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

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Re: **major spoilers** Speculation about a certain document
Post by DMcCunney   » Fri Feb 15, 2019 8:49 am

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JollyJoker wrote:
DMcCunney wrote:We don't actually know when and where Schueler shuffled off this mortal coil. The cathedral in the Episcopate named after him was built to house the tomb where his body was interred, but isn't necessarily the place where he expired.
Do we actually know the cathedral was built after his death? That would make it unlikely he'd place a recording there.
We don't.

But I can see Schueler telling his closest faithful while still alive that the time for him to return to God was approaching, and that they should prepare a tomb and cathedral to house the tomb in his Episcopate. For that matter, construction of the tomb and cathedral could be handled by "servitors" already known to exist and deployed by Archangels. Consider how the Temple was built. It was raised after the destruction of Langhorne's HQ but not built by the colonists. He could stash a recording and other Federation tech stuff in it as part of the process to be available after his death.
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Re: **major spoilers** Speculation about a certain document
Post by DMcCunney   » Fri Feb 15, 2019 9:06 am

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PlaysWithBees wrote:
bkwormlisa wrote:Me too. It's mentioned that after the war Chihiro "departed". Boy do I want to know how that was meant! The implication to me was that he supposedly left Safehold, as in departed physically, but that's just the sort of ambiguity RFC loves to torment us with.
What makes it even more ambiguous is the mention by SSK that the last bombardment happened after “Chihiro AND SCHUELER departed in glory with the Dawn Star
It's mentioned that Chihiro and Scheueler departed in glory, and that the servitors the Archangels deployed returned to the Dawn Star which disappeared from Safehold's sky. I don't believe it was stated that the Dawn Star is where Chihiro and Schueler went, nor precisely when they left.

(And the colonists didn't know what the Dawn Star was, or that the servitors were machines. Note Nynian and Sandaria's reaction to discovering they weren't living things created by God to aid the Archangels.)

And we don't know precisely when the Rakurai strike that destroyed that convent originally built to house Kohdy's tomb occurred. We know that the last of the lesser Angels still present on Safehold were waiting for the Adams and Eves to all die, so they could do things like edit the Testimonies and delete things like Kohdy's diary that would raise inconvenient questions. They'd wait till anyone with actual first hand knowledge was gone before they rewrote history.

We can assume the lesser Angels were younger members of the command crew originally, and got tasked to do it because they would still be alive then, where the older Archangels would have already died.
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Re: **major spoilers** Speculation about a certain document
Post by DMcCunney   » Fri Feb 15, 2019 9:33 am

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bkwormlisa wrote:
DMcCunney wrote:Schueler is the first Archangel we have heard about returning to God and leaving a mortal body behind, interred in a tomb with a church raised over it to house the tomb.

I do have to wonder about the other Archangels, and precisely how their departure was handled. (I am especially curious about Chihiro.)
Me too. It's mentioned that after the war Chihiro "departed". Boy do I want to know how that was meant! The implication to me was that he supposedly left Safehold, as in departed physically, but that's just the sort of ambiguity RFC loves to torment us with.
I asked RFC about that at a con, and said "Departed to where? Unless there is something you haven't mentioned yet, the only places to be are Safehold or a colony vessel." He said we would find out where the Archangels wound up and what happened to them, but that there weren't PICAs stashed under the Temple.

(I wondered about that, too. If Owl's fabrication unit could construct a PICA, the more powerful units aboard Hamilcar certainly could. I have to assume the plans for making PICAs weren't part of what was supplied to Operation Ark. Owl could do it because he had Numue's PICA to examine and reverse engineer. Chihiro and Schueler lacked an example to copy.

I had a vision of Chihiro recording his personality as death approached, uploading it it a PICA, and returning to Safehold in an immortal body to rule forever. RFC said if Chihiro could do that, he wouldn't have waited. He'd have done it ASAP. And he'd even have a cover story - his return to Safehold in an immortal body was penance, and he was exiled to Safehold instead of returning to God with the other Archangels for failing to stop Shan Wei.

Fortunately for all, he couldn't. :P)

But I'd really like to know what happened to Hamilcar, who/what was aboard when it departed, where it went, and when we'll see it again.

My suspicion is that it has very capable VR units, and a recording of Chihiro (and possibly others) is resident. Then the question becomes "Can a recorded personality in a VR unit control the ship that houses the VR unit? I don't offhand see why not.
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Re: **major spoilers** Speculation about a certain document
Post by JollyJoker   » Fri Feb 15, 2019 10:40 am

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DMcCunney wrote:But I can see Schueler telling his closest faithful while still alive that the time for him to return to God was approaching, and that they should prepare a tomb and cathedral to house the tomb in his Episcopate. For that matter, construction of the tomb and cathedral could be handled by "servitors" already known to exist and deployed by Archangels. Consider how the Temple was built. It was raised after the destruction of Langhorne's HQ but not built by the colonists. He could stash a recording and other Federation tech stuff in it as part of the process to be available after his death.
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Dennis

Remember these guys aren't like saints that are recognized only after their death. They were archangels walking around preaching a religion. They could well have had their own private churches built in their lifetimes.
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Re: **major spoilers** Speculation about a certain document
Post by DMcCunney   » Fri Feb 15, 2019 3:03 pm

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JollyJoker wrote:
DMcCunney wrote:But I can see Schueler telling his closest faithful while still alive that the time for him to return to God was approaching, and that they should prepare a tomb and cathedral to house the tomb in his Episcopate. For that matter, construction of the tomb and cathedral could be handled by "servitors" already known to exist and deployed by Archangels. Consider how the Temple was built. It was raised after the destruction of Langhorne's HQ but not built by the colonists. He could stash a recording and other Federation tech stuff in it as part of the process to be available after his death.
Remember these guys aren't like saints that are recognized only after their death. They were archangels walking around preaching a religion. They could well have had their own private churches built in their lifetimes.
That was essentially my assumption - that his church and tomb predated his actual death.

If he had it built for himself with the assistance of the sort of devices that built the Temple, he could have tucked all sorts of things away in it for later use.

The underlying question is whether the apparition of Schueler that appeared in his cathedral on the day commemorating his soul's departure from his mortal body and return to God was something the real Schueler had arranged or a sneaky IC trick. For reasons mentioned elsewhere, I think that was Schueler, and it will be as big a surprise to the IC as it will to the Temple. Given what Schueler said in his brief address to the faithful, the contents of the Testimony he left behind should cause consternation, to put it mildly, when that volume is read by the Vicarate in the Temple. I look forward to reading about their reaction in the next volume. :P
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Re: **major spoilers** Speculation about a certain document
Post by Julia Minor   » Sat Feb 16, 2019 4:22 pm

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Terranovan wrote:RFC has implicitly said that the Order of St. Kohdy was involved in this.

If this was their doing, I would find it wildly implausible that the Inner Circle doesn't know something about it. Simple courtesy would dictate a heads-up.

However, I can't yet wrap my head around how the Order and/or Inner Circle would get access to one of Zion's main churches with Federation-level technology.


If the Sisters of St Kohdy had anything to do with this, Nynian should have known about it long before. Or did she resign as Mother Superior when she got married?

For that matter, if the SSK had access to Federation tech other than Kohdy's relics (journal, sword, and armor) Nynian shouldn't have been gobsmacked when Merlin showed her around the cave for the first time.

If the Visitation was a SSK plan, there has to be some reason Nynian was out of the loop.
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Re: **major spoilers** Speculation about a certain document
Post by Thronk   » Sun Feb 17, 2019 9:26 am

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dwileye13 wrote:'Gratitude is the sign of a noble soul' is the moral of the Androcles fable.

How does that fit with the Schueler Visitation??

I do not believe the visitation was generated by any IC action but was actually a 'Delayed Presentment' by Schueler and intended to bring a real history to Safehold.


If the Writ is to Safehold as the thorn is to the Lion this would seem to be a good start at removing it.
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Re: **major spoilers** Speculation about a certain document
Post by DMcCunney   » Sun Feb 17, 2019 10:28 am

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Julia Minor wrote:
Terranovan wrote:RFC has implicitly said that the Order of St. Kohdy was involved in this.

If this was their doing, I would find it wildly implausible that the Inner Circle doesn't know something about it. Simple courtesy would dictate a heads-up.

However, I can't yet wrap my head around how the Order and/or Inner Circle would get access to one of Zion's main churches with Federation-level technology.
If the Sisters of St Kohdy had anything to do with this, Nynian should have known about it long before. Or did she resign as Mother Superior when she got married?
I think RFC would have mentioned it if she had. There was no particular reason for her to quit the job, as being Mother Superior of the SSK didn't require much of her personal attention. They were an isolated convent, mostly unknown to the outside world and with little interaction with it. Whoever served as abbess on site could handle needed supervision. Nynian's other role, as commander of Helm Cleaver in Zion, was the more important and time consuming one. Her most important job was mostly managing the investments that funded the SSK and Helm Cleaver.

(And I wonder if Helm Cleaver was formally disbanded, or still exists as a way to keep an eye on Mother Church after Zion rose against the Inquisition, Zhaspar Clyntahn was deposed, tried, and hung, and Grand Vicar Rhobair began to completely reform the CoGA.)
For that matter, if the SSK had access to Federation tech other than Kohdy's relics (journal, sword, and armor) Nynian shouldn't have been gobsmacked when Merlin showed her around the cave for the first time.
Correct. The SSK knew things the rest of Safehold didn't, courtesy of Kohdy's diary, but Kohdy never committed the suspicions that led him to go to Zion to seek clarification from Schueler to writing, even in the portions of his diary written in Espanol.

The SSK knew he waas a Seijin, with some miraculous gear like his battle-steel sword, but those were divine artifacts provided by the Archangels. The SSK had no notion of technology.
If the Visitation was a SSK plan, there has to be some reason Nynian was out of the loop.
If the SSK had that capability, Nynian would have known about it, even if she had resigned as Mother Superior when she married Merlin. It's not a capability the SSK would have suddenly developed in the time following the failure of the Jihad and execution of Clyntahn. Where would they have gotten the required knowledge?
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