolt,if it continues in it's present course,and possibly South Harchong as well,as there's some descriptions of how the good nobles treat their serfs and I can't imagine them tolerating that kind of treatment.Rainbow Waters is going to have to step on that pronto.


Do you think North Harchong might declare war on South Harchong to "cleanse the heresy" in the future,if the sitation continues as it currently is,possibly against the EOC and Siddarmark,as it loks like they may be able to secure a treaty of some kind with South Harchong?
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Re: Safehold post-Jihad
Post by fallsfromtrees   » Fri Jan 06, 2017 4:13 am

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Jeff wrote:Personally, I'm going for the Leveler Scenario.

Something like many of the Might Host end up returning to North Harchong just to return to their families .. and suddenly realise they don't want to take it anymore. Harchong version of Mao arises, emperor loses his mandate and we have instant Red Menace. The two Harchongs could 'North/South Korea' it.

Desnair could go the same way and I believe there has been several mentions of Leveler activity in Siddarmark.

No clue though, how the 'thing under the temple' would play out in this scenario.

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Re: Safehold post-Jihad
Post by PeterZ   » Fri Jan 06, 2017 11:27 am

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The barrier to a Leveler scenario is simply the fundamental conservatism of Safehold in general and Harchong more specifically. Safehold societies as shaped by Church doctrine do not stress egalitarianism, but authoritarianism. So, the Levelers by their nature will move towards government ownership without the underpinning that government is for the people. After Clinton's thorough abuse of his authority, what citizen in their right mind will want their government having MORE power? Certainly not Harchong.

No, the Levelers worked in Siddermark because Charis was viewed as causing economic disparity between Charisian émigrés and native Siddermakians. The same cannot work when they target their own elites as having more wealth and power. It cannot work because Church doctrine asserts that the Church and those it designates are justly authorized to have more wealth and power. God says so. In North Harchong the local Church has brutally enforced this view. Overturning this social order requires abandoning the foundations of the faith that girds the loins and comforts the souls of Harchongese serfs. Not gonna happen.

Jeff wrote:Personally, I'm going for the Leveler Scenario.

Something like many of the Might Host end up returning to North Harchong just to return to their families .. and suddenly realise they don't want to take it anymore. Harchong version of Mao arises, emperor loses his mandate and we have instant Red Menace. The two Harchongs could 'North/South Korea' it.

Desnair could go the same way and I believe there has been several mentions of Leveler activity in Siddarmark.

No clue though, how the 'thing under the temple' would play out in this scenario.
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Re: Safehold post-Jihad
Post by DrakBibliophile   » Fri Jan 06, 2017 11:34 am

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I got the impression that South Harchong is in favor of ending serfdom.

South Harchong is now in the position of "breaking away from North Harchong looks good/possible".

Of course, if the Host can't return to North Harchong, then South Harchong has a nice army to defend itself from North Harchong.

Michae wrote:Looking at the situation: I think North Harchong is heading for a very nasty serf revolt,if it continues in it's present course,and possibly South Harchong as well,as there's some descriptions of how the good nobles treat their serfs and I can't imagine them tolerating that kind of treatment.Rainbow Waters is going to have to step on that pronto.


Do you think North Harchong might declare war on South Harchong to "cleanse the heresy" in the future,if the sitation continues as it currently is,possibly against the EOC and Siddarmark,as it loks like they may be able to secure a treaty of some kind with South Harchong?
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