BY HERESIES DISTRESSED – snippet 5:
Rock Point turned and looked back out the stern windows at the pall of smoke swelling above Ferayd. More than a third of the city’s buildings had helped to feed that looming mushroom shape, but Rock Point had allowed Lakyr’s surrendered troops to demolish a semicircular fire break around the portion of Ferayd he’d been ordered to destroy. Emperor Cayleb’s instructions had specified that not a building was to be left standing within a two-mile radius of the Ferayd waterfront, and Rock Point had carried out his orders with precision.
And also, Lakyr admitted unwillingly, with compassion. He’d permitted civilians whose homes had lain within the decreed radius of destruction to take away their most prized possessions — assuming they were sufficiently portable — before the torch had been applied. And the Charisian admiral had permitted no excesses on the part of his troops. Which, given what had happened to the Charisian merchant crews who’d been slaughtered here in Ferayd when Vicar Zhaspahr had ordered their ships seized, was far better than anything for which Lakyr had dared to hope.
Of course, he thought, regarding Rock Point steadily, there’s still that interesting little question about exactly what Rock Point’s orders concerning the commander of the garrison who did the slaughtering might be.
“I’m sure most of your citizens will be happy to see the last of us,” Rock Point continued. “I’d like to think that with the passage of time, they’ll realize we at least tried to kill as few of them as possible. However, there was no way we could allow what happened here to pass unanswered.”
“I suppose not, My Lord,” Lakyr admitted, and braced himself. The admiral’s last sentence suggested he was about to discover precisely what Charis had in mind for the officer whose troops had committed to the atrocity which had brought Rock Point to Ferayd.
“The real reason I invited you aboard Destroyer, Sir Vyk,” Rock Point said, almost as if he had read the Delferahkan’s mind, “was to deliver my Emperor’s message to your king. This –” he gestured with one hand at the smoke-choked this invisible to the stern windows “– is a part of that message, of course, but it’s scarcely all of it.”
He paused, waiting, and Lakyr’s nostrils flared.
“And the rest of it is, My Lord?” he asked finally, obedient to the admiral’s expectant silence.
“And the rest of it is, Sir Vyk, that we know who actually ordered the seizure of our ships. We know whose agents . . . oversaw that seizure. Neither my Emperor, nor Charis, is prepared to hold Delferahk blameless over the murder of so many Charisian subjects, hence this.” He waved at the rising smoke once more. “Should more of our subjects be murdered elsewhere, be assured Emperor Cayleb will respond equally forcefully there, as well. Nor will there be any peace between any who attack Charis, or Charisians, at the orders and behest of corrupt men like Clyntahn and the rest of the Group of Four. But our true quarrel lies with the men in Zion who choose to pervert and poison God’s own Church. And that, Sir Vyk, is the real reason I asked you aboard. To tell you that although my Emperor must hold you, as any military commander, ultimately responsible for the actions of the men under your command, he understands that what happened here in Ferayd was neither of your seeking, nor what you intended. Which is why you will be returned ashore after our business this morning is concluded to deliver a written message from Emperor Cayleb to King Zhames.”
“Indeed, My Lord?” Lakyr couldn’t quite keep the surprise — and the relief — out of his voice, and Rock Point snorted in amusement.
“No doubt I would have anticipated a rather more . . . unpleasant outcome of this interview if I’d been in your shoes,” he said. But then his expression hardened. “I’m afraid, however, that the unpleasantness isn’t quite over yet. Come with me, Sir Vyk.”
Lakyr’s nerves had tightened once again at Rock Point’s ominous warning. He wanted to ask the Charisian admiral what he’d meant, but he strongly suspected that he would find out altogether too quickly, anyway, and so he followed Rock Point out of the cabin without speaking.
The admiral ascended the steep ladders to the upper deck with surprising nimbleness, despite his wooden leg. No doubt he’d had plenty of practice, Lakyr thought, following him up. But then the commander of Ferayd’s defeated garrison found himself standing once again upon the spar deck, and any thought about Rock Point’s agility disappeared abruptly.
While the two of them had been below, in Rock Point’s cabin, Destroyer’s crew had been rigging halters from the ship’s yardarms. There were six of them, one dangling from either end of the lowest yard on each of the ship’s three masts.
As Lakyr watched in stunned disbelief, deep-throated drums began to rumble like distant thunder echoing across mountain peaks. Bare feet pattered and boots clattered and thudded as seamen and Marines poured onto their ships’ upper decks in answer to that rolling summons, and then six men in priest’s cassocks badged with the purple sword and flame of the Order of Schueler were dragged across the deck towards the waiting nooses.
“My Lord –!” Lakyr began, but Rock Point waved his right hand. The gesture was sharp, abrupt, the first truly angry thing Lakyr had seen out of the Charisian, and it decapitated his nascent protest as cleanly as any sword.
“No, Sir Vyk,” Rock Point said harshly. “This is the rest of my Emperor’s message — not just to King Zhames, but to those bastards in Zion. We know who provoked this massacre, and we know who ordered it knowing his minions would do precisely what they in fact did. And those who murder Charisian subjects will answer to Charisian justice . . . whoever they may be.”
Lakyr swallowed hard, feeling the sweat suddenly beading his hairline.
I never even dreamed of this, he thought. It never even crossed my mind! Those men are priests — consecrated priests, servants of Mother Church! They can’t just —
But the Charisians not only could, they were actually doing it. And despite his horror at the impiety of what was happening, a part of Sir Vyk Lakyr discovered that he couldn’t blame them for it.
He saw Father Styvyn Graivyr, Bishop Ernyst Jynkyns’ intendant, the Office of Inquisition’s senior priest in Ferayd, among the prisoners. Graivyr looked stunned, white-faced . . . horrified. His hands were bound behind him, as were those of the other five inquisitors with him, and his shoulders twisted as his wrists fought against their bonds. He seemed almost unaware of his struggle against the cords as his eyes clung to the waiting noose, and he moved like a man trapped in the bowels of a nightmare.
He never dreamed it might come to this, either, Lakyr realized, and yet another emotion flickered through him. He was still too stunned himself to think clearly, but if he hadn’t been, he might have been shocked to realize that at least part of what he was feeling was . . . satisfaction.
Graivyr wasn’t the only inquisitor who seemed unable to believe, even now, that this could possibly be happening to them. One of them resisted far more frantically than Graivyr, flinging himself against the iron grip of the stonefaced Marines dragging him towards the waiting rope, babbling protests. And as Lakyr stared at the unbelievable events unfolding before him, he heard the rumble of other drums coming from other ships.
He wrenched his eyes away from Destroyer’s deck, and his face tightened as he saw more ropes hanging from other ships’ yardarms. He didn’t try to count them. His shocked mind probably wouldn’t have been up to the task, anyway.
Good.
While I’m not normally one to go for the death penalty, in this case it was entirely appropriate. Especially given that the Inquisitors probably thought their offices would protect them from the consequences of their prior actions. No one is above the law, and it’s about time that the corrupt priesthood found this out.
War to the knife – works for me.
more.
Should be interesting to see how willing the members of the inquisition will be to follow orders when word of this gets out! May not be quite so easy for the chief piggy anymore!
I suspect the only lesson the inquisitors will take away from this is “be sure to have your getaway planned, just in case.”
@5: Sadly, that’s probably true. Though, at least they may decide to exercise better discretion as well.
This is a message for Clynyn, and he will have trouble dealing with it. It is everything that he supposed and proposed, but made flesh. The reality will provoke the obvious question (why only priests of the Inquisition?), and not just from outside his order. The reality of executions will not materially strengthen his position, but it will undermine his credibility and the authority of his office.
J
This might be where the Go4 agree to declare Holy War. Of course, without a real fleet the only Charisians they can get at are the ones they’ve already captured, and the ones living in places like Siddarmark, half of whom are still Temple Loyalists. Stohnar may be forced to choose sides once and for all.
I think this is really bad news for Clyntyn. Safehold is not Europe before the Reformation.
This religion guarantees that God will not let certain things happen in a way that no religion on our planet ever has. The inquisition will not only have to hide this from the rest of the clergy, they will not have to hide it from their own people. The logic of the Safehold religion is that if the inquisition were doing God’s work God would have intervened.
Excellently-planned reprisal.
1) Warns other Safehold realms that actively supporting the church will have costly consequences.
2) Tells the Church of Zion that reprisal will be personal.
3) Controlled mercy for the people of Ferayd.
1) Will reduce the enthusiasm that the Kingdoms of Safehold implement Clyntahn’s orders. Even if they agree with Clyntahn, there will be an undercurrent of letting someone more enthusiastic suffer the consequences, and then join in later when (they hope) Charis is weakened.
2) The priests of Inquisition may start thinking of their own skins. Service in coastal cities has suddenly become less desirable.
3) In some ways, this is the most dangerous for the Go4. There are now many thousands who (although losing their houses) have seen a well-behaved, well-ordered reprisal raid. Clyntahn won’t be able to suppress the news, and it will spread. And it doesn’t fit with the tale Clyntahn’s telling.
“Should more of our subjects be murdered elsewhere, be assured Emperor Cayleb will respond equally forcefully there, as well.”
Hmm, maybe the idea of blasting the Zion waterfront wasn’t *quite* as farfetched after all… :) At the very least, that’s certainly the implicit threat. While I still figure it’s unlikely to come to fruition, I wouldn’t mind in the least if it did.
RH
I think this will also provoke a quiet split within the Inquisition / Order of Scheuler personnel. Those who disapprove of Clyntahn’s policies appear previously to have mostly ‘gone-along’, and kept their heads down. I suspect there will be more passive (and active) resistance now. After all, if God didn’t intervene to stop it, it must ultimately serve his purposes to permit it, right? That opens a Pandora’s Box of theological arguments that are not easily answered with force.
Yep. This church is not very sophisticated in terms of theology and explaining God’s failure to protect the inquisitors is going to be interesting.
You know, the juxtaposition of the executions here and the scene in Zion back a few pages suddenly struck a thought off my skull (a frightening concept I know)…
Clyntahn is shown planning to torture the “heretics” into confessing all sorts of vile baloney about the situation in Charis. A few pages later, several of “his boys” get “the drop”. For all Clyntahn’s absolutely massive number of utterly vile faults, he is quite loyal to his people (at least when they serve him well). I can see him being absolutely incandescent about this incident. Furthmore, he’s a fat, indolent creature likely in at least somewhat poor health, and who’s almost certainly not exactly 25 or so either. Could this lead to a stroke or even aneurism that removes him from the situation? Probably not, but I wouldn’t exactly complain if it did.
I could also see him starting to execute the heretics instead of “wasting” time torturing them. Or he might try to do both. He could demand the arrest and execution of any Charisian who is living anywhere on the mainland (figuring they aren’t ones whom he could torture for information that he could release and expect people to buy) and yet still try to keep the captured sailors around for his torture sessions. I would expect that even Traynair would oppose him if he brought this up to the Go4, but I could easily see him reacting in such fury that he “forgot” to clear his orders with them first. And if that happens, one wonders how people (both in Zion and elsewhere) will react?
RH
Someone in the inquisition has to be a secret member of the Circle or at least a supporter. In BSRA, Vicar Samyl Wylsynn stated “My sources were able to get me an actual copy of the original semaphore message…” from Ferayd. Word of the new events will likely get to the Circle as fast as to Clyntahn. Although very unlikely, it would be an interesting twist if Rayno is that person….
This is an excellent example of the way wars feed on themselves. Hanging the inquisitors will provoke “Holy Mother Church” to new outrages, and Charis will respond, and so on, and on, and on. And it can’t be helped — or rather, it could be helped, if people ran the world with any sense. Alas, as Heinlein noted in his 1973 Naval Academy lecture, they don’t.
Total war here we come!
I can’t wait to read the scene where Clyntahn reads the dispatches about this little bit of news. :) He’s gonna have an apoplectic fit and won’t that just be terrible. :P
At the end of THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM BY E. A. Poe, when the protagonist has been rescued from the pit just before the blade on the end of the pendulum cut him in two, there is a line that reads something like, “The city had been taken; the Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies”. This seems like a similar situation.
@17: Yeah. Whether or not this will come back to bite Clyntahn later on, he can try to use it right now (with judicious editing to leave out the miraculous loss of civilian casualties) to whip up further support for Holy War. I don’t think he really plans for – or cares about – the future. That’s a characteristic typical of gluttony and indulgence. As long as he gets what he wants right now, he’ll let the future take care of itself.
I wonder if this calculated reprisal will finally get the majority of the Church heirarchy off their duffs. So far they have let the Go4 run things. However, if they feel more personally exposed to the Go4 decisions, might they then decide to effect a change?
RH, if word gets to Merlin about where the Feryahd prisoners are kept, perhaps he would do something about their captivity. Poor Clyntahn will be empty handed AND short a few stupid, arrogant agents of his inquisition. What would that do to his ability to generate fear? Without that he has very little real power.
PZ
@14: People aren’t going to be at all shocked or surprised that God didn’t personally intervene to stop this.
Safehold theology is BASED on an explicit belief that God lets his deputies (archangels, then angels, now mortals) deal with this sort of thing. NO ONE was shocked that God didn’t protect Church Couriers for instance, they were shocked that Charis would FIRE on Church Couriers, but not at all surprised that such fire is ineffective.
AFAICT they don’t hold there to have been even a single divine miracle since the death of the last angel. Lack of a miracle isn’t a problem.
Similarly the idea of a divine miracle never occures in to the viewpoint character in this scene. But horrified that Charis whould hang a priest does occure to him.
The church doesn’t have to explain squat about why God didn’t protect their people. They just have to declare holy war since it’s THEIR JOB to deal with heressy. Their theology delegates dealing with this sort of thing to the church and people.
But probably about 1/3 or more of the people on Charis will be horrified by a mass execution of priests and more like 90% everywhere else. And without knowledge of Merlin’s abilities Charis has no way to explain how they knew which priests were responsible, so it’s going to look like they simply executed every inquisitor that they caught(or possibly even every priest, we don’t know who’s being executed here). So even people sympathetic to Charis who think about it will be fairly sure that at least a few innocent priests were caught and killed.
Excecuting criminals is fine policy, it sucks as propaganda, they’ve just handed Clyntahn an enormous short term advantage.
I doubt this mass execution will create problems in Charis. The Charis population is furious about the civilian casualities in the ship ship sizing incident in Delferakh and everyone in Charis has heard eyewitness accounts of the incident and how inquisition priests demanded dead to the heretics.
The Charis reaction to the ship sizing incident will be a major shock to leaders of mainland countries with coastal cities. They will feel squeezed between the risk of church reprisals and charis reprisals.
What is a governor to do in the following situation?
The church demand the handover of Charis sailors from sized ships and the governor fears there is a risk of similar Charis revenge actions against his harbour cities if there is any harm inflicted upon the sailors he hands over to the church.
Clyntahn will probably use the charis revenge actions as propaganda on the mainland and in the church hierachy. “Those heretics has destroyed the martyr city of …… and killed all the priests in the city”
Such tactics will backfire, because it would create fear on the mainland. “The heretics could do the same to your home town if they want to do so and the church and our governor is powerless to prevent them for doing so”
Doug, what if Charis has evidence they can provide such as the executed priests’ own reports. Do you think they’ll hide what they did?
Plus, it’s definitely only a short-term advantage for Clyntahn. In the long run, it will become increasingly obvious even to the true believers that the Church is obviously lying to cover its own butt. And I suspect that Merlin’s abilities wouldn’t be enough to explain this in any case, since I believe he simply didn’t have time (or reason) to deploy SNARC parasites to Ferayd and thus used satellite reconaissance to keep track of what was going on. Furthermore, it’s obvious that the priests themselves sent an accurate report to Clyntahn, thus their own records would have corroborated Charis’ accusations (as Drak suggested).
The kicker is that nobody would ever have conceived of executing a frocked priest before this, so they wouldn’t have bothered concealing their internal memos, so to speak. Just goes to show how utterly unprepared the Church was for a real religious war.
By the way, maybe someone can answer this. Where exactly is Delferahk? I think I have the location pinpointed, but the maps in the hardbound books don’t go into enough detail for smaller kingdoms, so I can’t be sure.
I managed to locate Delferahk on the southern tip (western part) of Howard
The area called “Breakheart Head” is located on the Delferakh map and on the entire world map
Well, Merlin did have SNARC cover of Ferayd, because he waked up King Caleb in the middle of the night in order to inform him that there had been an atrocity in Ferayd
Jeff, it’s more or less the bottom tip of Howard.
Doug, the fire was “ineffective” only in that it didn’t actually hit the church courier. On the other hand, it got them to surrender, so by that standard it was VERY effective. And furthermore it wasn’t even aimed at them in the first place (it was aimed across their bow instead) so expecting it to hit would be silly at best. As for whether people are expecting miracles, you forget that these people believe the Archangels are still out there somewhere. Sure their original bodies are gone, but they believe they are still around and can come back if God wants them too, and if the current system on Safehold really IS His intended design yet things continue to go worse and worse for the church, what sane person would think He would NOT send them back to fix things? True they are not expecting miracles “right now”, but that does NOT mean they aren’t going to start wondering why the Archangels still haven’t come back to straighten things out. So maybe in the VERY short term this is a propaganda advantage to Clyntahn, but only if he gets his version of things out first. If Charis gets their version out (or even if the Circle manages to get part of the real truth out) it’s going to come back to bite him FAST.
PZ, I’m thinking that is a definite possibility. Sir Vyk here could mention soon that the prisoners are on their way to Zion… or more likely may well have already done so. If I was a Charisian Admiral coming to execute a reprisal like this, the very first condition I’d give the surrendered troops was that they release any surviving prisoners from the original atrocity. And if they couldn’t produce any, I’d demand any information available on where they went and how they were transported. And while I agree with Jeff that Merlin likely didn’t have SNARCs around BEFORE the massacre, I’d bet good money he does NOW. If nothing else, I’d have a few on Destroyer to keep an eye on things. And probably at least a few more in the nearby vicinity.
RH
Page 361 in the hardcower of By schism Rent Asunder (Merlin talking with Cayleb after Merlin decided to disturb Cayleb’s sleep)
“I have just been reviewing Owl’s take from the SNARCs”
a few lines further down
“”There are several things you need to know about” he continued aloud, “but the most important are from Siddarmark and delferahk””
@23 Archangels and the church hierarchy are not the same thing at all. Langhorne and his accomplices thought of the church as staff, not equals or successors. The whole thrust of what passes for theology in the church is you carry out Langhorne’s orders and that’s it. The destruction at Armageddon Reef was propagandised as an act of God, not an act of the church. If the Charisian clergy are any good at their jobs, and we know they are, they are going to ask why God, not the church, failed to protect the inquisitors.
“Which, given what had happened to the Charisian merchant crews who’d been slaughtered here in Ferayd when Vicar Zhaspahr had ordered their ships seized, was far better than anything for which Lakyr had dared to hope.”
Oh, give me a break. What do you think happened to the crews of merchant ships attacked by Charisian privateers? None of them were killed?
The historical model here is Britain vs Spain, France and other Catholic countries….Britain really had no basis for being all holier-than-thou about civilian casualties as it conducted state-sponsored piracy on all the world’s seas.
There’s reason to say Britain was overall better, freer, but the whitewash is being laid on tremendously thick here. Not only do the Charisians consider themselves righteous, but now even their adversaries are made to agree with them!
Re the Safehold map, see http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/Gbaba/Safehold%20Map.htm for a good, detailed map that shows Ferayd and lots more. Tis over 12MBytes in size.
The adversaries of Charis atm include %80 percent of the planet they don’t control and the majority population to boot. Geographically speaking, Delfarahk has benefited in large part because of Charisian merchant trade so as a former customer, they are more likely to hold views favoring Charis because they dealt more with Charisian trade than Inquisitory crusades up to this point. Russia, for all of the advantages they could have had as an ally of France, stuck with their trading parter instead. Since Delfarahk was pretty much going to lose all its economy, the destruction of everything up to 2 miles from shore will probably benefit Charis as the now travel-ready citizens move inland with their posessions to tell of Charis’ limited reprisal. To say that Weber is laying on the sympathy thick is probably close to the mark given how little backhistory we have with Safehold, but given that the communication barriers of Earth (namely language) are pretty much moot on Safehold, there is more room for sympathy between cultures as a result of mutual understanding at the fundamental level of language.
The interesting point I find in this snippet is the shock over how “holy” men hang just as poorly as criminals. The kind of simple fear that is sparked by the prospect of being singled out for death has much potential in generating blind hatred. Where it will start is the Order of Scheuler, but if it lasts long enough, it can be spread quite easily to the general populous. All the Church would have to do is slaughter a few small coastal towns and make it look like a Charisian massacre on the mainland to set every reason to spark outright hatred and total-war mentality against Charis; at least with the populations that deal more closely with the Church.
28. There is a very large differance in casualties that happen in the process of taking a ship that doesn’t strike it’s colors and puts up a fight, to a massacre of 95%+ of crew members of captured ships. Don’t forget that we have “Big Brother” Merlin to keep an eye on Charis ship masters. I strongly suspect that any ship’s master that perpetrate counter-massacres will quickly find themselves in hot water with the Empire when they return to Charis. Cayleb will probably spin it as one of the crew was driven by his conscience to report it to the Admiralty. While I agree that this is a work of fiction and there are much fewer grey areas in it than in real life, but I’m cool with that. This is entertainment and I like my good guys to be good guys. :)
@28: Remember, in BSRA, Clyntahn specifically mentioned that only 14 Charisians were taken prisoner. Even taking into account the fact that nine or ten ships escaped (which is only a third or so of the ships which were in port), and assuming that half of the personnel on board the seized ships managed to escape to one of the ships which did get away, that still leaves, effectively, the equivalent of ten ship crews which were effectively slaughtered by the armed boarding parties. Even considering that merchant ships don’t have anywhere near as many people stationed aboard them as military ships, that’s still got to be hundreds of people.
By comparison, most merchant ships are not armed well enough to fight off Charisian privateers. So while some may fight, most will surrender without bloodshed (due to the traditional “shot across the bows”), and the rest certainly wouldn’t have very much fight in them. So you almost certainly wouldn’t see very many of their crew members killed. Furthermore, the slaughter at Ferayd was a personalized one. It wasn’t two ships blazing away at each other with cannons, it was boarding parties attacking the personnel of ships (docked and at anchor) and generally butchering them. Including the majority of the women and children on board those ships.
It’s not like the Charisians were systematically butchering the crews of the ships they seized, after all. So the two situations are not at all analogous.
@ 36: Minor point: Clyntahn doesn’t mention the number 14, that’s Vicar Wylsynn when he meets with other members of the circle to explain what really happened. Clyntahn tells the group of four that ALL the Charisians were killed. When questioned about this, he backtracks and tells them that a handful might have survived, but not many. Later, he backtracks even more and tells them that some of the ships escaped. I really wonder if Clyntahn was planning ahead and leaving himself a little wiggle room in case some of them died under “questioning”.
I’ve been reading all the responses:
1) There will be no rescue of the prisoners. Merlin didn’t even no what happened to Dennys after he returned to Zion.
2) The Inquistitor will have a short term advantage in all this propaganda. A much more educated public (though not nearly as educated as years gone by), lacking critical thinking, swallowed a Himalyan amount of BS the past 28 years, particularly the last eight. The population on the mainland will believe what he tells them…now. Even in Siddarmark there will be many (and in Harchong it never matters what the serfs believe). But bit by bit by bit by bit, the inconsistancies of all the lies and the rumors of what Charis is really doing will catch up to him.
3) Besides all the internal strife in the Church that Cayleb and Merlin and Staynair are trying for, I hope their (Weber’s) endgame is to force the Church to break the Proscriptions first. Or coming up with rationalizations that the technology advances are actually in accordance with the Proscriptions. Otherwise, Charis and Chisholm will definitely be seen as heretical, not fomenters of a schism.
4) I’m wondering from the descriptions of the book how the secrets they’re keeping from Sharleyan(sp?) are going to bite them in the ass.
5) I still don’t understand how Merlin can’t have SNARCs watching the sempohore towers and break the code of the communications. The lack of info coming from the Temple or even right next to it I understand. Elsewhere I don’t.
6) I also hope that Charis pushes the Church into making steam power holy by taking water power to heights not reached on Earth because steam engines and electricity came along. Hydraulic ram pumps and water powered moters anyone?
7) What some here don’t seem to realize is that Merlin is trying to make this all human based, from the intelligence and motivations of the people. He doesn’t want sheep that won’t be able to fight the Gbaba.
@30: Okay, granted, he did have SNARCs in Ferayd. But I doubt he had more than a handful there (and that’s assuming he had more than one), which is the only way he could possibly have been able to follow all the groups of boarding parties. So I don’t think Cayleb was relying on the SNARC intel to determine exactly who was responsible.
More likely is that since they already knew that the priests were responsible, they raided the Church offices in Ferayd after taking it (remember, they gave the townspeople time to evacuate first, so there was ample time to do so), and got the information on which priests were involved from that. It’s also possible that they got it from the Ferayd military (soldiers do keep track of that kind of thing, after all). Either way, they have a paper trail to prove that the executions were justified.
@37: Yeah, I recently reread BSRA, and I confused the two since they came so close together.
#38: Regarding bugging the semaphore towers with SNARCs, something to consider is that even with Owl, Merlin is simply not able to keep up with everything. And remember, the SNARCs can’t do the decoding themselves; Merlin or Owl would have to. It’s entirely possible that he decided that bugging random semaphore towers would produce too little gain for too much work.
I can’t be sure, of course, but that’s my take on the matter. And good point regarding the necessity of getting the human race to be able to think for itself again.
@39: Merlin wouldnt have to bug random semaphore towers. Just the ones around Zion, all info goes there right? Now that the Brotherhood and Merlin are working together why couldnt Merlin make a room with a bunch of LCD like viewscreens showing SNARCs takes. And have members of the Brotherhood monitor 24/7? That would help keep better track of whats going on and free up alot of Merlins time right?
The “there’s too much traffic to read the Church’s mail” excuse is a bit weak. Of course Merlin/Owl have limited resources, but this isn’t the NSA trying to listen to every phone call in the world. The data dump from these SNARCs all over the world has got to be much more of a processing load than reading the semaphore messages would be. No matter what handwaving Weber has done about it, the bandwidth of a semaphore station is just too limited compared to something like Owl.
Whether Merlin has the time to read all those messages, that’s another story. But you would think he would have the time to read the ones coming from Ferayad after the battle, for instance. And he could record all messages routinely, even if he rarely bothers to decode and read them under normal circumstances.
Semaphore Communication and OWL are discussed by DW. See http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/Gbaba/oar_church_communications.htm
Cultures of change are born from conquest. All this warmongering with no quick solution is ultimately good for Charis since the innovations that spring from war are made acceptable when it is considered a matter of life and death. While it does bring about unfortunate items such as poison gas, bio warfare, and nuclear arms, in the mechanical application of war, people are in a constant problem solving process which generates the kinds of thinking skills which don’t arise in a stagnant, peaceful society.
If Merlin wanted to he could introduce the hot air balloon with no break in proscription. Heck, a dirigible wouldn’t break proscription so long as a good substitute for the propellor can be found.
The Church has already broken proscriptions with gunpowder, btw.
As to the semaphore, I thought there was some mention in BSRA about their vulnerability to spying though I cannot recall if Merlin ever handed off intelligence gleaned from semaphore.
I am pretty sure that, with his habit of writing strong female roles, Weber will keep Sharleyan mentally flexible enough and forgiving enough to accept the truth. After nearly getting killed a couple of times, I’d think that Cayleb would be pretty much set on telling her everything when he gets back.
E, I’m thinking it’s almost as likely that Sharleyan figures at least part of it out on her own. After all, she noticed the way Cayleb seemed to be “extra controlled” when the news from Delferak came in, and she noticed how one of the councilors seemed to slide his eyes past (to Merlin) at one point… to say nothing of the impossibility of him hearing her cry on the waterfront at the tearful departure of the invasion fleet (a flat impossibility for any normal human) plus being able to actually respond such that she can hear him… she’ll eventually figure out that Merlin is a LOT more than he appears to be. How much more beyond that, tho I can’t say.
Mike, et al, Weber did do some “hand waving” on the sempahores, but not as much as you think. You are thinking in terms of simple messages passed with a single flag in some sort of “morse code” that takes a long time to send even one message. But that’s more appropriate for a decentralized system where only time-critical messages get passed by semaphore and everything else goes by messenger wyvern or ship (or even overland). With such an ultra-centralized system as Weber has created with Zion — where even many of the archbishops spend most of their year in Zion rather than in their actual postings, plus all the vicars, plus an active inquisition constantly on the look-out for any scrap of heresy… etc… and LOTS of message traffic back and forth constantly — the message traffic simply is HUGE. They can’t possibly handle it all with single-flag towers. These towers are almost certainly passing several messages at once with combinations of dozens or hundreds of flags. That alone doesn’t make it impossible, but it does make it harder. Then you add that EVERY message is in code, and that there are dozens (at least) or even hundreds (more likely) of these codes to break (to say nothing of how often they change), then Merlin would have to intercept every message and then break every code and only THEN scan content for useful nuggets… that represents a LOT of processor power. Owl might be able to handle that, but even he’s going to run out of processor power eventually. And even if he could handle it, if Merlin is already unable to keep up (and he is) then even if in theory he could do it he also doesn’t feel that he can handle trying to do it.
RH
RE: Sharlyan figureing things out: I can see her having a meeting and one of the folks who Merlin is giving hints to says absentmindedly to a problem he’s having “I wish Merlin was here” in which case he has to do some fast explaining. Then, what if she hears some of the ‘tall tales’ that are undoubtedly circling about him and starts thinking that perhaps there’s more to them.
About the semaphore msgs. Easier just to monitor the offices of interesting personell and have Owl ‘read’ anything marked urgent.
@42: Yeah. That’s what I was trying to say. Plus, you’ve got to consider that it’s not just the semaphore tower traffic that he’s got to keep tabs on. Throw on everything else that he’s juggling as far as spying and intel goes (and it has been stated several times that Merlin already has too much to do) and it makes a lot more sense why he might not bother with the towers at all, or only the ones which serve as written message relays.
It appears to me that they simply arrested and are about to execute every member of the Order of Schueler that they could catch as the responsible organization.
Is it surprising that Lakyr had not known that the Schuelerites were being arrested?
RH, I think you’ve underestimated the complexity that semaphore can reach. It is more likely that the Church is using semaphore with windows and shutters, which can carry a lot more code and relay information faster and at night (lamps). The pattern of windows and shutters will represent the messages more easily than flag positions. The walls of Zion probably maintain some very large relay towers (“grand trunks”) for sending and recieving multiple messages. The reason semaphore didn’t quite take off on Earth is because of the expenses involved when compared to, say, a pony express in relation to the volume of information that could be trafficked. That, and the invention of steam locomotion allowed large quantities of mail to be shipped cheaply. In the end, semaphore fails for common use because of lack of volume but for the Church (who can pour money into it) it’s perfect until the telegraph gets invented.
As to Sharleyan, I’m wondering if she’ll make the connections on what she’s noticed so far in such a way as to focus her questions on who/what Merlin is/is doing or if the slowdown in information traffic with Merlin gone will simply keep her at the level of overseeing unification and dealing with local troubles. I’m pretty certain that the Prince of Emerald whose name escapes me at this moment is going to figure it out if he keeps getting reports with the exact same neat handwriting and verbiage from OWL.
It doesn’t surprise me that Lakyr is unaware personally of the Schuelerite arrests because after surrendering his city he was probably held by whatever land team Charis sent in. Since the negotiations of Ferayd’s surrender took place off set, he is unlikely to have had much of his staff running around to report new developments and besides, the Schuelerites were probably easy to arrest quietly given that they probably all stayed in their churches thinking that divine mandate kept them safe.
Even so, considering all the other stuff that Merlin has to keep track of, I don’t think he would systematically bug semaphore traffic. Maybe in specific situations where he could be reasonably sure that the information was important (such as right after the massacre at Ferayd), but probably not as a regular thing. Especially not when he can get most of the same effect by bugging throne rooms, council chambers, and the like.
RH, I had previously read Weber’s explanation, and I still think it’s handwaving. As I alluded to, the NSA rotinely attempts to process every cell phone conversation in the world, and as much email traffic as they can. Of course they don’t have some poor human read every message. They apply filters.
Owl could do the same. It could also focus much more intently on messages from places that are known to be of interest (as long as Merlin took the precaution of recording everything, all the time).