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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   » Mon Jan 28, 2019 8:19 am

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Michael Everett wrote:
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 not the great enemy of God and 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?
Yes, but that's hardly the only place the idea has been used.
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..."
:D
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.
Ah, the Guelphs and Ghibellines. IIRC, Dante placed various characters in circles of Hell in The Inferno who were on the opposite side of the political fence from him in that conflict.
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...
I can too, and it would be a tickle.

But right now, I can't wait to see what the Temple's reaction to Schueler's Testimony will be.

One detail that struck me: when his apparition appeared in his cathedral, he told the faithful Shan Wei had been an innocent, betrayed by another, that he could finally reveal the true betrayer, and that Chihiro lied. He did not name Chihiro as the betrayer in his appearance - he only said he lied. Who the true betrayer was is presumably in his Testimony.

If it's not Chihiro, who is it? The plausible candidates are Langhorne and Bedard, for taking it upon themselves to alter God's original plan (which will presumably be OA's original orders, minus any mention of Safehold being a colony and Adams and Eves originating elsewhere.)

That will set the cat among the pigeons... :P
______
Dennis
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Re: **major spoilers** Speculation about a certain document
Post by SilverbladeTE   » Mon Jan 28, 2019 1:03 pm

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What jf that huge file in the Key is Schueler's Artificial.Personality recording....?
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Re: **major spoilers** Speculation about a certain document
Post by DMcCunney   » Mon Jan 28, 2019 1:15 pm

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SilverbladeTE wrote:What jf that huge file in the Key is Schueler's Artificial.Personality recording....?
We don't know how big a personality scan is, but I doubt petabytes. That huge file may be an archive containing more then one file within it, so a scan of Schueler is a possible component. But since I think the apparition that appeared in Schueler's cathedral was Schueler, there is likely a more recent copy in existence in a VR unit somewhere.
______
Dennis
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Re: **major spoilers** Speculation about a certain document
Post by catfishncod   » Mon Jan 28, 2019 2:41 pm

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DMcCunney wrote:There are folks here who think it's a sneaky IC trick, but I can't agree. The risks are simply too great.... 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.


Exactly. The one thing Merlin has held to from the very beginning is to never ever lie, because when the time comes to undo the masquerade in full, he (and by extension the IC) must be trustworthy. In fact, their trustworthiness must be a legend to rival that of the Archangels'.

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...


Hold on there, pardner. The War didn't begin in earnest for two years, but that was not because it wasn't activated. I had to go back and read the first chapters of OAR to realize that. The "angel" visits Lakeview and starts prepping them for the War (the first Safehold had ever known), giving them the party line that "Archangel Shan-Wei has rebelled against God"... and then Kau-Yung's nuke goes off.

We as readers don't have much more info than the IC, but we do have that. And it implies that the War was already on. That's why Kau-Yung moved immediately to assassinate Langhorne's Council in retaliation. With both command centers turned to mushroom clouds, the surviving crew members had to figure out who was where and on what side. That's what those two years were about.

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.


Schueler eventually became his second, yes, but how did that happen? What do we know of Androcles Schueler, the man behind the Archangel?

But Schueler's brief as an Archangel was Justice


Which is exceedingly useful in justifying the Vision in the Key as well as the Visitation and the Testimony. Schueler seeks justice for Chihiro's lies, and justice for the slandering of Shan-Wei.

Kohdy's diary talks about the Fallen who defeated him claiming Chihiro had been altering Langhorne's Plan... [o]ne thing we don't know is whether he actually got to speak to Schueler before he was killed, and what Schueler's reaction was.


One reaction was certainly "Chihiro will kill anyone, including his allies, to impose his plans. I had best step carefully."

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?


Remember that while "Shan-Wei has fallen" was promulgated before the nuke, the entire concept and definition of "The Fallen" was set by Chihiro. Now given what happened to Kohdy, what do you think his definition was? "Shan-Wei's collaborators"? Or "Anyone who voices dissent from my plans"?

(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.)


Exactly. I'm certain the War, which began as a purge of the Alexandrians, became a purge of all dissent whether they signed onto the Langhorne Plan or not. There were almost certainly more than one set of goals espoused by "the Fallen" (aka the Resistance).

If Chihiro outright lied in his book, everything everyone thought they knew about Safehold history is wrong.


Wrong? No. Most of it's probably still right, in fact: lies are best hidden within truth. But everything about the entirety of the scriptures of Safehold -- Holy Writ, Commentaries, and Testimonies alike -- must now be suspect. Chihiro could have deleted or changed whatever he pleased.

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 think that was already partially implied. Chihiro's original spiritual brief was history and recordkeeping; he was the Chief Scribe of the Archangels. Saying that he was the one to take down the words of the other Archangels would fit perfectly into the mythos; and then all one has to say is that he changed things behind the other Archangels' backs.

catfishncod wrote: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.


Look up the Jewish concept of Satan as "adversary" -- i.e., prosecuting attorney, officer of the court, advocate of the counterproposition. Also the Gnostic concept of the Demiurge. And there are direct verses in the Quran contradicting Christian claims to Jesus' divinity, while still supporting his prophethood and even most of the prophecies about him. There's precedent, and Scheuler might use it.

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.


Exactly. The Church teaches that they await the Archangels' return and that the Archangels will restore the Fallen world to a righteous state. If Shan-wei didn't fall, then she and the Alexandrians are again Archangels, and their messages can be construed as necessary for restoring the world.

And what was Shan-wei's strongest belief? That the colonists not lose their free will, and their ability to choose whether to stay hidden or face the Gbaba once more. Langhorne's faction, in their PTSD-addled minds, tried to decide for all humanity and for all time. One way to present it would be to describe a Heavenly Debate (i.e., the Administrative Council), "set up by God" as a sort of passion-play about obedience vs. free will, with neither side completely right or wrong. Like this:

12 For God said unto the Archangel Langhorne, "This world of Safehold is for the protection of all; and thus do I give unto thee the charge of protecting My Holy Law; for it shall be a guide and protection for all the people."

13 But then God said unto the Archangel Shan-Wei, "My children are also made in My Image, and even as I have created you and you have created Safehold in My Name, so too shall they seek to create."

14 And God said, "Therefore their minds too are holy, and each must seek their own path to Me. Into your charge I give the protection of choice, and of free will, to find new ways to glorify My name."

15 Then Langhorne said, "Thy ways of choice may lead men and women astray, O Shan-Wei; and some would choose to disobey the Holy Law. I would forbid these choices, to keep God's people protected."

16 And Shan-Wei said to Langhorne, "Nay; for God is greater than even Archangels, and it is He who created mortals and angels alike. There is more in Heaven and Safehold, O Langhorne, than is dreamt of in your philosophy."

17 And God said to Langhorne, "Remember that though My Law is in your keeping, Shan-Wei is the brightest of My Archangels. The Laws and Proscriptions are in your care, for the time of your bodies, and for a time beyond, for the protection of My People.

18 But after that will come another age, and the time of Shan-Wei's light will also come."

19 And Langhorne and Shan-Wei submitted to the Will of God, and were content for a time.

20 But Langhorne and Shan-Wei continued to struggle to understand that Will; and there were many debates between them, according to the Plan of God's Holy Council.

21 Then came Chihiro, master of words and maker of mischief, the Trickster....


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.


That's been hanging over us from the beginning, though it wasn't immediately clear that it was Chihiro in the driver's seat. The Church of God Awaiting as we know it wasn't either Shan-Wei's Plan A or Langhorne's Plan B, but Chihiro's Plan C: some of which he might have planned beforehand, but much of which must have been cut-and-paste in response to the events of the War whose aims were to purge all adherents of Plan A and Plan B.

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.


Never mind traumatic; it ruins "Archangel" Schueler's authority to say "verily I say unto you" and all that. But you can reveal quite a lot without breaking the Masquerade: such as there being dissent before the War within the general confines of "God's Plan" aka the goal of safeguarding humanity; that the "Fallen" were benign guardians of forbidden knowledge; and that there might be a purpose to such forbidden knowledge beyond tempting fallible humans.

What version of the Plan will Schueler present and advocate? It clearly isn't Chihiro's Plan C. Was he for Langhorne's Plan B? Also unlikely, for he says Shan-Wei didn't Fall. And it can't be the original Plan A, because that requires breaking the Masquerade entirely, and that simply can't be done all in one go. So it's going to be somewhere between Plans A and B... hopefully, some interpretation that lets progress become part of the Divine Plan for Safehold, and allows the IC more freedom in pushing towards enacting the original mission: not just evading, but beating the Gbaba.

The IC are the heirs of the Plan A faction. The Plan B faction has either been exterminated, or converted to Plan C by Chihiro's wars and lies; the CoGA are the unwitting heirs of the Plan C faction. And now we have Schueler the wild card. Does he have a Plan D? And is it merely the dead hand of his recordings moving.... or is a live AI still able to make new moves?
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Re: **major spoilers** Speculation about a certain document
Post by thanatos   » Mon Jan 28, 2019 4:56 pm

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Dilandu wrote:
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?


That assumes the SNARCs can only be operated by such a tactical computer and cannot be operated manually by a human and that whoever is trying to access OWL's network knows which back doors to look for (he'd need to guess what sort of computer Nimue would have access to). And it also assumes that OWL and Nahrmahn's unique connection (an electronic conjoined twin of sorts) wouldn't impede the hacker in some way or at least make the Inner Circle aware of the hack. And it additionally assumes that a Schueler VR has concluded that he can't just appear in the Temple and tell the Church leadership that all these innovations have to go. This sort of spectacle, whereby Schueler himself states that Shan-wei did not fall but that Chihiro lied, is in fact a repudiation of a millennia of belief predicated upon the Writ's inerrancy.
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Re: **major spoilers** Speculation about a certain document
Post by martin   » Wed Jan 30, 2019 6:01 am

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DMcCunney wrote:Precisely how does Schueler invite visitors to his VR unit?
______
Dennis

He invites visitors to his cathedral. Of course they wouldn’t know he’s a VR personality but they’d certainly be impressed.

Quite an interesting problem the master celery thief has set. It’s just what is needed to start a dialogue about the truthfulness of the writ. And this is Schueler isn’t it. No need for the IC or Merlin to lie or involve themselves.
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Re: **major spoilers** Speculation about a certain document
Post by JBNL1972   » Wed Jan 30, 2019 6:20 pm

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I've been rereading the last chapter today and there's a few things that really bug me about it ....

1. Language shift.
Remember how the 'current' Safeholdians had to really carefully listen to the original "Vision of Schueler" (in Paityr's Stone/Key combo) because of the language drift over the preceding 900-odd years ?
Notice none of that was mentioned or even inferred in this case.

That would suggest this is an IC operation ....BUT ...

2. Specific blame.
Schueler specifically zeroes in on Chihiro as the master villain, something the IC has no definitive proof of, (at least that I can find textev of) since they have no data on what exactly happened after Commodore Pei blew up Langhorne and and friends ... they have fragmentary data in the form of Kohdy's journal, but not even that could assign that blame with such certitude.

And that would suggest this might an Archangel return ... so the biggest questions are which is this, and second, what form of it.

My personal theory (ready to be mercilessly gunned down by everyone) is that Schueler somehow suspected foul play by Chihiro, knew he couldn't stop it and made his own arrangements to defer the truth to the future.
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Re: **major spoilers** Speculation about a certain document
Post by runsforcelery   » Wed Jan 30, 2019 6:25 pm

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JBNL1972 wrote:I've been rereading the last chapter today and there's a few things that really bug me about it ....

1. Language shift.
Remember how the 'current' Safeholdians had to really carefully listen to the original "Vision of Schueler" (in Paityr's Stone/Key combo) because of the language drift over the preceding 900-odd years ?
Notice none of that was mentioned or even inferred in this case.

That would suggest this is an IC operation ....BUT ...

2. Specific blame.
Schueler specifically zeroes in on Chihiro as the master villain, something the IC has no definitive proof of, (at least that I can find textev of) since they have no data on what exactly happened after Commodore Pei blew up Langhorne and and friends ... they have fragmentary data in the form of Kohdy's journal, but not even that could assign that blame with such certitude.

And that would suggest this might an Archangel return ... so the biggest questions are which is this, and second, what form of it.

My personal theory (ready to be mercilessly gunned down by everyone) is that Schueler somehow suspected foul play by Chihiro, knew he couldn't stop it and made his own arrangements to defer the truth to the future.



Well, it's an interesting theory, anyway . . . .

:twisted:


"Oh, bother!" said Pooh, as Piglet came back from the dead.
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Re: **major spoilers** Speculation about a certain document
Post by runsforcelery   » Wed Jan 30, 2019 6:28 pm

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Um. And while I'm thinking about it, you guys do remember a certain journal which came into the IC's possession courtesy of a certain nonexistent order of nuns? Let me see . . . the author escapes me at the moment, but I'm sure it will come to me.

:twisted:


"Oh, bother!" said Pooh, as Piglet came back from the dead.
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Re: **major spoilers** Speculation about a certain document
Post by runsforcelery   » Wed Jan 30, 2019 6:30 pm

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Hmmm . . . wonder why the Sisters of St. Khody never made a single appearance in TFT?

Left hand, right hand, man behind the curtain . . .

Think it could have been one of the above?

:twisted: :twisted:


"Oh, bother!" said Pooh, as Piglet came back from the dead.
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