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

Weird Harold wrote:

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

DMcCunney wrote: 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?

I don't assume they are, though consider some of the lengths Zeus had to go to to do it, like Leda and the Swan. (And a significant point there is that swans are waterfowl and have dicks. )

Granted, Zeus was dealing with the challenge of keeping his affairs secret from Hera, but the same question affects the Archangels. How do they do so discreetly?
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Dennis

Keith_w wrote: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.

Since it took 40 years of prep by the command crew before Safehold was ready for the colonists to be awakened, command crew members might have produced children after they arrived. But as I mentioned elsewhere whether the Wylsynns were directly descended from Schueler or from one of his descendants might be irrelevant.

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.

Sorry, but IIRC, it was a Wylsynn family tradition they were descended from Schueler. Owl's DNA analysis simply confirmed it. You may recall an IC conversation where Narhmann reveals that little bombshell, and the question arose "Do we tell Paityr? Would he even want to know?" Merlin and Cayleb happily punt that one to Staynair. Given the image that emerged of Schueler as author of the Punishment used indiscriminately by the Inquisition during the Jihad, knowing he was descended from a possible monster would cause Paityr considerable pain (and did, when he was told about it.)
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Dennis

And going a bit farther on the question of Schueler and the Wylsynn's descent from him, something that struck me is RFC's habit of planting things early on that prove highly significant later. It's the old theater adage: "If you have a gun placed in a drawer in the first act, it needs to be taken out and used to shoot someone/something by the the third act!"

One of the early things we learn about is Paityr's possession of the Stone, which he uses to interrogate Merlin. Where did he get a TF tech device?

After he is sent to the Monastery of St. Zherneau by Archbishop Michael to retreat and meditate over his concerns he's lost his vocation to be a priest, and comes back cleared by the Brethren to be inducted into the Inner Circle, we learn about the Stone and Key, the personal message from Schueler when he gives them to the Wylsynns, and the Wylsynn family tradition that they are descended from Schueler. Whether the descent is direct or through Schueler's offspring may not matter.

Like the gun placed in the drawer in a play, it's hard to imagine Paityr won't have to use the Key in the manner Schueler's vision described.

I'd call the vision of Schueler Paityr recounted the first act in the play. I'd call the apparition of Schueler appearing in the main cathedral dedicated to him, saying Shan Wei wasn't the embodiment of evil and Chihiro lied, and leaving behind his Testimony in a form like the master copy of the Writ in the Temple, the second act.

And the not written down anywhere assertion by Schueler that the Archangels would return in a thousand years relates to this, with the real question being not "Were the Wylsynns really descended from Schueler", but "Why did he give them the Stone and the Key in the first place, and charge them to keep it secret that they had it?" That happened a long time ago, and it would appear Schueler had some premonition of the way things would develop.
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Dennis

This was the first thread I had to drop into after finishing TFT.

On whether the “Apparition of Schueler” was set up by actual Schueler or the IC: Occam’s Razor suggests Schueler. The location suggests Schueler had all the access necessary, and the IC would be unlikely to accuse an old lie (Chihiro’s deception) by creating an new one (a false Schueler). Establishing truth is going to be hard enough anyways.

Most importantly, we already have proof that Schueler was doing other things “behind Chihiro’s back”, what with the Stone, the Key, and the existence of the Wylsynn family, *none* of which would have been in the Langhorne Plan. Meanwhile, we know from the tale of St. Kohdy that Chihiro was willing to kill *anyone* interfering with his own Plan, not just the Fallen that were on Shan-wei’s side.

As the Foglios put it in Girl Genius, this was turning into one of those plans where you kill everybody who notices you’re killing everybody. And where does that end? With the hikousen on fire, everybody’s dead and you’ve lost your hat. And any plan where you lose your hat is a bad plan.

So base assumption: Chihiro went overboard in the War of the Fallen, and Schueler didn’t like it — but couldn’t stop it. So he dropped time-delay actions hidden from Chihiro to undo his excesses. From the sound of the recording, bad-mouthing Shan-Wei and “the Fallen” was one of those excesses.

Absolute minimum we can expect from the Testimony of Schueler is a complete repudiation of the Book of Chihiro, with a more accurate history. I strongly suspect it will also contain passwords for the Key, though only the Wylsynns and the IC will recognize them for what they are.

Shan-Wei & Co. will be rehabilitated as Archangels whose spheres were beyond humanity’s proper knowledge at Creation. Shan-Wei, for instance, can be described more accurately, as God’s handmaiden in crafting Safehold (I.e., Chief terraformer). Proctor is still Archangel of forbidden knowledge; but in this telling, he knows that and obeys “God’s Will” by removing to Alexandria.

Chihiro is the bad guy of the Testament, that much is clear; though it may be portrayed with some sympathy. He disrupts the Plan, conducts the War, and lies about it all.

Biggest question mark is whether Schueler wants to return to Langhorne’s Plan, or Shan-Wei’s, or chart a middle course between the two. The Testimony of Schueler will be more accurate factually, but it is the portrayal of motives and shading of characters that will really have the most impact, along with what Schueler says “God’s Plan” is.

Second biggest question mark: is that an AI who is speaking of Clyntahn and the Jihad, or a recording speaking about the War of the Fallen? There is a war being fought across history by proxy here, with institutions and automatic equipment and knowledge caches as well as by sentient entities in time and space. Whether Schueler left only dead drops or an interactive AI matters to whether there are two factions (Langhorne-Chihiro and Shan-wei-Nimue).... or *three*.

Worth remembering the ‘Schueler’ specifically says terrible things were done in his name, BUT not with his approval. So...
1) The gruesome parts of his book in the Writ were probably not written by him.
2) Whoever was behind the vision and the Testimony knew at least something about recent events.
My money is on the Naahman and OWL. I’d really love it to be Schueler, but I don’t think so.

martin wrote:Worth remembering the ‘Schueler’ specifically says terrible things were done in his name, BUT not with his approval. So...
1) The gruesome parts of his book in the Writ were probably not written by him.

I assume the Punishment was Chihiro's addition.

2) Whoever was behind the vision and the Testimony knew at least something about recent events.
My money is on the Naahman and OWL. I’d really love it to be Schueler, but I don’t think so.

My money is on Schueler. I suspect there's a VR unit tucked away under his cathedral with a record of his personality made before he died resident in it. It could be programmed to "wake him up" at a specified time, and assuming there's a sensor network it has access to, Schueler can catch up on what happened while he was asleep. The question is whether his reference to terrible things being done in his name, but never with his approval refers to events during the War Against the Fallen, or more current ones.

If we assume the Temple has the various vicar's quarters and offices bugged (which the vicars would be unaware of) and Schueler's avatar has access as an Archangel to the recordings, he could know quite a bit about recent events.
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Dennis

DMcCunney wrote:My money is on Schueler. I suspect there's a VR unit tucked away under his cathedral with a record of his personality made before he died resident in it. It could be programmed to "wake him up" at a specified time, and assuming there's a sensor network it has access to, Schueler can catch up on what happened while he was asleep. The question is whether his reference to terrible things being done in his name, but never with his approval refers to events during the War Against the Fallen, or more current ones.

If we assume the Temple has the various vicar's quarters and offices bugged (which the vicars would be unaware of) and Schueler's avatar has access as an Archangel to the recordings, he could know quite a bit about recent events.
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Dennis

Schueler was fighting against the fallen in Khody’s time and after the death of Langhorne and the destruction of Alexandria. He’s referring to Chihiro as lying. Probably a reference to the changes to Schueler’s book and other parts of the Writ which would have to have been done after Schueler’s death. So its likely to be recent ‘terrible things’. But then there’s still the question of who? If it really was Schueler why use a book? Why not invite visitors to his VR and impress them directly? The whole book thing and single recorded appearance suggests something prepared long ago. Yet he is talking about recent events. Nah! It’s Operation Androcles

catfishncod wrote:This was the first thread I had to drop into after finishing TFT.

On whether the “Apparition of Schueler” was set up by actual Schueler or the IC: Occam’s Razor suggests Schueler. The location suggests Schueler had all the access necessary, and the IC would be unlikely to accuse an old lie (Chihiro’s deception) by creating an new one (a false Schueler). Establishing truth is going to be hard enough anyways.

I concur.

There are folks here who think it's a sneaky IC trick, but I can't agree. The risks are simply too great. One problem is that while the IC knows things the rest of Safehold doesn't, like where the Adams and Eves really came from and what the Angels and Archangels actually were, their knowledge of events on Safehold in the earliest days is mostly what was in Commodore Pei's downloads to Nimue, and there are gaps in that knowledge.

In particular, the War Against the Fallen and Chihiro taking over in its wake did not begin till two years after Kau Yung nuked Langhorne's HQ, and killing Langhorne and Bedard as well as himself, so all of that occurred after the downloads Commodore Pei created for Nimue.

There is too much the IC doesn't know and would have to make up, and that would bite them hard later.

<...>

So base assumption: Chihiro went overboard in the War of the Fallen, and Schueler didn’t like it — but couldn’t stop it. So he dropped time-delay actions hidden from Chihiro to undo his excesses. From the sound of the recording, bad-mouthing Shan-Wei and “the Fallen” was one of those excesses.

I also think Schueler disagreed with Chihiro. We are given to understand that Chihiro was essentially the new boss, after Langhorne and Bedard were killed. He was already Assistant Administrator (and we know he'd been working to undermine Langhorne for a while), so he was the designated successor. We get the impression Schueler was his second-in-command, and was the one who picked up on clues and warned Chihiro something was going on before the War Against the Fallen began.

But Schueler's brief as an Archangel was Justice, and I can see him becoming disenchanted with the direction Chihiro was going. Kohdy's diary talks about the Fallen who defeated him claiming Chihiro had been altering Langhorne's Plan, and his evidence was convincing enough that Kohdy went to Zion to talk to Schueler about it. He died in Zion.

One thing we don't know is whether he actually got to speak to Schueler before he was killed, and what Schueler's reaction was. It might have been a key factor in his turning against Chihiro. But he may have realized he couldn't actually stop Chihiro, and actively opposing him was a good way to get dead, so he would have to take more subtle and longer term actions.

Another thing we don't yet know was the Fallen's agenda. Whay were their motivations, and what would they have done if they'd won? (The Fallen who told Kohdy Chihiro was was modifying Langhorne's plan gives the impression they thought Chihiro was going too far, and wanted to return to what Langhorne wanted.)

Absolute minimum we can expect from the Testimony of Schueler is a complete repudiation of the Book of Chihiro, with a more accurate history.

That will be fascinating, because most of what everyone thinks is the history of Safehold since Creation is in the book of Chihiro. If Chihiro outright lied in his book, everything everyone thought they knew about Safehold history is wrong. An interesting question is whether he will also state that Chihiro was the principal author of the Writ, working under Langhorne's direction, and that the Books of other Archangels were at least edited by Chihiro if not actually written by him, so everything in the Writ becomes suspect.

I strongly suspect it will also contain passwords for the Key, though only the Wylsynns and the IC will recognize them for what they are.

I'm not sure I agree, but it's possible he would put stuff in specifically intended for the Wylsynns.

Shan-Wei & Co. will be rehabilitated as Archangels whose spheres were beyond humanity’s proper knowledge at Creation. Shan-Wei, for instance, can be described more accurately, as God’s handmaiden in crafting Safehold (I.e., Chief terraformer). Proctor is still Archangel of forbidden knowledge; but in this telling, he knows that and obeys “God’s Will” by removing to Alexandria.

The notion that Shan Wei was not the Mother of Lies and source of evil will be mind-boggling to those who hear it.

It will be equivalent to an authority that can't simply be dismissed out of hand claiming the Bible got it wrong, Satan was notthe great enemy of God end embodiment of evil, another angel was the true bad guy, and Satan got blamed for stuff he didn't do.

The notion of Proctor as guardian of forbidden knowledge is a neat one. It opens the possibility that there was knowledge humanity simply wasn't ready for, and it wasn't permanently forbidden - it was just being withheld till humanity had grown and matured enough to be capable of properly understanding and using it.

Chihiro is the bad guy of the Testament, that much is clear; though it may be portrayed with some sympathy. He disrupts the Plan, conducts the War, and lies about it all.

It's another variant of a comment Michael Staynair makes in an earlier book when Father Paityr is inducted into the Inner Circle. He comments that they knew what the Archangels did, but did not and could not know what they were thinking when they did it. They may have committed what we see as atrocities with the best of intentions, thinking they had no other choice if humanity is to survive. (Another poster commented they all had the worst case of PTSD you could imagine.)

Biggest question mark is whether Schueler wants to return to Langhorne’s Plan, or Shan-Wei’s, or chart a middle course between the two. The Testimony of Schueler will be more accurate factually, but it is the portrayal of motives and shading of characters that will really have the most impact, along with what Schueler says “God’s Plan” is.

And one of the questions, given Chihiro stirring the pot after Langhorne died, was how much of what Safehold turned into by the time Nimue awoke in her PICA was the result of the Chihiro Plan.

I can't quite see Schueler spilling the beans about where the Adams and Eves really came from and what the Archangels really were. That would simply be too traumatic for all concerned. The IC knows the truth must be told, but it will take a lot of preparation before it can be with any hope of success. My guess is Schueler is smart enough to recognize that. He'll start by trying to clear Shan Wei's name and calling Chihiro a liar. If he's going to support a plan, it will be Langhorne's, with the specification that it wasn't intended to be permanent, and greater truths would be revealed when humanity was ready for it.


But yes, most of the interesting stuff in the Safehold series comes down to motivations, and why various characters behaved as they did.

Second biggest question mark: is that an AI who is speaking of Clyntahn and the Jihad, or a recording speaking about the War of the Fallen? There is a war being fought across history by proxy here, with institutions and automatic equipment and knowledge caches as well as by sentient entities in time and space. Whether Schueler left only dead drops or an interactive AI matters to whether there are two factions (Langhorne-Chihiro and Shan-wei-Nimue).... or *three*.

My guess is that the apparition appearing in his cathedral on the anniversary of his soul's return to God is Schueler, and there's a VR unit with a copy of his personality which awakened him. If the VR unit has access to information sources (like a tap into files collected by the Temple), he knows at least something about the Jihad and Clyntahn's psychoses, so he's referring to those events as terrible things done in his name but without his approval.
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Dennis

martin wrote:Schueler was fighting against the fallen in Khody’s time and after the death of Langhorne and the destruction of Alexandria. He’s referring to Chihiro as lying. Probably a reference to the changes to Schueler’s book and other parts of the Writ which would have to have been done after Schueler’s death. So its likely to be recent ‘terrible things’. But then there’s still the question of who? If it really was Schueler why use a book? Why not invite visitors to his VR and impress them directly? The whole book thing and single recorded appearance suggests something prepared long ago. Yet he is talking about recent events. Nah! It’s Operation Androcles

Precisely how does Schueler invite visitors to his VR unit? Aside from the Inner Circle (which his VR personality is unlikely to know about), no one else on Safehold is aware of VR, stored personalities, or other Federation tech, and couldn't visit him at home if they did get an invitation.

(If the IC can get access to the VR unit holding Schueler through Owl, very interesting conversations become possible, but we don't know if such access can be managed. I asked elsewhere whether there were othe VR units besides the ones in Numue's gave scattered around, what personalities might be stored in them, and whether they could communicate with each other.)

Schueler is trying to reach the present population of Safehold. His manifestation in his cathedral as a glowing 50' tall being works to impress the gathered faithful, and the priests recognize his face and know who he's supposed to be. But he's unlikely to be able to manifest elsewhere, so a more permanent record is needed - the book. It's the same sort of volume as the master copy of the Writ in the Temple, and therefore clearly a holy object.

The reaction when the Temple gets a look at it should be classic.

But the contents of the book may be the biggest reason I don't see this as an OC ploy. Narhmann and company would have to make up entirely too much out of whole cloth and risk the entire thing being branded the work of demons, which would only cause more problems for them. It's a good bet Schueler will refer to things the Temple has records of but the IC doesn't, so there are limits to what they can make up safely.
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Dennis

DMcCunney wrote:It will be equivalent to an authority that can't simply be dismissed out of hand claiming the Bible got it wrong, Satan was notthe great enemy of God end embodiment of evil, another angel was the true bad guy, and Satan got blamed for stuff he didn't do.

...So you've read the Prince Roger series then?
Armaghan Satanists, the survivors of a religious civil war sparked by Christian Fundamentalists arguing over whether a certain service should be read in English or Latin. Those who tried not to get involved or attempted to stop the war were called "Satanists" by both sides, so they effectively decided "What the hell, let's go with that..."

Oddly, the language of a service is not the most apparently asinine reason for war. That honor goes to a religious war over someone moving a bucket.
Not kidding.
Admittedly, the bucket was just the trigger for a huge war that was almost inevitable given the pre-existing tensions, but if you were to say that a huge war was fought over a wooden bucket, most people would give you a look of disbelief.

Given the tensions between the Temple Loyalists and the various churches (notably Siddarmark and Harchong), I can see the sudden revelation causing quite a few issues, including the rise of self-professed Followers of Shan-Wei, the Betrayed Archangel...