Dauntless wrote:wasn't there a line in OAR about how Langhorne didn't oversee the terraforming, he was with the majority of the fleet elsewhere. That was how the brain washing of the colonists escaped notice until it was too late to do anything about it.
Langhorne was in orbit, and I don't believe he physically set foot on Safehold until the terraforming process was well along. (And I suspect he was in orbit around Safehold. Why should he and the rest of the colony fleet be anywhere else, and where else was there to be?)
The brainwashing of the colonists didn't escape notice. Because of the implants all colonists had, it was possible for Bedard to rearrange colonist's memories while they were in cryo, and suppress conscious memory of who they used to be and where they had come from, so they awakened as Adams and Eves and saw the Angels and Archangels as divine beings. This probably occurred well before they were awakened.
Langhorne was Colony Administrator and authorized Bedard to do it. Shan Wei and some of the rest of the command crew disagreed, but were overruled by Langhorne. The original plans for Operation Ark called for the colonists to refrain from using technology beyond wind, water, and muscle power for a period of 300 years. The assumption was that use of advanced technology left traces other high tech species could follow, and that was how the Gbaba located the TF colonies and finally Earth itself. 300 years was chosen as a likely time frame in which the Gbaba could conclude they had exterminated humanity and stop looking.
I believe the original plans called for weakening of colonists memories of who they were/where they were from, simply to make it easier to refrain from using advanced technology for several centuries. If you are bootstrapping a new colony world from scratch, there will be powerful incentives to use more advanced tech if you are aware it exists and is possible. But the Alexandria Enclave existed precisely as a place to preserve humanity's history and provide the information required to resume technological development once it was thought safe.
Permanently abjuring technology and hiding on Safehold forever was Langhorne's modification of his original orders, but Earth was dead and there was no one left to prevent his meddling. He was legally appointed Colony Administrator and final authority, and could rewrite his orders. Without going into open revolt, the rest of the command crew couldn't stop him.
(After Kau Yung nuked Langhorne's HQ in retaliation for the Rakurai strike on the Alexandria Enclave, killing Langhorne and Bedard as well as himself, a faction of the command crew *did* revolt against Chihiro who had assumed the reins after Langhorne's death in what became the War Against the Fallen, but that conflict did not erupt till two years after the Rakurai strike that turned the Alexandria Enclave into Armageddon Reef.)
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Dennis