Armageddon???? (Part Fifty Up)

[Stuart]

With Stuart's permission I'd like to post a short entry into this thread based on the story he's already started. I'll post after he gives his OK since this is his thread really. Good start so far folks.

Go ahead.

I've got the story plot-lined already,s o if you'd like me to eye your paragraph first, just pmail it to me and I'll make sure it fits in.

[Setzer]

Where did you get the names from? Is it just suitable sounding nonsense, or did you look it up somewhere?

And are you planning to turn this into a fictional universe like TBO?

[Stravo]

I noticed Surlethe also expressed interest in writing additional material, in this setting. So as not to clutter up Stuart's thread does it make sense to create a "companion" thread where anyone that's interested can submit additional work in Stuart's universe or do we keep it all in here?

Stuart, mine is more of a character piece since I have no real background as you do in the modern military aspects of things and I wouldn't want to add anything that is lacking your sense of realism. So I take a more of a "Meanwhile as all of this is going on..."

I also wanted to flesh out the divine forces humanity is facing giving them some depth.

Of course it's all up to you. I will PM you what I have.

Anyone else that is interested please chime in.

[Stuart]

Where did you get the names from? Is it just suitable sounding nonsense, or did you look it up somewhere? And are you planning to turn this into a fictional universe like TBO?

I just made the names up as I went along. At the moment, this is a one-off fiction story. The only thing is, The Big One started as a one-off story intended to squelch the "Really Cool Nazis Conquer The World" genre of alternate history and just grew as there were more and more questions I thought needed asking. This could go the same way although at the moment the story is self-contained and self-limited. Who knows, the Demonic People's Liberation Front may well kick off a few more stories.

[Stuart Mackey]

Well, I am sure New Zealand will have an amusing time with the demons of hell, every one will be competing to play there favorite LOTR character.

To WETA workshops!

[Chris OFarrell]

This is about ten layers of awesome.
You know, it reminds me of one of the few great 'Worf' quotes on Star Trek.

"Our Gods are dead. Ancient Klingon warriors slew them ago. They were...more trouble then they were worth".

So let it be written!

[Academia Nut]

Would it be bad of me to suggest a scene where a bunch of demons on gigantic warthogs wearing heavy armour, like basically slabs of solid iron, and thus immune to small arms fire, come face to face with the A-10 "Warthog" Thunderbolt II?

I also think it would be funny if a bunch of scientists were analyzing a dead demon and keep asking, "Who designed these things? They're obviously not products of evolution because there's no way they would have survived to adulthood to reproduce, but these things are put together worse than a Pinto!"

[CaptainChewbacca]

Alright, I hereby declare this...



A legendary thread.

[fusion]

This is awesome!

[Wyrm]

This is 99.44% pure "HELL YEAH!!"

I remember vaguely a rain of fire or some crud in Revelations. What's the poop and how ya gonna handle it, Stuart?

[The Vortex Empire]

I volunteer to be some soldier fighting the demons. Doesn't matter to me what he's like, but I'd prefer if he lives.

[Academia Nut]

Hmmm... you know, I was thinking that since one of the big themes here seems to be science and technology vs. faith and the supernatural, there should be some scenes with scientists doing research into what makes the demons and angels tick, and what they are weak against. Since you seem to be basing your supernaturals on real world mythology, and pretty much every major supernatural creature has some sort of weakness to words or symbols, perhaps one of the lines of research might be in finding out if this is true or just exaggeration. Other research could be if various supernaturals have weaknesses against certain materials.

If true, it would be awesome if instead of having to call in an airstrike to take out some of the nastier creatures, soldiers would be instead equipped with cold iron rounds with various words of banishing etched on the business end. It's something I would probably end up actually researching if this were to happen for real, so with the pseudo-denizen nature already seen, I figured I might as well suggest it.

As to the whole raining fire thing, well the modern militaries already have to deal with white phosphorous, napalm, FAEs, and nukes (to name a few things that would count as "fire") so its not like we haven't already developed countermeasures. If it turns out to be something like chunks of burning sulfur falling from the sky from a known source, then the world would probably find it dangerous to infantry and somewhat damaging to vehicles and structures, but thoroughly unimpressive in comparison to modern incendiaries.

[Sidewinder]

I also think it would be funny if a bunch of scientists were analyzing a dead demon and keep asking, "Who designed these things? They're obviously not products of evolution because there's no way they would have survived to adulthood to reproduce, but these things are put together worse than a Pinto!"

Demons that badly built would die too easily, making the story too boring.

[Academia Nut]

Well the ones already faced were put together like Pintos, seeing as how their own blood caused them to go up in fireballs. Obviously these things were designed under the philosophy that they would never encounter significant resistance. On the off chance some guy gets lucky the blood will probably dissolve/incinerate the sword swinging idiot, and if you hack at it enough the demon will self-destruct taking out everything in melee range. But any real resistance at a range and sudden that demon is a bomb ready to take out everything in close proximity, including other demons like it.

I would posit from what we have already seen that the first wave of demons are going to be terror troops, originally meant to make bronze age warriors shit their pants, but completely useless in a modern context. This will give humanity enough time to begin learning how to counter anything that might be put together in a more sane fashion.

[Stuart]

Well the ones already faced were put together like Pintos, seeing as how their own blood caused them to go up in fireballs. Obviously these things were designed under the philosophy that they would never encounter significant resistance. On the off chance some guy gets lucky the blood will probably dissolve/incinerate the sword swinging idiot, and if you hack at it enough the demon will self-destruct taking out everything in melee range. But any real resistance at a range and sudden that demon is a bomb ready to take out everything in close proximity, including other demons like it.

I would posit from what we have already seen that the first wave of demons are going to be terror troops, originally meant to make bronze age warriors shit their pants, but completely useless in a modern context. This will give humanity enough time to begin learning how to counter anything that might be put together in a more sane fashion.

I'll be putting part two up Monday or Tuesday (hopefully, weather permitting, we've got a nor'easter coming in). Some of your questions will be answered them.

I'd like to thank everybody for the input and comments. Everything that's been said has been taken on board and there are already some useful ideas that have been included.

[Sidewinder]

I know you stated that no mystical weapons will be used, but using a cursed weapon, e.g., Stormbringer or a Muramasa blade, might be worth a shot. (Imagine a demon laughing at a human soldier with such a weapon, thinking the human can't possibly harm him, only to get cut to pieces by the bloodthirsty blade.)

[FedRebel]

I know you stated that no mystical weapons will be used, but using a cursed weapon, e.g., Stormbringer a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muramasa]Muramasa blade[/url], might be worth a shot. (Imagine a demon laughing at a human soldier with such a weapon, thinking the human can't possibly harm him, only to get cut to pieces by the bloodthirsty blade.)

Why?

It'd be better to have all the legions of Satan assembling on a large plain, they laugh at the lack of resistance (no opposing human army has formed up in response the the deployment of the damned army) all that the demons can see is a singe eight engined flying machine approaching at high altitude...

Satan looks at what just happened with disbelief and shock, all of his soldiers...his feared army of the damned...wiped out in a single blow. For millennia only the fear of the wrath of God kept his forces at bay, but once that fear was extinguished, mere mortal humans...imperfect in their creation have destroyed his mighty legions with impossible ease

[Academia Nut]

I think the idea here is that humanity is as it is "today" with no magical effects on our side, although with obvious evidence of supernatural forces, scientists will immeditately begin dissecting and analyzing everything they can find, persuing every avenue presented by mythology for clues to the weaknesses of their new enemies or new weapons. I would expect there to be a hell of a lot of false paths, dead ends, and charlatans claiming things, but the beauty of the scientific method is the promise that any phenomenom can be understood with enough study.

If the war goes on long enough, I can see humans learning magic, but it would be very different from what we would think of it or what the forces of Heaven or Hell would use. Their forms would probably be long and complicated and drenched with mysticism. Any "magic" used by humanity would be to the point, utilitarian, and would only be used if it gave some sort of advantage. Don't expect soldiers to be throwing around fireballs if a rocket launcher would be faster and more effective. Invisibility and silence might be useful for special forces though, depending on how they are used. This is of course all presuming that any sort of magic independent from demons or angels could be developed.

Of course, even things like invisibility might not be needed. I can see a demon or angelic general rallying his host about a banner when his head explodes, hit by a sniper a good mile away. Any attempts to locate sources of magic fail as the sniper was just using his own skills at stealth. The effects to morale would devastating. These creatures have lived all their millennia long lives fighting in close combat, or near enough by modern standards, and now they are in a situation where the humans slaughter them enmass from points where they can't even see who they are fighting.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

FUCKING AWESOME THREAD, STUART!

Any "magic" used by humanity would be to the point, utilitarian, and would only be used if it gave some sort of advantage. Don't expect soldiers to be throwing around fireballs if a rocket launcher would be faster and more effective. Invisibility and silence might be useful for special forces though, depending on how they are used. This is of course all presuming that any sort of magic independent from demons or angels could be developed.

You mean magic like this? We already saw demons get killed by four Vimanas armed with 'arrows that seek their targets'. We simply call them jet fighters and missiles. Maybe we'll see what happens when Damned get hit with 'a single projectile charged with all the power of the Universe'.

EDIT: stupid keyboard.

[Academia Nut]

Essentially. Human "magic" would almost invariably blend into our technology as we would see it from a different perspective. While I doubt Stuart would make up nonsensical technobabble, any sort of "magic" would be couched in scientific principles, probably involving lots of large words strung together to explain the bizarreness of what is happening.

But very quickly there will be two camps, probably roughly defined as "scientists" and "engineers". The scientists will discourage the use of the word "magic" and seek a greater understanding of what is happening beyond the surface level impressions, while the engineers will take the attitude of "if its stupid but works, it's not stupid". So if for example a circle of salt can be used to block demons, the scientists would seek to understand if this is psychological, physiological, or something else. The engineers would be concerned with figuring out whether or not you could adhere salt to the surface of a tank and make it a immune to demons. Obviously there would be actually scientists and engineers on both sides of the question and both their work would benefit the other, but the language is useful in defining understanding as opposed to application.

[Knife]

While extremely fun with a wink and nod, as easily as the first four demons and the mention of hte rest getting fraged in other countries, it's going to be hard to keep any tension going.

I guess the humans could have gotten over confident with the first set not knowing they were low level scouts or something while future waves are more resilient to missiles and 20mm autocannons.


Edit: whoops, mean to ask. Has Satan just not been paying attension for the last 100 years to human development?

[Sidewinder]

I think the idea here is that humanity is as it is "today" with no magical effects on our side, although with obvious evidence of supernatural forces, scientists will immeditately begin dissecting and analyzing everything they can find, persuing every avenue presented by mythology for clues to the weaknesses of their new enemies or new weapons.

Should there be a scene similar to that in 'Starship Troopers', where the intelligence officer, wearing a lab coat, is demonstrating how to kill a Bug by shooting at a captured specimen?

[Starglider]

This is extremely awesome Stuart.

Seconded! Damn, I wish I had time to contribute to this, but right now I'm insanely busy.

(cool speech)

That reminds me of something I wrote back in 2005, when I was a little more strident about just how important AI research is. A fundie wrote to the SIAI (a research group I was part of) saying this;

'This entire site is the bigest load of navel gazing stupidity I have ever seen. You are so niaive, and clueless as to the inherent evil that lurks forever. A machine is no match for Satan.'

My response was;

'Assuming the system achieves superintelligence and nanotechnology by breakfast, we will be liberating Hell and arresting Satan in the morning as a warmup. We expect to be storming the gates of Heaven by noon, and tactical projections suggest we should be able to overthrow the dictator 'God', install a functional celestial democracy and be back home in time for tea. God, Satan and assorted celestial beings will be charged with dereliction of duty and inflicting gigadeath and hypersuffering, and the war crimes trials will begin as soon as we've finnished partying. We hope you will join our coalition of the willing and help us bring freedom and prosperity to the cosmos.'

Do we have helljumpers? I mean, units dropped into hell, to fight, Ala Doom?

The world has exactly what it has in terms of military forces on January 11th 2008. Trained, equipped and deployed the same way. Anything else that develops does so as a result of the plot progressing.

Clearly the need for intelligence is paramount. The humans don't know the extent or capabilities of the forces facing them. I imagine priority one is capturing some demons and/or angels and interrogating them. Priority two is working out how they're deploying; if they can appear anywhere the defence situation will be nightmarish, but if there are 'demonic gates' or similar then there are chokepoints that can be defended and/or nuked (given that this is Stuart writing, I imagine that one way or another there will be nukes in any case ).

The war is only 'winnable' with defensive means if the demon's population and breeding rate is low enough that they can be expected to exhaust themselves. If not, the humans are going to have to reverse engineer their means of travel and strike back. Assuming that's possible (and I really hope it is), the question is what would the operational parameters of this magic-tech be? If it's a static gate that's limited in size, firing off ICBMs through the portals might be a good way to soften Hell up (because I doubt Satan has an ABM system). In that case sending some spec ops guys over to recon for optimal target co-ords might make sense. If it works like a sci-fi jump drive, then we can send recon planes over to map the other realms and then bombers over to nuke them. Both are fun.

Might I suggest that this improvised tech works by using demon body parts preserved (for short periods) with life support machines and interfaced to control computers via electrodes spliced into their nerves? My reasons for this are as follows;

1) If the demons are getting into our reality via literal magic rituals, humans can't take the fight to them without learning to do it ourselves (if we can). This gets into the issue of did magic really exist before the demons came, and if so why no one discovered it etc etc and generally pollutes the whole science/tech vs faith/magic theme.

2) If they're travelling by divine/diabolic fiat, we're stuck in a defensive war indefinitely. This also sets a bad precedent; I'd expect the opposition to use some 'miracles', but the theme of the story is partially that humans have progressed far enough to match most of them (e.g. we can fly around and destroy whole armies with one blow too). Unfortunately too much reliance on miracles from the top makes the human situation ultimately unwinnable. I much prefer the notion that these celestial tyrants can do a few party tricks but mostly rely on the abilities of their hoards of minions.

3) Working out the laws of physics (or whatever more fundamental features of reality they use) that govern these abilities, then designing machines to replicate them would be /immensely/ hard. It's /at least/ the equivalent of Victorians trying to build a nuclear weapon if not worse. Soft sci-fi ludicrously fast research could do it but it would kinda clash with the fairly realistic combat.

4) Thus I suggest this. The demons have some bizarre organ and/or brain structures that allow them to teleport themselves from hell to earth. After capturing a few live and dead-but-mostly-intact specimens we dissect them and correlate with any data we can get from observing them appear (or more likely disappear, if they have a notion of retreat) with EW aircraft. We adapt current tech used to keep human organs alive during shipment (between donor sites) to keep the relevant bits of demon alive. We then adapt current neurointerfacing tech to control them. This is good enough to insert black and white images into human visual areas and it's good enough to control insect bodies more or less completely. Then we write software to activate the abilities we need. We may have to do stuff like; capture a demon with tranq darts (after finding a compound that works on them), cut the nerves to the relevant region, splice in a neural signal recorder, release them, let them wake up, then record the signals as they frantically try to teleport away from the tank platoon chasing them. But that's ok. This is mad science, 'by any means necessary'. The weaponised prototypes will be a nightmarish tangle of technology and demonic organs, it'll be horribly unreliable at first (and possible indefinitely) and you'll have to harvest some fairly fresh demon organs for each trip. Personally that sounds pretty cool.

No magic or mystical weapons used by Earth forces. The theme here is that science, technology and ultra-violence (precisely applied) trumps faith, superstition and listening to one's heart

That's about half of my personal philosophy right there. How much to I have to bribe you to appear in this story?

I just made the names up as I went along.

I hope we see some souls of the damned/enslaved pressed into service as demonic /divine infantry. Then we could expect to see the names of some of the more notable SDN / HPCA trolls in the enemy ranks.

The only thing is, The Big One started as a one-off story intended to squelch the "Really Cool Nazis Conquer The World" genre of alternate history and just grew as there were more and more questions I thought needed asking. This could go the same way although at the moment the story is self-contained and self-limited. Who knows, the Demonic People's Liberation Front may well kick off a few more stories.

Well it makes a nice contrast with those abysmal (and humourless) 'Left Behind' books.

Hmmm... you know, I was thinking that since one of the big themes here seems to be science and technology vs. faith and the supernatural, there should be some scenes with scientists doing research into what makes the demons and angels tick, and what they are weak against.

Ah, a fellow Mad Scientist, excellent.

If true, it would be awesome if instead of having to call in an airstrike to take out some of the nastier creatures, soldiers would be instead equipped with cold iron rounds with various words of banishing etched on the business end. It's something I would probably end up actually researching if this were to happen for real, so with the pseudo-denizen nature already seen, I figured I might as well suggest it.

Hmm, maybe, not sure that fits with the theme of the story though. There's been a lot of that kind of thing in Buffy and its clones. Frankly, it's been done. OTOH that's the first detailed description of demons being shot down by AAMs I've ever read. Similarly for the other posters proposing the humans learning magic etc, bad idea. If and when we eventually do understand the principles these abilities work on, we should be able to do /much better/. The enemy is limited by biology and a ritualistic, superstitious mindset. As the F-18s versus demons demonstrated, once we understand what's going on Technology Does It Better (tm) (r).

If it turns out to be something like chunks of burning sulfur falling from the sky from a known source, then the world would probably find it dangerous to infantry and somewhat damaging to vehicles and structures, but thoroughly unimpressive in comparison to modern incendiaries.

Indeed. At the strategic level, I would find it even more amusing if the opposition unleash a plague of 'biblical proportions' and it turns out to be easily treatable with modern antibiotics.

Satan looks at what just happened with disbelief and shock, all of his soldiers...his feared army of the damned...wiped out in a single blow. For millennia only the fear of the wrath of God kept his forces at bay, but once that fear was extinguished, mere mortal humans...imperfect in their creation have destroyed his mighty legions with impossible ease

Oh, the 'demon army gets nuked' scene just has to happen at some point. This is Stuart we're talking about here. But I doubt it will be over that easily. Even if it did take hell out of the picture, apparently we're up against heaven as well, and presumably they're watching and wouldn't make the same mistake.

I'll be putting part two up Monday or Tuesday

I'm trying to minimise recreational Internet use right now but I'll definitely make an exception for this.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Gurkha flying in his swift and powerful Vimana hurled against the three cities of the Vrishnis and Andhakas a single projectile charged with all the power of the Universe. An incandescent column of smoke and fire, as brilliant as ten thousands suns, rose in all its splendour. It was the unknown weapon, the Iron Thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death which reduced to ashes the entire race of the Vrishnis and Andhakas.

[Academia Nut]

Ah, a fellow Mad Scientist, excellent.

Engineering Physics, Nanotechnology Option. Weee!

Hmm, maybe, not sure that fits with the theme of the story though. There's been a lot of that kind of thing in Buffy and its clones. Frankly, it's been done. OTOH that's the first detailed description of demons being shot down by AAMs I've ever read. Similarly for the other posters proposing the humans learning magic etc, bad idea. If and when we eventually do understand the principles these abilities work on, we should be able to do /much better/. The enemy is limited by biology and a ritualistic, superstitious mindset. As the F-18s versus demons demonstrated, once we understand what's going on Technology Does It Better (tm) (r).

Well, I was meaning that Technology Does It Better (tm) (r). What I was trying to get at was the fact that the reason scientists rightly dismiss all claims of the supernatural is because there is no evidence for it. When there is glaringly obvious evidence for it, then the first thing that will be done is a thorough investigation to determine what exactly is going on. The first paths of investigation will use mythology as a starting point, to see what is true in those myths.

So if demons are weak against cold iron and certain words, even in script form, then even if we don't really understand why they are, then the smart thing to do is to exploit those weaknesses. Especially if they stop sending flying Pintos our way.

But yeah, I can see a lot of initial moral dilemmas as we begin experimenting on demons. A lot of people will see these sorts of actions as war crimes, and might even resist such actions at first. Until of course we discover what the demons are doing.

I can see it now:

"Up until this point we have treated your troops as if they were human and given them fair treatment in accordance with the Geneva Convention. However, refusal to obey the laws of war has resulted in the revocation of all rights and priviledges previously enjoyed. We would like you all to now enjoy the comforts of industrialized extermination camps where you will be systematically vivisected so that we may learn how to better kill your comrades. Good day."

As to all the people wondering why Heaven or Hell wouldn't keep up with the times, why would they? Neither has tested their forces against human armies in thousands of years, and they steamrolled any human forces when they did. Sure, they have the souls of all the people who advanced humanity, but why would they care what these souls have to say? In Heaven, since this is the dick god, its probably the bask in his aura sort of thing, while in Hell its probably straight to the torturing. Neither one seems likely to ask, "So what are the latest advances in kill humans up/down there?"