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So Abigor surrendered, eh? Smart baldrick. One question though, why do the baldricks speak modern day English?

The Vortex Empire wrote:So Abigor surrendered, eh? Smart baldrick. One question though, why do the baldricks speak modern day English?

They may have an innate ability to just plain make themselves understood, though that shouldn't work through tinfoil. I'd go with 'writers' fiat'.

Later on, I really wonder how morale can be kept up for Hell. If you're up against an overwhelmingly powerful enemy who casually rips through armies of tens of thousands and you're a lowly demon expected to maintain your position in a line, I don't know about you but I'd be scared shitless and desert. How do you keep an army going like that? When the knowledge that one demon in the whole mechanism of the army no longer matters, only the weight of numbers and that you have no chance.

hongi wrote:I don't know about you but I'd be scared shitless and desert. How do you keep an army going like that?

Firstly, the news hasn't had time to spread yet. Hell has no mass media, just one-to-one communication, and most demons don't move around much. News travels faster among harpies than other demons, mostly because they tend to have line of sight to each other when flying around and gossip telepathically to some extent, but that's still pretty slow. It will probably take weeks for the majority of hell to hear anything about the losses.

Secondly, Hell combines the tactics of WWII Russia and Japan. If you advance you will probably die, but if you retreat you will definitely be killed for desertion/mutiny. I wouldn't be surprised if in the later stages of the war against hell we see the demonic armies being shadowed by 'special punnishment legions', personally loyal to Satan and responsible for executing any forces that try to retreat. If you die honorably, your family is presumably well treated. If you die dishonorably trying to run away, your family is probably going to be suffer a horrible fate.

One question though, why do the baldricks speak modern day English?

There was a reference to a 'gift of tounges' in the segment about the harpy that was shot down. My guess is that this instinctively and semi-instantly slurps knowledge of a language out of the brains of humans the demon interacts with. Thus a demon can converse in English even with shielded humans, if it has previously encountered an unshielded human that speaks English. Maybe later we'll see some civillian demons who never happened to learn English unable to communicate with shielded humans, but frankly making up a whole language in the style of those demon names would be hard work for little narrative reward, so probably not.

Darth Wong wrote:Satan concluded that Abigor's army failed due to a lack of courage, ie- they were annihilated because they lost discipline, broke, and ran when they were on the verge of breaking through the human lines.

That may not necessarily be true. Stuart has been consistent in saying that Satan is a lot sharper than he appears. You have to remember that Hell is ruled by rather complicated and cut-throat politics, so Satan's chastising of Abigor may be driven entirely by political necessity. I wouldn't be surprised if the Prince of Lies didn't believe a word of it.

hongi wrote:Later on, I really wonder how morale can be kept up for Hell. If you're up against an overwhelmingly powerful enemy who casually rips through armies of tens of thousands and you're a lowly demon expected to maintain your position in a line, I don't know about you but I'd be scared shitless and desert. How do you keep an army going like that? When the knowledge that one demon in the whole mechanism of the army no longer matters, only the weight of numbers and that you have no chance.

The thing is, a modern human army doesn't look impressive. It's all spread out. The soldiers try to avoid being clear targets, the vehicles maneuver at distance. Visually and viscerally, it's not as impressive as vast legionary squares marching in formation with banners fluttering in the wind and trumpets blowing. For a member of the Hell army, I think your confidence would be buoyed by the perceived strength of your army, and the apparent cowardice of the humans.

Mind you, by the time you figure out how things really are, it's too late. You've already marched into a killing zone.

Darth Wong wrote: The thing is, a modern human army doesn't look impressive. It's all spread out. The soldiers try to avoid being clear targets, the vehicles maneuver at distance. Visually and viscerally, it's not as impressive as vast legionary squares marching in formation with banners fluttering in the wind and trumpets blowing. For a member of the Hell army, I think your confidence would be buoyed by the perceived strength of your army, and the apparent cowardice of the humans.

Mind you, by the time you figure out how things really are, it's too late. You've already marched into a killing zone.

That's a very, very good point, though the modern battlefield has its own mechanistic horrors which are already made apparent, and really, aren't even fully manifest yet. Wait until the Soviets line 3,000 heavy guns wheel to wheel for heavy assaults inside of hell itself.

I'm wondering what kind of disinformation campaign we would be sending into hell. We already know that Hell can receive radio broadcasts, as well as being able to hijack demon telepathy. I would advocate sending targeted messages to demons of "shows" we want them to see. Seemingly candid snippets of information meant to give disinformation to hells forces.

At this point whatever Abigor has said, you want to make it seem like it was a load of shit. For example that we took heavy casualties trying to hold off Abigor, and that we already threw EVERYTHING we had at them, and that was barely enough.

However, we do it candidly, like somebody being interrogated in a Hollywood fashion to find out what information they passed to Hell. When you would be giving Hell a bunch of bogus information about our troop strength and location. Another idea is to evacuate Hit, level it to the ground and "leak" the demons that we will hold that city at all costs, because of how valuable that city is to us.

Instant Sunrise wrote:Another idea is to evacuate Hit, level it to the ground and "leak" the demons that we will hold that city at all costs, because of how valuable that city is to us.

So you want to turn Hit into a bombing range and lure Satan's armies right into the crosshairs of heavy bombers' sights? Sounds like a good enough plan.

Darth Wong wrote:The thing is, a modern human army doesn't look impressive. It's all spread out. The soldiers try to avoid being clear targets, the vehicles maneuver at distance. Visually and viscerally, it's not as impressive as vast legionary squares marching in formation with banners fluttering in the wind and trumpets blowing. For a member of the Hell army, I think your confidence would be buoyed by the perceived strength of your army, and the apparent cowardice of the humans.

Mind you, by the time you figure out how things really are, it's too late. You've already marched into a killing zone.

You know, what would be funny would be to put up giant projector screens displaying hundreds of computer-generated legions marching in formation... Just behind the minefield and artillery range you've set up.

The Duchess of Zeon wrote: That's a very, very good point, though the modern battlefield has its own mechanistic horrors which are already made apparent, and really, aren't even fully manifest yet. Wait until the Soviets line 3,000 heavy guns wheel to wheel for heavy assaults inside of hell itself.

Um....did I miss the bit where Putin pressed the 'Yes thats what we WANTED you to think!' button?

That is such an awesome Stalinist Slip.

Instant Sunrise wrote:At this point whatever Abigor has said, you want to make it seem like it was a load of shit. For example that we took heavy casualties trying to hold off Abigor, and that we already threw EVERYTHING we had at them, and that was barely enough.

What is the intended strategic goal here, to get Hell's forces to use Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) again? As I don't think (considering the literally near-complete destruction of the sixty legions) that the above would be plausible.

The Vortex Empire wrote:So Abigor surrendered, eh? Smart baldrick. One question though, why do the baldricks speak modern day English?

It was established in the first Memnon excerpt that demons have the gift of tongues, they can reach into the minds of their prey and immediately speak the language fluently. Angels seem to know all languages on an instinctual level while demons need to be exposed to it in some way to master it - at least that's the way I see it in my contributions to the tale from the demonic/angelic slant. I'm sure Stuart can come up with the real scientific rationale. I stick to the magical idiom.

Stravo wrote:

The Vortex Empire wrote:So Abigor surrendered, eh? Smart baldrick. One question though, why do the baldricks speak modern day English?

It was established in the first Memnon excerpt that demons have the gift of tongues, they can reach into the minds of their prey and immediately speak the language fluently. Angels seem to know all languages on an instinctual level while demons need to be exposed to it in some way to master it - at least that's the way I see it in my contributions to the tale from the demonic/angelic slant. I'm sure Stuart can come up with the real scientific rationale. I stick to the magical idiom.

Personally, I think it would have worked better if the demons spoke Latin, but that would be clumsy in a story like this. It would work better in a movie, where they could speak Latin with English subtitles.

Why Latin? Wouldn't Hebrew make more sense, seeing as they're the people they'd have had the most contact with historically?

Junghalli wrote:Why Latin? Wouldn't Hebrew make more sense, seeing as they're the people they'd have had the most contact with historically?

Latin makes more sense. The demons were still highly active in the world during Jesus' time, when Hebrews were a weak and unimportant minority and the Romans had a huge and growing empire. It makes sense that they would use the language that was in popular use at the last time they were heavily involved in the world's affairs. It's also one of the only languages that hasn't changed much over all that time. English from the 15th century, for example, is almost unrecognizable.

Darth Wong wrote:

Junghalli wrote:Why Latin? Wouldn't Hebrew make more sense, seeing as they're the people they'd have had the most contact with historically?

Latin makes more sense. The demons were still highly active in the world during Jesus' time, when Hebrews were a weak and unimportant minority and the Romans had a huge and growing empire. It makes sense that they would use the language that was in popular use at the last time they were heavily involved in the world's affairs. It's also one of the only languages that hasn't changed much over all that time. English from the 15th century, for example, is almost unrecognizable.

Not to mention its the language chanted at them whenever they possess someone and the language of the "enemy"'s main organization on Earth - the Catholic Church.

Stravo wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:

Junghalli wrote:Why Latin? Wouldn't Hebrew make more sense, seeing as they're the people they'd have had the most contact with historically?

Latin makes more sense. The demons were still highly active in the world during Jesus' time, when Hebrews were a weak and unimportant minority and the Romans had a huge and growing empire. It makes sense that they would use the language that was in popular use at the last time they were heavily involved in the world's affairs. It's also one of the only languages that hasn't changed much over all that time. English from the 15th century, for example, is almost unrecognizable.

Not to mention its the language chanted at them whenever they possess someone and the language of the "enemy"'s main organization on Earth - the Catholic Church.

The only problem is, in the first millennium, you'd probably have more Greek than Latin speaking Christians. For quite a while Christianity was much, much more numerous in the Eastern Empire and points further east than Western Europe.

You could have some of the demons speaking Greek and some speaking Latin, depending on what they prefer. Or you could have them all being fluent in both, and choosing to use Latin because these people look like westerners.

I wonder if Abigor and company are going to be shown a nice human movie. How we have fought war from 1914 to the present including the Terminator 2 Nuke blast scene.

Stravo wrote:

The Vortex Empire wrote:So Abigor surrendered, eh? Smart baldrick. One question though, why do the baldricks speak modern day English?

It was established in the first Memnon excerpt that demons have the gift of tongues, they can reach into the minds of their prey and immediately speak the language fluently. Angels seem to know all languages on an instinctual level while demons need to be exposed to it in some way to master it - at least that's the way I see it in my contributions to the tale from the demonic/angelic slant. I'm sure Stuart can come up with the real scientific rationale. I stick to the magical idiom.

What about pulling the languages from souls in hell or other demons ?

If they do this without thinking then the only thing unexplained is how they store all those languages in their brains.

bilateralrope wrote:

Stravo wrote:

The Vortex Empire wrote:So Abigor surrendered, eh? Smart baldrick. One question though, why do the baldricks speak modern day English?

It was established in the first Memnon excerpt that demons have the gift of tongues, they can reach into the minds of their prey and immediately speak the language fluently. Angels seem to know all languages on an instinctual level while demons need to be exposed to it in some way to master it - at least that's the way I see it in my contributions to the tale from the demonic/angelic slant. I'm sure Stuart can come up with the real scientific rationale. I stick to the magical idiom.

What about pulling the languages from souls in hell or other demons ?

If they do this without thinking then the only thing unexplained is how they store all those languages in their brains.

Well, Stuart has stated that demons are much smarter than humans. Maybe they can pick up a couple scores of languages like we pick up the names of the people we talk to.

It would probably be most realistic for the demons and angels to have their own unique languages; possibly related to --but still distinct from-- anything on the material plane.

Their universal fluency when dealing with humans doesn't bother me though. It would be pretty hard for succubi to work if they only knew dead languages.

Typhonis 1 wrote:I wonder if Abigor and company are going to be shown a nice human movie. How we have fought war from 1914 to the present including the Terminator 2 Nuke blast scene.

What would be the point of that? I guess they'll probably see some human TV sooner or later anyway, but it seems like a silly waste of time to actually hold a special demon movie night for them. Abigor should be almost constantly in discussion with military personnel about all the information he has on Heaven and Hell.