Armageddon???? (Part Fifty Up)

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Post by Kodiak »

CaptainChewbacca wrote:
Separated from the ritualistic 'satanic' trappings, their belief system is very similar to secular humanism. The seven tenets of secular humanism can easily be rephrased as the Nine Stanic Statements. That, combined with the fact that Satan and everything associated with him are going to be less popular than Saurkraut on D-Day, makes me think the Satanic Church is going to either quietly go away, or declare itself something like the 'Church of Man'.
Church of Man certainly has a nice ring to it. In fact, I think that would catch on quite nicely.
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Post by MKSheppard »

FOR THE EMPEROR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Post by Stravo »

You would think in this scenario we would do away with churches and anything smacking of religion.
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Post by CaptainChewbacca »

Stravo wrote:You would think in this scenario we would do away with churches and anything smacking of religion.
You would think, but humans seem to have a driving need to believe in something. Only now, we're going to ritualize the belief in ourselves.
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Post by Sean Mulligan »

I bet a lot of people are going to be changing their living wills so that they don't end up going to Hell. At least before Hell is liberated.
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Post by Ritterin Sophia »

MKSheppard wrote:FOR THE EMPEROR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh thank the Emperor, I wasn't the only one who thought that. :lol:
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Post by KlavoHunter »

Sean Mulligan wrote:I bet a lot of people are going to be changing their living wills so that they don't end up going to Hell. At least before Hell is liberated.
What does the content of your Will have to do with you going to Hell?

The only relevance I can think of for it is "Hold my belongings in trust until you break me out of Hell."
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Post by Gomu Niwatari »

He said "living will." Those have more to do with Do Not Resuscitate orders than what happens to your stuff.
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Post by Junghalli »

Starglider wrote:this isn't necessary - the angel and demon civilisations could've simply started earlier than humans and already have been at a population of millions by the time humanity first started expanding out of Africa.
It would depend on the scope of operations for Heaven and Hell. If the souls in Heaven and Hell represent a random slice of the sapients in the universe the place would probably have been filled up billions of years ago, because there are lots of possible life-supporting stars that are older than our sun (and that's not counting the possibility of older universes, which is statistically likely if the lower plains represent multiple universes). It's hard to imagine the Angel and Demon civilizations being that old, because if they were you'd think they'd have had experience with something like what's happening on Earth already; this wouldn't be such an OCP to them. It seems more likely IMHO that mass-scale arrival of souls in Heaven and Hell would have started relatively recently on the cosmic scale. Natural level-jumping being a rare event would seem the most parsimonous explanation for that.

Another possibility is that the other lower-plain worlds are actually (technologically primitive) parallel versions of Earth, also full of humans. Or, of course, that advanced technological civilizations are simply ridiculously rare for some reason.
Well, maybe. The total population of Abrahamic religions have been growing steadily pretty much since it began, worldwide population growth has overcome any temporary loss of popularity. I don't think Heaven really needed to keep any closer a watch on humanity than Hell did; they've received the same steadily swelling stream of souls, just not growing quite as fast as hell's did.
Possibly, but I tend to think the Angels will keep a closer eye on the lower-plain worlds than the Demons, just by the nature of their system. Before they encountered the Angels the Demons probably just killed everyone on the lower-plain worlds they encountered - it's what they're planning to do on Earth now that they have free reign. They view them like a fisherman views the sea; they don't have the sort of mindset and system that encourages them to pay any attention to what's happening outside of Hell. The Angels have a system that naturally encourages them to keep a much better eye on their lower-plain domains.
Abigor mentioned waiting until a new intelligent species evolved on the planet, implying that that's within the timescale of demon civilisation, if not the lifespan of individual demon lords. If that's correct it implies staggering longetivity for their civilisation, millions of years at least (though this could be thinking along the lines of 'The Thousand Year Reich').
That's not management, that's slash-and-burn while counting on the fact the land will eventually recover. Really, the most efficient thing the Demons could do is to just leave Earth alone. The people they're harvesting would be in Hell in a few decades anyway, and this way they get their children, children's children etc. as well.
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Post by phongn »

CaptainChewbacca wrote:Separated from the ritualistic 'satanic' trappings, their belief system is very similar to secular humanism. The seven tenets of secular humanism can easily be rephrased as the Nine Stanic Statements.
What? How are the seven tenants of secular humanism at all like the Nine Satanic Statements?
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Post by CaptainChewbacca »

Both the Church of Satan and Secular Humanism are devoted to truth, vitality, gratification, justice, and the betterment of mankind. The CoS is just dicks about it.
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Post by phongn »

CaptainChewbacca wrote:Both the Church of Satan and Secular Humanism are devoted to truth, vitality, gratification, justice, and the betterment of mankind. The CoS is just dicks about it.
That seems like a remarkable oversimplification of things.
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Post by Mayabird »

Junghalli wrote:
Starglider wrote:this isn't necessary - the angel and demon civilisations could've simply started earlier than humans and already have been at a population of millions by the time humanity first started expanding out of Africa.
It would depend on the scope of operations for Heaven and Hell. If the souls in Heaven and Hell represent a random slice of the sapients in the universe the place would probably have been filled up billions of years ago, because there are lots of possible life-supporting stars that are older than our sun (and that's not counting the possibility of older universes, which is statistically likely if the lower plains represent multiple universes). It's hard to imagine the Angel and Demon civilizations being that old, because if they were you'd think they'd have had experience with something like what's happening on Earth already; this wouldn't be such an OCP to them. It seems more likely IMHO that mass-scale arrival of souls in Heaven and Hell would have started relatively recently on the cosmic scale. Natural level-jumping being a rare event would seem the most parsimonous explanation for that.

Another possibility is that the other lower-plain worlds are actually (technologically primitive) parallel versions of Earth, also full of humans. Or, of course, that advanced technological civilizations are simply ridiculously rare for some reason.

It's not at all hard to imagine that technological civilizations are rare. Just looking at Earth history, Neandertals were around for some 300,000 years or so. They had brains larger than modern humans, symbolic thought of some kind (they did bury their dead, and pollen has been found in the soil around the burials indicating that the dead were buried with flowers) and were THE top predator in Ice Age Europe. At the same time, there were never more than a couple tens of thousands of them around at any one time. Hunter-gatherers require a LOT of land and have very low population densities.

Anatomically modern humans began to appear a little over a hundred thousand years ago, but modern humans with signs of symbolic thought (ornaments, carvings, stuff like that) don't seem to appear until about 70,000 years ago. Same deal with them - low population densities from hunter-gathering. The total population was probably greater, but that's only because they spread across a lot more continents. It took some 60,000 years or so until agriculture started appearing, which is necessary for supporting the large population base necessary for a civilization.

More later. Gotta go for a bit.
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Post by Mayabird »

Alright, now where was I...Barcelo-no, wait, that was something else.

Anyway, the point that I was making is that civilization itself as we know it could be an improbable event. The vast majority of intelligent species (the evolution of which could be a highly improbable event) that can be soul-harvested or whatever may never get beyond hunting-gathering basics. They might not have the proper appendages for manipulating stuff. Maybe they live under water or in environments that generally makes it difficult to build or grow things. At any rate, there won't be many of them, and a Bronze Age army would be able to take them easily.

A similar mechanism might exist for those few species that get past that stage to something approximating civilization. Some get unlucky and go extinct from asteroids/supervolcanoes/being too close to a supernova/whatever. Some just lose their civilizations for whatever reason. Some might just stay in stasis, little mud brick houses with pointy rocks on sticks for millenia on end. Metal poor planets? There's lots of possibilities which are all just me speculating out my rear end. Anyway, the important thing here is that apparently none of the harvestable species that the Baldricks have encountered previously made it past the Bronze Age or an equivalent.

There DOES remain the possibility that there are realms aside from Heaven and Hell controlled by other beings which themselves harvest different areas of the universe. Yahweh and Satan here may only have access to the Milky Way galaxy and its satellites, which would greatly limit the possible number of worlds, species, and so on down the Drake Equation compared to the rest of the universe. I don't know how far Stuart has thought into this. We're probably massively overthinking this, anyway. This is a story about blowing up demons!

I forget who said it way back when, but a commentary thread split off would probably be a good idea. Thirty pages is a little bit absurd.
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Post by DarthShady »

General Schatten wrote:
MKSheppard wrote:FOR THE EMPEROR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh thank the Emperor, I wasn't the only one who thought that. :lol:
Errrr, what?
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Post by [R_H] »

General Schatten wrote:
MKSheppard wrote:FOR THE EMPEROR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh thank the Emperor, I wasn't the only one who thought that. :lol:
Same here. *Imagines Space Marines beating the shit out of daemons, while ranting about Chaos*
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Post by CaptainChewbacca »

DarthShady wrote:
General Schatten wrote:
MKSheppard wrote:FOR THE EMPEROR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh thank the Emperor, I wasn't the only one who thought that. :lol:
Errrr, what?
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Post by DarthShady »

WH40K. You get it, or you don't.
Ok then.
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Post by brianeyci »

What I'm thinking is that because they mentioned "magic" the demons must have their own kind of magic. Or why would they describe it as magic?

Satan must be pretty badass. At the least if he survived... millenia... he's had to survive through many assassination attempts. It's not just his survival... the assassins only had to get lucky one time. What is unlikely over 50 years becomes almost certain over a thousand. And what is the difference between Lesser Demons and Greater Demons? Size? It can't be that simple.

Personally I would like to see Satan with some low-level Jedi abilities. If there's telepathy already, there should be telekenesis too. Maybe even an ability to predict danger in general. It would explain why someone hasn't just offed Satan.
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Post by FedRebel »

brianeyci wrote:What I'm thinking is that because they mentioned "magic" the demons must have their own kind of magic. Or why would they describe it as magic?
Wasn't there a time when people thought cameras stole one's soul?

Whenever someone sees something they don't understand they will try to put it in an understandable context.

The demons aren't scientists, so they credit their abilities to the supernatural. Anything that they don't understand is put into that supernatural context.

If you never saw a fighter jet with missiles before but are used to chariots and spears, how would you describe what you are seeing?

Would you call it a plane? No, you'd call it a flying chariot which can fly due to magic

Would you call the thing the 'chariot' fired a radar guided missile? No, it's a flaming spear which never misses it's target no matter what due to...magic
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Post by NecronLord »

brianeyci wrote:If there's telepathy already, there should be telekenesis too.
No.
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Post by Starglider »

brianeyci wrote:What I'm thinking is that because they mentioned "magic" the demons must have their own kind of magic.
No, they don't. They have some unusual biological abilities, some of which (e.g. portals) relies on physics humans weren't previously aware of.
Or why would they describe it as magic?
Because it's Sufficiently Advanced Technology.
And what is the difference between Lesser Demons and Greater Demons? Size? It can't be that simple.
The greater demons have more and stronger 'supernatural' abilities.
If there's telepathy already, there should be telekenesis too.
The presence of telepathy in no way implies the presence of telekinesis. They are two completely different things. As it happens we do have fairly strong evidence for Satan having telekinesis, but we don't know the mechanism and no other demons have exhibited it.
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Post by Stuart »

FedRebel wrote:If you never saw a fighter jet with missiles before but are used to chariots and spears, how would you describe what you are seeing?
I can give you the exact description; Her Grace, the Duchess of Zeon, quoted it earlier in this thread.

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.

Translated.

[reuters] An Indian fighter pilot flying an Su-30MKI fired one nuclear-tipped Brahmos missile against each of the three cities occupied by the Vrishnis and Andhakas. The resulting fireballs could be seen from over 80 kilometers away. Casualties in the cities were so high that the enemy had no choice but to capitulate [/reuters]

The ancient text translates so precisely into a modern environment, it actually makes me slightly uneasy. However, your general point is absolutely right. The demons have some inate characteristics that they take for granted just as we do. They have no comprehension of the level of technology available to humans.

That's where the important difference kicks in. Faced with a (say demonic mind-masking), the humans are asking "How does this work? How can we detect it? How can we measure it? Can we counter it? Can we exploit it?" Faced with a conundrum (Say human ability to kill at a distance with precise accuracy) the demons say "its magic" and their interest ends there. Without wanting a spoiler, that difference is a key to why this whole scenario developed in the first place.
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Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Man, the Ramayana is so awesome.

And I'm glad you're using the awesome term sky chariots. I think I kind of independently developed that term when I was making shit up for sci-fi fantasy that involved half-naked Hellenists pouring homoerotic oil on themselves, but I'm sure the term has been used some time before already...

I wonder if there are actually demons with "magical powers", as in technology. But these techno-demons hoard their secrets and pass it on from one generation of techno-demon to another, while never really telling the next generation the true secrets of their "magic" (selfish pricks). So the latest generation of magician demons are just this...isolated sect of weirdos with technology they can barely operate but lack any sort of understanding.

Sort of like the Adeptus Mechanicus from Warhammer 40,000.

But I think this would sort of conflict with what's already been established. Unless Satan/Lucifer is an idiot.
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Post by Stravo »

I've been looking over this passage from the bible when crafting some of my ideas for the story and how God might perceive humanity and it really does explain a lot as to why he might not want to get his hands dirty here, he knows we can kick his ass:
1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. 3 And they said one to another, Come, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. 4 And they said, Come, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children builded. 6 And the Lord said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them." 7 Come, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. 8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
Think about that, a bronze age culture united in purpose gave him pause...this is the basis for my excerpts on heaven's side of things.

And also once again showing God has some potent things up his sleeves. Talk about a mind fuck, making millions of people no longer speak the same language. Pretty neat trick.
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