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TFT out of order snippet

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TFT out of order snippet
Post by Dauntless   » Fri Jun 22, 2018 1:24 pm

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copied from the pushing fed tech along thread to make finding and indexing easier.

Since the question of relative capabilities --- and whether or not one might wish to risk pissing off The Thing Beneath the Temple, I thought I'd post this little out-of-order snippet. It would appear that Merlin actually manages to get himself or a remote (I say not which at this point and there has been some modest editing to acoid hints) inside the Temple, and discovered the following:



RFC wrote:The Temple was riddled with even more — far more — power sources than they'd been able to detect and track from outside its walls. They'd blazed up the instant his passives had crossed the Plaza of Martyrs.

He'd always thought Chihro's decision to plate the Temple's silver dome in eight centimeters of armorplast had been ridiculous, even for a lunatic like him. There'd been far less . . . exorbitant ways to keep that dome mystically mirror bright for centuries on end. It certainly hadn't been required for any conceivable structural reason! Indeed, when Nimue Alban first observed the Temple, she'd thought she'd seen flimsier planetary-defense command bunkers.

It hadn't occurred to her — and it damned well should have — that the reason she'd thought that was that she had seen flimsier PDC bunkers. Because even though the people living and working in the Temple and its "Archangel-built" Annex didn't know it, a planetary-defense bunker was precisely what Chihro and the surviving "archangels" had set out to build.

The Temple's exterior walls might look as if they faced with seventy-five centimeters of fine de Castro marble, but that "marble" was actually solid ceramacrete, carefully disguised to look like marble, and it was sandwiched around battle steel bulkheads that were themselves twenty centimeters thick. The central dome was a hemisphere of "marble-faced" battle steel almost as thick as the walls' bulkheads, and the skylights which pierced it were ten-centimeter slabs of armorplast, all of that under the eight-centimeters of the exterior armorplast. The "stained glass" of its spectacular windows was equally formidable, and while its interior walls were rather less impenetrable, even they would have sneered at any conceivable muscle-powered — or, for that matter, gunpowder-powered — assault. They were also riddled with molecular circuitry controlling power, light, air conditioning and heat, powered doors, fire suppression systems, information terminals, surveillance systems which obviously reported to something, and the smart walls in the endless offices and living quarters. He'd detected over two dozen separate wireless nets, spreading beyond even the walls' mollycircs, tying together literally hundreds or even thousands of high-tech devices and artifacts the Church and its servants either never knew were there or else took totally for granted as part of the all encompassing proof of the Temple's divine nature.

He had no idea, even now, how deep the complex went, but he'd come to the conclusion that it must go deeper than they'd believed. Nimue's Cave was actually a complex of artificial caverns, each bigger than most of the Terran Federation Navy's shuttle hangers, hollowed out to house and conceal the tech base Pei Shan-wei and her terraforming crews had left for her. It was big enough to provide a formidable support base and fabrication facilities which could easily have springboarded modern technology on a planetary scale, if only they'd been able to operate openly. But it couldn't have supported and maintained anything on this scale, and he'd already detected a half dozen concealed doors — concealed from the current Church hierarchy, not just interlopers such as himself, he suspected. Two of them, including one which opened directly into the Plaza of Martyrs, were big enough full-scale assault shuttles could have passed through them with ease when they were open. There were clearly ramps behind those concealed doors, diving deep into the earth, and he found himself wondering just how big a hole Chihiro had dug when he built the place . . . and what hose ramps might lead to. Since there was no other high-tech presence on the planet, they'd always known any support base for the Temple had to be under it, but they'd never suspected how big it must be or how deep it might go.
Last edited by Dauntless on Fri Jul 06, 2018 9:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: TFT out of order snippet
Post by noblehunter   » Fri Jun 22, 2018 2:49 pm

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Do we have any hints on how they keep all that running? Is Fed tech good enough to run for a thousand years without maintenance? I don't know if holy servitors or whatever have been mentioned.
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Re: TFT out of order snippet
Post by Dilandu   » Fri Jun 22, 2018 4:56 pm

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noblehunter wrote:Do we have any hints on how they keep all that running? Is Fed tech good enough to run for a thousand years without maintenance? I don't know if holy servitors or whatever have been mentioned.


Seems like that. After all, Nimue's Cave did not degrade significantly.
------------------------------

Oh well, if shortening the front is what the Germans crave,
Let's shorten it to very end - the length of Fuhrer's grave.

(Red Army lyrics from 1945)
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Re: TFT out of order snippet
Post by Michael Everett   » Fri Jun 22, 2018 5:05 pm

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Random thought.
We know that the archangels had a Manufactory Ship (whose name I've forgotten! Aargh!) that they used and that it is no longer in orbit.
How far down did they dig for the Temple?
Could the Temple be perched on the nose (or possibly the dorsal ridge) of the ship?
It could explain the launching-bay-sized door and tunnel... it leads down to the ship's boat bay...
Alternatively, the Lake would provide a wonderful way of hiding the ship if it were deep enough. Just sink the ship to the bottom, set up a couple of tunnels to the shore and then dump some mud and rocks to cover the upper hull.

Please, someone tell me I'm wrong and the Church doesn't have a full-scale Manufactory waiting to be discovered...
~~~~~~

I can't write anywhere near as well as Weber
But I try nonetheless, And even do my own artwork.

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Re: TFT out of order snippet
Post by noblehunter   » Fri Jun 22, 2018 6:10 pm

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Dilandu wrote:Seems like that. After all, Nimue's Cave did not degrade significantly.


Was Nimue's Cave shutdown and in non-reactive storage before she woke up?

*sigh* I really don't have time to re-read the series.

Though I think the big question about the Temple is who the Archangels expected to be shooting at it. They seemed to be the only ones with the hardware to crack such a mighty fortress.
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Re: TFT out of order snippet
Post by Joat42   » Fri Jun 22, 2018 6:56 pm

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noblehunter wrote:
Dilandu wrote:Seems like that. After all, Nimue's Cave did not degrade significantly.


Was Nimue's Cave shutdown and in non-reactive storage before she woke up?

*sigh* I really don't have time to re-read the series.

Though I think the big question about the Temple is who the Archangels expected to be shooting at it. They seemed to be the only ones with the hardware to crack such a mighty fortress.

Yes.

---
Jack of all trades and destructive tinkerer.


Anyone who have simple solutions for complex problems is a fool.
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Re: TFT out of order snippet
Post by gblab   » Sat Jun 23, 2018 5:15 am

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Michael Everett wrote:Random thought.
We know that the archangels had a Manufactory Ship (whose name I've forgotten! Aargh!) that they used and that it is no longer in orbit.
How far down did they dig for the Temple?
Could the Temple be perched on the nose (or possibly the dorsal ridge) of the ship?
[...]
Please, someone tell me I'm wrong and the Church doesn't have a full-scale Manufactory waiting to be discovered...


Oh, I love this idea :idea: . But just on second thoughts, would that not make a certain Nimue Alban the last-surving, and therefore highest-ranking officer of the Terran Navy? And thereby the lawful commanding officer of said ship? It might have been called Hamilcar before, but maybe we should just call it 'Mother,' now? ;)

In any case, and whatever his celeriness decides, I for one am looking forward to reading it. January cannot arrive soon enough!
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Re: TFT out of order snippet
Post by Dauntless   » Sat Jun 23, 2018 10:27 am

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would a pica class as "alive"?

also was Hamiclar a fleet ship or a civilian ship modifed with stealth and better hyper drives for operation Ark?

if civie which to me makes most sense (fleet generally doesn't need mobile factory, though i suppose it could be a fleet tender) would a military officer be able to take command or only civilians unless every ship was classed as military?
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Re: TFT out of order snippet
Post by gblab   » Sat Jun 23, 2018 11:37 am

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Dauntless wrote:would a pica class as "alive"?

also was Hamiclar a fleet ship or a civilian ship modifed with stealth and better hyper drives for operation Ark?

if civie which to me makes most sense (fleet generally doesn't need mobile factory, though i suppose it could be a fleet tender) would a military officer be able to take command or only civilians unless every ship was classed as military?


Excellent question. If I remember my textev correctly, virtual personalities in VR were considered "alive", so I would assume such a personality in a PICA would count, too (if one were to disregard the hacked firmware that allowed Nimue to operate past the legal 10-day limit).

As for the distinction military/civilian: the Terran Federation was in a fight to the death with the Gbaba. I would be more than surprised if some sort of military law were not have been in effect, especially in the final days, making that distinction a little less meaningful. Hamilcar may have 'only' be a modified freighter, but it was part of the fleet ...
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Re: TFT out of order snippet
Post by AClone   » Sat Jun 23, 2018 2:26 pm

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I appreciate some of the speculation here. I suppose that in the original thread, someone stopped to wonder just who had implants? :geek:
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