HFQ Official Snippet #12

fallsfromtrees wrote:snip
Does the Temple have any stashed in the basement, subject to automatic maintenance? I really hope not; that's the sort of thing that has really dreadful failure modes.

You seem to discount Merlin power source and the fact everything in the cave is in peek condition. If it true for Merlin and his equipment then it is also true for the temple. Same tech base. Ditto for weapons and weapon system. Remember this is space base tech, failure in space means death so systems would be failsafe and then backed up for redundancy. If there are bombs there they will work, the Federation had years of fighting and plenty of time to prefect small high grade high yield weapons for combat.

Well, there's one thing we know that's in the basement of the Temple, and that's a fitment with two hand-prints on it. I wonder if, just possibly, there might be any information in Saint Kohdy's writings about that?

There probably isn't, but just suppose . . . !

Peter2 wrote:Well, there's one thing we know that's in the basement of the Temple, and that's a fitment with two hand-prints on it. I wonder if, just possibly, there might be any information in Saint Kohdy's writings about that?

There probably isn't, but just suppose . . . !

See, now, that is way more likely than random nukes lying around for 1000 years!

The smallest nukes I've read about would be made of Californium which come in at like 2 to 10 kg. Even that seems a little heavy for a vest pocket.

The half-life of californium-251 is about 1000 years, so that would amount to a large degradation in the weapon.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

BobG wrote:snip
I remember reading about a possible device based on on Hafnium 178m2. It was supposed to be one thousandth of the power of a true nuke by weight, but one gram of it was supposed to have equivalent power to 300 Kg of TNT. See Hafnium controversy in Wikipedia.

-- Bob G

The only problem is the the half life of 178m2Hf is 31 years, which means that in 620 years you will only have about 1 millionth of the Hafnium left, which means that your 1 gram of Hafnium will now produce the equivalent of .3 grams of TNT - not a particular large explosion. And if you stretch it out by another 155 years (to 775), you are down to about 10 milligrams of TNT. Definately not your big bang.

jgnfld wrote:The smallest nukes I've read about would be made of Californium which come in at like 2 to 10 kg. Even that seems a little heavy for a vest pocket.

The half-life of californium-251 is about 1000 years, so that would amount to a large degradation in the weapon.

So if someone set one of those off, would they be Californicated?

kbus888 wrote:=2014/12/01=
I think the options Merlin is thinking of is that in Nimue's cave he has the option of slapping the ones who do not accept the truth in cryo storage rather than needing to kill them.

??Comments??

runsforcelery wrote:<SNIP> And how would he deal with what he’d have to do if she responded . . . poorly? The decision to take her and Sandaria to the cave would give him options he hadn’t had far too many other times, yet even so . . . .<SNIP>

Through this entire snippet I wondered how much Merlin had told Aivah, and why he was taking her to the cave. Now we know that she hasn't been initiated into the inner circle, but she's going to get an in-depth introduction to the Terran Federation and some of the tech that the "Archangels" had available to them.

Once I realized he was taking her to the cave to give her the introduction, it clicked into place that having her there would allow him to put her into cryo sleep if necessary - after all, he's already said that he'd put the head of Charisian weapons research into cryo rather than kill him, since the guy would probably respond to the truth by wanting to scream it from the nearest church steeple.

So clearly taking Aivah and her sidekick directly to the cave serves two purposes. 1) It shows them undeniable evidence that the archangels were frauds and that the CoGA which they created is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on humanity, since those two don't have years of close friendships with members of the inner circle who can explain the Truth to them, and 2) It gives him the option of tossing one or both of them into cryo sleep if they take it badly.

I suspect Aivah will be quite shaken, but even with the foreshadowing of how she feels the church should be, the fact that it's such a force for evil in the world at the moment should help her overcome her lifelong dedication to the idea of a CoGA that functions as she feels it should. If it truly was God's church, how could He allow it to run off the rails so badly? (Plus quite a lot of the Writ isn't actually false.)

Her sidekick may not take it as well, but we may not find out that she has severe reservations until she runs to the Inquisition later. Time to plant a SNARC in her ear so she can be eliminated at need!

I'm looking forward to Aivah's meeting with Nahrmahn as well! Finding out that the entire basis of your society is a fraud is nothing compared to meeting a ghost!

Chief-CWH wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:snip
Does the Temple have any stashed in the basement, subject to automatic maintenance? I really hope not; that's the sort of thing that has really dreadful failure modes.

You seem to discount Merlin power source and the fact everything in the cave is in peek condition. If it true for Merlin and his equipment then it is also true for the temple. Same tech base. Ditto for weapons and weapon system. Remember this is space base tech, failure in space means death so systems would be failsafe and then backed up for redundancy. If there are bombs there they will work, the Federation had years of fighting and plenty of time to prefect small high grade high yield weapons for combat.

I don't disagree with you, but let's not forget that Nimue's cave spent several centuries completely shut down in an inert atmosphere. So the wear and tear on its equipment is much lower than the maintenance systems of the Temple - although we have no evidence whatsoever that the any of them have failed.

Terran technology is extremely durable stuff! (Which is too bad when it comes to the Rakurai..)

McGuiness wrote:So clearly taking Aivah and her sidekick directly to the cave serves two purposes. 1) It shows them undeniable evidence that the archangels were frauds and that the CoGA which they created is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on humanity, since those two don't have years of close friendships with members of the inner circle who they'd believe, and 2) It gives him the option of tossing one or both of them into cryo sleep if they take it badly.

There are two aspects to that problem: Neither Aivah nor Sandariah seem to be really shaken when they are put into an "angelic" techlevel skimmer, although none has been operated for centuries to the best of their knowledge. Descriptions by Kohdy seem to have them prepared, which is interesting in itself.
Moreover, there is no good reason for Merlin to take them to the Cave for their introduction into the truth that we readers know of as of now. But there should be, and it will be quite revealing, I guess. I would fully expect it to be related to Kohdy's diary and those sections the sisterhood does not really understand, which again hints at interesting stuff. (And I still posit that the SSK has a partial understanding of the Spanish sections.)
As to Aivah or Sandariah being put on a freeze: Ain't gonna happen. Indeed, it'd give higher odds to Aivah shutting down Merlin than to him sidelining Aivah.

BobG wrote:In fact, I've viewed Nimue's creation as an indicator that one of the two of them, Merlin or Nimue, will be killed off.
-- Bob G

That was one of the reasons for Nimue's creation which immedeately came to my mind as I read of it. I was thinking more of destroying the temple....

I think if I were running the show, I would send Nimue to Charis to pick up Father Paityr, not for access to his truth stone, but so he could share the full story of the Wylsyn family inheritance. Given their past association with that family, that could be very helpful.

Don