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It is the fall of the year 2000AD.

The Rapture happened in 1996.

Your job was to run the Internet.

Your mission was to cancel the Apocalypse.

You succeeded. You shattered the prophecies.

Then, a demon unleashed by the Sixth Trumpet Judgment killed you.

If predator is at its most dangerous when cornered, what about a God?

Last thread: >>3842423

Rules: http://emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/LeftBeyond.Quest2Rules.html

Datalinks: http://emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/LeftBeyond.Quest2Datalinks.html

Timeline: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BlMOSEOxSihj1gdagq7yxCjONaRBgcdlRxnc68uWf0A


---------------


SIX MONTHS LATER

"That still looks way too high. The serotonin levels..."

"Vega promised that this method-"

"Vega is and remains a drug dealer. I don't trust him any further than I can throw him."

"If it works, it works, if it doesn't, we try again with a different setup when his nerves can take it."

"That's another week!"

"It's been a month longer than it should have anyway."

You clear your throat to find that there's a tube in it. You can move, albeit weakly. Your hands are wrapped around some sort of controller, and everything is black, and warm, and wet.

A white light. Pain. It's a bit like being born...

You hear Dr. Diamond, sounding as maternal as she can. You see in front of you a stylized blue globe, on a black background.

"Welcome back, Foreman. You were out for half a year."


# What happened?

# What did I miss?

# Did I kill the demon?
>>
Sweet sweet victory screen.

# What happened?
>>
>>3852592

# Did I kill the demon?
>>
# Did I kill the demon?
>>
"No Foreman, You are the Demons!"
>>
>>3852592
># What happened?
Sitrep first. THEN killcounts.
>>
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So we just sacrificed ourselves so our party could escape an ancient fire demon....

Did we just become Gandalf the White?
>>
>>3852602
(Maybe a bit)

>>3852595
>>3852594
>>3852598

"Did I get it? Did I kill the demon?"

"Uh, we have security footage of you and Chandra shooting at, well, air, but-" That's Aki.

"You did, Foreman." That's Chandra's voice.

"What happened?"

"Mustard gas inhalation. Same as... about 1350 million people. Your implant tripped and gave you a dose of locust ichor. We saved a few people that way, you're the last to come out of medically induced coma." That's Suzanna again.

"I remember... fire, pain..."

"You were not in Hell, if that's what you're asking. You would be insane if you had been. Your body sought death, but death ran away from you." Chloe Steele? What's she doing here?

"All right, he's been in there for six months, he needs a real bath, everyone get out."

You feel weak as a kitten; you're removed from the VR setup. The lights are low and green, so as to not hurt your eyes. The room is tiny; it's some sort of infirmary. It's cold. You're confused. A very large pair of hands holds your back and carries you to a medical cot; a smaller pair of hands massages your extremities to encourage blood flow. Fingers, toes, you feel all of them, good.

"Thank you, Foreman Domai. Best if you go now."

"That'll get confusing, Doctor, please call me by name from now on."

Prick prick prick. Pins and needles.

You look down. It's fuzzy. You try to clear your eyes but you can barely lift your elbows and wiggle your shoulders.

Acupuncture needles, some with electrodes attached to them.

"Don't move."

"Where are we?"

"Ultima Thule. You'll like it."

Thule. Airbase in Greenland. Your instructions were to make the place into

# a great factory.

# a landbound ark, for preserving biodiversity.

# a self-sufficient city of a million souls.
>>
# a self-sufficient city of a million souls.
>>
>>3852607

# a great factory.
Need the ability then capacity, and jobs.
# a self-sufficient city of a million souls.
>>
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>>3852610
>>3852611

(People had voted factory earlier, FWIW, so I'll keep factory unless there's an overwhelming consensus otherwise)

"What else happened" you croak out.

"The sky cleared, but we over here missed summer. In Antarctica it got almost down to minus one hundred."

"Who died?"

"A third of us, minus children, pregnant women, and Remnant. And the people who did what you did, well, some of them anyway. Dr. Robertson. Raman."

"Where's the Remnant."

Petra, mostly. Most of them are in hiding. The Global Council passed laws against persecution, but... well, a lot of people didn't listen. I think they lost as many people as we did, except in their case it was the stupidity of men rather than the cruelty of God.

"Carpatescu?"

"Exactly where you left him, don't worry."

"Tsion?"

"Him, too. He's"

# Here in Thule.
* In a little cell.
* In a VR "cell".
* In a medical coma.

# At the blacksite
* In a little cell.
* In a VR "cell".
* In a medical coma.

# In a jail cell in Bern, for crimes against humanity.

"Witnesses?"

"Still on ice. Well, Moishe, anyway -- the one who died. We managed to separate them... most of them anyway. Eli is in a medical coma, it was the only thing that worked for containment, we just kept him sedated."

# Here in Thule.

# At the blacksite

"Food?"

"As much as I hate to say... less people means less food consumption. We're fine... for now. But we must fix the Earth before we run out of canned beans."
>>
>>3852615
(Factory works for me as well~!)
>Tsion
#At the blacksite... in a VR cell

>Eli
# Here in Thule

Keep him away from Carpatescu
>>
>>3852615
Tison
* In a VR "cell".
*Smashes cirtual controller and screaming at the pixels*

Eli
# Here in Thule.
Glad it wasn't Moshie, that guy wasn't as much of a dick as Eli....

Ask her if she did an autopsy on Raman. Dying by smoke sounds weird to me.

The other subpotentates?

How well did the other regions fair?

Where did the horsemen go?
>>
>>3852615
that picture is mirrored because all the words on the pins and badges are backwards.
>>
>>3852619
I think Raman survived, using Ichor like us.
>>
>>3852623
Sounds like wishful thinking, fairly certain he died.
>>
>>3852626

>"A third of us, minus children, pregnant women, and Remnant. And the people who did what you did, well, some of them anyway. Dr. Robertson. Raman."
>>
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Dr. Diamond sticks more needles in you, some hooked up to what looks like a TENS unit, and the sensation in your body returns, and the cold vanishes. Everything aches, though.

Between heartbeats, you hear a rythmic hum.

In half a year, Greenland has been prospected for resources, and is even now being strip mined as Thule rose from an airstrip into a mighty industrial center. Under Domai's leadership, Synco was deployed to its full capability; Thule is one of the world's foundries, rivaling Shenzen, Tokyo, the Ruhr and Lombardy.

Despite all the disasters, and the loss of population, the machine of the world still clanks along, albeit at a reduced rythm; given everything, if everyone could not afford a cell phone before, they can now.

On the debt side, the volcanic winter did more damage to the ecosystem than decades of industrial exploitation did, and UNDRR and some of the potentates have been scrambling to preserve what's left of the ecosystem.

People have largely moved to cities; the rural areas are being abandoned as the volcanic winter, and the soil depletion, have made it impossible to make a living growing anything. People have entertainment, fuel, heat... but you can buy a handheld gaming console for the price of a fresh salad.

And eventually the cans, all the stockpiles made during the years of plenty, will run out.

Your long-term plans included moving the internet towards a more

# centralized, with large datacenters running remote applications for user terminals

# decentralized, with torrenting protocols and P2P sharing

# VR ready, with promotion of 3D content at the expense of efficiency

model, and you're happy to know that your sysadmins have largely accomplished that goal. Of course, there was no censorship,

# except for extremism
* religious
* political

# period

because that's how it must work.

Carpatescu has been declared officially missing in action, with some hinting that he was killed in the Sixth Trumpet, just by luck of the draw.

Francesca made it; her caring leadership has ensured that the Ecumenical Council stayed relevant. Her major concern is the people's lack of hope: there's enough to live, for now, but little to live for. Will the children of humanity, the most precocious of which are now starting to learn to read and write, inherit a barren wasteland? Fixing the world seems too big of a problem...

The Peacekeeper force has been camped around Petra for months now; the Remnant moved in with the very last of the Sixth Trumpet ghost cavalry, a localized earthquake opening up a giant sinkhole that swallowed the bodies shortly afterwards. Sukhail launched a bunker buster missile in retaliation, but all it achieved was open up a subterranean spring where it landed.


>>3852621

(Intentional)

>>3852628

(Sorry, messed up the English there. Meant that Robertson and Raman died)
>>
# decentralized, with torrenting protocols and P2P sharing

#Period
>>
>>3852634
# centralized, with large datacenters running remote applications for user terminals

# except for extremism
* political
>>
Did anyone investigate the spring in the Euphrates that opened up when the Horsemen showed up?
>>
The situation in Petra is... surreal. Chaim Rosenzweig is in charge; William Cameron managed to convert him, after all, and he now sits at the head of a council of elders there. The original archeological site is now merely the entryway to a vast network of underground tunnels, vaults, and chambers.

It is divinely protected; within a spherical, invisible cupola centering roughly under the entryway, the laws of physics have effectively taken a vacation -- the only thing that goes through is the desert wind, and the massive point-to-point wireless link.

Remnant outside of there aren't being actively persecuted (most of the time), but they are actively discriminated against -- Tsion's last fatwa, which he managed to transmit before you caught him (Did the horsemen push the enter key? Was there a timeout?) equates smartphones held in the hand, and nomenklators held on the head, with the "mark of the beast". It's a heck of a stretch, of course, but most Remnant went with it, with the result that anyone with a flip phone these days gets at the very least wary looks. The cashless system never was made mandatory, of course, although these days most everyone takes e-payments; that's enough for Chaim to rail against it.

The former botanist, now having taken to call himself Micah, went through the same ordeal as you, and had a crisis of faith about six weeks ago, culminating in his conversion; how he made it to the head of the council of elders in Petra so quickly is still being investigated.

Rayford and Chloe were let go by Dimmsdale when it became politically untenable to hold them, since their lawyer managed to paint their detention as official anti-Remnant persecution.

During your absence, Network Nodes and Synco systems have been built everywhere, as per your instructions; Yang has been pushing for his own intranet, and for splitting the Global Community in general, with Lal pushing instead for unity. As the potentates of the most populous regions, they've essentially aligned the Council on a two-party axis, with the occasional stalemate.

Pope Mathews is, in fact, still Pope, although he's basically under house arrest and the Catholic Church is being run by his cabinet until he finally decides to die; you're mildly surprised that the demon horsemen didn't take him out.

As per your standing orders, once the skies cleared, CATS spent their effort wrapping up the

# ground infrastructure, as fast as possible

# ground infrastructure, with gap generators on every pylon

# satellite infrastructure, using cheap microsats in vast swarms

# satellite infrastructure, using a large quasi-station per territory
>>
# ground infrastructure, with gap generators on every pylon
>>
>>3852645
># ground infrastructure, with gap generators on every pylon

The ones with long range effects but not very strong.
>>
>>3852645
You know what would really troll them? If we introduced more tech that resembled the mark of the beast, until we get to RIDF chips under the skin. Then we completely cancel the tech and revert back to thinks like credit cars and phones.
>>
So if Chloe's here in Greenland, does that mean she's defecting to CATS? Because I would certainly welcome this.
>>
>>3852643

It's a spring; it's clean. The Euphrates has since been allowed to flow again, in order to preserve what little agriculture could get done in the formerly Fertile Crescent.

Effincold and Thule have gotten themselves in a bit of a productivity race, each manager -- Domai and Andrews -- wanting to showcase the benefit of their preferred ideology... however, by and large, the world doesn't seem to care much.

The prophecy timeline has been mostly cleared, although Chaim insists that in three years Christ the King will appear and heal the world. He supports his message standing on his fame as the inventor of the Eden fertilizer, and on the promise of fertile fields forever that he's hired artists and filmmakers to make.

Chaim's message is more poetic and metaphorical than Tsion's insistence on literalism, in large part due to the fact that thanks to you a literal interpretation of Revelation is no more tenable than a history book in which the Confederacy wins the war... although alternate history is really popular these days, in writings, games, or film. People have been through too much, and want escapism.

In a year, the food will start running out.

In two, the last series of supernatural events, the Bowl Judgement, will begin in earnest.

In three, the Glorious Appearing will take place.

The Garibaldi is currently in drydock, for a much needed cleanup and upgrade.

(Pick two)

# Full nuclear propulsion, by replacing the gas turbines with four more copies of the "John Galt engine"

# Elongated deck, with catapult and arresting gear, to work with modern airplanes

# Spinal sled acting a both a catapult and as zeroth stage for high precision medium range missiles

# Widened deck and double hull, to allow for two modules at the same time

# Dedicated drone bay

>>3852647
>>3852648

GCASA has done their best to establish a space telescope infrastructure, and they have succeeded, to a point; you will have to work with them to rebuild space capabilities.

Some amount of research got done, although your instructions were to focus on reconstruction (and the Global Community council bullied your workers a little).

>>3852650

That's a viable plan.
>>
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klE6VqLGNP0

>>3852647
>>3852648


The decrease in population has brought on a decrease in bandwidth requirements; you had a contingency plan for this. All CellSol pylons that operate on-grid have a built-in gap generator. The new designs have been trial-and-errored iteratively after being generated by genetic algorithm, and while this allows the pylon-generator combinations to work relatively well, it translates to a bit of strangeness when it comes to the analog parts of the design.

Oh, and then there's the, well, miracles. "Best if Francesca explains this one" your people agree; they've been in and out of the room providing exposition for a couple hours now, while the acupuncture does its thing.

>>3852655

Chloe is currently in San Diego; ICCO is still active, and has been the whole time, but more as an import/export and peer-to-peer credit consortium. Interestingly, its evolution means that a lot of the negative Jewish stereotypes have been shifted to the Remnant -- look at them, living the post-scarcity life in their divine city while the rest of us work our behinds off, that sort of thing.

>>3852656

Other than the fact that literally all your lieutenants have seen you almost-naked by now, the situation seems to be at least metastabe. Dr. Diamond and an assistant start taking off the needles, and in about 15 minutes you're finally able to sit up, with some effort and a tremendous headache.


# Ask about anything I didn't cover.


The people need food. Hope. Freedom from fear.
>>3852639
>>3852640

(needs tiebreakers)
>>
>>3852656

>He supports his message standing on his fame as the inventor of the Eden fertilizer, and on the promise of fertile fields forever that he's hired artists and filmmakers to make.

That's rich considering the fact it was his formula that screwed everything up.

# Full nuclear propulsion, by replacing the gas turbines with four more copies of the "John Galt engine"

#Dediated Drone Bay

Eh, I'll support:
>>3852640
>>
>>3852656
When you say drone bay, do you mean like drones that can carrier precision guided munitions?

Also we should release Tison or let him make video rants from time to time just to hurt their credibility.
>>
>>3852661
Hold yer horses now, multiple modules sound really useful, would it be possible to change half a module, and how much would it cost us to switch around the modules?

Also what can't it take modern planes as is? Or do you mean VTOL, cuz if thats the case, we may as well get Harrier Jets
>>
Is Robertson's understudy, the former prisoner from stealing nuclear fuel, still alive?

Also what is the status of Schorpe's beatification?
>>
>>3852639
Backing
>>
>>3852659
Did we put all the important people on ice?

Did we take a closer look at Raman's death?

Are all the subpotentates alive? (Did we find the bodies of Terry and Walid?)

Are the Peacekeepers still around much and do they still follow the CLUlt?

Did that science guy who was researching the bug venom survive?
>>
(OOC note: we're in the endgame now, with only a few problems left to solve, and then if you want, a big fight at the end.)

>>3852673
>>3852661

(Not wanting to be a butt but centralized v/ decentralized, and no censorship v/ any censorship, is a thing that will change the ending, so please pick at some point!)

>>3852668

Philippe Jospin is alive and, in the mess, has reconnected with the family. They were so glad to know that he was alive that the details didn't matter much.

Beatifications and sainthoods are stalled, largely because they need direct papal approval and Mathews is being a stubborn turtle about it.

>>3852663

Making use of Tsion in that capacity is definitely possible!

The dedicated drone bay is intended to transport 80% assembled drones, put them together on the fly, and launch them from a side catapult independent of the main flight deck. The logic of this is that if a drone with, say, cake-carrying capabilities is needed, one can be put together from existing modules quickly and launched in a minute.

>>3852666

(Nice trips)

The Garibaldi is too short to land, say, American carrier-based fixed wing fighters. Extending the deck and adding magnetic brakes would allow her to operate with them. (after some avionics work to allow for precision landings).

>>3852661

Some entrepreneurs and self-styled innovators just have a sort of reality distortion field around them. Crazy, but sometimes reality is unrealistic...
>>
>>3852677
Can't we just put some in storage and if needed we send a guy up and deploy one from the hold and have the control operate from the CIC or Island?

Heck, we can put a hundred of them on deck attached to magnetic clamps or a clamp lock ring thingy for quick deployment.

and the deck modules?


>(Nice trips)
>>3852599
>>
I'm more adamant at keeping the net censorship free, as its part of our cultural identity. I'm ambivalent about servers.

Would Philippe Jospin be interested in carrying on his mentor's work?
>>
>>3852684
What is to stop a powerful news or media corporation from push lies and propaganda non stop, regardless of how harmful the information or the negative social, cultural, or political effects are?
>>
>>3852677
>Jospin
wasn't that the female guard?
>>
>>3852676
> Did we put all the important people on ice?

No, just Eli. Why would anyone else be in cryopreservation?

> Did we take a closer look at Raman's death?

Same as one third of humanity -- a bunch of mustard gas, with traces of nastier stuff like nerve agent, appeared in his lungs.

People are understandably afraid that some other unstoppable calamity will happen in a few years, as was with the Rapture and this...

> Are all the subpotentates alive? (Did we find the bodies of Terry and Walid?)

Yes, although Pravin Lal's wife died. Terry April's body was not found, but Wahid's was. Vega had one of the femurs made into a ceremonial scepter.

> Did that science guy who was researching the bug venom survive?

A few people survived by locust-ichor injection, same as you, yes. Some did not, dying immediately after their nervous system fixed itself.

>>3852681

(If that's how you want to flavor the drone bay, sure. I thought an onboard assembler would be cooler is all)

>>3852684
>>3852685

(Y'all tell me! And... who guards the guardians?


(map is WIP)
>>
>>3852659
Also would it be possible to have two of the same configurations on at the same time, like Cargo/Cargo for extra capacity?
>>
>>3852686

Blanche-Neige Jospin is also doing well, yes. It was lonely up north, eh?

>>3852688

There isn't a whole lot of point, honestly, but it can be.
>>
>>3852685
If it's more centralized that makes it easy for a single powerful group to do all those negative things. With a decentralized model, dissenting voices always have room to speak
>>
>>3852687
>Raman
I thought you said smoke asphyxiation?

How did Robertson and Raman die?

Did any of the measures that the subpotentates come up with work? Like Scuba diving etc?

Did we ever figure out the pattern they were killing people based on?

>>3852692
You can drown out the smaller voices easily, and if you have more smaller voices shouting and screaming the same thing you can turn the minority into a some that no one can hear.

WHat's to stop people from harmful slander for the sole purpose of getting someone hurt or killed? Lets say you publicly star at making misinformation that someone was a rapist or pedo, and kept spamming it all over the web with a persons personal information, address and name?

We mainly didn't censor the Remanent cuz our character is American and to throw off the prophecy.
>>
>>3852696
I don't think the solution to libelous speech is to centralize and censor communication. That is the sort of solution that ends up making worse and more problems that become harder to solve once the central power becomes compromised.
>>
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>>3852696

Other than the excluded groups (Remnant, children, pregnant women, people with locustbite) there didn't seem to be a pattern, by and large. You and you, live. You, die.

Dr. Hamish Robertson and Raman Vajpayee died of various toxic substances being phased into their lungs by a demonic horseman.

The measures taken worked to varying degrees; the one that worked best was locust ichor injection. Diving only worked at some depth. Being on a plane worked some of the time but not all.

>>3852701

Yang has been pushing for internet censorship; Lal against. They're both smart enough to not want to step on your turf, of course.
>>
>>3852687
Did we downgrade our covert opts to security?
They can be official now, lets call them Combat teams. (except black opts.)

Maybe we can recruit lower quality guys to fill up manpower gaps and call them security teams.

ST=Security Teams
Good for protect, guarding stuff and general fighting.

CT=Counter terr- I mean Combat Teams
Some of our best fighters and infantry, basically special operatives.

B.Opts= Black Operation team
As good as CT in skill and quality.
Not as good in terms or morality.

>>3852687
ROBO ANTI JESUS ZOMBIES!

Robo zombies vs Holy zombie.

Who wins?

Find out on next episode of Deadliest Warrior!

>>3852656
# Full nuclear propulsion, by replacing the gas turbines with four more copies of the "John Galt engine"
# Widened deck and double hull, to allow for two modules at the same time

>>3852701
How different is it from today with free speech and rights?

We can put form an ability to petition and have something removed and censored after judgment and passing courts.
>>
>>3852705
I mean what was Robertson and Raman doing at the time? holed up or like outdoors shooting a electric ray gun and a regular gun?
>>
>>3852685
Fear that the telecomms 'security' people will decide that their misinformation is deleterious to network platform stability.

Since we have the sword of Sir Pratchett, it is only fitting to quote Vetinari, "For after seeing what you have done given nothing at all, I would hesitate to press even a penny to your hand."

>>3852687
Decentralized, no network censorship. Possible occasional client-side maintenance of the integrity of informational space.
>>
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>>3852718
>>3852707
>>3852701
>>3852696

You've made sure CATS sticks to its mandate and promises, and you've promoted the decentralized nature of the network: should something horrible happen to the high bandwidth fiber cables that constitute the internet's skeleton, like another global quake, the wireless systems would keep functioning.

This gives you an excellent ground to stand on when dealing with both Lal and Yang, simply because you've stuck to your guns.

>>3852711

Vajpayee was working out who he could spare sending to help the people of San Felipe bury or at least stack their dead. Robertson was in the deepest level of the neutrino observatory; oddly he died with a smile.

>>3852707

(They aren't very covert anymore is all)
The Garibaldi will be ready to sail in a few weeks; one of the things that the people of Thule wanted to do to demonstrate their superior craftmanship and machining skill was building large-scale Stirling radiothermal generators, the closest thing to nuclear reactors that can be manufactured with the current understanding of physics. The original was taken off the ship and meticulously copied, then five of the copies installed instead of the original gas turbine pairs and auxilliary generator.

Cpt. Marko Dessy can't wait to take her out on nuclear power; a bust of Cpt. Steele has been mounted on the bridge.

The addition of a drone bay technically makes her air wing greater in numbers than the American supercarriers of the pre-Carpatescu era; the regional potentates have taken notice, and since they are limited by mutual agreement to one active warship of significant tonnage, they're wanting to get the most bang out of their nick.

-----

The first person from outside CATS to know that you're back in the land of the conscious is Carla; she wants to see you as soon as she can.

UNDRR has had to deal with the monumental tasks of handling a billion corpses; most were cremated, and their ashes scattered according to the families' desires -- although Carla pushed that they help Earth's fields and meadows recovered. Yang was surprisingly helpful in that sense, declaring "It is every citizen's final duty to go into the composting tanks and become one with all the people."

The hard part for her has been convincing people to lay fields fallow until the volcanic winter has dissipated, instead of trying to wring a bit of agricultural production from them.

To put it simply: after the last depopulation wave, the potentates are competing for citizens, and trying to do every little thing to persuade people -- especially skilled people -- to move into their territories.

Now that fresh fruit and vegetables are a rarity, and the time is soon going to come when cattle feed will run out, making meat cheaper than it's ever been for a brief season and then once more a luxury, low (or at least less punishing) prices for such things have become one of the perks that can be offered.
>>
>>3852735


Everyone can have a smartphone or a game console or a semielectric bike or a pet drone tank or an afternoon at the beach; what's become precious now is the access to barbecue without spam, pizza without government cheese, a swim where there's actually fish to see, hunting with real bullets instead of with laser/camera guns.

To her credit, Chloe has resumed Project Penguin after she was let go, largely because Domai and Andrews, in a rare show of unity, told her that she got what she wanted and she should deliver, otherwise what is ever the point of getting contracts down in writing. To her shame, it's not doing very well.

Part of it is that shortly after Tsion was locked up, she gave birth, and understandably enough her baby became her whole world. Kenneth Bruce Cameron is healthy, vivacious, and joins almost 200 million children of the Tribulation.

Which, alas, is not enough. Carla confirms that with the current situation -- people have enough to eat, but it's not healthy stuff -- humanity is on the decline, to the tune of approximately six million people a year. And it will get worse once the canned goods run out.

The fields have to be allowed to recover, but inter-regional competition for manpower makes it difficult. For the long term, your recommendation will be focusing on (Pick two: 2nd most voted becomes secondary focus)

# vertical farming: large, automated greenhouses that serve cities directly.

# aquaculture: algae will have to substitute for vegetables.

# autarky: it's time to go back to victory gardens in the backyard, replace lawns with berry bushes, give each kid a tree to care for.

#
>>
>>3852748
# autarky: it's time to go back to victory gardens in the backyard, replace lawns with berry bushes, give each kid a tree to care for.

Butter or Guns?

# vertical farming: large, automated greenhouses that serve cities directly.
>>
>>3852748
# autarky
# veritical farming
>>
>>3852748
# vertical farming
# aquaculture

Autarky means there's less time for specialization, each person would have to spend part of their day farming. They wouldn't get as good at farming as professional farmers, and they would have less time to do the thing they are good at themselves
>>
We are not yet at the point where owning a pet is a luxury, but that will come, inevitably. Some regions of the world have adapted readily: people who know how to cook guinea pig are one of Chile's most prized exports (the little buggers can eat almost anything), there's a lot of research going on on fast-growing weeds like kudzu to use for soil reclamation and erosion prevention, and Indian cattle breeds, optimized for milk production rather than meat, are rapidly taking over the cow markets so as to get the most of every single animal.

Incidentally, PETA has petitioned for joining the Ecumenical Council, but so far they've been told to take a hike.

You're not an agricultural expert -- Carla has plenty of those on staff, and so do the regional potentates, but your opinion is that people who can afford it should

# flex humanity's R&D muscle and work on vat-grown meat; it will be the most sustainable option in the long run.

# look to the sea; fish is easier to raise, and nobody can afford to care about wild-caught versus farmed anymore.

# handle things locally; our grandparents raised bunnies and chicken in the back yard, and so shall our children.

#
>>
>>3852756
# flex humanity's R&D muscle and work on vat-grown meat; it will be the most sustainable option in the long run.
Fish still eat algae, and if the environment is fucked, fish die too
Local production means less specialization of our workforce, efficiency is reduced.
>>
>>3852756
# flex humanity's R&D muscle and work on vat-grown meat; it will be the most sustainable option in the long run.

If there is anything left over, I know a guy who has a bunch of chickens in his backyard. Kinda neat and fun.
# handle things locally; our grandparents raised bunnies and chicken in the back yard, and so shall our children.
>>
>>3852756
># flex humanity's R&D muscle and work on vat-grown meat; it will be the most sustainable option in the long run.

Much as i personally am enough of a savage to enjoy knowing i consume death, a devastated earth needs sustainability first. Japan's once-thriving Ramen Cuisine Culture is proof enough that whatever we have to do to survive, someone will someday soon find a way to make it taste good.
>>
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>>3852762
>>3852762
What do you think your doing!?
Ya dooble dipping wankar!
>>
(If it wasn't painfully obvious, these parameters are being used to generate the next scenario)

One issue that has resurfaced is that of inequality: Litwala owes his reign to you, but now he's started complaining about slow internet speeds. On the other hand, you've noticed that up to a point, interconnectivity has a supralinear effect on R&D speed.

For the next while, you resolve to

# equalize bandwidth availability across the globe

# maximize improvement efficiency regardless of fairness

There is also the matter of your space policy: you have to repair the damage caused by the various volcanic plumes.

You've developed designs that allow for cheap micro satellite deployment, and by now your "big" satellites can carry a variety of components.

Comm arrays, high resolution cameras, orbital network nodes, orbital PKE meters (they're not precise at all, but give you a good early warning system and tell your field teams where to start looking), even deployable thermobaric warheads with precision landing systems. By using Thule's industrial capabilities you can even launch a "satellite" that is in fact a uranium hydride bomb, plus what aerodynamic capabilities it needs to come down on target.

Microsatellites can't do any of these things, but are unmatched if your interest is high bandwidth and low latency at low cost: the regional potentates are going to be grateful (and they're also not going to be able to deploy antisatellite weapons any time soon since the swarm would be too large).

# Focus on microsatellites, and launch a few large sats, one per region for example.

# Focus on large sats, one per territory, and sprinkle microsatellites to cover the gaps.

Your weaponized sats, if any, will be tracked separately, of course.
>>
>>3852767
# Focus on large sats, one per territory, and sprinkle microsatellites to cover the gaps.

Micro satellites where a easy fix to big problem we couldn't address with large ones.
>>
>>3852766
having a browser glitch that it keeps taking me to an error page when i try to delete the duplicate.
>>
>>3852770
I'm just FUNposting outta boredom.
>>
>>3852766
( Butterlord!)


>>3852780

(Sorry if this is boring, I'm trying to figure out what you're going to the final fight with... and since you are taking most of the planet, well.)

Ecology preserves are being set up by every regional potentate, according to their means -- now that it's hard to afford keeping pets (funny; people thought it would be a problem with overpopulation, and now with less than three billion people on Earth, here we are) zoos have become all the more popular. And they have to be made sustainable.

Litwala took advantage of wildlife tourism to effectively impose the death penalty for poaching, which caused all sort of short term problems for him until the surviving poachers turned on each other, and then those who survived that realized that they could make more money in the Impi.

You have every plan to set up your own preserves, but think that in general the management of said preserves -- everyone wants to save the pandas, nobody cares terribly much about the sarcastic fringeheads -- should be handled by

# a new global agency with that mandate specifically

# UNDRR

# UNESCO

# each regional potentate
>>
>>3852787
I was Ransom Lord for much of the game.

Bored as in waiting in between posts, and unable to sleep.

# each regional potentate
With help of course
>>
>>3852787
>(Sorry if this is boring, I'm trying to figure out what you're going to the final fight with... and since you are taking most of the planet, well.)
And then Omega and the AC Ship land.
>>
>>3852787
# each regional potentate
>>
Chaim is identifying you as the Antichrist, for the following reasons:

* You might have Roman ancestry.

* You are celibate.

* Smartphones and headsets to him count as the mark of the beast.

* You have brought about a unified world via diplomatic means, through the internet.

* You have claimed to be God at least once. (He doesn't know that you messed with Folgore's head, but that sort of story circulates, of course)

* You have displayed miraculous powers. (Rumors about you having supernatural stamina exist, although the heart implant is still largely a secret; Klaue's is thought to be a prop)

* You are on friendly terms with the whore of Babylon (either Moira or Francesca)

* You have come back to life. Surviving the Sixth Trumpet Judgement the hard way is definitely close enough for his more forgiving interpretation. He also claims that the demon that got you was Satan, and has now possessed you.

* You have global authority. In a "soft power" sense, you do.

* You have desecrated God's temple... apparently dislodging a couple of bricks from the Wailing Wall counts.

Approximately sixty per cent of the Remnant agree with Chaim/Micah (as he has taken to calling himself); those who disagree point out that you're a man of your word when it comes to dealmaking, also, you haven't built a global army, quite the opposite if anything. There's also the fact that some of Chaim's claims are dubious at best.

Chloe thinks that since you fooled her and Tsion into thinking you were a Christian, you might be the False Prophet, but she also believes that you are not beyond salvation.

If you want to undertake any undermining campaign for these claims, you may do so.

# Write in; semi-releasing Tsion, in that he gets go to online, is an option since he still believes Carpatescu is it

On that note, is there anyone else you want put in VR confinement at the black site? Those who are offline can be connected to each other, or left in isolation.

# Make a bid for grabbing Fortunato, or not.

>>3852800
>>3852796

Most of the ecology preservation will be handled by the regional potentates; this bit of decentralization also increases competition for doing a good job, or at least being seen to do so -- for the first time in a long time, the mighty of the earth are beholden to the people by simple market forces, since there is a shortage of manpower for everything and all borders are open.
>>
>>3852805
Well I did decentralization since different regions will have different animals, climates, species, etc.

Leak a low resolution picture of Carpatescu playing VR tennis?

No, but I do want to put the Morale monitor in the grave.

Maybe have Tison and Carpatescu Interact online for the lulz.

Show him the crazy new tech we are rolling out that won't be considered the mark of the beast since you got everyone into thinking it was headsets and phones.

experiment on Eli with his bullet transparency.
>>
>>3852805

> If you want to undertake any undermining campaign for these claims, you may do so.

# See if Santiago wants to leak a sex tape? We're the king of the internet, that's how the internet does things.

# Check ourselves with a PKE meter, and at least dispel doubts internally or start running experiments. DO we have a head Satan? I assume not since we didn't actually die, but let's test it.

We don't need Tsion. Hell, we could even just impersonate him if we really wanted to. Mind control men are not wanted here.
>>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAyzVA8Z9xI

For a while, there's nothing to do but everything: a horde of small but necessary projects eat up all your time, no matter how much you manage to delegate.

Your security forces find themselves likewise engaged in a million small issue to handle: protecting UNDRR workers as they spread the phosphate rock that used to constitute the island of Nauru, busting hackers -- incidentally, the Aki doppelganger seems to be gone; either they are lying low or they lost the Sixth Trumpet lottery -- intervening in land disputes, even occasionally have to protect Remnant.

Neall Ellis even complains, in good humor, that he should have taken a steady paycheck from you rather than working contract!

Moira participates in another of Vega's tournaments, getting past the cutoff point where she would be eligible to work for him, but refusing the job. There's a small kerfuffle over the rules when one Muay Thai fighter is found to have titanium shin implants ( http://fightland.vice.com/blog/a-muay-thai-fighter-was-suspended-for-having-titanium-shin-implants )

Carpatescu seems to have made his peace with having become a myth in his own lifetime... or so he acts like, anyway. He reads, writes -- this is one thing you do have to censor -- and generally tries to stay sane.

"According to Tsion, I should be dead, a walking corpse held up to false life by Lucifer. I prefer thinking that I'll get out of here in a few years, do physical therapy, and see what the world you've created has to offer someone like me.

Tsion on the other hand is, to put it bluntly, angry. He's requested, and read, almost every piece of Protestant theology from Rev. Jonathan Edwards in 1741 onward, trying to find where his mistake was. Every time he has an audience, he just warns them of impending dooms that are to come, and more that can no longer come. You're genuinely worried for his mental health.

Connecting the VR prisons of these two together is pretty tempting, isn't it?
Speaking of prison, your prison population hovers at around 20, mostly poachers or hackers who are eventually let go. Your experience is that as soon as the population of Remnant hits around a quarter of the total, a cascade of conversions occurs, even now. As far as you can tell, Remnant Christians are safely below that threshold globally, topping out at fifteen percent or so; granted, there could be secret believers. You tested this by letting the prisoners talk to Tsion via terminal, and determine that he "counts" for about 2 to 5 people.

things to decide:
----

# equalize bandwidth availability across the globe

# maximize improvement efficiency regardless of fairness

----

# Focus on microsatellites, and launch a few large sats, one per region for example.

# Focus on large sats, one per territory, and sprinkle microsatellites to cover the gaps. (1 vote)

----

# tactics to keep the remnant splintered

---
>>
>>3852843
# equalize bandwidth availability across the globe
>>
>>3852831

You haven't had sex with Santiago, though (Or really anyone since this whole mess started).

>>3852811

The Morale Monitor guy's usefulness ended a long time ago; what will you do with him?

Connecting the containment systems for those two would be interesting, and you can definitely release a transcript after sanitizing it; you can even claim that the Carpatescu in there is the one that some of the Peacekeepers worship. Carpathianism has made it into the Ecumenical Council, but it's less popular than, say, Greco-Roman revivalism amongst the general population (though not with the Peacekeepers, although hirings and firings are diluting the percentage some).

A few experiments on Eli are authorized: Moishe's body seems to be susceptible to bullets just fine now. Eli... not so much. People either miss incredibly easy shots, or the bullet just goes through. Replacing the material seems to do nothing.

Testing DEWs would not be safe because he'd thaw.

What's creepiest is that he is literally covered in ice and fed intravenously on a starvation diet, and he still hasn't died. People are starting to joke that you could make a Friday the 13th series on this guy.
>>
>>3852850

Yes, I know, I'm propositioning her.

# equalize bandwidth availability across the globe

# Focus on microsatellites, and launch a few large sats, one per region for example.

# tactics to keep the remnant splintered - encouraging the other faiths on the EC to strengthen their own communities in the face of adversity. Failing that, if they start to get powerful, terror tactics, create an entirely false Remnant splinter group that we can pin things on.

If millions have to die so billions don't, I'd rather the blood on my own hands.
>>
>>3852843
># equalize bandwidth availability (per capita) across the globe

# Focus on large sats, one per territory, and sprinkle microsatellites to cover the gaps. (1 vote)

# tactics to keep the remnant splintered
Get someone to make, as close as we can determine, a biblical 'changelog' document, from the Dead Sea Scrolls forward. In devnotes format, with version numbers. Make sure that this is sent to all schoolchildren within the Remnant enclave, with a subject header of "Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Re: I can't stop laughing at this cat."
>>
>>3852843
# equalize bandwidth availability (per capita) across the globe
# Focus on large sats, one per territory, and sprinkle microsatellites to cover the gaps.

>>3852850
>You haven't had sex with Santiago, though (Or really anyone since this whole mess started).
Is it time for us to get a WAIFU???
>>
>>3852843
# tactics to keep the remnant splintered
Show various Remanent terrorists like that guy who showed up to the mall trying to get people stung.
>>
>>3852805
>You are celibate
Are we or is he just being a dick? >>3852843
>equalize bandwidth availability across the globe
>Focus on large sats, one per territory, and sprinkle microsatellites to cover the gaps.
>tactics to keep the remnant splintered
Release a sex tape with a prostitute and let Tsion post a rant every now and again.
>>
>>3852850
WHAT? WTF! YOU LIED TO US!

We had sore ribs from the Greece date!

And Carla wanted to see us ASAP!

Its like you only wanted us to sex up that Whore witch.
>>
>>3852864
Carla and Santiago are priority number 1!

Everyone else comes next, we have Demolition man style virtual sex with aki even!
>>
>>3852853
>>3852856
>>3852860

You don't want a homogeneous world, but you do want the regional potentates to compete on equal footing at least as far as you are concerned... besides, any who get too ambitious can be threatened with BOCHICA throttling.

VR outside of arcades or even massively multiplayer first person shooters aren't going to be a thing any time soon, but people find it interesting that they can be on MU*s or even things like Ultima Online with other people from anywhere in the world without issues; online dating is starting to go from very niche to socially acceptable, even.

Your choice to make the internet as decentralized as possible takes some control away from you, but it also makes effectively impossible for Yang to secede -- he'd have to take away the net from all his citizens, all at once, and at the same time keep it operating for factories and banks. You've essentially put yourself in the same position as Francesca, except that as it turns out, on the day to day, people are more attached to their memes than to their faith.


>>3852864
>>3852863
>>3852869

(... I thought y'all just wanted a hug on that scene, honest, hence the sore ribs joke! I'm not good at writing this sort of thing, ask Kat...)

(Chaim thinks that you're celibate; I am not saying the Foreman is; that's for y'all to tell me!)

---

You decide to focus on large satellites rather than microsat swarms; GCASA need the experience in deploying "big dumb boosters" at a hat's drop in case there are more unwanted visitors, and this allows you to build a sat infrastructure that can have a few redundancies and a few things up there that you don't want people to know about.

The launch schedule, once optimized, lets you fill up the sky.

Each large sat will carry two antenna arrays, and has three free slots.

# Tungsten rods (1 use)
# More antennas for better comms
# Low-res space telescope
# High-res space telescope (2 slots)
# Local compute node

On this optimized rotation, you can also send up

# a proper space station again!

# five "roamer" satellites that can be repositioned. Each will have two propellant tanks, and also three free slots.

Finally, you launch

# one

# two

satellites that ID as backups, but actually carry U-H bombs. You've used a lot of nuclear fuel on the Garibaldi, so the third will "only" carry four sets of tungsten rods.
>>
>>3852885
Every Region will have one

# High-res space telescope (2 slots)
# More antennas for better comms
To watch space and the ground.

Have one satellite in each region have Rods or a Giant Space Laser.

# five "roamer" satellites that can be repositioned. Each will have two propellant tanks, and also three free slots.

# Tungsten rods (1 use)
>>
>>3852885

# High res space telescpe
# Local compute node

I don't really want too many wmds in space.

# five "roamer" satellites that can be repositioned. Each will have two propellant tanks, and also three free slots.

Better comms, tungsten rods, and a local compute node for communication error correction. We'd better not need more than 5 weaponized satellites, we're a telecom organization!

Space station's a luxury for later.

# two two nuke sats pls.
>>
Here are some thoughts on Remnant Tactics

#Tactics to keep the Remnant Splintered

Have N.A.P. publish a study on Revelations, Daniel, and Isaiah to explore the different interpretations (Historicist, Preterist, etc.)

Unleash a Bible app for the Nomenclature and the Smart Phone. That the Mark of the Beast could be used to promote "the Word" would really cast some doubts.

Crack down on Remnant persecution (or at least people distributing blasphemy apps and calling for decapitations.)
>>
>>3852899
This, but maybe low res instead of high res and comms in the extra slot?
>>
>>3852903
Support
>>
>>3852863
>>3852861
>>3852856
>>3852853

You have a good working relationship with Francesca, and together you make sure that the other Ecumenical Council faiths get their act together when it comes to having a web presence.

A problem with that is that the Remnant in Petra have literally nothing better to do than flood the web, being as God Almighty is providing for their necessities and defense; it's hard to beat that.

Aki tells you that there are a couple of interesting people in there, Chang Wong and Naomi Tiberias; she suspect that one of them may have been her doppelganger.

You consider creating a false-flag Remnant group, but decide to keep that in reserve for now; instead, you set up an investigative-journalism piece about one Paule Stepola, the man who would free the swarm.

You also tell Tsion that you are willing to release some of his sermons to the public, if he writes them down; that does wonders to his sanity -- he's still a rabid lunatic, but he's an intelligent one, at least -- and you find that he and Chaim, good friends when they had different faiths, now are happier to attack each other than the nonbelievers over trivial and not-so-trivial differences, in the best Evangelical Protestant tradition.

You enlist Dr. Damosa's help in ensuring that Remnant kids -- who would be entering first grade soon at this point -- and young adult have access to information about other faiths and other lifestyles than sitting around in ruins and eating the same delicious food three times a day. Memes help; so does Damosa's cyberliteracy program for kids, intended to let them have email pen-pals as soon as they can read and write. Looks like the man has found a point to his life after all.

On that note, you've so far been unable to procure a manna sample or for that matter enter Petra at all.

>>3852894
>>3852899

You want as many eyes in the sky as possible; the standard comm sat will have a camera -- if one misses anything suspicious, you reckon, another will catch it. Local compute nodes will allow the satellite network to keep functioning even in case of catastrophic loss of downlink.

# Exempt South America as per Santiago's original request (and install something else)

# Don't

>>3852903

Once the last satellite launches, you throw a giant party (VR, LAN, dance, or whatever people like) for the whole organization: you have finally succceded in achieving the best connectivity possible barring a major breakthrough, all across the world. You tell Carpatescu, who says that he didn't expect you to actually manage that on the budget he had planned for you. He's mildly amused by the existence of CLUltists, but says he wishes they'd dissipate, since if they don't he may be stuck in there for longer.

(All areas to 5/5/5!)

You leave the issue of a permanent manned space station to GCASA: it's their job, after all. McLachlan has been wanting to test the new batch of Energia boosters by launching a Mars probe.
>>
Remnant Tactics Pt. 2:

Encourage Chloe to start an educational program to impress positive Christian morals (forgiveness, charity, honesty) through talking and singing fruits and vegetables. This will offer a more positive perspective of Christianity that doesn't condone the fire and blood espoused by the Witnesses, Tsion, or Micah.
>>
>>3852907

# Don't.

Sorry, but that's a lot of nope given that they're for apocalypse prevention.
>>
# Exempt South America as per Santiago's original request (and install something else)

Or we could consider negotiating with Santiago, explain the situation, and promise that once the weirdness finally ends, we'll remove the satellites.
>>
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>>3852901

You task NAP to create an interactive repository for various interpretations of at least the major religious texts, and they eventually do. There's a minor hacker war over who has admin rights on it, which by the look of it will continue long after any of this still matters.

( http://bibviz.com/ keeps going down, too)

(What do the five roamer satellites look like?)

(How many nuke sats?)

>>3852909

Chloe feels that given how expensive fresh fruit and veggies are, it's a little too indulgent -- then again, she fully expects that in the Millennial Kingdom everyone will have as much as they want, so she takes the suggestion to heart and has ICCO open a media studio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mOs9O4cTNw

Micah's response is.... interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtHigdgTYMw

And then there's the one guy who's still living in New Babylon, which to Aki's great sadness has wound itself down -- it's still a tourist attraction, but with a much smaller maintenance budget the cracks are starting to show -- who went and made this thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeZOaXbL5MU

You accidentally started a Remnant CGI arms race! At least it's keeping them busy... To Tsion, of course, all this is frivolity. To the internet at large, it's an excellent source of memes.
>>
>>3852907
# Don't.
>>
>>3852907
# Ask Santiago if shes done doing dirty business in her territory.

Also Compromise that you'd only have ones that point to the sky.

Otherwise shes going to the be only place comets could realistically hit in the future with low to no coverage.

(What do the five roamer satellites look like?)
Rods from Cat Gods

(How many nuke sats?)
As many as we can. Maximum Yield, MIRV types.
>>
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>>3852919

XD

Awesome!

((And then there is the anime bible show with Bishounen Satan.))
>>
>>3852923

You can afford two nuke-sats. Or you can keep the nuclear fuel in reserve; you're still digging quite a bit of it out of the ground, but should you need a lot of it, every bit will help.

>>3852923
>>3852921
>>3852918
>>3852913

You spend more and more of your time in Thule, but your HQ is still in San Felipe.

"Remember when we made that agreement, Foreman? It was the beginning of a solid alliance. Now that there's nobody above us but God, and let's see how long that lasts, tell me: why do you think I asked you that?"

"You were expanding the Espartanos more than Carpatescu would let you. Or building an air force."

"Those are both great ideas! And yes on the first, by the way. But... no, it was a matter of ideology. There should be a place on this earth where people don't have to wear silly hats to thwart the eye in the sky. Being prepared is good, but the panopticon... I believe it fosters paranoia, and paranoia is where so many good strategic minds go to die. If you're worried about what is coming to us, why not just build more telescopes here? We got the Atacama telescope, we can make one in the Sierra Negra in Mexico, or in Patagonia..."

You wish you were there; you can talk in near-miraculous 720p at 25fps from Rio to Thule now, in theory you could even teleconference via VR -- you've tried it, and latency wise it's bearable -- but you'd rather be over there. It's Rio; who wouldn't?

# Sorry, but this is too important for humanity.

# Ground telescopes aren't quite a replacement, but it's close enough.

>>3852924

(He looks like he wants to go nose-spelunking but can't as long as he's on camera XD)
>>
>>3852927

# Ground telescopes aren't quite a replacement, but it's close enough.

(I misread Espartanos as Esperanto, making me think that the Potentate was holding secret language clubs.)
>>
>>3852923

Your butt itches.

Your design for the "roamer" satellites is very simple: they're going to carry propellant, and they're going to carry tungsten rods. In addition to letting you "plink" another cometoid to see what it does, you're hoping that if you ever need to unleash Hell on a target, you'll be able to do so with a nuclear and nonnuclear option.

What if radiation goes back to normal in a few years, after all? The last thing the ecosystem needs after all that it had to survive is more contaminants.

>>3852923
>>3852899

On the other hand, if you'd had an orbital nuke, you could have put Fragment 4 to rest in minutes, instead of months. So, you get two.

>>3852929

The world's main languages at this point are Hindi, Simplified Chinese, and English; Esperanto was something that Carpatescu pushed early on, but let drop in favor of more urgent things.

Asking him about today, he'd teach everybody Toki Pona as a second language.

>>3852927

Your research into high energy sound systems has borne fruit; you can deploy LRAD vehicles (or even semi-portable systems) and, after a lot of simulation time and a fair amount of trial and error, you've replicated the mechanical-resonance Tesla demolition system: attach a series of small vibrators onto a rigid structure, let them synchronize with each other, and step away. In minutes or hours the structure will have torn itself to pieces.

Your butt itches.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fScXLVp6ADw Sonic tractor beams can move chemicals with zero contamination, which makes them useful in the medical and biotech fields.

Between this and the latest version of the gap generators -- they can block any miracle from any faith, even Remnant. in roughly the radius of a soccer field, which is why they're called Gap Fields and sports leagues are starting to recommend them for stadiums, although there's a big pushback against them being made mandatory -- you're reasonably sure that you can take any creature or demon that this or any other universe sends at the Earth.

Except for Angels. Angels, are still a significant mystery; you've had people pore through every sacred tome or obscure grimoire from every tradition, but...
>>
>>3852927
# Ground telescopes aren't quite a replacement, but it's close enough.

Don't get mad or upset at us if comets smack into your regions and demons come out of it attacking everyone.

Also Can we rebuild or Chicago HQ, I want 3 HQ's 2 in the america's 1 in greenland, with more to come.

both north and south pole, and the moon.
>>
>>3852927
# Ground telescopes aren't quite a replacement, but it's close enough.
>>
>>3852936
>>3852929

You made a committment, and you're going to stick with it. Corazon Santiago is visibly happy, perhaps on a personal level.

---

Ryan Andrews has kept busy, and is doing well for himself; he sold off the occult store chain to a Norwegian shipping magnate who wants to use it to promote Asatru, and is betting that the next big thing is consumer VR, as soon as cell phone accelerometers become responsive enough. His first product is basically a color version of the VirtualBoy, and literally hurts your eyes -- maybe you're just used to better -- but it doesn't cost a man's yearly salary.

You discover with some sadness that Francine has passed away shortly after the Sixth Trumpet Judgement, although not because of it; she simply died of old age. The Aurora VR setup is now being run by her adopted child, Ari.

---

A lot of trial and error allows for further increasing both the power and the range of Gap Generators; statistical analysis of Remnant reports show that there are four "active" angels, identified as Caleb, Christopher, Nahum, and Anis. The first three seem to follow a predetermined pattern; the latter is more flexible, and shows up to help believers in any number of crises -- as long as they are with in one prayer-circle link of Chloe, Micah, or Tsion, personally. Statistical analysis, combined with the fact that people on Chloe's site (which has since merged with the YTF site; this is the first year in which the world has no teenagers, and there will be eight more), has allowed figuring out what series of events cause an Angel to show up -- you can cause one. Pick a territory, too.

# Robbery

# Kidnapping

# Street fight

# No

Anis seems to be the only one of these who is flexible; the others follow a predetermined patterns. Comparison to Pacman ghosts happen almost immediately. Christopher admonishes people to fear God and give glory to Him, Nahum warns that Babylon would fall, and Caleb warned that any who worship the beast and take his mark would forever forsake salvation.

---

Dr. Diamond wants to enter series production of her implant; it makes no sense to have spent so much in R&D with only three functioning units in the world.

# No

# Augment your people
* sec
* black ops
* both

# Put it up for sale

# Augment some fighters, and suggest to Vega a true no-holds-barred MMA tournment that allows augmented fighters, to see what the competition has been up to.
>>
>>3852935
Well, get our butt checked out.

Also put our sperm in a sperm bank, and put our dna in some cold storage.

Can we make special VTOL Jets and Tactical/Strategic Transport and airlifts?

Also make Armoured Fighting Vehicles for taking out aerial supernatural beings like with a 20MM rotary autocannon back up by 2 40mm bofor guns and some missiles slapped on for good measure.

And start researching Mechs and Gundams, and special mobility combat suits to fight in all environments like poison gas and stuff.
>>
# Kidnapping - United Pacific States


Catch and release if angels don't show up.

#Augment your people (Both)
# Suggest to Vega a true no-holds barred MMA tournament

Can we combine the two? I think it would make a good training exercise.
>>
>>3852955

Since you can afford it, you fish out of the archive some designs for a hybrid legged-wheeled platform, which may be useful for mountainous or hilly terrain despite the additional mechanical complexity. If it comes to a fight in or near Petra, you want to be able to go up and down the steep cliffs.

Something like that would be good for

# direct fire support, something like a tankette.

# indirect fire support, mountain artillery that doesn't have to fit on a mule.

# engineering support, to help other vehicles up and down.

You have a nurse prescribe you a topical cream; you've survived worse, so it's not a big worry. However, she notes that she's had to order more of the stuff lately, and BOCHICA is not quite keeping up with demand when sending work orders. Is there some sort of rash epidemic?

... Is it time for the First Bowl Judgement already?
>>
>>3852953
Where are we in the timeline now?

>promote Asatru
Awe comon now.

# Street fight

>she simply died of old age
Wait our VR lady right? Not the Witch right?

# Augment your people
* both

# Put it up for sale
>>
>>3852955
Oh god no, not the fucking spider tanks again.
>>
# engineering support, to help other vehicles up and down.

SPIDER TANKS!!!
>>
>>3852967
I want giant fighting robots, since Chole said we'd be stomping angels and demons in a mech.

But since qm seems to be making a few legs to many, nuke the program from orbit and suicide all the engineers and developers.

Welp, time to have our factories and Science teams research and stay near Gap Generators.

Also send up satellites to check out space around us, so as to detect the movement of atoms and energy or whatever that may be god doing some bullshit.
>>
>>3852961
>>3852955
>>3852969
Please, no spider tanks
Do you people not remember what happened last time?
>>
Man I don't even know what we are doing anymore, are we going to research anymore? Are we just gonna let these events happen and pass through it? Can we build a space ship to leave earth and set up a device to collapse space in the local area?
>>
>>3852972

Hear me out.

Spider Tanks were a terrible idea in the last QST because the earth was flat and no need to worry about geography.

If we're going to be fighting TJ at Megido, the area is relatively mountainous. Also I think flooding could be a concern.

Ergo, it'll be useful to have these little buggers on hand to wade through the slush and climb the hills... but as support.
>>
>>3852977
Aircraft and drones would be better.

Either get big Gundams or don't bother.
>>
>>3852977
>And every island fled away, and no mountains were to be found.
The earth is still planned to get flattened by the 7th bowl, spider tanks would be a complete waste of resources again
>>
>>3852960

Yes, you can combine the two.

>>3852966

Yes, Francine was the lady who was running your first VR instalation.

Francesca, strega and coordinatrix of the Ecumenical Council, will die of old age sometime next century, you reckon, at this rate.

>>3852967

( Hey, >>3852955 asked, and to be fair since this world has mountains and hills, they make marginally more sense)

>>3852971

(As someone who has worked on fighting robots professionally : the optimal number of legs as far as I am concerned is zero, followed by six. Although, again, situational mobility. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzaXMzYFtSM )


>>3852966

With things quiet on the political front -- you're occasionally asked to arbitrate things -- you let yourself focus on your work, and Carla on hers.

Humanity these days is mostly concentrated in cities, thanks to vertical farms and the hope that soon meat will be vat grown; for now, people make do with community chicken coops and bunny farms in what used to be the suburbs.

Between cities and towns, the environment -- aided by the sacrifice of an entire Pacific island to bootstrap the depleted soil -- is being allowed to slowly restore itself.

You've been busy with so many little and not so little projects... surely it hasn't been a whole year since you got punched in the gut by a demon, could it have?

Yes, it has; summer, proper summer, came again to the Southern Hemisphere, and even Thule's winter was a comparatively balmy -40C.

>>3852975

(We're fast forwarding to the final fight, since the prophecy has been broken)

Your butt itches. Nearly everyone's butt -- or back, or thighs, or cheeks for those especially unfortunate -- itches.

It looks like acne, which is probably good news for cosmetics manufacturers since teenagers stopped being a thing this year and won't be a thing again until the far-off year of 2008.

>>3852984
>>3852975

(Are there any other big projects that you wish to continue?)

garibaldi: nuke, drones
thule: factory/eisenstadt
internet: decentralized, free
veggies: vertical farming, autarky
meat: vatgrown, autarky
satellites: large, keep, telescopes
ecology preserves: regional, icco
remnant schism: 60%
>>
Doesn't that happen at the end of the battle though?

Anyways, I'm proposing using them for engineering support not combat which could be useful for installing infrastructure before Armageddon.
>>
>>3852984
On the other hand, we don't even really have to plan for turns anymore.....
>>
>>3852953

# Street fight, I want DEW drones on standby

# Both

# Augment some fighters. We teched Vega up for this, let's fucking do it.

>>3852961
# engineering support, to help other vehicles up and down.

>>3852977
Hey nerds, can we NOT start teching up military force for this? We want to win through trickery, not trying to follow the prophecy.
>>
>>3852953
# Kidnapping
Kidnapping would the be the easiest to prepare an arena with traps and tests for devices of

# Augment your people
# Augment some fighters
>>
>>3852986
Tell Carpatasu we also have tison imprisioned and if hes interested in verbally duking it out in cyber space.
>>
>>3852986

Theology: I'd at least like to get N.A.P. speculating on what could be driving these events. Maybe coordinate interviews with Carpatescu for more information since he seems to be less of a prick these days.
>>
>>3852986
I think a plan would be prodice some 100 or 1000 gab generators put them in front of the petra wall and start em all up. See if that makes a hole for us to get inside.
>>
>>3852986
No spider tanks please

Oh no not sores and rashes
Why did it have to be the BUTT?
Is it so we can't sit down and play computers all day long anymore?
>>
>>3852986
>big projects
All of them?

Can we release the antichrist now?
>>
Should we build a really translucent big sun catcher satellite thing to refect the incoming schorching heat?

Paint things lighter colors to reflect more heat, alot of solar panels.
>>
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>>3853010

That could work. Maybe invest in solar power?

>>3852986
>>
>>3853010
>One proposed sunshade would be composed of 16 trillion small disks at the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrangian point, 1.5 million kilometers above Earth. Each disk is proposed to have a 0.6-meter diameter and a thickness of about 5 micrometers. The mass of each disk would be about a gram, adding up to a total of almost 20 million tonnes.[3] Such a group of small sunshades that blocks 2% of the sunlight, deflecting it off into space

>In 2004, physicist and science fiction author Gregory Benford calculated that a concave rotating Fresnel lens 1000 kilometres across, yet only a few millimeters thick, floating in space at the L1 point, would reduce the solar energy reaching the Earth by approximately 0.5% to 1%

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade

Do we really have the capacity to launch 16 trillion small discs or 1 disc 1000 km wide into space? Would that even be enough? These numbers are enough to counteract CO2 global warming, but not sun increased in power so earth burns to death global warming...
>>
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>>3852997

You'd have to let them know that you have Carpatescu, though.

# Go for it.

# No.

----

>>3852995
>>3852994

Gideon Vega thinks that it's an excellent idea! This is going to keep Dr. Diamond busy for a while, of course, but she's been wanting to get this done for a good while now.

His people's implants are a bit less nuanced and, you reckon, probably a bit more prone to infection. You pick a date that suits both of you and doesn't get in the way of other events.

Gideon has been busy; after consolidating his power in the Southeast Pacific, he's done his best to provide people hope through transcending the human condition. Aki has admitted to you that if she wasn't working with you, she'd probably try to work for him.

----

>>3852996

"Foreman, you're an interesting conversationalist -- certainly more so than Tsion -- but yes, I would love to talk to a different human being. You're just not my type, you know."

Linking the two VR rigs takes a bit of time, but it's absolutely feasible; the black site isn't being used for much else these days.

>>3853004

You can release Carpatescu at any time (but people have to vote for that).

>>3853010

That's a solid concern. Building an orbital mirror would require a significant effort. Despite the recent volcanic winter, there are people worried about global warming in the medium term, once population has risen again.

The idea for an orbital mirror is formalized by Lowell Wood, a senior staff scientist with GCASA, who calculated that deflecting 1% of sunlight would restore climatic stability, and that that would require either a single mirror 1600,000 square kilometers in area or several smaller ones of equivalent area. Wood had been researching the idea for more than ten years but considered it so infeasible that it should only be a back-up plan for solving any future global warming problems.

You're more worried about the Fourth Bowl Judgement, which is expected to last four months as per the latest NAP figures -- and royally screw the Southern Hemisphere, just to make it fair with the volcanic winter, since it'll happen right at the start of harvesting season for most common crops.

Fortunately, vertical farms are relatively easy to make reflective.

To sell the idea, you

# refer to the Remnant prophecies directly.

# point out the importance of energy conservation.

# (write in)

----

>>3852995
>>3852960

The most accessible Remnant community that is in the Pacific States, away from being able to call for help (a tall order in this connected word), and easy to control the environment in is in the Australian interior. You identify one Bruce Tannock as an ideal target for his amount of posting on Chaim's website, relative isolation in realspace, and relatively good physical health (he's obese, but young, so he's likely to survive any mild trauma).


A work team and a sec team should do it, plus

# Moira.

# yourself.

# Chandra.


>>3853019

(OK that's cool :D )
>>
>>3853024

# NO

We are not informing anyone of, nor releasing, the antichrist until after the final judgement, at which point I really hope we execute him for mind control shit.

# refer to the Remnant prophecies directly.

Fuck it, people know, at this point we can't be the only group on Armageddon prevention.

# Chandra.

Outback operation? This is his show.
>>
>>3853024
>>3853010
>>3853019
Also, another problem blocking out the sun is that the 4th bowl will END. The 5th bowl covers the world with darkness, if the sun is blocked out, the darkness would be even worse.
>>
>>3853024

We'd have to work out some sort of SCP clearance system. We're not going to let everybody know we have the Antichrist in a box.

Otherwise
#No

# point out the importance of energy conservation.
# point out this would be an excellent opportunity to let her project see fruition. CATS helped the late Dr. Robertson realize many of his dreams after all.


#Moira
>>
>>3853024
#No
# point out the importance of energy conservation.
>>
>>3853031

The fifth bowl actually covers the 'Throne of the Beast' in darkness. At least in the LBverse


Considering we're being hyped as the Antichrist, my interpretation is the network going down.
>>
>>3853036
If that happens and we build an army we put the prophecy back on the rails, let's avoid antichrist tropes k?
>>
>>3853024
# point out the importance of energy conservation.

Show how these system comes with prefabricated and well researched designs that work with the AI reducing man hours and saves energy, water, and effort. Unless we are talking about the mirror....

Wouldn't we need less material and area coverage if we moved the mirror closer to the sun? We can deploy a metal like foil that is extended like a umbrella and being 1km in size, and can build a few space stations to help with maintenance and stuff.

# Chandra.
Less well know, but also quite scary.

Got idea for that, mass of lights everywhere lighting things up, and night vision goggles.

glow in the dark moss and paint or something.

>>3853036
Need to link everything with fiber optic or something.
>>
>>3853036
>>3853044
That makes sense, we should reinforce the network some more too
I still don't like space sunshades though, it will need a lot of work, and we aren't sure how much sunshade we'll need to set up beforehand to counteract the 4th bowl
>>
>>3853043

Totally agree!

Actually that brings to mind the Sixth Trumpet. The river dries, but there is also the part of demons convincing armies to mass at Armageddon. We've got to be on the lookout for that.

>>3853048

We could try increasing cloud cover or encouraging a shift to subterranean shelters?
>>
>>3853033
>>3853032
>>3853030

You connect the VR prisons for Nicolae Carpatescu and Tsion Ben-Judah, but only to each other -- and add in a bit of glitching, just so that they'll think that they are not in the same place if they know anything about networking; their best guess is that one of them is in Effincold and the other is in Thule.

It takes exactly three hours for Carpatescu to ask -- almost beg -- to be disconnected. They go from being unable to know if the other is an impostor, to agreeing at least temporarily that neither of them is, to five minutes of civil conversation including possible plans to escape, to Tsion ranting at Carpatescu for everything he did and quite a few things he didn't.

>>3853044
>>3853033
>>3853032

Your pitch here is simple: only Remnant feel safe around nuclear power (this is less and less true as civilians rotate in and out of your installations, but by and large, it's still true for a large majority of the population), the only good thing about the effective halving of the human population since 1996 is that pollution went down, let's ease off on burning coal once the dust cloud is all gone.

People don't buy it much; one problem is that there's been less of a reason to go into the contryside lately. The children of the tribulation are more likely to know the names of fantasy creatures than real animals.

While an appeal to the people doesn't get too far, an appeal to the authorities does better: the best time to build better-insulated houses and offices is now, since the population is as low as it'll get (hopefully).

At least city centers will look a little brighter, with shiny buildings and vertical farms...

>>3853058

You do a little bit of math to that. A nuclear or kinetic strike on Yellowstone would do the trick -- the caldera is quiet for now, but the new crust is fragile. Of course, the problem with that sort of thing is that you can't exactly feather the throttle on it; either you don't do it, or you do it and take all the good and bad.

---

NAP has a few proposals for how to deal with the Seventh Judgement, the real problem at the end of all of this.

# Review proposals.

# Follow the tournament.

# Direct a kidnapping.

The pattern of butt-itching is familiar: guess who isn't affected. On the other hand, with nearly everyone having skin sensitivity issues, DEWs will be a lot more effective in microwave mode, while remaining nonlethal.
>>
# Review proposals

Does the rash affect the Orthodox Jews?
>>
>>3853062

# Review proposals
>>
>>3853071

Also what about children under 12?
>>
>>3852977
Spider tanks might be good for rough terrain, yes.

Know what's better? Air mobility. And pack mules.

>>3852998
Crazy idea:

Gap Field Generator plus a compact generator(I'm thinking a business jet APU and a tank of avgas; it only has to hold at full power for an hour or two) plus cushioning; and we air drop it with a drogue parachute into Petra.

With that we can preplace GFGs ahead of an advance, or to disrupt NC shenanigans in general without having to risk personnel or vehicles.
>>
>>3853062
# Review proposals
>>
>>3853024
Darn carpatsu I really thought we a thing going. That we could hook up after this.
>>
>>3853099
Yeah its a good plan i think. We can test it out without worry. Its not.like they are going to leave petra anytime soon.
>>
>>3853109
I'm a little worried about revealing the capability to the loyalist Remnant ahead of time, though. At least insofar as it might jolt them(and God) into preemptive action to prevent its use.

In any case, we can test it elsewhere. There's no shortage of flat, open, unoccupied spaces where we can trial prototypes without interruption.
>>
I'd like some clarification.

What happens to non-Remnant as they approach Petra? Do they supernaturally drop dead, even if they don't mean harm?

I'm a bit confused.
>>
>>3853079
>>3853071

That takes surprisingly long to find out -- half an hour, maybe. The rash does in fact affect Orthodox Jews, and for that matter pregnant women.

It does not affect children, or Remnant.

Thanks to modern analgesics, it's little more than an annoyance, but the very fact that it exists is enough to create a moment of global panic: what else will follow?

During the last prophecied disaster. all the technology and preparation could do nothing. On the other hand, that was the exception, and as far as this particular issue goes, well, cortisol cream will sell well.

>>3853099

That's actually fairly easy to try! The basic gap generator design is public; you -want- people to make the things. They've been selling really well to casinos and sports arenas, ostensibly for their jamming capabilities; what people have had a hard time start admitting in writing is that when an augur of Mercury or a priest of Loki breaks the roulette table three days in a row, it's cheaper to buy a gap generator and install it on the ceiling than to break the guy's leg and have to deal with the subsequent misfortune.

>>3853106

Who knows?

>>3853127

The Peacekeepers guarding the place were eaten up by the ground -- an instant sinkhole. A few people have approached since (Orthodox Jews seem to be able to go in and out without a problem). However, you've lost a handful of people trying to infiltrate, and so has everyone else. They're warmly greeted in the courtyard, are allowed into the tunnels, lose cell phone signal... and that's the last you see of them.
>>
.... We have priests of Trickster deities with demonstrable fate manipulation?!

This merits study!

>Petra

Spooky. So either they're being converted on the spot, or they're being killed in the tunnels.
>>
>>3853101
>>3853079
>>3853071

NAP meetings tend to be a bit raucous, but being around Fr. Schorpe taught you that it's actually not that odd about theological societies. Granted, most theological societies until a few years ago didn't have a metaphysics lab or a combat training branch.

"... Mr. Centime, you have the floor."

"Thank you. I think what we are looking at is that Yahweh's powers are based on sound. If we were to mute Iesu, preemptively, he would be unable to do any damage. At which point, we could likely use known containment technologies. Of course, we would have to test this with an Angel first, at a minimum."

This proposal involves enormous plasma speakers, software that doesn't yet exist, and an approximate knowledge of where Jesus will make landfall on the Last Day.

"Next, Mrs. Ashtear?"

"We are facing an enemy unknown, but an unknown unknown -- we don't know what we don't know. In previous situations, we were able to, albeit not always, figure out a clue from the Ben-Judah documents. In this situation, they assert that our target is omnipotent and omniscient. Leaving philosophical discussions about the possibility of both charactristics existing in the same being aside: it does mean that the target must have appeared so to a First Century audience. We have a sequence of actions, but how can we best interrupt them? We don't know. Which is why my proposal is to apply the only thing we know works with everything: point blank annihilation. A series of uranium hydride devices, placed in a particular pattern and detonated in sequence, will not only destroy the target but also prevent the Mount of Olives to be split in half, because it would no longer exist. We have all the R&D for this; the difficulties are in the engineering and, given that this would have to happen in Israel, the politics."

"Thank you. Dr. Vahlen, if you could."

"I believe that the techniques pioneered during the Two Witnesses incidents and further refined by our own Foreman, and my current employer, Gideon Vega, will win the day. Our gap generators are sufficient to blunt the effect of any narrative causality sufficiently that a small team should be able to airdrop in and take out the target at close range. Afterwards, of course, a thorough series of biopsies will assist in keeping the so-called messiah subdued."

The other presentations aren't ready technologically, or require too much engineering efforts, or are based on philosophical nuances that the a conqueror God may simply decide to ignore.

# Other ideas very welcome though! Bring them in and I'll see if they are at least feasible in-setting.
>>
>>3853166
What if we nuke Petra into oblivion? Or drop rod on it?
>>
>>3853164

It does! And some preliminary study has been conducted.... largely by casinos and lotto operators, whether legitimate or not. It's good complement to the Angel capture project; the question is, of course, who would you do it with?

# A reputable casino in Montecarlo.

# A disreputable casino in Phuket.

# A numbers racket with old-school mob ties in New Jersey.

# An actual Temple of Mercury, recently restored, in Naples.

>>3853175

A rod drop would be easier to explain politically than breaking out the nukes, especially nukes that actually (sort of) work.

The main issue is that once you escalate to that level, you're effectively at war with the Remnant; you could possibly do a rod drop with plausible deniability.

Another possibility is to drop incendiaries, and disguise them as a plane crash, the plane being unmanned, of course. It just so happen that the plane was carrying a LOT of fuel.
>>
>>3853145
>That's actually fairly easy to try! The basic gap generator design is public; you -want- people to make the things. They've been selling really well to casinos and sports arenas, ostensibly for their jamming capabilities; what people have had a hard time start admitting in writing is that when an augur of Mercury or a priest of Loki breaks the roulette table three days in a row, it's cheaper to buy a gap generator and install it on the ceiling than to break the guy's leg and have to deal with the subsequent misfortune.

Hmm...

>>3853164
>Spooky. So either they're being converted on the spot, or they're being killed in the tunnels.

They could also have just been isolated and converted the usual way.

Have we tried moving a GMG into the Petra NC zone? Say, on a RC jeep?

>>3853166
...Could we simply flood Petra with airdropped GMGs, days or months before the final judgement? Break prophecy again?

>>3853175
With NC active? Petra emerges unscathed, and we get our asses handed to us.
>>
>>3853184

# An actual Temple of Mercury, recently restored, in Naples.

Conveniently, we can also find nearby racketeers and mobsters just by looking over our shoulders, too!
>>
>>3853189

Drone flybys of Petra have revealed little of interest, other than some radio noise within the exclusion zone (which is why the point to point link has to be set up just so, in order to work correctly). Carrying in a gap generator into the exclusion zone by drone tank resulted in the gap generators not doing a whole lot except draining the drone tank's batteries considerably faster than normal.

(Food tiem)
>>
>>3853145
>Carrying in a gap generator into the exclusion zone by drone tank resulted in the gap generators not doing a whole lot except draining the drone tank's batteries considerably faster than normal.
Interesting...

Is the gap generator drawing more? Or is energy just disappearing?

Have we tried a Peacekeeper with intent to harm walking alongside the drone tank?

>The Peacekeepers guarding the place were eaten up by the ground -- an instant sinkhole. A few people have approached since (Orthodox Jews seem to be able to go in and out without a problem). However, you've lost a handful of people trying to infiltrate, and so has everyone else. They're warmly greeted in the courtyard, are allowed into the tunnels, lose cell phone signal... and that's the last you see of them.

Are the entrances visible from the air?

Can we listen in with 3-c geophones? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geophone (does interferometry work with microphones?)
>>
# An actual Temple of Mercury, recently restored, in Naples.

>End Game

This is a reckless idea but what if we introduced something into the Narrative that can't be 'Rule Lawyered away by Zod?

Case-in-Point

Jesus shows up to fight the Anti-Christ only to find himself facing Jormungandr and the Fenris Wolf from Norse Mythology or the Iron Horse of Erlik Khan from Mongolian Eschatology? Or things that are interpreted as such?
>>
>>3853220
Oh, one more thing. How much is power draw increasing with distance to Petra?

Is it a flat draw within the NC zone? Is it increasing linearly, exponentially, logarithmically?

Does the presence of a Peacekeeper, or something else likely to provoke an NC response, affect this at all?
>>
>>3853184
So its drawing power from around it to make the sheild then. Can we block this transfer or jsut shut down the grid in a 1000 mile radius and see what it does.
>>
>>3853225
>>3853237

And another, nother thing: Have we tried a drone tank with no gap generator? To test anon's hypothesis?
>>
>>3853243
>>3853237
>>3853225
>>3853220

> anons doing delicious science

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsDy7QJ5uh8

>>3853220
>>3853243

The gap generator is drawing more power; turning it off returns battery consumption levels to normal.

>>3853225

Assuming that the center point is Petra's iconic entrance (which, incidentally, means that most of the complex is probably off to one side), the power draw increases logarithmically.

Asking various practictioners of other faiths to put wards on a drone tank, sans gap generator, resulted in the wards being smudged, or washed off, or damaged, at the first possible opportunity (by the drone tank getting its paint scratched against a pebble for example).

>>3853224

That's interesting!

>>3853220

The entrances are all clustered together and very much visible from the air. Since there are no ventilation shafts, one group of entrances sucks in air and the other spits it out; your guess is that it's either some supernatural breathing rock effect or, more mundanely, they have a bank of ducted fans down there and the layout of the underground city is more or less linear.

>>3853224
>>3853202

Francesca d'Angelo is not only happy to introduce you to the Flamen Primus of the temple, she'll also attend the ceremony, if her rites are found to be compatible by Mr. Cocuccio (said priest of Mercury, anagraphic name Gennaro Cocuccio).

---


What will you focus on first?

(Also, write-ins like >>3853224 welcome, and green anon definitely has the right idea
>>
>>3853291
Hmmm...you know...since THEY used nerve gas on US first...anywhere we can get our hands on some?

As for dealing with the Mount of Olives, I'm definitely in favour of either sonics or nuclear annihilation.
>>
>>3853291
>Asking various practictioners of other faiths to put wards on a drone tank, sans gap generator, resulted in the wards being smudged, or washed off, or damaged, at the first possible opportunity (by the drone tank getting its paint scratched against a pebble for example).

Does this happen on a tank with an active gap generator?

>The entrances are all clustered together and very much visible from the air. Since there are no ventilation shafts, one group of entrances sucks in air and the other spits it out; your guess is that it's either some supernatural breathing rock effect or, more mundanely, they have a bank of ducted fans down there and the layout of the underground city is more or less linear.

Crazy idea number 2: An infiltrator plants a wireless repeater at the entrance pulling air, and then releases a box full of neutral-bouyancy balloons with sensors and repeaters. The balloons form a simple adhoc wireless network that passes sensor data up back to the repeater, which sends it along to the point-to-point link.

For Pennywise Points, make the balloons all blood-red.
>>
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/yuval-noah-harari-is-worried-about-our-souls (Heh.)

>>3853316
>>3853220

Good ideas both, but there's maybe 200K people in there by now; what's likely to happen is that the balloon will be given to a kid and the transmitter reverse-engineered.

Geophones and in fact all manner of sensors have been deployed on the perimeter; they mostly get chatter, machinery running, and that sort of thing.

You do know that Remnant living in Petra make a point of praying together at the morning and evening meal (manna and spring water) and that within the exclusion zone people can understand each other without needing translation. On top of that, within the zone Micah can be heard anywhere without amplification; this effect doesn't extend to the sensors, which caused some confusion at first when technicians picked up a bunch of people saying "Amen!" or "Halleluia!" without any apparent context.

>>3853312

Whether nerve gas would work on King Jesus is a good question. Unfortunately the closest thing to make inferences with is an Angel, and that still would not give you anywhere like a complete picture.

>>3853312

You can make some, although you can't use the public factory system, obviously.

People have learned what happened to the chemical weapons stockpile, and are fairly happy about it having gone the way of the nuclear weapons stockpile; there's been enough death for ten lifetimes.
>>
We'll the old fashion meetings with Nicolae aren't going to happen any more and theses question are a bit dated but.

Ask him why he stockpiles the Chemical weapons, it ended up helping the Narrative.

Why did he snub the UN guy for the African position. If it didn't do that, it may have not set off the spiral of events that made us remove him from power.

I wanted to ask William or Ray this, but I forgot, or felt like the time was inappropriate. What happened at the start with the shooting of Nicolae's mentor and the events around it.
>>
>>3853365

Carpatescu expresses his condolences about Tsion. "If you win, do him a kindness, and do not let him out. A world with no rails to follow would be worse than Hell for him."

>Ask him why he stockpiles the Chemical weapons, it ended up helping the Narrative.

"We were getting rid of that stuff. Very slowly, admittedly, but what was the alternative - shoot it all into space? Couldn't afford it, too heavy. Sink it in the ocean? And have it resurface uncontrolled at the first seaquake. I figured, let us built one very good safe, and put it all in there, and get good men to guard it, so I would only have to guard one door for it."


> Why did he snub the UN guy for the African position. If it didn't do that, it may have not set off the spiral of events that made us remove him from power.

"For lack of a nail, the horseshoe was lost. I was a little drunk on power when it comes to Mwangati Ngumo, I will admit. I could humiliate the UN Secretary General, all of a sudden.... and so naturally I did. But I do not regret picking Rebohoth. The man was odious, but so was Josip Broz Tito; his odiousness unified a continent for me, even if it just so everyone would hate him equally. In sincerity, if you had not killed him, I would have."

>>3853365

William Cameron goes back and forth in and out of Petra, quite often, being as he's Chloe's husband and yet a personal friend of Chaim Rosenzweig; he often has to act as a go-between. Rayford is, as far as you know, still flying for ICCO.


(OOC note: I would like to compliment the green anon on the last thread for his monthly planning... and note that he has essentially worked himself out of a job, since the world now works as well as it's going to for this scenario! I was expecting the place to look like Mad Max by now, instead it just looks somewhat dreary... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-MAqVsOLFI )

--------

The next thing to do at this point is

# Restore hope.

# Choose an end-game strategy.

# Follow the tournament.

# Direct a kidnapping.
>>
>>3853422
# Choose an end-game strategy.
>>
>>3853422
# Follow the tournament.

So our weapons in space are super secure right?

And we even put thinks like interception with giant laser cannons powered by a nuclear power plant for a single laser cannon type of deal for things falling on us?
>>
>>3853438

"... Mr. Centime, you have the floor."

Mr. Centime has determined that Yahweh's powers are based on sound and if we were to mute Jesus preemptively, he would be unable to do any damage. At which point, we could likely use known containment technologies. This proposal involves enormous plasma speakers, software that doesn't yet exist, and an approximate knowledge of where Jesus will make landfall on the Last Day.
+ Most R&D completed
+ Relatively cheap to implement
- Needs accurate landfall location
- Must be tested on an Angel first; may not work

Mrs. Ashtear intends to apply point blank annihilation. A series of uranium hydride devices, placed in a particular pattern and detonated in sequence, should not only destroy the target but also prevent the Mount of Olives to be split in half, because it would no longer exist.
++ All R&D completed
- Extremely expensive to implement
- Political issues

Dr. Vahlen believes that the techniques pioneered during the Two Witnesses incident will win the day. Concentrating gap generators on the site of Jesus' landing will allow a small team to aidrop in and take out the target and His escorts at close range. Afterwards, a thorough series of biopsies will assist in keeping the target subdued.
+ Most R&D complete
+ Relatively cheap to implement
- Needs very accurate landfall location
- Should be tested on an Angel first; may not work

Another suggestion involves causing events from incompatible mythologies to happen: what if Jesus shows up to fight the Anti-Christ only to find himself facing Jormungandr and the Fenris Wolf from Norse Mythology or the Iron Horse of Erlik Khan from Mongolian Eschatology? Or things that are interpreted as such?

Patrick Zevo sent a proposal in: he believes that while his stepfather was wrong in wanting to train remote-control child soldiers, there may here be a use for his madness. At the Glorious Appearing, the oldest children will be 7 years old; among millions of kids, it must be possible to find those precocious enough to operate war vehicles. The answer to "How many first graders can Jesus beat up" is probably "zero".


The other presentations aren't ready technologically, or require too much engineering efforts, or are based on philosophical nuances that the a conqueror God may simply decide to ignore.

(Write-ins welcome!)
>>
>>3853449

The idea with putting weapons in space is to raise the bar for people messing with them.

Ablative interception using laser requires a lot of advance warning, which your telescope network is now providing, and laser technology you currently do not have.
>>
Vahlens method is relatively cheap yes?

Any way we could use her method, but also set up the point blank annihilation strategy as a back up?
>>
>>3853455

Zevo can get his ass back on the bench.

Incompatible mythologies is an idea, but we have absolutely no research into that, and we REALLY do not want to swap one armageddon for another!

I support Mr Centime's solution as our primary plan of action. We should be able to get angel testing done in the near future.

Should angel testing fail, fall back to Ms Ashtear's plan.
>>
>>3853455
Dr. Vahlen
Mr. Centime

Do both?

Both are fairly cheap.

>>3853479
We can do all 3 then!

First two fail, we hit the switch and blow it all up.
>>
What if we start blasting sound int Petra?

Also have we drawn out lines on the rage and maximum or minimum range for the "Petra effect"?

How come we could not test the Schlieren effect to see the horsemen?
>>
>>3853484
There is a cost to splitting our efforts that much, yknow.

Fact is, while this technique might work, we have no idea how much of our elite teams are running on NC themselves, at this point, especially if we turn to Vega for guys - which frankly is our only option to get manpower for this.
>>
>>3853497
Victory?
The cost OF Victory.
That is a cost worth paying for!
>>
At the very least Incompatible Plot elements can create a cover while we execute one of the other plans.

While Jesus is distracted by spouting sermons at Odin or Kali or the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, we can cage/subdue/disintegrate him
>>
On a tangental note:

Maybe we can get some insight into Narrative Control by looking at the concept of Tulpas from Tibetan Buddhism?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulpa
>>
>>3853455
>why not all 4 with point blank annihilation being the last chance.
>>
>>3853488

You couldn't test the Schlieren effect because that sort of thing takes longer than 1 or 2 days to set up from scratch.

The exclusion zone around Petra is very well mapped; there might as well be a circle painted on the ground (there isn't, but the perimeter is easy to tell by looking at where the sensors are, and it's geofenced).

>>3853535
>>3853484

As always in this quest, you can choose to do multiple single-choice options, but at an efficiency penalty.

>>3853500

The real issue is not Armageddon, but the Sheep and Goats Judgement, scheduled to happen the following day: in it, roughly 80% of the human race will die and go to Hell. That makes roughly 2200 million people. The survivors will lose a significant portion of their cultural wealth.
>>
>>3853758

Yeah. We need one absolutely surefire turbojesus remover.

We know sonic containment is likely to work, need to test it.

We also know vaporizing everything will work, and we've already done all the research for it.

Israel was made by the displaced, if we gotta displace em again to save the ENTIRETY OF HUMANITY well that's Israel's problem. It's not like with a third of the world's population dead there isn't room, and I'm pretty sure the world won't mind.
>>
>>3853503

One thing that might fit with using Vahlen's plan is to create real-life superheroes -- take a mercenary team and make them celebrities by giving them hidden advantages and great PR -- and see if their performance actually improves.

People do need hope.

>>3853526

From what you can tell, it seems to be a case of shared belief. Have thirty kids do a mousetrap race car workshop, convince them beforehand that red ones go faster, and when they build their cars, the ones that get painted red will have a slight speed and acceleration advantage.

Remnant have the advantage of being a relatively large group with mostly coherent beliefs, even with the three main groups bickering over the details; the EC promotes pluralism, but actually agree over very few things.

(Y'all tell me! I would recommend picking a main plan and a backup)
>>
>>3853779

We can always give them a new homeland in someplace that's nicer and not built atop a lot of dead bodies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-evIyrrjTTY
>>
I like the Sonic Plan with the Annihilation Plan as a backup. I would like to toy with the idea of causing Narrative Cognitive Dissonance by introducing something to the Narrative at Armageddon or the S&G Judgment.
>>
>>3853799
>>3853779

Looks like Plan A is sonic containment, and Plan B is nuclear bombs. Confirm?

>>3853488

Taking vehicle-mounted LRADs to Petra is definitely workable. What will they say?

>>3853503

That might work, according to your theologians, and at least it might be a useful distraction... but what would it be? Something that a 1st century Palestine resident might recognize? Something that has a cultural impact today?
>>
>>3853823
That's got my vote.

Also my plan for the gas wasn't Jesus it was figuring out if you can gas Petra.
>>
>>3853823
Something so unfathomably alien it will make Jesus' head spin.
>>
>>3853422
>I would like to compliment the green anon on the last thread for his monthly planning
And I would like to thank everyone for supporting my plans and for, in my absence, managing to "win" so much of the events.

>and note that he has essentially worked himself out of a job, since the world now works as well as it's going to for this scenario
No problem OP, I've always wanted to retire in style: I can think of no better way than making a future where a man like me is unneeded.

> I was expecting the place to look like Mad Max by now, instead it just looks somewhat dreary
We've honestly done a good job: who knows a decade from the start of this hell and humanity might actually even be recovering; we could send out hundreds of teams to find the blood, bones and bodies of extinct species and begin the struggle to recreate the old world's glory one species at a time.

>>3853823
>That might work, according to your theologians, and at least it might be a useful distraction... but what would it be? Something that a 1st century Palestine resident might recognize? Something that has a cultural impact today?
Why not us? We've recovered from the thing that killed 1/3 of humanity; we fought and killed one of the demons who did it; we are the head of cats, a cyborg and a man who rejected world-power; we are the closest thing mankind has had to saviour against god. They might not pray to us but they should pray for us and all we do.
>>
>>3853891
Actually disregard that idea, just remembered being called a god is an anti-christ thing...
>>
>>3853903
A hero, chosen one perhaps?
>>
>>3853912
Nuke the site from orbit AND from below?
>>
>>3853914
Im betting the nukes will be jesused away but not the tungston rods
>>
>>3853903

Maybe giant holographic C'thulhu? Or some anime character?
>>
>>3853918
Hit him with those too!
>>
>>3853903

Maybe we can do a giant holographic Pokemon or anime character? Defeat Jesus with the power of Japanimation~!
>>
>>3853823
Confirm
>>
>>3853912
>A hero, chosen one perhaps?
Just a martyr, a statue to raise?

More seriously, perhaps. I mean the sonic containment backed by nuclear is probably the best plan but if we can distract them for a period by use of a sacrificial lamb while we get shit sorted? We should.

>>3853918
It is a possibility. On the other hand, we can store them under Gap generator effect and hope that works.


Also, can I just point out that we've been under for 6 months: by this point I honestly would've expected Thule to have been completed in all three regards and maybe even a second city started. Admittedly we've done orbital shit and network stuff instead so I suppose it's unimportant by comparison.

On the other hand, it turns out Thule is a city of a million if we went the Colony route: which as I pointed out previously we could build about 24 per year meaning 96 million people could be living under CATS control in 3 years time assuming we've got all other shit sorted. Given the Factory network has been completely expanded? Assuming that means we've got the original 22 regions worth (since the region numbers have changed I think) and the same number of work teams we could actually have built 11 levels per month meaning 132 levels per year before accounting for drones.

That is to say we could currently, assuming we still had only 24 work teams and used no drones / heroes, build self-sufficient accommodations for 26.4 million people per year that also have some industrial capacity. I'm tempted to go do some simple calculations to create an idea of just how insane this would get with two added assumptions: 1, we get a work team per half-a-million people living under us; 2, we get a Bn from each million people (assuming 80% are working adults, they'd be paying 18,750 dollars equivalent in taxes which sounds kinda reasonable for one of our high tech supercities since it should attract the best of the best and shit).


>>3853920
>>3853928
Certainly a possibility.
>>
>>3853912
A hero would make most sense. You guys provided connection, industry, hope, and a face to the future. That no matter what happens you faced demons, famine, war, devastation, gas attacks, and you are still here. That alone could have narrative power as the hero of humanity
>>
>>3853955
Try to make somthing new a protector?
>>
>>3853955
Maybe a benign trickster archetype. The trickster embodies what our organization stands for.... we stand against an oppressive authority trying to keep humanity huddled within the darkness of fear and ignorance but CATS brings different people together, empowering regular folks into becoming paragons of humanity, offering knowledge and finding unique means of overcoming trials and tribulations. Every now and then we burn our feathers, but we learn from our mistakes and emerge the stronger...
>>
>>3853955
>>3853957
We need a hero that appeals to all of humanity: something so completely left-field that god can't prepare for it but at the same time something sufficiently believable or memeable that people will get behind it...it can't be of an existing religion, too much bad blood, it can't be a person from CATS, too close to creating a anti-christ and that leaves only one option:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXtyE_aEioo
>>
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>>3853965

Do you reckon Heaven has the Sega Saturn?
>>
>>3853978
Nope, which means we'll just have to introduce it to them. You do raise a good point, we should just get whoever is the Bruce lee of the universe at this point, I say that that way because most of the IRL ones are probably dead after all the shit that has happened.

Imagine a augmented martial artist: enhanced endurance alone would make them a damnably deadly fighter but adding in anything else would greatly enhance them.
>>
>>3853823
Confirm, and make sure anyone who'd be doing the containment work knows that if it doesn't work the plan B is nukes. volunteer martyrs only.
>>
Wait!

It's so obvious! In all of humanity there is one entity who appeals across all cultures and tribes, a paragon of human kindness and decency, who brings out the best in everyone... All he asks of his followers is this:

Won't you be his neighbor?
>>
>>3854017
Well the answer is clear, we must start assembling this team of extraordinary individuals to combat the threats that we can not.

Also you just made me think about the fact there is a good chance Mr Rogers is dead from the 1/3rd of humanity dying thing.
>>
>>3854031

Mr. Rogers was a Presbyterian minister, so he probably was Rapture'd... Unless Turbo Jesus has a thing against puppets.
>>
>>3854042
>so he probably was Rapture'd
I can therefore only imagine that he is currently fighting the good fight from the other side.
>>
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>>3854046

Oh, I'm sure he is.

---

To better prepare for the final battle, we should put an emphasis on unarmed combat. It may help our agents get close to the target without being recognized as an enemy.

In a lot of Apocalyptic fiction the soldiers get absolutely slaughtered at Megiddo due to God's 'Tricky Magic'.

Instead of overt force, we should opt for the ninja route. ((They're one of Christianity's more dangerous enemies.))
>>
>>3853945
>>3854010

Plan B is going to be to destroy the Mount of Olives utterly, when the time comes. According to Zechariah 14:4, it will be split into two, east to west, and "the people" (meaning either Orthodox or Remnant) will flee through the new valley.

You're going to prevent this by nuclear fire, plain and simple.

Fortunately, you have a year to do it in, and your nuclear fuel production allows you to churn out a nuclear weapon per month without breaking a sweat, not to mention your stockpiles; unfortunately, it's in the one place in the world where you have to worry about sovereignity issues.

Dr. Robertson's design for Alkahest shows that tightly packing six U-H warheads around an old-style plutonium-hydrogen thermonuclear weapon should be sufficient to force the former to go off regardless of any changes in neutron capture rate. The bad news of course is that this precludes delivering the payload in any way other than

# building nuclear landmines over time, as part of a public works project, but you would have to find a pretext

# faking another near-miss with an Akhenaten-sized body and then modifying the navigation package of an Energia rocket to come back and hit the Earth, but you would have to, essentially, fake a moon landing.


This is the backup plan; you'll spend most of the money there, but the production effort is straight forward. The primary plan has more finesse: you're going to precisely pinpoint Jesus' location either

# upon landing the first time, or

# upon sitting on His throne for the Sheep and Goats Judgement

and bring there as many Gap Generators as possible, as well as some sort of silencing system that you haven't designed yet.

One of your first successes against the fixity of prophecy was noise-canceling Carpatescu's influence away from your mind; now you're going to have to do the same thing from a distance.

For that, you need an Angel.

The best way to cause Angels to appear is by creation of a situation in which enough Remnant will pray for them to, and so you have arranged for the kidnapping of one Bruce Tannock in the western Australian outback, to be conducted by Mr. Chandra because you don't wish to sully Moira's image as a heroine, as that may be needed.

To this end, you've put out a mercenary contract with Darkwater for Tannock's capture; your men will fight theirs in a way that appears to put the bait in danger.

# Ensure that a few members of the Young Tribulation Force are nearby, to maximize the chance of appearance.

# A two-way firefight is a sufficiently dangerous environment without inolving a third side.
>>
>>3854068

That is Vahlen's plan, in a nutshell; coming in unarmed has served you well a few times, including with the Witnesses.

Dismemberment after that point is optional.

The safest way to deliver a combat team in that case would be by high-altitude or orbital drop; fortunately your "large satellite" design is quite able to hold a small team for a day or two.

>>3854042

Mr. Rogers was an extremely worthy individual, but he is not as well known as he should be outside North America. He was, in fact, Raptured.

>>3853986

Moira is scheduled to take part in a no-holds-barred tournment in a couple of months, happily!
>>
>>3854130
# faking another near-miss with an Akhenaten-sized body and then modifying the navigation package of an Energia rocket to come back and hit the Earth, but you would have to, essentially, fake a moon landing.

CATS has the world's computing power, the ear of all the governments and enough clout to fake a thing like that, at least long enough to kill Jesus, after we do that? We can be honest about the truth and most people odd to thank us given we'd be the literal saviours of humanity.

# upon landing the first time, or

I'd rather not leave it until the judgements that promise to kill 80% of all humanity just in case we can fit in a second attempt.

# A two-way firefight is a sufficiently dangerous environment without inolving a third side.

We can perform additional incidents if we fail to summon an angel but starting out with them complicates things.
>>
>>3854130
# faking another near-miss with an Akhenaten-sized body and then modifying the navigation package of an Energia rocket to come back and hit the Earth, but you would have to, essentially, fake a moon landing.

# upon landing the first time

# Ensure that a few members of the Young Tribulation Force are nearby, to maximize the chance of appearance.
>>
>>3854177

Support
>>
Rolled 1, 1 = 2 (2d2)

>>3854197
>>3854182
>>3854177

Bruce Tannock, through no fault of his own, is kidnapped and taken across the outback to a small underground base, where he is kept for a fairly hefty ransom, asked to his family.

He's only one guy, but you ensure that the story makes the news, and magnanimously offer to pay the ransom yourself.

The "underground base" is, of course, a maze that the Angel or Angels will have to solve in order to free Bruce.
>>
>>3854237

The ransom exchange goes through without a hitch, and Bruce is released. Normally, that would be great, except you were waiting for some sort of supernatural intervention!

The local gap generators are off, Bruce was within one prayer circle of both Chloe and Chaim... what went wrong?

Maybe the guy isn't important enough; maybe the Angels are too smart...

And then one of your guys picks up something on the detector; there's someone, or something, standing invisibly next to Bruce as he thanks God for his liberation even though your hostage neotiator is sitting right there.

The idea here is to

# capture the angel for careful study

# shoot as much stuff at it as you can within the underground base to see what works and what doesn't.
>>
# capture the angel for careful study
>>
>>3854246
# capture the angel for careful study

Having a viable sample of Narrative-matter would be great to study: who knows we might be able to make a energy weapon that can decompose it.
>>
>>3854246
# capture the angel for careful study
>>
>>3854255
>>3854252
>>3854249

Bruce has been trying to talk to (arguably put the moves on) one of the captors, Rehema, who actually works for you; now that this is over, or so he thinks, he encourages her to look Micah's preaching up.

She tells him to duck, instead. The gap generators come on in full force, and while this doesn't make the Angel any more visible, it certainly makes ti less incorporeal, enough so that it shows up on sonar.

The Angel reveals itself a moment before a barrage of extinguisher foam would have forced it to do so anyway; Rehema leads Bruce to safety -- well, she pushes him into a closet, but it's probably a very safe closet -- and the Angel's subdual is attempted by an excessive application of

# cold; it worked for Eli and Moishe.

# beatings, courtesy of some of Mr. Vega's martial artists, as well as your own men.

# laser light right in the face.
>>
>>3854268
># laser light right in the face.

It worked on the horsemen.
>>
>>3854268
# laser light right in the face.

It worked on the horsemen, it worked on Eli and Moishe and it should work here too.
>>
>>3854273
>>3854276
Great minds think alike.
>>
# laser light right in the face.

Demons are just fallen angels, right?
>>
>>3854281
>>3854276
>>3854273

A platoon of your soldiers -- including Chandra and a couple that were with you during the Sixth Trumpet -- quickly march into the underground base, position themselves on two lies, and train DEWs at the Angel, shooting it right in the face. It shields its eyes, at which point the men spread out so that they can keep hitting from multiple angles.

Rehema keeps Bruce calm as your people fan out and continue keeping the Angel blinded.

It tries to disappear again, an attempt which is quickly foiled by the fire extinguisher foam.

To subdue it, Chandra's men make use of

# resin and rope, nothing fancy.

# chlorophorm.

# locust ichor, from a jet injector.

# the burliest of the men walking over and delivering a righteous right hook to its jaw.
>>
>>3854295
# resin and rope, nothing fancy.

Don't use locust ichor we MAY need to figure out how to kill them.
>>
# locust ichor, from a jet injector.

These guys are supposed to break people out of prison, yes? I think they've maxed out their Escape Artist skill...
>>
>>3854300

Good point....

#The burliest of the men walking over and delivering a righteous right hook to its jaw.

Time to test out the Martial Artist program is worth its salt...
>>
>>3854295
# resin and rope, nothing fancy.
>>
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>>3854314
>>3854300

You're pretty sure that someone somewhere can get off to this; while the Angel is being blinded, two soldiers come in from the side and spray what amounts to sugar and wood glue all over its body, wings, and tunic.

The Angel clearly doesn't know what to do with this, and when your people come in with rope and netting to wrap around its body, all it can do to fight back is flail at people... which is nearly sufficient, as they drop on the floor unconscious or paralyzed as soon as the Angel touches their skin.

The gooping continues until three people had time to put on gloves and masks, and manage to wrap netting around the Angel.

It takes a deep breath, and emits a sound like a trumpet blast, strong enough to shatter some of the gap generator tubes that it happens to hit, and fracture some of your men's eardrums, so Chandra puts a sock in his mouth.

Eventually, it falls down after wriggling too much to keep its balance.

"We got one!"

# Release Bruce Tannock.

# Keep him contained.

# Let him think he managed to escape by himself.

And now it's time to conduct some experiments, which will focus on

# seeing what hurts it and what does not.

# attempting a proper interrogation.

# countering the trumpet blast.

# seeing what makes it tick.
>>
>>3854345
# Keep him contained.

I wonder how many angels we can get. I mean it'd be nice to do all these tests...

# countering the trumpet blast.

Once we've countered the trumpet blast, we can try to interrogate or do anything else. Fact is however countering it's sonic stuff should give us a hint towards dealing with TurboJesus
>>
# Keep him contained.

# countering the trumpet blast.

Sonic countermeasures are needed for dealing with TurboJesus.
>>
>>3854345

# Release Bruce Tannock.

# countering the trumpet blast.
>>
>>3853758
Lets draw a circle.

>>3854345
# Let him think he managed to escape by himself.

# countering the trumpet blast.
>>
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>>3854351
>>3854353

Bruce is going to head to your blacksite -- it's a bit of a nasty thing to do, but the sores are keeping everyone in a poor mood and it's not as if you won't let him go in a few weeks, anyway. Besides, who know what stories he would spread!

It's easier to build a lab around the Angel than moving it; the "trumpet blast" shatters glass at will, so the Angel is kept cotntained by metal and foam walls, and watched "by hand", on rotation. Any biopsy will have to wait until you can safely degoop it.

One thing of interest is that the trumpet blast not only sounds like a trumpet, it looks a fair amount like a sped-up version of the Angel's own heartbeat (touching its hands still causes unconsciousness, but it doesn't seem to be dangerous per se, so the heartbeat is collected by holding an electrode in an orderly's palm and having him shake, and pass out).

All you need to do now is a bit of time to develop a way to tune it out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1PwC7ViG8A

"You can't unring a bell" has been a dictum in law for a long time: In law, unring the bell is an analogy used to suggest the difficulty of forgetting information once it is known. When discussing jury trials, the phrase is sometimes used to describe the judge's instructions to the jury to ignore inadmissible evidence or statements they have heard. It may also be used if inadmissible evidence has been brought before a jury and the judge subsequently declares a mistrial.

Lawyers will have to figure out a different saying.

# One specimen is sufficient.

# This relatively simple gambit paid off; get more.

----

The sores means that the next plague is the seas, all of them, turning to blood. You don't even know how the heck that's going to work; Chloe expects algal blooms all over the place, Micah proclaims that the turning to blood will be quite literal.

Thanks to your decision to have the regional potentates set up wildlife preserves, land animals are in good shape when it comes to preservation, but deep-sea critters don't belong to any one territory and have thus been neglected somewhat.

# Focus on the Angel experiments.

# Focus on catching some whales and giant squid.

>>3854379

Portions of the perimeter are on sand, but you have an actual circle drawn between the "green zone" surrounding Petra, and the "yellow zone" around it. Pretty soon, a few people with nothing better to do are jumping across the barrier, conducting simple experiments, and the like.

One viral video shows that mixing Coke and Mentos works significantly differently in the yellow zone; there's barely a fizz. The person doing the demonstration then jumps to the side, back into the green zone, and is covered in foam in a second.
>>
>>3854405
# This relatively simple gambit paid off; get more.

# Focus on catching some whales and giant squid.

We need to preserve this planet. Genetic resurrection would take decades.
>>
>>3854405
>One viral video shows that mixing Coke and Mentos works significantly differently in the yellow zone; there's barely a fizz. The person doing the demonstration then jumps to the side, back into the green zone, and is covered in foam in a second.

So it's amplifying NC behavior in general, not just God's...

...I wonder how much we can amplify a summoning ritual by conducting it in secret, in the dead of night, right under the nose of 'good and proper people'? Because that checks off quite a few Satanic memes--and there's nothing quite 'under the nose' like inside Petra's green zone.
>>
>>3854405
# This relatively simple gambit paid off; get more.

# Focus on catching some whales and giant squid.

Trying to resurrect some of these species would be damn near impossible given how little bone they leave behind for gene sampling. Not to mention, creating a artificial womb big enough for a whale would be a challenge.
>>
>>3854405
# This relatively simple gambit paid off; get more.
# Focus on catching some whales and giant squid.
>>
Rolled 1, 11, 12, 6 = 30 (4d12)

>>3854429

You put the Angel matter on the backburner for now (not literally; that means that you focus your efforts elsewhere, not that you're making angel BBQ, although you're pretty sure that Angel body parts would sell really well in some markets) and, instead, send the Garibaldi fishing.

Hopefully the whole water-turns-to-blood business will not extend to artificial reservoirs.

Using sonar lures, your people try to collect large cetaceans, which are then towed to Thule's drydock where large "bathtubs" are welded around them.

It's not a happy life for the whales, but it may be the only life they get.

# Showcase the effort.

# Keep it low key until it pays off.

In the meantime, your people are going to work on the signal processing necessary to mute the trumpet blast.

>>3854412
>>3854429

Finding Remnant that are doing something illegal isn't easy -- they are overall a pretty well behaved bunch, and the genuine instances of crowd violence after the Sixth Trumpet have taught most of them to not do things like scream at gay couples -- but a number of them consider themselves at war with the Global Community, and can be occasionally caught stealing fuel or even vehicles; you suspect that ICCO acts as a clearing house for those goods, but Chloe is smart enough to keep her nose clean.

It'll be interesting to see what happens if you catch more Angels.

>>3854428

There is argument about what color is what zone, but that is certainly something to try!

# Handle it directly.

# Pass the info to Francesca.
>>
>>3854454
# Showcase the effort.

I presume most smaller creatures of the sea, fish and crustacean, were gathered earlier / have breeding stocks in captivity? What about stuff like seaweed or sea cucumbers?

# Pass the info to Francesca.

We've got stuff to focus on and not enough resources to waste on anything but the critical stuff.
>>
>>3854454
# Keep it low key until it pays off.

No sense looking crazy, we have not outed the prophecies.

# Pass the info to Francesca.
>>
>>3854464
To be fair, most people have accepted the prophecies at this point. They might think that the Remnant are causing them or any number of explanations but they do commonly believe that this shit is happening.

At least that is how I've read it.
>>
>>3854454

"Foreman, are you going to put the whole world in a bottle?"

"I'm going to build a suit of armor around it, if I must."

That exchange followed the capture of the last specimen of sperm whale that you needed for a minimum viable population.

In preparation for the Second Trumpet, all your ships have been fitted with "mud buddy" type propellers, including the Garibaldi; you have made plans available, and this time people know better than to argue with Micah's proclamations. If it turns out that Chloe is right, well... it's just a bit of wasted effort.

>>3854459
>>3854464

That was done by the regional potentates, UNDRR, and even ICCO. The prophecies are definitely out by now; the question is just when, and how literal are they.

Francesca is thoroughly amused by the suggestion, and before long people from various faiths, as well as illusionists and the like, have found a safe place on the plateau behind Petra to film a documentary on. There's even talk of building a theme park or a chemical plant.

Remnant guards chase people off with DEWs; thanks to the zone, or thanks to the sores that a lot of people are more or less managing, the weapons are very effective in pushing people off; filming the documentary will still be possible, but permanent installations across the zone border won't be.

# Make it a diplomatic issue -- it's your land after all. Maybe you can ge an audience with Micah.

# Let the Remnant be about it.


----

Your Angel apprehension program has not given good results, sadly; you only grab one more specimen before either the Angels or the prayer circles get wise to your trick, and the white big winged men with no wang stop appearing.

You bagged Hesediel, angel of freedom, and Lailah, angel of night. That's interesting; this one presents female. You didn't know that was a thing.

The former seems to only want to break itself and Bruce out of containment, while the latter seems to be willing to talk after realizing that letting out Chang Wong after the guy was busted trying to hack into the New Babylon BOCHICA hub to siphon off some fuel, is not going to happen.

Chloe says that Wong was working for her, he's overzealous "due to a lack of companionship", and she'd be happy to pay for the damages if she could get him back.

# It's a trap! Just study her waveform output for now.

# Sure, we can talk.
>>
>>3854486
# Make it a diplomatic issue -- it's your land after all. Maybe you can ge an audience with Micah.

If they want to get into an energy weapons war, we will respond in kind. We will however ensure they take note that CATS doesn't need to use humans to bear our DEWs meaning we can tank their shots where they can not and that CATS can produce better quality DEWs.

>Chloe says that Wong was working for her, he's overzealous "due to a lack of companionship", and she'd be happy to pay for the damages if she could get him back.
No opinion on this, going to sleep, best of luck anons and don't worry, I have complete confidence that our combined efforts shall lead to glorious victory.
>>
>>3854486
# Make it a diplomatic issue -- it's your land after all. Maybe you can ge an audience with Micah.

# Sure, we can talk.

From everything we know, it's unlikely the angel is being deceptive.
>>
>>3854486
# Make it a diplomatic issue -- it's your land after all. Maybe you can ge an audience with Micah.

How did they get DEWs?
# It's a trap! Just study her waveform output for now.
>>
>>3854511
>>3854513
>>3854499

By the look of it, they grabbed some directed energy weapons from the Peacekeepers. They're first-gen DEWs, but between people having sensitive skin due to the sores and, you guess, belief that the things work well, they do, at least as well as your fifth-gen ones.

The film crews are issued a permit to operate by your office, and wave them about next time they are shooed off; it doesn't do much to stop the beams, that's for sure.

The next day you have the crews guarded by drone tanks of the bomb-disposal type, with a DEW installed instead of the shotgun; they automatically return fire, and the Remnant attackers run off, laughing.

Micah mentions the incident in a sermon, in which he notes that Petra is the Remnnt's until the Glorious Appearing, just as the Earth is God's until the Last Battle.

# Have a quick talk with the guy, via megaphones or via teleconferencing.

# As above, but use it a distraction to sneak sensors in.

# Just send him a rent-past-due bill and move on.
>>
>>3854513
OOC, They had them in Left Behind. I assume one meme or another of Ameri--er, Protestant ingenuity snuck in somewhere. Certainly would make a good sop to the intended audience.

IC, dunno, but they're maintaining heavy machinery in Petra somehow. Presumably NC shenanigans are involved.

Presumably also smuggling via tunnels. Can we arrange some "discrete" thumper activity, get some reflection seismology going?
>>
>>3854526
# Just send him a rent-past-due bill and move on.

Once we've gotten Turbojesus to fuck off we can just fucking Finger of Death these assholes if we want to.
>>
>>3854530

Yes; what you find is that when they said hey were going to dig, it means they were REALLY going to dig.

Petra, the historical site, was carved in sandstone; using modern machinery and a certain disregard for archeology, Chaim's people have dug in all directions -- it looks like an anthill to your sonar. It also makes it quite fragile... how are they planning to all leave if/when there is an earthquake? You get the idea that the answer is, in a nutshell, a miracle -- like usual.

>>3854534

You send him a bill. He ignores it. Just for fun, you decide to have one auto-sent every month, with the extra fees tacked on.

-----

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXyXRM1LQio

Your guys are getting something good out of the Angel voices; notably, the "trumpet blast" are similar even though they sound different. It's an interesting waveform; you copy it for your LRADs, and get it to shatter glass and induce mild nausea, but theirs is still better.

One thing you do get out of this is the upper limit for sound pressure for the voices.

# Talk to Lailah.

# It's a test subject, nothing more.

----------

You wake up one day to find that your butt itches less, and it's an experience you share with everyone at HQ, except for Aki for some reason (she got a sore on her cheek, and was really shy about it, the problem is that she put makeup over it and now it'll just take longer to heal).

That's bad news, though. Sure enogh, your inbox fills with reports from around the globe saying that the seas have turned to blood.

Rotting carcasses of all species of aquatic life have risen to the surface, and crews of ships are having to be evacuated before they fall ill.

The blood is of type AB+, and satellite telemetry data shows that the mass of the Earth has actually increased enough to perturb some orbits.

Chaim is triumphant; Chloe is worried; your "bathtubs" worked, although it will be centuries before the ecosystem has a true chance to recover.

Carla is also worried -- more than worried.

"Foreman, we've lost. Most of the oxygen on Earth comes from phytoplankton, and now it's all gone. Whatever else happens, our grandchildren will asphyxiate."

# Reassure her that the balance of probability is that it'll revert.

# Phytoplankton is not a particularly complex lifeform, we'll reintroduce it.

# You're going to beat environmental restoration out of Jesus if that's what it takes.

People are, of course, grateful that you saved the whales, but it won't take long for Carla's justified despair to get picked up by the world population at large -- it's an obvious inference to make among the educated, and it's the sort of thing that memes easily so that the uneducated will pick it up quickly.

# Suggest a media strategy.
>>
>>3854575

# Reassure her that the balance of probability is that it'll revert.

# Phytoplankton is not a particularly complex lifeform, we'll reintroduce it.

# Suggest a media strategy. - Get people to contribute to ocean re-terraforming projects. Donate money, or run microbiology cultures. Get them feeling like they're doing something. Some of it might even be useful.
>>
>>3854575
>talk to lailah
Then this
>>3854584
>>
>>3854575
# It's a test subject, nothing more.

WE APPEAR TO HAVE BIGGER PROBLEMS.
>>
>>3854596
I think we can get more information out of the angel. Such as who is filling the prophetic shoes for antichrist dragon and false prophet
>>
>>3854595
>>3854584

Carla orders UNDRR tankers and barges that are not otherwise occupied to fill up with the blood; the plan is to re-release it into the sea once it turns back to water, in the hope that its breakdown carries enough nutrients to restart at least a simple ecosystem.

You promote cultivating algae at home so that they may be returned where they belong when this is over.

Attacks on Remnant resume, which means more and more move into Petra -- must be a half million people in there by now. You send your security teams to

# stop the violence when you can.

# capture more Angels, this time publicly, since they're bound to show up!

# declare Petra your new containment facility and vector Remnant members you've arrested there, unless you have a better use for them.

A lot of coastal places experience a different plague -- flies everywhere. In some places it's bad enough that they have to berak out the stuff that was built to deal with the locusts. Fortunately, mosquitos are too stupid to suck up blood from a surface rather than from a vein, or you'd have a malaria epidemic on your hand.

This plague ends ICCO's sea-harvesting operations; on the other hand, they haven't really had to turn into a black market broker after all, so it's not as if they don't have money.

>>3854599
>>3854596

(yall tell me!)
>>
>>3854599
That's fair. I guess we talk to the angel.

# declare Petra your new containment facility and vector Remnant members you've arrested there, unless you have a better use for them.
>>
>>3854610
# stop the violence when you can.

Last thing we want is yet more Remnant feeding the NC feedback loop in Petra.
>>
>>3854615
>>3854595

You know a trap when you see one. That's not to mean that Laila has a penis -- Hesediel doesn't; looks like Angels come with Barbie/Ken doll anatomy, although you'll have to do a biopsy to be sure -- but it does mean that Lailah looks exactly like you'd want a woman to look.

You ask your personnel if this is just some sort of mental effect; people who like guys tell you that they don't find her particularly attractive, people who like girls run the gamut between "yes, she's cute" and "meh".

So, at least in appearance, she was tailored to your tastes.

Her tunic is relatively clean, her wings are covered in goop, her hands and feet are tied together, and she's sort of curled up in a corner. They don't eat, but you've seen them drink on occasion, only water.

# I didn't know female-presenting Angels existed, this is suspicious to me.

# Were you sent here to seduce me?

# What do you people want from us?

# (write in)

----
>>
>>3854631
# What do you people want from us?
>>
>>3854624

It's hard to remind people that it's not the Remnant's fault that these environmental disasters are happening when the average Remnant adherent rejoices in it, seeing it as confirmation that the prophecies are happening more or less on schedule. Micah is a little more conciliatory than Tsion was, but he makes it very clear that all he is doing is giving warnings, and that in this case God in His mercy saw fit to not directly kill anyone.

Micah is not the best diplomat. Your security teams have their hands full protecting people that believe, or even wish, them to go to Hell -- it's not exactly good for morale.

----

"What do you people want from us?"

She looks up. The puppy-dog eyes are on point. "I want a job. I am Lailah, Angel of Night. The light of the moon will be as bright as the sun, and the light of the sun will be seven times brighter— like the light of seven days— on the day that the Lord binds up the brokenness of His people and heals the wounds He inflicted. That is, in the Millennial Kingdom."

# Are you trying to defect?

# Your job is to scream. If you want to do it willingly, good, less work for us.

# I only hire human beings.

# (write in)
>>
>>3854526
# Just send him a rent-past-due bill and move on.

Are we not researching the sores to find out more about them? We can bet that during the final battle, the enemy will use shit like this to attack us.

# Phytoplankton is not a particularly complex lifeform, we'll reintroduce it.

# Suggest a media strategy.

Start making a video channel that tells people what to do in times of crisis, and how to prepare for the future and show it working. Its important that they believe.

Filter the water, there is water in blood.

# capture more Angels, this time publicly, since they're bound to show up!

# declare Petra your new containment facility and vector Remnant members you've arrested there, unless you have a better use for them.

Have we found a way to detect remnant marks?

# I didn't know female-presenting Angels existed, this is suspicious to me.

Also, we should start training all our staff in matrix like simulations in oder for them to belive in their ability to "bend the spoom" or Jump to the next building.

Start in small increments and test them outside of their simulations to see if we can create "super heros" or enhanced people via believing they can do it or are better than the average person in ability. Maybe even doge bullets, wrenchs, and dogeballs.

# (write in)
After that last shitshow with the demonic horsemen, I'm not sure there is any ability for reconciliation. I'd consider siding with the Devil out of spite at this point, but I've made it this far with out either side's help. Not going to change this simple because we lost a round.

Why don't you start. (talking.)
>>
>>3854673
# Are you trying to defect?
>>
>>3854673
# (write in)
Why should I Hire you? What would you want in payment? What is your reason and goals in this?

You can understand that I'd be hard press to trust you or risk allowing you to roam free, after what you and your kind has done either by orders coming from above, or of your own volition.
>>
>>3854676

Yes, you do have the ability to detect Remnant; your people chopped up some of the remaining demon locusts (which by now are all past their intended lifespan, so you're keeping them frozen -- they're insects, so they can take it) and used their eyes and nervous systems to build detectors.

>>3854534
>>3854676

You send Micah a bill. He ignores it. Just for fun, you decide to have one auto-sent every month, with the extra fees tacked on.

>>3854676

Adapting desalinators to extract water from blood is a difficult task, but since the next catastrophe coming is the same thing hitting freshwater sources, you want people to be prepared for it -- you convince the recalcitrant potentates that this is a bit of prophecy that's just going to have to pass, and encourage accumulating drinkable water and filters.

Thanks to your efforts in the past years, your preparedness is excellent, and Carla has a procedure for this stuff, developed in the days of Fragment 3.

At council, you point out that God is basically doing the same things over and over, just more overtly supernatural this time.

Carla keeps her worries about oxygenation to herself, but eventually they get out; you try to restore people's hope by setting up a pilot program in Thule that shows how some of the blood's nutrients that are being filtered out can be return to seawater and metabolized by phytoplankton.

Separating water from hemoglobin and proteins is hard work; all over the world people modify desalinators, improvise stills, and learn to live with the smell. Bloodmeal is produced in industrial quantities, and either kept or returned to the soil.

-----

>>3854676
>>3854688

VR training can definitely be a thing; how much focus are you willing to put on this? Of course, assisting in extracting water and fertilizer from the bloody oceans will tie up most of your resources that aren't being used in maintenance,

# and that's just how it is: VR stuff on the backburner.

# but Aki should get something to play with, and people should be able to find some hope, even in escapism; give it modest priority.

# but the VR project is more imprtant in the long term, and UNDRR got the desaliation, so focus on that.

Thanks to your earlier preparedness efforts, PSA videos are more effective than they would otherwise be.

>>3854688
>>3854700

"Are you trying to defect? Why should I hire you?"

"I'm trying to exist. If there's no night, what's the point of me? If there's no point of me, what will happen to me? We were created to be immortal servants, and yet.."

"Your leader has killed billions and now is trying to sabotage the environment so that we'll die off even after we defeat Him. I'd side with Lucifer just out of spite, if it wasn't for the fact that I already beat him."

"The perfect does not tolerate imperfection."

# Perfection is a goal that you can chase, but never catch. That's what God doesn't understand.

# Your story sounds too perfect. Not buying it.

# (write in)
>>
Also, lets start making gay/yaoi fan art with Tison and Chaim with the most cringyist captions along them and post them all over the net where remnant will see.
>>
>>3854705
# Perfection is a goal that you can chase, but never catch. That's what God doesn't understand.
>>
>>3854705
Can we have a more reliable one that can detect not reliant on bugs?

Maybe something that acts like Geiger counters?

# but Aki should get something to play with, and people should be able to find some hope, even in escapism; give it modest priority..

# Your story sounds too perfect.

# (write in)
Show me/Prove to me that I can trust you.

Who is the perfect in this case? (if its god then why did he create us? If he did not then hes trying to conquer and subjugate us when he has no more right than any tyrant.)
>>
>>3854705
># but Aki should get something to play with, and people should be able to find some hope, even in escapism; give it modest priority.
>>
>>3854705
# and that's just how it is: VR stuff on the backburner.
Priorities.

#(write in)
>>3854720
>Who is the perfect in this case? (if its god then why did he create us? If he did not then hes trying to conquer and subjugate us when he has no more right than any tyrant.)

Then(and this is off the cuff again):
"...Listen. I'd love to hire you, but here's the thing.

We already got burned by one agent of God--you might be familiar with him, big name, man of peace, ordered nuclear strikes on hospitals? He's in a cell now, but only because we paid in lives to put him there, and only after a good, long while of dancing to his tune until we, quite accidentally, discovered the strings.

So we're all wondering if you're not just here to put us up on strings again. "
>>
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22 KB GIF
>>3854710

A nice thing about this sort of memetic warfare is that it's cheap, and they can't really shoot back because any satire they try to do of you will be unintenionally cringy rather than ironically so. (See any Christian webcomic for examples)

Unfortunately, if there's any other way to detect the Sign of God on Remnant adherents' foreheads, you haven't found it.

>>3854729
>>3854720

VR arcades are popping up all over the place; the youngest people on Earth born before the Rapture are now 20 and 21, but escapism has its place -- rather than just gaming, now that the bandwidth and userbase is there IRC chatrooms ported to VR and given more personality become one of the main attractions. It's safe and clean in there. You do occasionally have to remind Aki to log out -- she's reconnected with whoever of her former crew are still alive -- but overall it looks fairly benign to you. Stories about people being able to access the VR grid in their dreams spread, but you do a cursory survey, and see tha they are stories.
>>3854720
>>3854717
>>3854732

"You say God is perfect, but how does a perfect plan involve ripping children from their mothers and murdering 85% of everybody?"

"Some would ask, how could a perfect God create a universe filled with so much that is evil. They have missed a greater conundrum: why would a perfect God create a universe at all?"

"So you're agreeing with me that the whole perfect plan thing is baloney?"

"You say that, not me." She's smiling gently. Maybe it's a concept that she is prevented from vocalizing, or even formulating in full.

"Prove to me that I can trust you. We already got burned by agents of God. Most of them are in cages now."

"Put me in a cage too then, I'll be your songbird. I trust that you will let me out some day."

# She's telling you what she thinks you want to hear, back to audio testing.

# Stick her in a containment suit.

# She's trying to get close to Carpatescu... heck no.

# Send her away with a message to her boss.

# The best way to send a message to her boss is the old fashioned way. Let's start with the biopsy.
>>
>>3854738
# She's telling you what she thinks you want to hear, back to audio testing.

She wants to be our songbird? Sing, then, let's see what kind of data you can give us. Maybe when this is all over and we're not discussing planetary annihilation, we can talk more.
>>
>>3854738
# She's telling you what she thinks you want to hear, back to audio testing.

# Stick her in a containment suit.

# She's trying to get close to Carpatescu... heck no.
>>
>>3854738
We also, should put entertaining games that teach and train skills, including socializing skills, and combat.

General education games, including ones that teach you to play and can transfer over to real life skills, such as eve online, and Counter Strike source.
>>
>>3854741
>>3854720
>>3854741
>>3854752

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyrKeThaEJM

"Your story sounds too perfect. You want to sing? Great, we need audio samples. You 'want to be my songbird'? This isn't a bodice-ripper and I'm not a horny teenager. Consider yourself a prisoner of war. Can you read?"

"I can speak all the tongues of man."

"I'll take that as a no. Prisoner of war means you've surrendered and the winners are not allowed to harm you. We are not barbarians."

You consider taking her to the blacksite and putting her in a containment suit, but she might be able to get out of it -- it may even be a ploy to get close to Carpatescu and let him out.

You tell her that if she wants to help - use her trumpet blast to break things, as directed, and that's all.

Later on, you mention the incident to Francesca during a NAP plenary session, and she tells you that you did the right thing, in her opinion; angels don't come with free will in Remnant tradition.

She does ask for pictures, though. "Interesting, so that's your type of girl, eh? Well, I'm not dying my hair, sorry..."

----------

The next plague turns the fresh water sources into blood, too... again, except for the Remnant -- they can pick up a bottle from a river and it'll turn back to water in their hands.

Fortunately, thanks to your and Carla's efforts, the people had desalinators ready; tanker trucks carry precious water in the interior. People have learned how to improvise stills, and do, but between that and the fact that none of the world's hydroelectric dams can work at capacity now,

Everything smells rotten. Coastal cities are the worst, but it's where the desalinators are. Public drunkenness spikes almost everywhere, simply because beer and wine are safe to drink.

The Zensunni, having spent years training themselves for the harsh desert life, send out missionaries to teach water discipline, and make a number of converts.

# Encourage it.

# Remain neutral.

# Discourage.

The silver lining is that you estimate that this is the last thing that's going to afflict the world; the other plagues cover people with the mark of the Beast, which simply never happened, or the city of New Babylon, which is no longer necessary in the grand scheme of things.

# Put forward this message: people trust CATS, and will be more hopeful for the future, but what if you are wrong?

# Just keep the various exegeses out on the web

The world doesn't feel like it's ending -- Tsion, when you let him publish a sermon, claims all sort of calamities that simply aren't there. But it certainly feels like it's winding down. Every week there's less of everything: food, water, free time since the water reclamation effort is titanic enough to cover the whole of society.

Carla thinks that it's a good time to slaughter most of the remaining meat cattle: this will make meat cheap for a few weeks, but then things will be even worse. What little feed is available must go to milk cattle.

# Agree

# Disagree
>>
>>3854775
# Agree
I love SPAM!

leave the quality cows alive, and take samples for cloning.

Hows the meat grown vat stuff going?
>>
>>3854775
Ask the angel to lie to us, to see if she can lie.
>>
>>3854784

The research is doing well; the stuff is palatable, for those who can afford it. It's not entirely vat-grown (you need cow wombs; it looks gross, but it's sanitary and not difficult to accomplish), and it's great for hamburgers but the meat so obtained has no nerves or fat and uniform muscle tones -- the steaks taste great but they look too uncanny valley.

One rung below is fake meat enriched with reconstituted hemoglobin (internet legend has it that they juts get it out of the ocean and sprinkle it in, rather than doing that and then chemically reconstituting it for hygiene's sake), it's made of beans and tastes okay, but you can tell.

Most people can't afford either and live on old cans or MREs, either somewhere rundown and dusty in the countryside or somewhere tiny in the cities.

The disasters have taken their tolls on the mind, at long last: people have enough to live on, yes, but except for those who have kids, not much to live for.

Even pagan rituals are giving way to a sort of apathy; Ragnarok didn't happen, the world is just... winding down, or so it seems to many. People spend a lot of time online, consuming content rather than sharing it. Why go to pubs when the Datalinks killed trivia night and all anyone can afford is one cup of coffee or one glass of wine?

https://jackchick.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/chick-parody-who-will-be-eaten-first/

The newest cult that sprang up are the Devourists -- they agree with Chaim on eschatology, but they preach that God is amoral, a soul farmer who planted two seeds in the Garden of Eden and now is reaping billions. Unlike the cult of the Old Ones, they claim that the least dismal option is not to be eaten first, but to do and feel and think as little as possible, so that one's soul may be diminished and not found worthy of consuming. Their services consist in meeting in empty rooms and rambling about any tiny little thing they've done since the last meeting, so as to appear as uniform as possible.

>>3854793

Lailah closes her eyes and enunciates. "This... statement... is... false." Then she points at your jacket -- with her nose, she's restrained -- and says "This suit is black not."

----

People need something to hope in. It's one of the last hurdles you have to jump, in many ways, but you have to.

# Ideas welcome!
>>
>>3854802
>People need something to hope in. It's one of the last hurdles you have to jump, in many ways, but you have to.

Get staff to splice together video footage from wherever they can get it, including our own archives, to try to assemble a sort of HFY highlights reel. Ideally even include some of Carpy's early speeches in forming the global community. Remind people that a world where humankind is not at war with itself is a dream that has been impossible for thousands of years, and now it is achieved. Not Under God, but Beyond God, and in time, standing atop a dethroned god. We will endure, we will survive, and whatever is thrown at us, we will learn once again to thrive!

Get the fringe nutbar scientists out to espouse barely testable hypotheses about genejacked algae consuming the hemoprotiens throughout the oceans. The artists and dreamers designing Cain's Ark, the generation ship for humanity to seize the stars themselves from the grasp of god.

Give Aki carte-blanche to use the VR to produce whatever whacked out porn she can conceive of, invent new perversions for a new world!
>>
>>3854775
Ask Lailah what other powers angels have

# Remain neutral.
# Just keep the various exegeses out on the web
# Agree
>>
>>3854895

Before clamming up, Lailah told you that Angels can fly, rebuke the world with their words, become as the giants of old in a fight, and other things that you have mostly seen. The size-changing is new to you; you have not seen that happen at all, and that's odd because it would be a very good way for them to escape the netting, at least before they're cuffed properly.
>>3854846

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6ugFcwsgpE

Your greatest successes were the first plagues, those that needed a reason to happen rather than just showing up by fiat. You build on that. Propaganda videos are nothing new, and in recent years thanks to streaming video the internet has become the place where they go be horribly mutated. The difference is that you know of that: this one is designed to be cut up, spliced, mixed. It's just little things -- match video with audio just like that, add a black frame between two scenes to encourage splicing right there. The result looks old-timey, a relic from the analog age, but it's supposed to come across as painfully earnest. Then you have it released it in the wild, cheating with search engine algorithms just a little bit so that it shows up often enough to acquire critical mass. People put it to chiptunes, splice it with cartoons, revert the message, make it about racism or faith or their favorite band. But it gets out there, and the snippets are well produced,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb-C9qrDJe0

The last snippet is sprouts coming out of the dust bowl after it has been churned up with blood meal, and irrigated by hail.

>>3854846

Aki stares at you for a few seconds after you ask her that, to the point that you have to make sure she's blinking. "I don't..."

She does. And if she doesn't -- you make it specifically so it's impossible to tell who uploaded what to where -- her fan club certainly does. Remnant commentators, including Chloe, react predictably to the wave of erotica that shows up shortly after, pointing out that humans were made in the image of God and this sort of masturbatory escapism is the sign of a civilization in decline. Chloe in particular compares it with being able to walk free in the friendly sun, green meadows, and healthy air in the coming Millennium.

Someone replies to her that if that's her fetish, she's welcome to it, and she's even welcome to get in a VR booth and get, or make a preview.

And that's how Chloe, through an intermediary, offers to buy a VR booth to be installed in Petra. If you do, you'll pack it with sensors.

# Sure, people must be bored to tears of eating manna and shitposting on web forums

# You'll have to do without

# I'll sell you it for a manna sample

>>3854784
>>3854895

Carla's suggestion is well taken. It takes a bit of doing to mandate this drastic step in what is still a market economy, but incentives and tax credits do their job.

Micah chides the world for having a last party before starving, and by response, someone air-drops him a steak.
>>
Question:

Why have we assumed that Lailah IS in fact an angel? She could be a demon you know...
>>
>>3854775
#Encourage it
#Agree

>>3854937
# I'll sell you it for a manna sample
>>
>>3854937
# I'll sell you it for a manna sample
>>
>>3854937

People find ways to cope. You did not expect magic to be one of them. You aren't sure why, and you'd like to know, and -- most frustratingly -- every time your people or even Zakharov's or Francesca's show up with instruments it stops working, but some priests of all the world's faiths have, bit by bit, learned how to perform miracles.

It's relatively small things, but it's still small things that violate the laws of physics. Bent spoons, sure, but also bathtubs of ocean blood turned back to water, trees coaxed to regrow branches in minutes from barely vegetating stumps, Maybe God's power is leaking.

And so, hope rebounds a little.

Rather than analyzing the phenomena, whose only repeatable characteristic is to fail to manifest when examined by anything other than eyes and ears (even a camera will mess things up: you've seen devotees of Varuna ask camera crews to turn their equipment off before a section of canal dug from the Siang river could be purified -- witnessing a miracle is pretty much the only reason why people would turn their smartphones off), you analyze the performers. This is not true for all of them, but what they do have in common is that they are well-versed in their own mythologies and have used immersive VR to train their abilities in low-poly form until they could manifest them. Granted, even the Primus Flamen of Zeus, with fifty thousand followers in a temple in Rome and two million online, is unable to so much as light a match without striking it as long as any instrument is watching.

The only faith not so crippled by measurable observation is the Remnant's.

# Clamp down on this by creating a security scare and incentivizing surveillance camera installations.

# Promote this by having a few intentional dead zones in the network, and sending observers.

# Only map where this works and doesn't -- it looks like the sort of power that would fail when you need it in a fight.

One of these miracle workers, stage name Oath and patron deity Horkos, even went to Petra to challenge the elders there to what amounts to a supernatural wrestling match.

# Allow it by turning off some sensors.

# Prevent it.

# Go watch it yourself.

>>3854949

Good question! She showed up with the same pattern as the other angels, but definitely looks different. She talks in something other than Bible verses, for example.

You've confirmed that she is from Jewish lore, but she's also the only female-presenting angel in there, and the book of Enoch is not Remnant canon. Looks like each angel has a specialty, they've only got one woman around.... at least they aren't blue or French.
>>
>>3854960
# Promote this by having a few intentional dead zones in the network, and sending observers.
# Go watch it yourself.

We ARE going with the counter-meme war, right?
>>
Do angels lay eggs then? =D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StzFZNWeMAY

On a more serious note, we should inquire how we should know she's an Angel or a Demon. Free Will.

----
# Only map where this works and doesn't -- it looks like the sort of power that would fail when you need it in a fight.

Non-Remnant magic has always come across as unreliable in my opinion.

#Go and watch yourself

Horkos?
>>
>>3854960
# Only map where this works and doesn't -- it looks like the sort of power that would fail when you need it in a fight.


# Allow it by turning off some sensors.

Good catch, Anon. My demon detector might be broken.
>>
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>>3854955
>>3854953

Chloe deigns to talk to you again, after months.

"I can't do that. It will spoil overnight, but there is always a fresh supply every morning anyway, so saving it is considered a lack of faith, and forbidden. by the elders."

"Okay, so give us a ration of manna a day for rental fees, and we'll study it in the hours we have."

"Foreman - you're missing the point. You can't take the universe and grind it down and sieve it if you're looking for justice or goodness or mercy."

"Is that what you think we do? We built the internet, we built BOCHICA. We're all about emergent behavior. That sort of parody reductionism belongs in Chick tracts."

She asks this of the elders, but they refuse. You tell her that the offer is on the table.

----

A few of your people are starting to exhibit additional faculties, although it's subtle. Domai got better at bending metal with his meaty hands than just strength would indicate, for example. One day you see Moira in the barracks, taking a shot of scumble (you don't want to know what's in it) and spitting out a flame that, while relatively harmless since it's just a flame rather than burning liquid, rivals some of those made by Eli and Moishe's. She's heard that some people don't even need to hold up a zippo, they can just snap their fingers and make a spark.

# Spend some time figuring out if you can do anything like this

# Focus on work

You have to conduct an informal statistic, because a formal one makes the effects go away almost as fast as gap generators do. Generally speaking, reputation helps (explaining why Moira can do that with little training), time spent around gap generators and CRTs hinders. Large flat screens have begun being a thing, that sort of consumer electronics being one of the few industries for which there is genuine demand, so you get some installed.

The next tournment of Vega's is interesting; there's a clear benefit in titanium shin and ulnar implants, and you're a little disturbed by how far some of his martial artists have taken things -- implants should not need continous maintenance, if one is to be a soldier rather than a prizefighter -- but you're inclined to believe the stories of what transpired in the off-camera events, people's legs and arms stretching out, people spitting fire after taking a tiny shot and making a spark with their hands in front of their mouths.

----

The two great projects you have started, in the meantime, continue. After a lot of trial and error, a plasma speaker with the right power output has been built that can nullify Hesediel's trumpet blast repeatedly. The Angel has been put into a situation in which it's the only thing he can do to affect its environment, so it does, screeching at technicians and breaking glass and ceramic and eardrums. Until the day that it doesn't, because a plasma speaker counters the effect. It becomes angry, agitated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1PwC7ViG8A&t=2s
>>
>>3854977
# Focus on work
We shouldn't do antichrist stuff
>>
#Focus on work
>>
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>>3854846
>>3854802
I'd like to give ourseves a goal and purpose, to fight and rsisit, overthrow Gods tyranny, and oppression. Pain it as such that only if we surrender our souls and will to him in which he allegedly gave to us in the first place does he seek to rob and take it away.

Make it a media plan to fight, and liberate ourselves so as to push ourselves further into the world and when we are ready, into the great beyond towards the void of space or the ethereal planes of heaven and hell if we must.

In short, we give humanity a purpose, a goal, and a future. Freedom and Prosperity.

Or something like that.

>>3854937
>>3854949
# I'll sell you it for a manna sample
Ask for 1/10 of it to be paid in manna.
The rest in cash. (still probably alot of manna)

Put Cameras up around Petra and line a path to the front entrance with camera's then test it by sending in drones with gap generators to see its effect.

Create a dead zone in areas we can oversee on each continent.

And of course keep tract of this stuff.

>>3854949
Good point, we should ask, or try to get her to interact with the other angels.

>>3854960
I intended for us to do it for ourselves and our teams in VR, Matrix style but oh well, we should try and train ourselves to bend reality a bit.

# Go watch it yourself.

>>3854977
# Spend some time figuring out if you can do anything like this

We should be a more public figure, a Hero of humanity, not its leader....
>>
>>3854960
>Only map where this works and doesn't -- it looks like the sort of power that would fail when you need it in a fight.
>Go watch it yourself.
I am not sure why the other stuff has started working, but I have two theories:
1. It is working because it is part of remnant lore, praying to a false god is essentially praying to a demon and would work if all christian stuff does work. This is also consistent with it being weaker. As god has become real so have his adversaries and their blessings, demons posing as gods.
2. "God" is indeed some kind of belief parasite and as we break narrative causality and peoples belief in non-christian things increases, it's powers become less focused, fizzling out onto other strong forms of belief. This is consistent with one major explanation for what we are dealing with and the only problem I have with this theory is that it first and exclusively manifested as christian lore becoming truth, even though there are other large belief systems. To be fair we wouldn't have noticed one of the other main religions becoming true. Abrahamic apocalypse is happening so christian, Muslim and Jewish belief becomes true, next on the list is Hindu/Buddhist, how would we have noticed that becoming true? So the alien parasite being shows up and makes the believes of the vast majority true, but only Abrahamic believes are noticeable and would also be the strongest as they have the most believers.
>>
Is South America seeing any particular uptick in superpowers because of the lack of cameras?

>>3854985
Well reasoned.

>Laylah

QM: Is it permissible to do our own research to form hypothesis?

I've formed a hypothesis about Laylah after reading a few articles on Angelology and Jewish folklore but I don't want to spoil things through metagaming.
>>
>>3854990
The spartan helmets?

The foreman can pretty much do the same thing you just did, but easier and with an AI and a bunch of secretaries and support staff.
>>
>>3854973
>>3854967
>>3854966

Survey-mapping things that resist systematic observations is intrinsically hard; you do that by asking people to report supernatural with approximate locations, and offering a small cash bounty. The system is very easy to game, but over the years Ryan Andrews has developed some skill to sniff out bullshit; he gives you what tips and personnel he can, in returns for publishing rights.

Eventually, you have a rough map of blue, green, and yellow zones, from least amenable to minor miracles to most.

Surveillance systems override most of these, line-of-sight; gap generators override these more or less in a spherical radius among themselves.

>>3854981
>>3854979
>>3854984

You're well-known enough to have some supernatural powers... maybe... but decide to not open that particular can of worms; you don't need that kind of crutch and you certainly don't need anything less than complete reliability. The best fireball-slinger in Vega's employ, courtesy of a bit of flint between the nails and an acquired taste for pure ethanol, becomes nigh-useless as soon as someone loads the camera program on their phones to record it. With careful timing and the use of a film camera (remember those?) a montage was made, for an ad... but since it's impossible for someone to hold perfectly still between frames, it looks like claymation.

>>3854985

(Both good starting hypotheses)

>>3854984

(Yay classic HFY!)

Lailah has been a lot less cooperative after someone told her how POW status works, unfortunately; she's talked to some people, but does not want to use her trumpet blast or any of her other powers.

>>3854985
>>3854967

Chloe did offer cash, a lot of it, but it's fairly meaningless to you at this point. You do take the time to point out that the very fact that she's offering cash means that the whole "mark of the Beast" business is nonsense.

The only way for this "challenge" to happen is for you to turn off some of the sensors you and Commissioner Lal had installed around Petra (which ended up being labeled as the only "orange zone" in the color map), so you get a couple of other observers -- you hate relying on witness statements, but there's no other way -- and head outside Petra yourself; the access to the Remnant city is restricted by a small canyon, on the walls of which are marked distances to the exclusion zone.

>>3854990

Yes, actually; you don't know if Santiago saw it coming , but hi-res cameras really ruin supernatural effects when they pass overhead; mapping had to be done keeping that into account. You could probably shut the whole thing down if you wanted to put up more eyes in the sky. In Santiago's territory, the lasting effect that your deal has had is that traditional communities are thriving once again; they're having babies, hunting, growing crops, and in a few places they're even de-bloodied sections of the great rivers by asking them to.

(It is, in fact, encouraged to do so)
>>
>>3854995

Fair enough: Here goes!

I think Laylah is in fact Lilith based off the following evidence:

A) Seductive female
- Lilith is the original succubus

B) Remarkable display of Free Will
- Lilith's fall from grace occurred because she wanted to be on top, which G_d was against.

C) Association with the Night
-Many translations of Lilith's names equate to the night (I.E. Night Monster, Screech Owl)

D) Layla is another of Lilith's names...

What's particularly interesting, if this hypothesis pans out, is that Lilith is not another demon subservient to Satan. Yeah she's portrayed as a demon, but she has her own agendas...
>>
>>3854997
Why don't we do something like earth hour, but instead we ask or will for all the fresh water sources to become clean and drinkable again, blood free, and some salt water bodies and seas.

We can keep the oceans bloody for the harvest to reconstitute the soil.
>>
>>3854984

This Oath guy is half pagan priest, half mountebank, and has a more infectious smile than Ryan Andrews', to the point that you wonder if he's using mind control (something that, at least as far as you can tell, so far seems to be the exclsive province of Carpatescu and maybe Tsion).

Chaim and the other elders are happy to prove the prophecy about false prophets and wonder-workers showing up in the last day, which is why they accepted the challenge.

Oath shows up with modern trucks and an actual old-timey circus wagon, and enough digging equipment to carve the facade of a small Greek temple in the sandstone in the canyon. He even put up flyers in nearby towns!

His largest brag is that he claims that people will be able to record his this, as long a they bring film cameras.

Petra has a small population of Orthodox Jews, largely people who moved out of Israel for political reasons or because they preferred a religious enclave of a faith not their own to life in a secular country... or, as some have commented, because they got addicted to manna. A number of them have been wanting someone to show Micah up -- guess not all is well in proto-paradise -- and seem interested in attending the show rather than watching it from afar with distain, as the Remnant will do.

Oath is putting up a big screen with a CLU instance on it. Oh, great... he's one of those.

# Don't give Chaim or the CLUltists ammunition; have gap generators brought in on the plateau, and turned on at the last minute. It'll make Oath look stupid, but that's his problem.

# You're genuinely curious; do not interfere, bring an old 16mm film camera, and just have people take notes.

>>3855003

That's definitely worth looking into.

# Ask yourself.

# Send someone you trust.

# Use a professional nterrogator.

>>3855004

That's a good idea; it will take a while to coordinate, and you figure that it's best if it looks like a grassroots initiative. While a global effort never manages to happen (there's always some jackass with a camera), local efforts are met with limited success, up to the size of a small pool, and soon temples turn into a secondary source of drinkable water, next to filtering plants. As often happens, the temples get a disproportionate share of the credit.

"Magic battles" between various traditions have been declared permissible by the Ecumenical Council, as long as there is no permanent harm -- with excommunication from the Council and full cooperation with the secular authorities if there is. Pontifex Francesca has to specify that singed eyebrows or hair don't count.

You don't know if raising faith in faith is overall a good idea, but it does give people who just aren't into MMOs something to do and talk about.
>>
# Don't give Chaim or the CLUltists ammunition; have gap generators brought in on the plateau, and turned on at the last minute. It'll make Oath look stupid, but that's his problem.

# Ask yourself
>>
>>3855011

# You're genuinely curious; do not interfere, bring an old 16mm film camera, and just have people take notes.

Study it with science! The old fashion way.....

# Send someone you trust.
The spirit of a plum- i mean Fr. Schorpe
>>
>>3855003
GOOD CATCH. High five, Anon.

# Send someone you trust. If only Schorpe were still with us. This was really his thing. :(

# You're genuinely curious; do not interfere, bring an old 16mm film camera, and just have people take notes.

We can squash the CLUtists later. CLU cant' be the antichrist, they're harmless.
>>
>>3855011
# Send someone you trust.
# You're genuinely curious; do not interfere, bring an old 16mm film camera, and just have people take notes.
>>
What if we ask Nicolae about these angels and demon names?
>>
>>3855011
We can start spamming earth hour now and start memeing it later.
>>
>>3855033

I agree. He might know some stuff. Maybe even mention the super powers? Maybe his mind-control is related to whatever-the-heck is going on right now.

It's like he has some sort of insider information that he's acting on.
>>
>>3855038
Wait, no don't.

We need to up the security and containment first.

He can probably manifest stronger or more powers. Best take alot of excessive precaution.
>>
>>3855011
One of the questions I forgot to ask Nicky was about the lighting strikes during his capture, was that his doing? including the one that hit the Humvee?
>>
>>3855045
I think that was Satan. He's described as the "Prince of the Powers of the Air" in a lot of Protestant circles.

The False Prophet would also be able to summon fire from the heavens, but we seemed to have dodged that particular threat.... I hope.
>>
>>3855048
>The False Prophet would also be able to summon fire from the heavens
*glances nervously at our satellites*
>>
>>3855052
Maybe not have nukes in orbit then...
>>
>>3855052
>>3855060

We should be fine as long as we don't nuke Remnant or non-believers. We're saving those for TJ and his armies, yes?
>>
>>3855065
>don't nuke Remnant
You ask of the impossirubu!

I thought we were saving them to take out any future comets.
>>
>>3855025
>>3855022

Oath is clearly a skilled illusionist, and starts his show with traditional things -- bending spoons, turning sticks into snakes and swords into doves, and so on. He invites people from the audience to stand behind him and spot the trick.

A couple of times, that happens, and when it does, Oath congratulates the spotter, focuses for a moment and performs the same trick without any hint of prestidigitation.

And then he moves on to things that just flat out can't be faked, like changing the angle of the shadows in the canyon, or making a small raincloud appear out of nowhere and gently drizzle on the audience once it gets warm and dry out.

He asks people to consider the possibility that Carpatescu did ascend into the digital realm, and points out that unlike Chaim and his folks, he's not there to force anybody. "Unless you want me to show you that I can do that!" he proclaims amidst a small display of thunder and lightning from the little cloud above, which darkens for a few seconds. There's laughter.

The Petran elders, and a group of Remnant around them, look on. A few people return to Petra, others offer to help Oath pack up - he has staff for that, though.

"Well, Dr. Rosenzweig, or is it Micah these days, that was my half of the performance. Let's see yours?"

The Petra elders stand, twenty meters inside the orange zone. Dr. Rosenzweig, in full Old Testament garb, shouts out a reply.

"Some have legitimately questioned how a loving God could shower the earth with such horrible plagues. Yet I ask you, what else could he have done after so many millennia to shake men and women from their false sense of security and get them to look to him for mercy and forgiveness? Think of how merciful he has been. He removed his church before the Tribulation began. He sent two supernatural witnessing preachers to Jerusalem to communicate his love. He sent angels of mercy to help people make their decision for Christ. Most of all, in his mercy, God still allows people to decide their own eternal destiny, whether to choose Jesus or Satan. God has prompted us to use the brilliant minds and technology we have been blessed with here. Anyone who communicates with us via the Internet will get a personal response with everything you need to know about how to receive Christ. We also have teams of rescuers who can transport you here if you are being persecuted for the sake of Christ. Many of our own loved ones have lost their lives in the pursuit of righteousness. But we will do what we can until the end to keep fighting for what is right. For in the end, we win, and we will be with Jesus."

"A website ad? That's it?"

There are boos. Oath walks into the zone, brandishing a contract. "Now listen here, we had a deal to-"

There's a tremor, and he falls into a small sinkhole that opened up under him; there's another tremor, and it closes, leaving a few lines in the dirt road, like a scar. People scatter and run away.

# Leave.

# React.
>>
>>3855093

# Leave

Not much point doing something here, we need to kill the hostile God making a literal hole in our reality.

Not sure if killing his little cult with gas will even work, and I can't think of any OTHER ways to do it.

That said, with this record of an overt murder, I think we can get warrants out for those "rescuers". Kill on sight?
>>
>>3855093
# React.
See if we can dig him out with remote controlled construction equipment.
>>
>>3855099
#Leave

I must disagree. If we kill the 'rescuers' we feed the persecution complex which is driving this narrative.

Here's a question.... Is there dissent among the Remnant about sentencing people to
Death-by-Sinkhole? Micah just sent a guy to hell before there was any chance to convert him.

From the looks of things, there is already grumbling among the Orthodox Jews in Petra...
>>
>>3855033

You talked with Carpatescu by having one of the people who monitor his head type things back and forth on his offline PC and a regular terminal; he claims that he has no idea. About Lailah being Lilith, it sounds like the sort of thing where the Sumerian god Baal became the demon Beelzebub.

"If I were you, I would not trust her any more than you have been trusting me."

>>3855019
>>3855022

After all of this, you send one of the people who were working at TTI for a brief interview; his take on Lailah is that either she's genuinely afraid, or she's very good at mimicking the body language of a human being who is afraid in terms of fidgeting, blinking, and the like; she does claim that there's no place for her in the Millennium or thereafter, as there will be no more night, and Angels do not exactly get an afterlife.

She does, however, seem to understand that there are more than two sides in this -- that's a first.

# This is a distraction, don't waste too much time on it.

# There may be something to this, give her a chance to cooperate.

----------

Your researchers are now trying to find a way to disrupt a trumpet blast without knowing its angle, phase, and source vector; the first attempt was with a lot of white noise, but it didn't particularly help.

"We need to get the air to vibrate as we want, and only as we want, crowd everything else out" says the report summary. Brainstorming sessions haven't brought much in -- ideas were come up with, tried out, and failed. The technological spinoffs are interesting, the medical applications alone would make removing gall or kidney stones a same-day procedure with no surgery, but that doesn't do much for you right now.

Plan B seems to be doing better -- all that's needed there, at the end of the day, is building U-H warheads. At least for now: the difficult part is going to be putting them where you want, namely, in a precise pattern under the Mount of Olives.

# If it comes to that, they will have to fall from the sky. The hard part will be timing the fall.

# Put them on tracked chasses, and they'll have to get there just before the Last Day.

# Time to dig.
*either clandestinely or
* by asking permission.

>>3855111
>>3855099
>>3855108

Micah is convinced that wonder-workers like that are damned either way (Chloe and Tsion disagree, although Tsion has decided that the Mark of the Beast is being installed on schedule and it's just invisible to those who don't have it). Dissent in a culture where the elders can open the earth beneath your feet and let it swallow you, you figure, is difficult to express.

While using a drone excavator might be a good way to get the poor bastard out, you don't have any available immediately.
>>
>>3855118


# There may be something to this, give her a chance to cooperate.

# Time to dig.
* by asking permission.

Israel has cooperated so far, and we dealt with the Two Witnesses with minimal damage. As far as I can see, they either owe us, or are in their best interests to work with us.
>>
# There may be something to this, give her a chance to cooperate.

Something in a non-critical project.

#Time to dig
-by asking permission

Israel still remembers the Witnesses. We can maybe onboard the Prime Minister by discussing what we know and point out that, despite the Remnant's 'Jewish trappings', they are effectively seeking the destruction of the Jewish culture.

They attitudes towards the Jewish faith is that those who don't convert to Judaism will be destroyed by Jesus.
>>
>>3855118
# There may be something to this, give her a chance to cooperate.
# Time to dig.

>>3855124
>>3855128
You two are both green/brown and gave the same response, nice
>>
>>3855118

The Petra website do put up a short video of what happened, and indicate that this was an act of God, not something that Chaim or any of the elders cause: as proof, they show them unmoving, arms crossed, while Oath breaks out a contract and marches into the orange zone to complain.

And then, every coastal and riverine city in the world -- most of the major ones, therefore -- makes a collective gag of disgust, as the seas and rivers start boiling over. It's hot, all of a sudden -- you skipped summer, back when Yellowstone erupted, and now half the world may well skip winter.

It's uncomfortable, extremely so, but not to the point that Tsion talked about when he said that those with the mark and those who worshiped Antichrist would burn if they so much dared as get out into the light of day.

Thanks to the building-insulation campaign you promoted months ago, indoors is safe. CellSol pylon energy intake has not changed after having slowly recovered from the volcanic cloud, although everyone says that the days are brighter and the shadows starker.

# Check on the Peacekeepers, most of whom are still CLUltists.

# Advise moving to a night schedule if at all possible.

# Check on your people.

Dr. Rosenzweig, or rather Micah -- there isn't much left of the kindly botanist in the berobed, bearded figure that rules Petra, although unlike Tsion or the Two Witnesses at least he isn't found of shouting -- proclaims that this is the beginning of the last year of the Great Tribulation, and encourages Remnant to redeem the time ("Kairos!" as he says, yelling the word out for once rather than speaking in a conversational tone) since it will be now that they begin having the upper hand. "Do good work during the day, as the enemy is relegated to lurking in the shadows!"

It is true that Dr. Diamond reports a lot of heatstroke cases all of a sudden, but there are no significant increases in widlfires... yet.

Carla considers an evacuation order, but there isn't anywhere to go, most of the time. She warns that people will get sick from the vapors, recommends staying indoors, and at some point throws her arms up at you -- she's got no idea how to deal with this one.

# Offer comfort, as a colleague.

# Offer comfort, personally.

# Give her some hope by pointing out that unless she cares about New Babylon shutting down, this is the last one.
>>
>>3855118
# There may be something to this, give her a chance to cooperate.

*Sigh* Make remote operated heavy equipment,
store them in thule, and around the middle east, and at our HQ.
>>
>>3855136
I know, cray right?

>>3855148
# Check on the Peacekeepers, most of whom are still CLUltists.

# Offer comfort, personally.
>>
>>3855136
>>3855128
>>3855124
>>3855150

It's clearly time to build an armada of drone construction vehicles; hopefully you won't end up having to put guns on them, but you want to leave yourself the option.

You have to make a formal visit to the new prime minister, Arik Scheinermann; he's a former general, and ran on a platform of armed neutrality that caused Corazon Santiago to congratulate him formally after he was sworn in. Telling him that you want to fill the Mount of Olives with nuclear land mines will be a hard sell,

# but you try to do just that -- cards on the table.

# but you point out that it might be good for Israel to have its own underground warren, like Petra or like the bunkers that Yang is constructing.

# but you try to sell this as a part of an underground canal initiative, lined in such a way that they won't turn to blood.

# (write in)

------

As for Lailah, you offer her a chance to cooperate; all she agrees to do is use her trumpet blast to, well, break things, and help see if it can be stopped. She seems a little surly that you turned her down, although how does that even work in the first place?

# She should have a "shouting match" with Hesediel, to see if the two trumpet blasts interfere with each other.

# She should provide intel about the heavenly host.

# That's sufficient help.

She's made it clear that she's afraid for her continued existence -- Angels don't exactly get fired when surplus to requirements, do they?
>>
>>3855148
# Check on the Peacekeepers, most of whom are still CLUltists.

# Advise moving to a night schedule if at all possible.

# Check on your people.


# Offer comfort, personally.
time to get laid.

Also start making like full body travel and lfexiby suits, like Mass effect, or something that looks like fallout, or some dude in all leather, wearing a motorcycle helmet with a backpack that carries a generator.
>>
>>3855157

# but you try to do just that -- cards on the table.

---

# She should provide intel about the heavenly host.

Crazy Thought:

What if we introduced her to the GCASA guy? He works in space, and she is the 'Angel of the Night'. Maybe if would help her morale if she knew how much humanity admires space, the endless sea of stars which is in her domain?
>>
>>3855148

# Advise moving to a night schedule if at all possible.

# Give her some hope by pointing out that unless she cares about New Babylon shutting down, this is the last one.


>>3855157
# but you try to sell this as a part of an underground canal initiative, lined in such a way that they won't turn to blood.

Should that fail, cards on the table.

# She should have a "shouting match" with Hesediel, to see if the two trumpet blasts interfere with each other.
>>
>>3855156

The Peacekeepers aren't burning... but their clergy is. A few people called themselves sysadmins of Carpathianism -- some of them even with some understanding of what they were talking about, some just bandying about 1980s computer jargon as if it was arcane incantations -- and about half these people were in fact found spontaneously combusted. The remaining clergy is staying indoors.

Elsewhere, there have been cases of arson in the homes of prominent financiers and bankers, invariably preceeded by a well-coordinated attack on their security systems.

Micah claims that those who took the Mark in secret so that they could be the "real" buyers and sellers of everything in the world are being supernaturally punished; local police seems to think it's a matter of Marxists taking advantage of what's going on.

Tsion says that the dwellings of those who took the mark would indeed burn, but... as far as you know exactly zero people have taken the mark: cash is slowly dying off since nearly everyone has a card or an e-payment system, but if you were to walk to San Felipe from your HQ and try buying groceries at ten stores, ten would take your Nick notes (which, by now, have taken the Euro convention of having a common face and a territory-specific face). Granted, you'd spend twice as much money as you would have a couple of years ago, more than that if you were to buy what little fresh fruit is available, but still...

The oceans are literally boiling off; the heat is sufficient to close down seasides in almost every city and town, and melt polar icecaps, with big icebergs detaching from Antarctica and starting to dilute it.

>>3855162

That's a good idea. McLachlan has been hesitant to resume a manned space program when people's average meal is a MRE from four years ago, for fear of backlash, but so far, six copies of Alkahest have been built and a dozen more are on the way; he's even used one of the Energias to launch a space telescope in a polar orbit, roughly halfway between the Earth and the Moon.

# Introduce him to Lailah.

# Don't.

UNDRR encourages people to move to a night schedule; the energy expense that this brings in is pretty negligible, overall -- energy isn't expensive, food is.

>>3855159

The heat is making motorcycle travel more popular than it used to be, because it's open to the wind and because, Harleys aside, bikes get better gas mileage than cars, which is important if food is consistently expensive. The average person using private transportation between cities rather than mass transit will, in fact, end up looking like a leather enthusiast.
>>
# Introduce him to Lailah.
>>
>>3855157
Arik, let me level with you, your an old general and you've probably had enough politics for a few lifetimes, I can try and sell you some bullshit, but frankly I don't like the smell.

# but you try to do just that -- cards on the table.

We maybe be facing total affiliation, the remnant have claim all non believers will be destroyed, and sure you can't expect all of Israel to covert to Christianity overnight? If we're wrong, great, no need to blow up a mountain, but if we are right, then there will come a man who has had nearly 2000 years to hold a grudge against people who crucified him and he won't be taking no for an answer.

>>3855157
# She should have a "shouting match" with Hesediel, to see if the two trumpet blasts interfere with each other.

# She should provide intel about the heavenly host.
>>
>>3855178

Maybe don't bring up the crucifixion as that is a VERY sore point for the Jews (Their role as 'Christ Killers' was the role for their persecution), but we should definitely emphasize that despite the Jewish trappings of the Remnant, their policy towards Israel is "Convert or Be Destroyed".

Otherwise, your approach is quite good.
>>
>>3855169
# Introduce him to Lailah.
Is the sun scorching us or are people jsut really really hot like greenhouse effect?

What happened to the making the giant space mirror?

I thought we were going to try that?
>>
>>3855169
Well investigate the attacks and I dunno, have giant blimps float up with large white sheets of nylon or whatever to filter out some of the sun, and reflect the rest?

Send giant blankets into space that block a bunch of sunlight? have self repairing materials that allow it to be hit by micrometeorites? Send a satellite to the sun to see whats up?

Hell at this point we may as well move the moon into the path of the sun.
>>
>>3855179
well maybe frame it as that is how THEY see it.
>>
>>3855169

# Don't.

Not yet. Stop the apocalypse first.
>>
Rolled 130 (1d1000)

>>3855179
>>3855178
>>3855163
>>3855162

You explain what's going on to Mr. Scheinermann, concluding with pointing out that the various prophetic events have at least been trying to happen. He sighs.

"It wouldn't do any good, nukes no longer work."

"Ours do. We blew up Akhenaten. Let's look at the worst case scenario: I'm right, and in a year or so some alien or extradimensional being claiming to be Jesus as understood by American Evangelicals shows up. He would literally melt the flesh off the bones of everyone in Jerusalem first, and then kill almost everyone anyway a couple of days later."

"I've read the whole thing, yes. You stopped Folgore's army, and you eliminated the so-called Two Witnesses; we have no reason to not trust you, Foreman. What perplexes me is what makes you think that this would work."

"It's plan B. Plan A is using methods similar to those employed the Witnesses."

"I accept, on one condition: your men will do the excavation work under IDF supervision, and after it's completed, you're going to give me the ignition key. Not the army, not Parliament, not the office of the prime minister: me. Someone needs to be accountable, and if it must come to pass that we have to blow up half of Jerusalem to save the world, it's gong to be an Israeli and a man who understadnds the responsibility."

# Take it.

# Leave it.

# Argue.

>>3855180
>>3855174

Lailah's understanding of space seems to be firmly stuck in the Ptolemaic era; McLachlan is enormously surprised that you have an Angel in custody, but gets over it and tries to explain to her what his agency does, what previous space agencies have done, and even a primer on the history of space exploration. She looks tremendously sad. "You tell a wonderful story, and I so wish that it was true, but I know it isn't, not really."

>>3855163

The "shouting match" is arranged, and while you confirm that two Angels cannot hurt each other -- their eardrums burst, but heal in seconds -- the research team is extremely interested by the interference patterns. They arrange to have both Angels fire at the same person, an older guy who is already completely deaf and has volunteered to wear a bulky noise-dampening suit and hold up glass and ceramic bowls.

This generates a deep harmonic, which shakes the building for a moment and which the deaf guy also perceives, through bone conduction. Further testing shows a harmonic in the 40Khz range.

"They're superheterodyning the air!"

Air is not a perfectly linear method for the conduction of sound; sending out two pulses of a similar frequency and timbre, that match exactly other than for a small details, causes "beats", quasi-stable peaks and throughs that themselves form different frequencies -- the sum and the difference of the original signals, specifically. It's nothing new in the radio frequency domain, but doing it with sound is at the very least novel.

"Does this help us?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMkgQshDdcI
>>
>>3855200
# Argue.

"Backup keys will be in the hands of the people who need them. We have seen people lose their mental faculties, die, or outright disappear at a moments notice, and this will be a situation where seconds count."

>>3855200
Yes, yes it does help us.
>>
>>3855200
# Argue.
We get the other key. And you wait for the all clear before setting it off. I don't want my people dying in a nuclear explosion if they don't have to.
>>
>>3855209
I think there should be 4 keys, two are required to fire the ignition, and etc.
>>
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>>3855200

"Immensely. if we send out our own pulses, and if they are strong enough, we can effectively saturate the atmosphere with sound so that the only thing that goes through is our signal. Normally, it's like AM radio: if two stations are conflicting you'll hear a mix of the two. A superheterodyning speaker array moves us into the FM domain, where if there are two conflicting signals, you get the stronger one, maybe with some warbling. It's the whole reason why music radio stations moved to FM in the first place."

"So?"

"So, we can shut someone up conclusively -- physically, that is, the sounds won't even leave their throat -- without having to worry about what they are trying to say."

"Sounds about right for AM talk radio."

It's a bad joke, and your people know you're a good enough boss that they aren't afraid of groaning at you for it.

"Let's build one and see what it does."

After testing it on regular sources of sound, further testing will be done on

# Lailah

# Hesediel

# Eli

# Carpatescu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDZn6X8je1g

----

>>3855209
>>3855213

"I understand your concern, but I cannot trust someone who is not an Israeli citizen with this. What if they go mad, or convert to the Remnant and decide that it fits their crazy timeline?"

"I don't want my people to die from a nuclear explosion either. I would have the other key."

"That's sensible. In that case, I request the only form of insurance possible in a nuclear escalation, since it's where we are: mutually assured destruction."

# Agree to install a nuke under your HQ, and give him the key for it.

# Agree to install a nuke under Thule and give him the key for it.

# Both.

# What? No!
>>
>>3855219
# Hesediel


# What? No! We know when this is going to happen, you EVACUATE, not get blown up!

PKE meter? Is this guy being mind controlled?
>>
# Agree to install a nuke under your HQ, and give him the key for it.

# Hesediel
>>
>>3855219
# Carpatescu
This guy is bored enough to participate I'd bet.
Keep both of them SEPARATE!

# What? No!
We're putting a bunch of nukes under a mountain not under the fucking Israeli parliament or PM's House. Also we don't have enough nukes for this.

Ask him directly if he is Remanent or something, or use the bug detector on this guy.

Maybe we should put the nukes in space then.

So we doing anything about the scorching heat?

No missions to block out the sun? We could even do a Mr Burns thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyjJbhuwGkU

Maybe this is his ploy to get Israeli into a nuclear armed state again.
>>
It's possible he could be compromised by mind control. Or he could be paranoid. Its not like people haven't tried to destroy Israel of the Jews before.

I go with the HQ route because we could just do what we did with the Chicago base and hollow it out.
>>
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>>3855223
>>3855237

The PKE meter isn't wriggling around a whole lot; you did after all just suggest to a foreign power that he let you install nuclear weapons next to their largest city.

You refuse, noting that it would make no sense to install a nuclear weapon under your HQ and give the initiation code for it to a foreign head of government.

"That we agree on, Foreman, that we agree on. Please rest assured that the IDF are going to function like the modern, competent military force they are, should any threat from this world or the next come to our homes. We will let you know if we can think of any areas in which we might cooperate about."

That sounded a lot like "don't call us, we'll call you".

>>3855245

(That's a distinct possibility, yes)

# Change your offer.

# Switch to air or orbital drop then.

>>3855228
>>3855223

The prototype build is not dissimilar in appearance from a Gap Generator, although instead of the sphere on top, there is what looks like a large diapason with a radar dish behind it. The underlying technology, too, is similar; the difference is that instead of generating white noise, the system now has a specific message to send out into the air. A regular waveform, say a piece of music, is processed in a way that two ultrasonic output, high enough in frequency to be directional, will produce the original waveform (and an even higher ultrasonic wave, which would be lost as heat) when impacting a surface, such as Hesediel's mouth. The only prerequisite for the input waveform is that it must have no pauses in it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd0MGxtfC3k

Hesediel has seen better days; even Angels get disheveled after weeks in confinement, and he's had to be allowed to do some damage to his containment cell in order to not get discouraged and stop using his trumpet blast.

Angels don't react to music, but this one should be different; your researchers blast the song into the cell, and have the deaf employee pass by the window carrying a fishbowl.

Nothing happens, except for your people cheering. What used to take carefully placed sensors, a few kilowatts of speaker output, and a lot of processing power now takes, well, even more processing power and a few dozen kilowatts of speaker output since ultrasonic transducers are insanely inefficient, but crucially, no sensors.

You can crowd out all sound from a target surface. A little bit of trial and error reduces Hesediel to near tears -- not a fan of prog metal, probably, or it's starting to understand what it feels like to be powerless -- but verifies that at other than short distances, the system needs at least two emitters coming from a specific angle, though.

You can cut an Angel's mic off, giving you a chance to do that with Jesus. What will you do afterwards?

# Kill him. If he comes back after three days, rinse and repeat.

# Imprison him. It has worked well so far with "unkillable" beings.
>>
>>3855251
># Change your offer.
"Fine, you want the key? Deal."

We fake it, we're the Internet, we're really good at that. If we can't build an undetectable backdoor at this point we're REALLY awful.

No, the IDF are going to get greased or mind controlled, I hate this guy and I'm tempted to disappear him to make the nuke project easier.

The good news is plan A is going better

# Imprison him. It has worked well so far with "unkillable" beings.
>>
#Change your offer

Nuke plan is backup plan, yes?

Ergo, we give the Prime Minister the key.

We stress that this plan is a fail safe should containment fail.

We also reiterate that the Remnant's leadership isn't Israel's ally just because Chaim is preaching for them now. One way or another they want the destruction of the Jewish culture; they're waging the same hate war that has persisted since the time of the Romans.

(We also install a backdoor as our own contingency.... and keep the Remnant hacker away from it)

#Imprison him.
>>
>>3855251
# Switch to air or orbital drop then.
This Fucker, I say we let half of Israel burn before saving their asses.

I would have been open to multiple people having the trigger and they all need to agree before being able to fire it so we don't die or get blown up too early.

# Kill him. If he comes back after three days, rinse and repeat.
I think this would be the best option but I kinda don't want to the THAT GUY who killed Jesus.
# Imprison him. It has worked well so far with "unkillable" beings.

>>3855254
We can do things like the soviets, where we have the guy in charge with the nuke button, but we disconnected the button.

>>3855262
Can we give it to the previous PM? Why did he even lose the election...

Also whats to say for him to go, fuck it, blow em all up? They are safe and that is all that will matter to them, if a few people had to unfortunately die oh well.

That seems to be his thinking.
>>
>>3855272

The problem is that we need Israel as an ally if we want to operate in the country.

How about this:

We push for cooperation with the Israeli military to contain a potential hazard, similar to the Witnesses, but with harmful intentions towards the current regime.

If sonic containment fails, we go with the orbital air drop. (We just won't mention this option.)
>>
>>3855262
>>3855254

"I know full well what Dr. Rosenzweig wants. Much like Rabbi Ben-Judah, he has bought into the Christian Remnant's ideology completely. My request is that nuclear devices be installed under your primary industrial center, in Greenland, kept under IDF surveillance, and with both of us having the ignition code, much like the ones you intend to plant under the Mount of Olives."

# Take it.

# Leave it.

>>3855272

That seems to be his thinking, yes. The previous PM lost the election due to his indecisive handling of Folgore's attack; the current PM is a former general, and the Israelis are nervous about having the Peacekeepers' main headquarter relatively nearby.

-------------

>>3855237

The heat wave is not due to solar activity: it's due to the blood in the oceans having started to boil. As to how that is happening, and where the energy is even coming from, there's no way to tell.

You're going to focus your security teams to

# investigate the arsons in financiers' homes.

# keep an eye on the main PK base at Al Hillah, and on Petra.

# acting as the meatspace arm of your network security.

# keeping your containment sites well protected, what with having Angels around and so on.

The boiling oceans have made it so sea transport is unsafe, simply due to the fact that steel-hulled boat reach intolerable temperatures. ICCO was largely air-based, so they're making a mint right now...

... and then just as fast as it started, it stops. The great boiling and bubbling ceases, and in the arc of 24 hours, the seas and rivers are clean once more.

Too clean. They have been scoured of life. Eventually, over weeks, they're going to cool down.... the heat wave is continuing, and possibly getting slowly but surely worse if anything.

# Take credit for this reversal of fortune, or suggest UNDRR do.

# You had nothing to do with it.
>>
On the topic of orbital launches...

Maybe we could ask Lailah what her job as 'Angel of the Night' entails? If we tell her we are fighting for 'the Night' she could lend her Narrative Causality powers to ensure our satellite, in her domain, lands precisely where it needs to?
>>
>>3855279

# Take it.

And fake it. They have NO IDEA how our nuke technology works or what a real UH bomb looks like. Keep it that way.


# keeping your containment sites well protected, what with having Angels around and so on.


# You had nothing to do with it.
>>
>>3855279
Wait what? I thought he wanted one under our HQ, did he change his mind or he wants to put them under both? And does he expect us to make more nukes for him to plant under ourselves?

# Leave it.
He can plant nukes under one maybe, not both.

Better to put them in orbit instead.

In order of most important
# keeping your containment sites well protected, what with having Angels around and so on.

# acting as the meatspace arm of your network security.

# keep an eye on the main PK base at Al Hillah, and on Petra.

# investigate the arsons in financiers' homes.

Idk if the number of teams we have is still relevant, but lets recruit more people, including agents for stuff like a replacement for Raman and Dr. Robertson.

# You had nothing to do with it.

>>3855292
What if they try to steal one?

We should make sure it cannot happen, set off an entire chain of nukes if we have to.

I don't know where the nukes are being put now.
>>
>>3855272
>>3855262
>>3855254

The little council of war you're presiding is coming to a close.

"We need to lock Him up. I want a containment system design that is mobile and that can hold anything."

"Why not just cut Him to ribbons?"

"We don't know what that would do. We didn't kill Carpatescu because we didn't want him to come back as Satan. I don't want to deal with Super Jesus three days after we blow Regular Jesus' eardrums out."

The engineers are tasked with designing a containment system that is mobile and can be deployed immediately. It ends up looking like a front-loading garbage truck had sex with a WW2 heavy tank and then their offspring decided to get a gender change.

Actually, you don't know what sort of terrain the containment system and the superheterodyning plasma speakers will have to be brought across; the Mount of Olives is basically rolling hills, despite the name, but who knows what the place would look like on the day of the Glorious Appearing. There's supposed to be another meteor shower (although you have nothing on radar), rain of blood as if that would impress anybody after the whole ocean turned into blood, hail, all sort of craziness.

The containment system has to be heavy and must be mounted on a tracked platform, but the speakers are going to be carried by

# helicopter; let's ignore terrain entirely.

# the same tracked platform, that way if one can get through, all can.

# a wide wheeled platform, for speed and stability

# (write in)

>>3855316

He changed his mind; he wants to be able, at least in theory, to hit your population, not your command capabilities.
>>
>>3855322
Tell him we intended to put him in Greenland.

Also, What About The Nukes? How are they gonna put nukes under us? We don't have enough to make more, and we sure as heck aren't going to waste time making more.

If hes going to put his own nukes, then all we have to worry about is radiation poisoning, which is fine by me if he just derped.

# helicopter; let's ignore terrain entirely.
>>
>>3855322
# helicopter; let's ignore terrain entirely.
>>
>>3855322
># Multiple Wiesel AWCs adopted to the purpose, and airlifted via helicopter.

Best of a lot of worlds: redundancy, mobility over rough terrain, and ability to take a hit or two.
>>
>>3855345
We should make the containment indiana jones fridge safe approved.
>>
Rolled 664, 99, 77 = 840 (3d1000)

>>3855336
>>3855316

To clarify: He wants CATS to build a U-H warhead, install it in the middle of Thule near the geothermal spike, and then give him, personally, the access code for it.

This is in order to assure Mutually Assured Destruction,

>>3855316

Your current "Plan B" is to plant nuclear mines across the Mount of Olives so that instead of being split east to west, as per Zechariah 14:4, it will either be leveled or split apart north to south.

>>3855348
>>3855345
>>3855336

You reckon that any hailstorm, supernatural or otherwise, severe enough to prevent helicopters from flying would also make it impossible to effectively use the entire setup anyway. While a helicopter-transported fixed platform will make it hard to follow the target if He moves, it will also be cheaper to produce in bulk, and easier to aim by using a pan-tilt mount.

A proposal to adapt Wiesel tankettes (technically AFVs, but they do look like WW2 tankettes) to carry one superheterodyning plasma speaker each is also advanced. The vehicles are easy to convert to unmanned operation and can, if stripped of weapons, haul around a Mk5 gap generator and a sufficiently beefy battery for it.

>>3855316
>>3855292

Your focus on protecting the containment areas pays off when, shortly after the world's waters finally start cooling down, the Young Tribulation Force finally finds the black site.

They definitely have Angelic help; the wide-range patrols around the site have been paralyzed or knocked out by trumpet blasts, and the YTF (roughly thirty people with motorcycles, ATVs and squad weapons) have made camp just outside gap generator range.

They don't seem to know you are holding Carpatescu: their demands are that you release one of their own, a certain Naomi Tiberias, who got busted for trying to piggyback on the MCP override in order to order the Peacekeepers around as CLU. She was subsequently used for non-invasive occult research.

They're all young people; you even recognize Lionel from the Jerusalem warehouse.

# Sure, take her, you don't care.

# Strafe these fools.

# Converge from your Chicago warehouse and from Effincold and add them to the blacksite population, if that's what they want.
>>
>>3855385
Re the warhead: yup. Build a real warhead, they'll be looking for a fake. They'll be looking for wireless jamming. We need gap generators to make sure it works. Just make sure the gap generators are close enough to the line carrying any kind of access signal to make sure it can NEVER go off.

I like the Wiesel idea.

# Sure, take her, you don't care.

I want these guys GONE. We shouldn't have put this Naomi in the blacksite, we should have had her in another holding facility. We got sloppy, if they free the Antichrist WE ALL DIE.
>>
# Sure, take her, you don't care.
>>
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>>3855385
>This is in order to assure Mutually Assured Destruction

>Nuke a empty mountain =/= Nuke a empty city.

Now if he lets us put a nuke or two under their biggest city.... That would amount to MAD.

>>3855385
Wiesel Chan!
>>
>>3855385
# Strafe these fools.
We gonna capture another angel now?
# Converge from your Chicago warehouse and from Effincold and add them to the blacksite population, if that's what they want.

>>3855403
We should not let her go, we went through a bit of shit losing so many actions chasing "Rose".

Plus we know that she might try to take control of the PK if they succeed in messing with our systems.
>>
>>3855403
We did not get sloppy, we just ignored all the times I wanted to build more blacksites.
>>
>>3855385
>To clarify: He wants CATS to build a U-H warhead, install it in the middle of Thule near the geothermal spike, and then give him, personally, the access code for it.
>This is in order to assure Mutually Assured Destruction,
He's compromised. He's trying to keep us from leveling the Mount of Olives and stopping shit.
>>
>>3855316
>>3855292
>>3855409
>>3855422


The Mount of Olives area used to effectively be a suburb of East Jerusalem before the Rapture. While it's true that depopulation has caused cities to shrink, they've remained dense, largely for reasons of efficiency in mass transit and infrastructure maintenance. As a result, the area is less inhabited now, but any fallout would hit East Jerusalem with prevailing winds.

Jerusalem is anything but empty, either.

>>3855409

(Yeah, it's a very cool design for this purpose)

>>3855403
>>3855406
>>3855414

As much as it's tempting to eliminate or detain the Young Tribulation Force entirely, it might be easier to simply hand over Naomi Tiberias: if it were discovered by Remnant that you are holding Carpatescu, they might launch a full scale attack or even bomb the facility.


>>3855421

Lailah and Hesediel are in Thule, simply because it was easier to prototype the electronics and metalwork necessary to do the sound testing.

Eli is also in Thule, under very heavy lock and key. The recent warming episode did not affect the liquid nitrogen based heat exchanger around his cell.
>>
>>3855429

Well if the Mount of Olive is going to be terraformed at the Second Coming, the area is going to get wrecked regardless...
>>
>>3855429
I would have had two black sites in Canada, and 1 in Thule at the very least.

What do we even do with the Neutrino observatory? Also how did anything even get down there, I assume it was all air tight.

5 Black sites would have been better, 2 in Greenland very seperate.

3 In north America.

1 for normies

1 for special people

1 for very special VIP people.

In greenland

1 for magic BS

1 witness/Jesus or angels.
room for only one of these two.
>>
Shortly after you hand off Naomi, making it clear that this is a pardon and not an attempt to negotiate, what's intended to happen to New Babylon becomes a moot point.

Without any warning, a black cylinder reaching up to space has enveloped New Babylon, centered around the Burj Carpathia. Cameras are operating properly, but the city's remaining population panic -- they can see nothing at all, and believe that they are blind.

Your people quickly determie that rather than affecting the physical movement of photons, the plague of darkness attacks the nervous system of all those within the affected area; aircraft radar and even the photocells on vending machines are shown to operate normally. Sound transmission is likewise not affected -- sonar rangefinders work.

Watching Otto Weser and his small group move around the city confirms that Christians who bear the sign of God would be able to see in what they describe to be sepia tones, up to roughly seven meters out; you do spot Trib Force members install keyloggers and try to mess with the Burj Carpathia's security system, even though it was only being used by Suhail Akbar as a HQ since the world capitol moved to Bern.

Getting out of the dark zone restores people's eyesight, much to their great relief; it's possible to simply evacuate the city.

Evacuation will be handled by

# CATS and UNDRR, using blind employees and drone tanks to guide people out.

# Peacekeepers, with automated assistance.

# Chloe's people, if she has any sense of responsibility.

# anyone else, it's not your problem -- focus on the two plans.

>>3855435

The ramps in the Sudbury Neutrino Obervatory are pretty wide. At the time, you had fewer resources than you do now.
>>
# CATS and UNDRR, using blind employees and drone tanks to guide people out.

Supplemented by:

#Chloe's people, if she has any sense of responsibility

Her involvement to help others could help drive further wedges in the Remnant.
>>
(I'm a little unclear about what people want to do with the nukes, and with the transportation method for the SHPS, so I'd like to ask for a vote again)


Nukes:

# Accept the proposal, reserve the right to mess with the physics package under Thule.

# Reject the proposal.

Transportation:

# Fixed turrets carried by helicopter.

# Small vehicles (Wiesels, armored cars etc) carrying on speaker each.

# Large tracked vehicle carriying two each.

# Large wheeled vehicle carrying two each.
>>
This is VERY promising. Whatever is directing the Narrative still thinks Babylon is the center of Global Community rather than BOCHICA or the network itself.

Does NAP have an estimate for how long the darkness is due to last?
>>
>>3855448
# Small vehicles (Wiesels, armored cars etc) carrying on speaker each.

Have some trucks and large vehicles carry some anyways, and some that have either pare parts or just empty space for moving stuff.

# Accept the proposal, reserve the right to mess with the physics package under Thule.
So long as we get to mess with the package.

If we have more resources ,then can we recruit more people? Agents and hero or what not?

Additional martial artists, spies, and counter spies? Gotta make sure our systems clean from chole's key loggers and stuff. Remember we still have Remanent employees and who knows what they may have snuck into the system.
>>
So what happens, if we do have to nuke the place? Does that mean he nukes our place regardless if we were justified or not?

What about after wards if he wants to use it against us?

What if he gets possessed or something or someone hits the button for him or forces him to?

What if magical god bs happens and the nuke goes off without a warning?

Assuming we give him the trigger:
What if during the event we need him to but he doesn't hit the button?
>>
Did we research the sores and what might have caused them?

Are we researching the oceans?

Can we research the black magic blindy thing in the old capital?

We can bet a few of these things will pop up at the final battle.

especially the thing that takes sway sight.
>>
>>3855445

"Chloe, these people are suffering. They think they've gone blind, a few have had heart attacks, some probably cannot get to water. Only a few of my people can see in there, yours can. Do the right thing."

"What we need to do is-"

"I paroled Naomi. You owe me."

Given how erratic Chloe has been lately, you guess that she has been undergoing a crisis of conscience; it's practically impossible that she will become an apostate, of course, being as there has been no such thing this whole time -- the sign of God does in fact act as a seal.

The darkness environment is interesting; one hack that emerges pretty quickly is connecting a camera and a LED flashlight to a headset, and using the buddy system, one person inside the darkness with a "third eye" and one outside describing to them what they see.

Between this method and the use of rangefinders, your people can navigate New Babylon at a slow but steady pace, and get most everyone out with only a few fatalities.

UNDRR's press release on the matter showcases how much can be accomplished by people of different backgrounds working together; Chloe calls it a mission of mercy.

The Petra site triumphantly mentions Revelation 18:2. "Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies."

The next verse is most interesting; there is indeed an angelic voice saying "Come out, people of God, that you not partake of Babylon's punishment", at the end of which Chloe bails. The Angel appeared briefly on top of the Burj Carpathia's truncated bulk, and, as usual, disappeared as soon as people looked away, which it could do with little difficulty.

>>3855453

They do; you're looking at about six months to a year. However, the seventh anniversary of the GC-Israel treaty is coming up in ten months, so that's your final deadline.

---

There is considerable celebration when an Aleut medicine man releases the first of a number of cetacean pods into a fenced-off "pond" off the southern coast of Greenland; the water is clear, the feeder biomass has been restored to a point over the past few months, and something like an oceanic food web is coming back, thanks to all your efforts.

It's a good thing, although Carla is still worried about phytoplankton die-off after the microscopic algae are through eating up the blood meal that was extracted during the previous judgements.

"Most ecosystems, the ones that aren't just gone anyway, are extremely brittle. We've been having to crack down on... well, even people trying to go out and go fishing again! It's too early..."


>>3855478

The idea is that both of you have the trigger for both setups

>>3855483

yes
>>
Rolled 647, 51, 82, 734, 863, 271 = 2648 (6d1000)

>>3855483

The darkness is there to stay; gap generators don't affect it, and neither do any occult ritual. The best workaround you've found is having your people operate in pairs, or drive a remote controlled device. The darkess effect seems to be neurological rather than physical: solar panels, photocells and the like keep working just fine.

>>3855483
>>3855478

You can probably exclude Mr. Scheinermann by messing with the controls on the initiators, but that itself is a gambit.

-----

You understand Carla's concern, of course, but you have to focus on the pair of plans you're moving forward.

True, there is no planet B; but you're mostly worried about there being no planet A a year from now.

Your people are going to work insanely hard in this last few months before the Glorious Appearing, and so will you; there are tunnels to build, a flotilla of vehicles to outfit, and that's not even mentioning the ongoing programs you have -- maintenance, theological research, collaborating with Francesca, the works.

# Plan A seems to be proceeding well: privilege efforts towards it.

# Balance things out.

# Plan B needs the most engineering effort at this point: privilege efforts towards it.

(I should do a "state of the world" post)

(OOC question) # Anyone in particular you want to zoom in?
>>
>>3855497

I would like to see what's been going on with Lailah.

Maybe Domai, since he's had the least amount of action.

---

# Plan A seems to be proceeding well: privilege efforts towards it.
>>
>>3855497
Ryan? Haven't really hung out with him in like a year or two by now.

Would Dr. Susan like to go on a trip to New Babylon?

Lets check out Dimmsdale, whats he been doing or up to? I hope hes made some important changes, and has start to shape up the military and sciences and stuff. USA used to be a super power, now South America probably has better infantry than they do, and... well I have no idea how good the other nations soldiers are.

How come no other nations have contributed to anything important so far? Don't they have science departments and stuff?

Like Zakarov has been going on about reopening nuclear and what not, but nothing has come from that so far, so was he never serious about that or is no one else able to get anything done?
>>
>>3855497
# Plan A seems to be proceeding well: privilege efforts towards it.
>>
# Balance things out.

Plan A is the Sound thing for Jebus and Plan B is the nukes right?
>>
Be nice to see what Santiago's up to.

Also kinda feel bad for Chloe, I can only imagine how useful she'd be without the brainwashing and ideological blinders. Zero deconversions is a terrifying statistic. Somebody ought to make before and after pictures with Chaim and Micah. Remnant Christianity: not even once.
>>
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>>3855526
(I'd rather do good writing later than bad writing now. gimme a bit, OK?)

>>3855544
(yes)

>>3855541
>>3855509
>>3855562


Thule cranks out a flotilla of remanufactured tankettes, each carrying a plasma speaker, gap generator, or repeater.

The pattern in which uranium hydride warheads have to be installed is complicated; the tunnels, which will also contain deuterium tanks and steel plates to shape the blast, must make a circle around Jesus' intended landing location, with segments cutting through the circumference for ease of access and further blast-shaping.

Your security teams keep the peace, and train for the final confrontation.

More and more Remnant move to Petra; it must be pretty cramped in there, or else they've turned the sandstone formation into gruyere cheese.

You? You got yourself back in shape after the forced atrophy of your coma, conduct an information campaign about the Remnant comparing "before" and "after" for various notable on their side, chief among which the formerly respected Dr. Rosenzweig (who went from crucial contributions in his field to denying that the importacnce of the ecological preserves because "God can wipe those "facts" off the map with His pinky finger"), make sure that Aki's digital frontier does not become her whole life, travel to keep good relations...

... a thousand little things every day, really. The second half of the Tribulation ended up needing people with their head on their shoulders, more than heroes. Maybe God can learn after all: He's certainly worked out a way to keep everyone busy.

Tsion, still in containment, has moved from denial, to anger, through bargaining very quickly, and now to depression; your medical team is worried for his muscle tone. His virtual environment is friendly, like a particularly colorful apartment, but he doesn't do anything with it. Lately he's barely read, even the Bible.

After receiving words that the tunnels under the Mount of Olives are as good as they're likely to get and have the UH bombs moved in, you're left counting the days until the Euphrates dries up.

Until it does. No special effects this time; the riverbed simply opened those damn instant sinkholes, and drained the river and its lakes down like a shower stall.

You're as ready as you'll ever be; the world, thanks to two thousand years of civilization and your own hard work and perseverance in the last eight, looks much different than what was depicted in Revelation.

(I need a pause, next up is state of the world and then the big fight at the end, questions welcome, writeups for where you think the world is even more so!)
>>
>>3855583
>Euphrates dries up

Didn't we already do that?

SO are we gonna have Carpatescu participate in the final battle?

Did we get around to asking that angel about stuff like what can Jesus do, how to detect remnant and thing about to happen if only by a few seconds, and using her powers to effect the world and see how its done?

Also ask her about demons. We have sorely been lacking any demonic encounters or combat against them.
>>
>>3855604
>Didn't we already do that?
Again: exactly what I was worried about.

>Did we get around to asking that angel about stuff like what can Jesus do, how to detect remnant and thing about to happen if only by a few seconds, and using her powers to effect the world and see how its done?

We need to send her up on a space capsule, incidentally, assuming we survive the Final Judgement.
>>
>>3855615
She can probably fly up there safely than be strapped to a flimsy metal rocket with volatile materials.

>>3855604
BTW I don't think stinger bugs and ghosts count.....
>>
>>3855604
Yeah we did that, god refilled it, then drained it again.

No, let's make sure the antichrist is in a tin.

>>3855615
Yeah if we live she can go to space
>>
I wonder what the Angels know about the devil, and the demons they are suppose to fight?

What kind of social, cultural and political impact did the horsemen have? How did most people react afterwards? Did anyone see what they really look like besides remnant and us?

Was that the tipping point for everyone to believe finally?

>god refilled it, then drained it again.
What? Where does it say that.....
>>
>>3855628
When the horsemen showed up, springs opened in the Euphrates.
>>
>>3855629
...... That's bs.

We should check the crevices to see where all that water went, use ground radar or something. Heck us it around petra to see if we can find anyone buried.
>>
(Write-ups eh? OK here's my amateur write-up for a State of the World)

The sound of drums could be heard for miles.

It was an overcast day in Custer County, South Dakota, yet the faint promises of rain did little to deter the dancers. Young men beat the deer-hide drums with fervor as older women in handcrafted attire weaved their way across the dance floor, the swaying hem of their ceremonial dress mimicking the rhythm of the prairie grass across the Great Plains.

The past six years had not been kind to the Native Americans. The Event had robbed the Native American community of the next generation, leaving no one to pass on tribal languages and customs. The poisoned waters, harsh winter, and mysterious smoke that followed quickly picked off the elderly, depriving the people of their wisdom and guidance.

Joseph Palemoon had lost family as well.

His beloved daughter Hannah, a nurse, joined the Remnant shortly after the mysterious disappearances. Although the former Army veteran adored his only child, he could not abide the movement's harsh beliefs which contrasted with his own. The Great Spirit was a stern father, but he wasn’t a monster that stole children. In the end, the constant arguments had driven an impassable wedge between the two.

Ironically, it was spirituality that saved Joseph from giving into despair. Shortly after smoke swept the world, a new spiritual movement had cropped up in the reservations: The Ghost Wheel Society.

According to the founder Paul Wilson, a distant descendant f the Paiute holy man Wokova, he had received a vision. According to a messenger of the Great Spirit, the time had come for the Native Americans to unite and perform a new sacred ceremony, a second Ghost Dance!

This new holy man, Paul Wilson of the Paiute people, promised that despite the devastation afflicting the world, healing was coming. Shortly after the Smoke had swept the United States, Wilson had claimed he had received a vision from heaven. Now was a time for the Native American people to gather once again and a perform a new sacred dance: a second Ghost Dance.

There was skepticism at first, but Wilson’s charisma and miraculous ability to summon light rain began to gather followers to his cause. Native People flocked to him throughout the United North American States with commune slowly building up in the dilapidated Black Hills.

The new movement preached peace, and encouraged its adherents to work towards healing the wounded Earth. On particular days, like today, members of the Ghost Wheel would engage in the sacred dances revealed to Wilson. Some had even reported miraculous abilities of their own: increased vitality and the ability to heal by the laying on of hands.

As Joseph joined his new brothers in their rhythmic drumming, chanting prayers to the Great Spirit he silently offered a plea of his own. He simply asked that the Creator look after his wayward daughter and keep her safe.
>>
>>3855618
It's not that she can't go up there, it's that she doesn't believe there IS an up there.

Her reaction to the revelation that no, there is an up there would be...telling.
>>
>>3855717
Yeah i dont see why we dont offer to send her up on a rocket ship
>>
>>3855717

I agree.

Dubious and potentially treacherous as she is, Lailah has a certain adorability factor to her.

I want to send her to space and see how she reacts.
>>
>>3855779

That's something you can do with very little prep, actually: your emphasis on large satellites before your coma and after means that you've had a number of Proton rockets and ready to go. Since your "large" satellites follow the design of a simplified Salyut station, getting a Soyuz capsule out of mothballs isn't exactly a stretch.

At worst, you'll get rid of her.

It's somewhat wasteful, but at this point you would not use the rockets for anything else; you already have two nuclear bombs up there.

-

>>3855685

(Thank you!)

-

>>3855636

You had the digging equipment made, and it's done its job in Jerusalem, largely; put them on a flatbed truck and it's a day trip to Petra.

>>3855628

Lailah was the only Angel(?) who was in any way communicative; the others seem to act like meat automata, largely. Francesca did tell you that they aren't supposed to have free will.

The big battle between angels and demons is supposed to already have happened, and ended in defeat for the latter, who were then bound in various places within the starts and into the earth; you've definitely seen the horsemen.

When the Rapture came, people were numb at first; it was hard to process, children just disappearing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l4vD8PXisE

This time, it hit a lot harder -- there were bodies, people saw them die, and cremating more than a billion people became a full time job for everybody who could be spared. The first few days were hectic: people killed themselves after their loved ones were gone, or went on benders, or just went for a suicide by cop.

After that came despair. To this day, right now, you're pretty sure that there are more people on medication (or who should be on medication) than not.

And after that, survivor's guilt. People went to work, and the bus was emptier and they could sit down, and they knew why. They had more money to throw around, at least until food prices rose, and they knew why. There were no more traffic jams, and they knew why. Many wondered if they had lost empathy -- truth is, with every family losing someone at the same time, the support networks that allow grief to be processed overloaded.

The Remnant made good scapegoats -- not only they sounded like they were gloating, they also disrespected the dead by saying that those killed by the invisible horsemen, or by the most efficiently delivered chemical weapon ever, were also suffering in hell regardless of the life they'd lived. No wonder people were furious, and no wonder law enforcement did as little as possible about it. Everyone else suffered, why not they?

That, of course, fed into the Remnant adherents' persecution complex.
>>
The tipping point for people to believe in the supernatural was the oceans turning into blood. Everything up to that point had some explanation. Meteorites, aliens, some sort of chemical weapon.

By then, people could believe in the God who was doing all this... and if it'd been 2000 years ago, or even 500, they may have submitted to overwhelming force. But humanity has changed in a qualitative way between now and then. Somewhere along the way, most of us stopped believing that might made right.

It was easy for Tsion and then Micah to convert those who did, of course; which explains the shift and to some degree the soft schism between Remnant who stayed in the world and those who secluded from it, in Petra or other enclaves. And a society of authoritarian followers is surprisingly easy to keep together if they have free food, water, and internet.

--

Andrews and Domai had their little private cold war between Effincold and Thule, each society trying to outdo the other while keeping to its principles, amidst the volcanic winter first and the thaw then. The similarity of environments forced similar social choices, although with the that, this became less the case.

What the cold started, in many ways, the horsemen finished. Andrews had always known that there's a market for everything, even socialism; Domai learned that some people would work best under him and some under Andrews. By contrast, it took your hands-on approach to things like demonic horsemen to show Andrews that Domai's style of managing from the shop floor does not denote a lack of ability to see the big picture.

These days the two get along with distant respect, except for the one time when the satellite launch project was completed, when they both got drunk and sang Aqua songs together. Nobody's let them live it down yet, of course.

--

Suzanna Diamond went to New Babylon to help treat dehydration cases and to study the plague of darkness; she determined that it was, in effect, a neurological issue rather than an optical one. She took to meditating just inside the area of darkness, after having put ropes on the floor that would guide her out; some people copied her.

A particularly enterprising tour operator saw this and set up prefab housing and relaxation tanks just at the edge of the zone of darkness, offering the ultimate sensory deprivation / meditation experience. After the novelty wore out, he pivoted it to doing executive-retreat type stuff; since New Babylon has been abandoned, this extends to RC drone flights and fights across the decaying global capitol. It's pretty fun, actually; Aki has set up a sort of joint venture with it in the nearest VR arcade, in Tel Aviv, then someone at your head office did the accounting and realized that she got screwed hard, what could have been a moneymaker barely broke even.
>>
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V17ij5Ap1pA

--

The regional potentates have been extremely busy with keeping their people from succumbing to despair, and saving what pockets of ecosystem they could. Zakharov went for DNA banks and semi-artificial wombs, the best vatmeat these days is Russian; he's expecting to have viable mammoth embryos in ten years, if Pravin Lal can keep enough elephants alive to provide a baseline.

Dimmsdale leveraged the hunting and ranching community to capture and corral animals before the rivers turned to blood and boiled over; it worked, at least in part. North Americans were used to having relatively few people work on farms, and switched over to vertical farming without too much cultural resistance; the family farm was a thing of the past already, and if anything, incentives to cultivate or keep chicken in the backyard was perceived as more authentic than endless acres of monoculture. Photos of pre-Rapture cornfields in Iowa these days are widely used to mock Chloe's vision of the Millennial Kingdom utopia.

Yang's people built downward, mostly; when the heat wave came, they barely cared. Yang has built a cult of personality, not around himself but around the ideal Confucian ruler, which he takes pain to show that he is not, or at least not yet. Overall, China and India are going to be the next superpowers; Pravin Lal and Yang are not so subtly fortifying their shared border for the time when there will be enough people to consider war once more.

--

South America is probably the region that benefited the most from the potentate system; people's natural of love of life was tempered by Santiago's discipline, which made all the difference after the horsemen struck. She had to crack down some once, when people questioned why the Spartan Guard could do nothing against this attack. She's not proud of it. With urban overcrowding gone and people from all over the territory helping native healers and modern disaster relief workers keeping the Amazon alive, people there fared better than most because they found a purpose. Installing insulated ponds and keeping purified sections of the river clear of blood, even as wildlife tries to eat you, is home defense as much as fighting an expeditionary war.

--

The Peacekeepers who stayed in the corps have, in many ways, become their own culture; Suhail Akbar ended up with people who, by what they did during Folgore's war or even by who they were before, were maladjusted for civilian life and would not be welcome home. So he gave them a structure, of sorts. You let him use some of CLU's functions, and he made an arrangement with its "sysadmins". Peacekeepers these days patrol the desert, conduct drills, and occasionally do actual work, as it needs done -- they helped build many of the desalinators serving Africa and India during the blood ocean times, for example.

Largely, they keep the peace by being there and not elsewhere.
>>
>>3855860
This is some seriously good world building.
>>
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Truly immersive consumer VR is still a way off, but every major city has a VR center where people can try it, either using the common environment designed by Aki's people, or any amount of shared environments developed by the user community. People who can afford it use their phones and headsets, aided by what amounts to plastic boxes with lenses and serial ports going to the phone's audio jack, to experience a simpler version of this. Interoperability between phones and PCs makes it easy to play Quake in VR if one buys a swivel chair and an IrDA keyboard.

Aki still believes that the future is in mind uploading, but that's for later.

-

Vega has taken that concept and brought it to the next level; combining VR and dissociative drugs leads to scenarios in which it's possible for someone to genuinely not know that they are in a simulation anymore, not because the simulation is that good - Aki's stuff is better - but because their brain becomes unable to tell the difference. He has been using it to give glimpses of Heaven to his most ardent followers and Hell to his enemies, including a few Remnant who were genuinely shellshocked by the experience. The tournments have become largely spectacle now that he's consolidated power.

Vega and Zakharov have been getting along quite well on the biotech front, if anything; he's also followed your energy weapon work with interest. Vega's people are the only ones who have managed to get narrative causality and technology to work well together, save for cameras; cleverness with superconducting magnets and what he calls control of psychic power allow him to use a flamboyant suit with magnetic gloves and boots to levitate within his compound. He gives rides, sometimes.

-

Litwala has embraced his continent's rich traditions; when narrative causality became a thing, ancient feuds between families of witchcraft practitioners reignited with newfound power. Francesca had to go mediate, and usually enjoyed the experience; she even hired your guys and Moira as bodyguards, too.

-

Santiago says she's missed you; so have Carla, Aki and Francesca. Your brush with death changed you; it changes everyone. In your case, at least until now, you became a lot more focused on work -- Chloe assures you that you did not experience Hell, but you know what it felt like to have your lungs revolt against you and alien toxin overload your neurons. You're not letting that happen to any of us human enough to refuse to bend the knee.

Now that the stage is set, you can resume working normal hours. The Garibaldi, underway on nuclear power, parked herself in the Mediterranean. Most of your people are a plane hop away. Just as a middle finger raised to the sky, you've used the canal that used to route the Euphrates into the Tigris and worked it in reverse, courtesy of a few turbines


# Proceed to the end of the Tribulation

# Wait, there was something else... (Questions? Preparations? Experiments to make?)
>>
>>3855879

# Proceed to the end of the Tribulation

Bring it on, hippie hair.
>>
# Proceed to the end of the Tribulation

# Waifu Aki
>>
I have only a few minor questions concerning those who are dead...

Is Schorpe beatified now?

Did Robertson ever receive the Nobel Prize, even if it was posthumous?
>>
>>3855887
># Proceed to the end of the Tribulation
Let Them Come.
>>
>>3855893

From 1974, the Statutes of the Nobel Foundation stipulate that a Prize cannot be awarded posthumously, unless death has occurred after the announcement of the Nobel Prize. Given the sheer amount of death certificates that had to be issued when the Sixth Trumpet hit, the physics committee announced their decision about Robertson's work on weak-interaction anisotropy as soon as he was declared missing, but before his death certificate could be filed. Two of his students were at the ceremony on his behalf.

In the Catholic Church, after a deceased Catholic has been declared a Servant of God by a bishop and proposed for beatification by the Pope, such a servant of God may next be declared venerable ("heroic in virtue") during the investigation and process leading to possible canonization as a saint. Since this does not require a formal ex cathedra pronouncement (which Mathews is still refusing to issue any of, and which canon law experts are slowly starting to make their way around) it's the best that can be done within the famously ponderous Church bureaucracy in such a brief time. The Venerable Alex Schorpe is the official patron of NAP and a bas-relief of him has been etched into the doorway of STMU's theology department.
>>
All I can say is good luck gentlemen. I hope it works out. Break the wheel.
>>
>>3855917

(Thank you Geist for humoring my questions. Schorpe and Robertson were two of my favorite characters on this quest. I appreciate getting closure before charging into the end.)

#Proceed to the End of the Tribulation!!!
>>
>>3855924

She's the best.

<3
>>
It is the year 2005.

The last line item on the prophecy checklist before the Glorious Appearing itself is the destruction of New Babylon; the various Remnant enclaves differ on the time frame just to be safe, UNDRR had it evacuated and cordoned off by Peacekeepers. The MCP complex has been sealed off by filling the stairways with concrete, and just in case, the CLU phone app set to find secondary servers.

Suhail Akbar has ordered the Peacekeepers to stay away from the Israeli border, just in case, to avoid any misunderstanding; you've made sure that he has a hotline with IDF command.

Things settle back into a routine -- nobody knows the day or the hour, after all -- until New Babylon loses power completely; no cameras, no pings on any address, nothing. It's still covered by the black column of psychoperceptive darkness, of course... except it's shrinking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbdcW-rPsi8

If New Babylon looked like a theme park before, now it looks like a disused movie set; it's as if the place had aged seven hundred years in the few minutes between the loss of contact and the removal of the shroud. The Burj Carpathia is still standing, but crooked as the heavy foundation sank into the sand, most of its windows broken, sticking up like a skeletal finger; most of the other buildings have at least partially collapsed from age. Ash and dust covers the roads; the lamp posts and traffic lights have rusted to nothing, with the occasional jagged stump sticking out of the parched concrete. One solitary light, a dull red, remains: a few of the LEDs that illuminated the memorial where the Burj Carpathia broke during the quake, partially powered by the best solar panels money could buy at the time to make an environmentalist statement, are still on.

The first Peacekeeper scouts going in have to do so with NBC gear just due to the asbestos dust; their reports, and video from their helmet camera, show the triumph of entropy in stark detail.

Once again, Micah answers with an exhortation to repent, for the time is very short now.

This latest bit of strangness finds you in

# Jerusalem.

# the area between Petra and Baghdad, where you've built a sort of forward post.

# San Felipe.

# Thule.

# (write in)
>>
Finally caught up to a live thread.
Thank you Geist for writing such a enjoyable and thought provoking Quest
>>
>>3855985
>forward post
>>
# the area between Petra and Baghdad, where you've built a sort of forward post.
>>
>>3855985
# the area between Petra and Baghdad, where you've built a sort of forward post.
>>
>>3855986

(Thank you! Good time to jump in, too)

>>3855994
>>3856001
>>3856002

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AToYv8crw4A

Your forward post uses Peacekeeper prefabs which your people have upgraded and, at times, decorated to their taste. It's dawn, and the red sun in the east is just managing to beat the glow of SRTGs and gap generators scattered along the perimeters. Peacekeepers are providing base defense, if any ever be required, but your plan is to get to Jerusalem by helicopter dropship, paradrop in the tankettes, support vehicles and containment vehicle, and lock everything down as soon as you can.

And if that doesn't work, rain fire, and blow up a hill.

Your people are all here, even Aki.

Domai is in heavy armor, a piece of his own design that unfortunately only a couple dozen of your men can use, because they have to be his size; he's carrying a gap generator and a SRTG on his back and a light assault weapon welded on the armor's forearm. The boots have deployable "heels" for stability. From a military standpoint it makes little sense, but if the idea is to scare the shit out of anyone shorter than him (around 2.15m boots to helmet), it's perfect.

Moira is not using the anti-locust armor; rather, she's in sensible BDUs. And grenade launcher. And grenades. And war paint, because she's coming from "arbitrating" something between a calcio storico match, a small ritualized war, and a sorcerers' duel in Kenya. She said it started off with a soccer match and went from there, anyway.

Chandra is wearing his dress uniform and got a modern kukhri made, courtesy of Pravin Lal. He's in better shape than most of you.

Dr. Diamond is sporting her favorite leather jacket, the one with all the patches for the places she's been.

Aki is wearing a white shirt, white pants, and a sort of leather cap that she's built a headset into. You're pretty sure she shaved her head under it, because it's visibly flush to her head. Also, she left the charging cable for the headset plugged in... and braided her remaining air around it, apparently. Whatever makes her comfortable.

You know that Santiago, Vega and Litwala have similar forward posts nearby; you don't know if they are there or in their own capitols, but suspect that the first two at least are going to want to be where the action is.

# And how about you?

Ryan Andrews came along; he's in a suit, with a clip-on tie, and not thoroughly sure what he's doing there or how he can help. But he came just the same. He looks at you lot, standing around a table with a map of the area between Petra and Jerusalem, and chuckles.

You're all more tense than you care to admit.

He takes a few steps back and breaks out his phone.

"So are we going after Cobra here, or what? Come on, I need a picture. Strike a pose! There's kids in first and second grade now. The action figures are going to be huge!"
>>
>>3856044
>"So are we going after Cobra here, or what? Come on, I need a picture. Strike a pose! There's kids in first and second grade now. The action figures are going to be huge!"

"No, not Cobra. Just someone who thinks he's a Commander."
>>
>>3856044
# And how about you?

A green-grey sweater with the CATS logo on the breast, with leather-accented shoulders and cuffs. Matching BDU pants and combat boots. CATS baseball cap. Headset.
>>
>>3856051

This but maybe trade the hat for a helmet similar to the one we used in battle against Carpatescu, signed by our allies and friends who have lived to see this dreadful day.

We also carry a few photographs of those who have been taken from us in our breast pocket. Although they could not be with us physically, they fight alongside us in spirit!

Turbo Jesus fights to fulfill the narrative, to usher in an era of cold sterility.

We fight for our friends and for the fate of humanity.
>>
>>3856056
I'll take it. Combat helmet it is.
>>
>>3856051
Really, Bradford? Really?
>>
>>3856064
Listen son, I'd fight wars to be half the man that man's sweater is.
>>
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>>3856044
>>3856051
>>3856056

You adjust that helmet, make sure your badge -- which you stuck some small, but important passport-size pictures in -- is visible and on straight, and let Ryan take the photo. He wasn't kidding about the merchandising, he already had a website up. Well, hearts and minds, especially when it comes to kids. Every little bit helps, right?

Outside the prefab, Wiesel AFVs are being loaded onto various types of helicopters; the idea is to head to Petra, or Jerusalem, as soon as there's a target, drop them, and then form them up. The containment vehicles are being carried by MilV-12 cargo helicopters, courtesy of Viktor Zakharov; the crew have their own parachutes and the hope is that by having two, at least one succeeds in making the trip without mechanical failure.

A trooper comes in.

"Guys! Look at the sun!"

You look outside; the sun has finally risen properly, sort of. Thick, jagged, and pulsing, a vertical yellow streak extends from it, two degrees above and four degrees of horizon below. Across it, a horizontal streak of the same thickness and half its length. The sun proper, barely brighter, is smack in the middle of this cross.

You tilt your head this way and that -- it's still there. You hold up a thumb to cover the sun; the cross around it goes away from your field of view, only to come back as soon as you move your finger. It looks like four jets coming out of the sun, perfectly vertical and horizontal to your and as it turns out everyone else's viewpoint.

Here, clearly, was the cross of Christ, emblazoned in the heavens in lightning that lingered, crackling with unbridled energy, yet striking nothing. This was the sign of the Son of Man, and it was there for the whole world to see.

In just a hour or two, King Jesus will arrive at Petra, defeat the Antichrist's armies massed there, and then take the people dwelling there and drive them to Jerusalem, where the same thing will happen.

Thanks to you, there's no armies anywhere. The Peacekeepers have been told to defend your forward post and coordinate with Vega and Santiago, but most of them are at Al Hillah, expecting a siege.

Your satellites look down, expecting... you aren't sure what.

Aki is going to stay here and help her people fly the drones; Andrews is also going to stay here, since he's no good in a fight.

You can send people to Al Hillah, Petra, or Jerusalem directly. The DO31 is faster than the helicopters, and will be able to double back if necessary.

# Deploy yourself, Moira, Chandra, Domai, and Dr. Diamond to one of those places.

What you don't know is what will happen when it becomes obvious that Petra is not under siege; will Jesus double back to Al Hillah just so He can pick a fight? Proceed with the script? He will end up in Jerusalem, that's all you know.


The DO31 is carrying its own gap generator; so are a good chunk of the Wiesels.

>>3856064
>>3856069

Don't forget the sword. If there was ever a time to use it, it's now.
>>
>>3855985
A dress shirt of our favorite color with a ballistic vest over it, sensible dress pants in a complimentary color; our favorite sneakers.

Waist harness with pistol on one side and the helmet we bashed Nicolae's head in with on the other. Prattchett's sword on our back. One hold out pistol with enough of a magazine to head shot all of our inner circle with if needed.

In our left breast pocket, the half piece of bark we sealed with ours and Santiago's blood. Around our left wrist, a single lock of Francesca's hair is braided as bracelet. In the left pocket of our plate harness, Shcorpe's last letter to us. Moira gave us one frag grenade which has written upon it "Hell hath no fury"; it is either red paint long faded or perhaps blood. Aki gave us the control board from her first drone which is in our back pocket; why does the circuit board looks like it says "Please be brave?" Our Nommy is the 1st one that ever completely beat Nicolae's mesmerism. We even kept Jorji's dazzler key chain.
>>
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>>3856076

>Don't forget the sword. If there was ever a time to use it, it's now.

Good heavens no! We wouldn't want to pull a Freyr...
>>
>>3856076
What is the exact script. I think our best bet is to suprise attack him with the sound blasts and get him under control during a travel or trasition. A time where it isnt fortold he would be under attack. And if all else fails i guess we confront him directly set up as
>>3856083
In Jerusalem

Moira and chandra Domai and Dr.Diamond all in the helecopters posed to drop the troops around jesus.
>>
>>3856076

# Deploy yourself, Moira, Chandra, Domai, and Dr. Diamond to one of those places.

I'm at Petra with Chandra

Moira's at Al Hillah.

Domai and Dr Diamond at Jerusalem.
>>
>>3856083
>>3856087

Fuck linked to the wrong post. Meant for:
>>3856044
to describe how we were dressed.
>>
>>3856076
#Moira is at the first site of appearing, Petra. Domai Is posted at Al-Hillah, we are at Jerusalem with Diamond standing by in a helicopter.
>>
>>3856107

This but lets also assign Chandra to Petra.
>>
>>3856113
We're at Petra with a bunch of equipment, maybe that'll look enough like an army. There's no Antichrist, but maybe he's supposed to be in Jerusalem.

>>3856107
Alright, let's go with it.
>>
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj6vPy5xtcQ

>>3856083

You are trained to work with pistol and ballistic shield; the pistol is the one you're used to, the shield has been repaired after being recovered from the Chicago HQ. You've picked up some swordplay along the way, too, largely courtesy of Chandra (and more time in VR than you want to admit).

Your keepsakes have been taped or glued on the inside of your shield. It's the sort of things that would go in a particularly strange scrapbook -- letters, a piece of magnetic tape, a PCB, a fragment of wood or metal. You don't want to trust in the supernatural for this -- the sheer amount of gap generators you're bringing along would nullify any effect -- but... it's where you've been and what you've done, and it will have to protect you.

>>3856087

Jesus is supposed to appear "somewhere in the east", defeat the army of Antichrist at Petra, then take the Remnant there and drive them to Jerusalem, where they will watch Him defeat Antichrist conclusively at Megiddo after Antichrist has conquered Jerusalem itself -- then He will make his way to the Mount of Olives; the only two fixed point that you have are Petra and the Mount.

The "problem" is that there's no Antichrist's army for Jesus to defeat, so... what will He do?

Tsion has pretty much given up; he's been quietly singing hymns to himself the whole time.

Chaim believes that the Peacekeepers will mobilize against Petra and Jerusalem themselves. They have been specifically told not to.

Chloe just wants it to be over. She thinks that Jesus will go to Al Hillah and eliminate the Peacekeepers over there, if they don't want to go where they are destined to go.

Either way, from any of the streaming cameras in the area, almost three billion people are watching. Used to be almost six, in the distant past, just the years of a childhood ago.

>>3856107
>>3856121
>>3856119

(So I got Moira+Chandra = Petra, Domai=Al-Hillah, Foreman+Diamond = Jerusalem?)
>>
>>3856119
Sure, sounds good.
>>
>>3856126
Yeah we can do that.
>>
....

Did we remember to leave someone guarding Carpatescu? I'm less worried about him escaping and moreso about him being 'spirited away' to Jerusalem.
>>
>>3856130
The blacksite should still be under guard, yes...
>>
>>3856126
Sure.
Did we not recruit any more people?

>>3856132
Hope its lined with a lot of gap generators.
>>
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>>3856127
>>3856121
>>3856107

You've decided to lead from the rear on this one: close coordination of vehicular assets may be necessary, and if things go pear shaped, it's only fair that you be near where the nukes are.

The DO31 drops off Domai and his heavy troopers at Al-Hillah, and then Moira and Chandra with a security team with the small detachment of Peacekeepers guarding the sensors at Petra

# and tells them to go away

# and tells them to stay there

while you go by standard helicopter to Jerusalem directly. The U-H bombs are in place, in case everything goes pear shaped; they've been switched to fail deadly mode, meaning that they will go off if they don't get a "heartbeat" signal ever yfew seconds, and you've set that to come from

# a voice command from your earphones

# a dead man's switch inside your shield

# your implant failing

# any or all of those

Your best guess is that "somewhere in the east" means that Jesus will want to make a dramatic entrance and come in from the sun. That gives you only a few hours.

>>3856130
>>3856132
>>3856133

Yes, the containment sites are on full alert and covered by a robust gap field; there are two security teams there (out of many) as per your standing orders. Understandably, Carpatescu is watching the livestream with interest.
>>
>>3856136
# and tells them to stay there

# your implant failing

Nothing else makes sense if we're expected to enter combat. Also, we shouldn't have the nukes armed until turbojesus actually enters the AO, early detonation is every kind of bad.
>>
>>3856136
# and tells them to stay there
# any or all of those
>>
# and tells them to stay there

# Voice command from your earphones - If things go somewhat pear-shaped
# Your implant failing - If things go FUBAR
>>
>>3856136
>>3856107

Guys we shouldnt be at jerusalem. We dont want to accidentally tske the antichrist's place. If we are going to confront him it needs to be anywhere but Jerusalem
>>
>>3856136
>Your implant failing
>voice command from your earphones.
>>
>>3856144
That is a VERY good point.


# Voice command from your earphones - If things go somewhat pear-shaped
# Your implant failing - If things go FUBAR

Arm and detonate via voice command, deadman if implant fails and the nukes are armed.

Our most loyal agents (Moira, Chandra) should have backup detonators.
>>
>>3856144
Pretty sure we already borked any interpretation we are the anti-christ at this point. Also, as he was supposed to have died and be muppeted by Satan at this point and we are clearly not, we should be safe.

>>3856136
# and tells them to go away
# your implant failing
>>
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>>3856136

At an order from the elders, the people in Petra are leaving their underground warren, and climbing the plateau surrounding the canyon that the ancient town was built in; they swarm upwards like ants, no doubt thanks to ladders that had been carved in the rock. The young help the old.

"What are they doing?" asks Moira.

"I think it's so they can get a good view of us getting slaughtered." answer Chandra, phlegmatically.

---

Domai and his guys disembark at Al Hillah and put themselves under General Akbar's orders; he's going to stay put, but if the heavenly host lands here, he's going to give them what for. The Al Hillah base is walled, and equipped with turrets, mortars, missile launchers, gap generators, the works.

>>3856144
>>3856152
>>3856154

# (Y'all tell me, but DO decide, as it is important for specifically that reason. Last call on deciding hero positions!)

>>3856143
>>3856142
>>3856140
>>3856148

You make sure that the U-H bombs aren't armed until the target enters the area of operations, to avoid premature detonation; you also make sure that they are set to go off if your implant detects your death -- if He kills you, it'll be the last thing He does. You can also set them off manually, of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWA8CVo9JBI

Your phone is sent a sat feed. Something that looks like a sandspout has started growing, northeast of Al Hillah, exactly east of Jerusalem. It soon turns into an enormous whirlwind, and in minutes, grows tall and wide and strong enough that it wraps up clouds around itself. There's now a circular cloud, like a cyclone without an eye, and it's slowly moving west.
>>
>>3856162
Least antichristy team in Jerusalem. We're at Petra with Domai. Moira at Al-Hillah, Chandra, the least antichristy, is at Jerusalem. Diamond's in the chopper.
>>
>>3856162
I say lets be at petra
>>
>>3856162
>>3856172
Support
>>
>>3856172
I thought we out Domai at the base but w/e.

Sure.
>>
>>3856172
Support
>>
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"Brothers and sisters in the Messiah," Chaim was saying on his stream. "We gather here in this historic place, this holy city of refuge provided by the Lord God Himself. We stand on the precipice of all time with the shadow of history behind us and eternity itself before us, putting all our faith and trust in the rock-solid goodness and strength and majesty of our Savior.

"May the Lord appear as I speak. Oh, the glory of that moment! We stand gazing into the heavens where the promised sign of the Son of Man radiates before us, thundering through the ages the truth that His death on the cross cleanses us from all sin.

"Within the next few minutes, you may see. the enemy of God advancing on this fortified city. I say to you with all the confidence the Father has put in my soul, fear not, for your salvation draweth nigh.

"Now many have asked what is to happen when Antichrist comes against God's chosen people and the Son intervenes. The Bible says He will slay our enemy with a weapon that comes from His mouth. Rev1:16 calls it 'a sharp two-edged sword. ' Rev2:16 quotes Him saying that He 'will come to you quickly and will fight against them with the sword of My mouth. '

Rev19:15 says that 'out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. ' And Rev19:21 says the enemies 'were killed with the sword which proceeded from the mouth of Him who sat on the horse. '

"Now let me clarify. I do not believe the Son of God is going to sit on His horse in the clouds with a gigantic sword hanging from His mouth. He is not going to shake His head and slay the millions of Armageddon troops with it. This is clearly a symbolic reference, and if you are a student of the Bible, you know what is meant by a sharp, double-edged sword.

"Hebrews 4: 12 says the Word of God 'is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. '

"The weapon our Lord and Messiah will use to win the battle and slay the enemy? The Word of God itself! And while the reference to it as a sword may be symbolic, I hold that the description of the result of it is literal. The Word of God is sharp and powerful enough to slay the enemy, literally tearing them asunder. "

You've decided to lead from the front; with any luck, you can end it at Petra, rather than Megiddo. Let it be famous for the battle that didn't happen.

Chandra has been sent to Jerusalem; he's got a proud service record with the Indian Army, and can speak the lingo.

Domai has deployed his heavy troopers around you.


"What are they doing?" you ask as the Petrans climb.

"I think it's so they can get a good view of us getting slaughtered." Domai rumbles.

The cyclone is coming in fairly slowly; by the look of it, it's headed for Al-Hillah first. It's making good time, around 50kph, and will hit there in an hour; if it continues to Petra, it'll arrive in 4
>>
>>3856192
Perhaps we should evacuate the base?

Have them reoccupy it afterwards?
>>
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqePV1n_Rh0

One of the combat and disaster recovery doctrines that you have set in stone is that drones go in first.

The Garibaldi is moored near the border between Israel and Egypt, ready to send aircraft and drone swarms your way if need be; you have brought many of your small rigs to the forward post, and right now Aki is sending a flying wing into the cyclone.

The image comes in nice and clear -- There He is, in the center of the whirlwind, surrounded by an army of Angels. Behind, there are other figures, looking on -- they're supposed to be the raptured and martyred.

As the drone gets closer, the figure of what you assume to be Jesus gets a little bigger, but the angelic choir around Him does not. Are they mere spectators?

"Isaiah 63 and thereabouts. Something about treading the winepress alone, and no one from the peoples being with Him. I don't think the other stuff has fully materialized."

That was Francesca; she's back in Valtellina, getting her own contingency plan ready. Many, but not all, of the Ecumenical Council faiths offered you a blessing a few days ago; you took it in good grace, but given that there's enough gap generators around that even your earsets are getting a bit of static, so you don't know what it would do.

>>3856207

You tell Sukail to

# get out of Al Hillah, now, and muster somewhere else.

# get out of Al Hillah, now, and scatter.

# engage with missiles and flak fire.

# stay put.
>>
>>3856228
# get out of Al Hillah, now, and scatter. This isn't a day for armies.
>>
>>3856228
Unless they have the specialized tools we are using here
>stay put and do not fire
>>
>>3856228
# get out of Al Hillah, now, and muster somewhere else.

They haven't attacked yet...
>>
Rolled 8 (1d10)

You can't quite make a decision on what the Peacekeepers should do immediately, but it's taken out of your hand. Someone near Sukail screams loud enough for you to hear it from his headset, "That drone isn't one of ours! The Machine God watches over us!"

There's cheers.

"... Peacekeepers, HOLD! Let's not waste ammo."

There's boos.

They do, however, launch a few flying wings to get a better picture at the cloud formation. Jesus is bright, bright enough that it confuses the camera on Aki's drone and makes the cloud glow white. People on the Petra plateau cheer -- He must be visible from up there.

Aki gets the camera to pick up Jesus' face, which means everything else looks like a grey blob for a second.

"Why is He white?"

>>3856233
>>3856234
>>3856236

(y'all tell me!)

You tell Sukail to

# get out of Al Hillah, now, and muster somewhere else.

# get out of Al Hillah, now, and scatter.

# engage with missiles and flak fire.

# stay put.

# use his best judgement.

Moira is describing the scene to you, providing a perspective that the drone can't. She's outside, on a motorcycle.

"It's really weird. I'm a bit nearsighted, not a problem usually, but those angel decals on the cloud, I can see them as if they were in front of my face! Details and all."

Suddenly another voice cascades from heaven. Jesus is still hovering along, not speaking.

"Behold!" the voice said. "My Servant whom I have chosen, My Beloved son in whom My soul is well pleased! I have put My Spirit upon Him, and He will declare justice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U_OkCsexjw

It has begun!"
>>
>>3856240
>get out of al Hillah now and muster (in some city not in the line of fire but able to come calling if needed) this is not a war to fight with conventional methoods.
>>
>>3856240
# get out of Al Hillah, now, and muster somewhere else.
>>
>>3856242
I'll support if they don't want to scatter their forces.
>>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVUuEeFarxU

>>3856243
>>3856242
>>3856244

"We're moving out! To Amman!"

"He's right here!"

"We'll abandon our heavy weapons if we leave now!"

Sukail has been holding on to these people, and has done it well, but now that the moment has arrived by the boos and jeers you hear you get the idea he's almost got a mutiny on his hands.

"Fine. Syspriests, select volunteers to man the turrets. Hold Him off. Everyone else - we have to protect Amman! Mount up!"

Moving that many soldiers takes a long time, and that's just a fact; Sukail knows what you're trying to do, and doesn't like it one bit, but sees the wisdom in it.

Moira will

# join you in Petra

# stay and hold the line

# head to Amman

and by now it's fairly obvious that Chloe's prediction was correct, so you have the Wiesels helitransported to

# Petra

# Megiddo

# Jerusalem

so that they may find the right spots to deploy.

Sukail is moving out his men, most on troop trucks, some on jeeps and bikes, some even tank-desant. A group of hardcore CLUltists simply refuse to leave, and go as far as accusing the general of cowardice.


To you it appears that the holding operation is a suicide mission.

Moira looks back and watches the installation empty out; even as it does, missile launchers angle themselves and flak turrets are calibrated to go after the impossibly bright point of light in the middle of the cloud. She sees a couple of men tape welding goggles in front of the turrets' cameras so that they can be used for aiming without causing a white-out.


....Yet despite the din, the words of the Lord could be heard clear and plain.

"Come near, you nations, to hear; and heed, you people! Let the earth hear, and all that is in it, the world and all things that come forth from it. For the indignation of the Lord is against all nations, and His fury against all their armies; He has utterly destroyed them, He has given them over to the slaughter. "

Moira watches watched through binocs a those operating the weapons seemed to explode where they stood. It was as if the very words of the Lord had superheated their blood, causing it to burst through their veins and skin.

Either Jesus is too far up for gap generators, or he's just that powerful. Moira confirms that the soldiers died roughly when the base microphones picked up the Bible verse.

Some missiles are launched; before being exploded, the CLUltists were able to put two of the flak turrets into auto-aim mode.

Jesus seems unaffected even as flak cloudlets explode around Him and are sucked up by the rotating cloud around him. Two missiles explode near their mark, but do nothing; one of the flying wings is hit by the shrapnel imprisoned in the cloud, and falls, one of its wings adding to the cloud's lethality.

"We need a way to get Him closer to the ground!"
>>
>>3856255
# Join you in Petra. We're bailing.

# Petra

He's headed straight at Petra, and we have Domai's troopers there.

Sorry Domai but you're the most likely bait to survive this.

Shoulda used peacekeepers desu.
>>
>>3856257
Didn't we put Pk forces there?
>>
>>3856264
Oh yeah there's still some guys guarding the sensor equipment.
>>
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>>3856257
>>3856264

Yes, there is a small contingent of Peacekeeper here with you. They've mostly been keeping an eye on the sensors.

-

Moira keeps away, but keeps an eye on things. The problem with that cyclonic cloud is that it'll eat up enough sand and shrapnel to make aerial approaches difficult... and Jesus is about a kilometer up, which is a little too far for the superheterodyning plasma speakers. You'd have to get the Wiesels up the plateau, or pull Jesus down by some manner.

Since you've chosen to make the entire setup helitransported, it's not an issue, although you can expect Remnants taking pot shots.
>>
>>3856269
Drop them on the Plateau, unless he starts losing altitude before we drop. We can call an audible if something weird happens, but we REALLY don't want to get caught with our pants down.
>>
>>3856269
Drop an orbital nuke above his head to force him down with the power of 200+ tons of tnt?
>>
Also , wasn't he suppose to appear on the mountain of olives?
>>
I've got to go but I've been reading the thread for the last hour or two: you anons have managed everything damn near perfectly in my absence as far as I can see; I probably won't be here for our victory or our defeat but I hope to return to a triumph rather than a defeat. If I'm lucky I'll be back soon enough to catch the after-thread stuff but worst comes to worst, I'm in the Discord and I'll see you there I guess.

This is the Green anon from last thread and from the previous quest, signing off and wishing you the best of luck. Give God hell.
>>
Did QM go to sleep?
>>
>>3856350
Killed by Turbojesus for being a heretic, probably
>>
File: last day map 3.png (209 KB, 800x837)
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Rolled 1000, 387, 890, 475 = 2752 (4d1000)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3eRn8jyWfk


The Peacekeepers head north; some scatter. Moira and a few of her guys make toward Petra, barely gaining on the white cloud with Jesus in the middle.

The helicopters take off for Petra.

"He's getting really close to the CATS camp!"

The whirlwind has broken off from the ground; what's left is an impossibly bright lenticular cloud, swirling at extreme speed and carrying along shrapnel, sand and debris, with Jesus in the middle. It moves somewhat erratically, cutting down its effective speed from 50kps or so 45.

Moira's dirt bike can do 60, and she has enough fuel to make it to Petra or to Litwala's camp. Her orders are to

# get the hell out of there!

# try to create a distraction!

and those left at the camp after the helicopters are out should

# attract Jesus' attention by firing their artillery

# head towards Amman

# head towards Petra

# heads towards Litwala's camp

The helicopters are going directly from your forward post to Petra; the Wiesels will line the plateau where the Remnant are standing, just outside the orange zone.

You have with you Domai's heavies and a handful of Peacekeepers; you're at the main access road to Petra, through a narrow canyon cut by some ancient and long-gone river into the plateau, going roughly east-west.

# Dig in.

# Secure the plateau on the north side.

# Secure the plateau on the south side.

# Spread your forces.

---

Sukail's men are making a slow retreat towards Amman; despite them being the largest force in the region, Jesus seems to be ignoring them for now.

He does not have very good control of them.

You tell them to

# double back and defend the CATS forward post

# scatter

# make to Amman and coordinate with the IDF
>>
>>3856538
# try to create a distraction!

# head towards Petra if they can outrun jesus

else

# head towards Amman

# Secure the plateau on the north side.

# make to Amman and coordinate with the IDF


we ahve no use for conventional forces here, go dummies go
>>
#Try to create a distraction.

Maybe instead of firing missiles at TJ (Cause that ain't gonna work), blow up some terrain to slow him down? Landslides, dust storm to limit visibility, etc.

Just hope she doesn't get too cocky...

# head towards Petra

#Secure the North Side

# make to Amman and coordinate with the IDF
>>
>>3856538
# get the hell out of there!
Litwala

# Secure the plateau on the north side.

# make to Amman and coordinate with the IDF
>>
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY8mwiiG5t8

>>3856553
>>3856569
>>3856572

"Moira, we need to slow Him down."

"Boss, I'm by myself and He's too far up. Hang on."

Jesus is moving through the air at about 50kph, faster than any horse with a rider, and wobbling a little bit. Moira's dirt bike can outrun Him, just barely; a column of army vehicles really can't, not reliably. Flying wings and drone aircraft of Israeli design come in to cover Moira, for what it'll do.

--

You have General Akbar's Peacekeepers make for Amman; the large column keeps moving north, shedding a few men and vehicles as it goes. Sukail does his best to prevent the retreat from turning into a rout, keeping the Peacekeeper together as best as he can. His plan is to head to Amman and coordinate with the IDF; Chandra is directing the last-minute things that need to be done at the Mount of Olives.

Given what happened at Al Hillah -- Jesus barely slowed down as He spoke the people at the base into exploding their flesh from their bones -- you also tell the people left at CATS forward post to evacuate; if there absolutely must be an army at Petra, it will be people loyal to you. They get the helicopters underway, after which they're told to

# hurry up, just go!

# try and take some gap generators with you!

while the large, fixed gap generators will be left on, just on the off chance that it does something. to help Moira.

--

Maybe 800K Remnant are standing in Petra's main "courtyard", in front of the catacomb entrances; the rest, those young enough and willing enough to fight, have climbed on top of the plateaus. It's pretty much impossible to tell where their leaders are.

You lead most of your forces on the plateau northwards of the entrance, with the reasoning that it's tall enough for the superheterodyning plasma speakers to reach and it's best to secure it in case the Remnant grow a spine and prevent you from doing so. So far, they're staying well within the orange zone.

A while ago, you had "spider bikes" built as support vehicles, with a small crane and winch; the detachment here has some, and they are put to good use, climbing up the plateau and then being used to carry some heavy weapons up. It won't do a thing against King Jesus, but if the Remnant decide to run across the orange line that was painted in the rocks, they'll have to think twice.

They're definitely thinking about it; a few are setting up machinegun nests on their own. They're shooting from inside the exclusion zone! So far it's just with DEWs, though; you have no idea why theirs work better than yours, but they do, and your people's hasty setup of sandbags and barriers keeps being interrupted by jolts of pain. Domai gets his heavies to act as human shields; the microwave beams make some spark on the metal armor, and they can smell ozone, but that's about it.

# Fire back, miniguns

# Fire back, microwaves and lasers

# Don't bother while the orange zone is up

---
>>
>>3856606
# Don't bother while the orange zone is up

Yknow, if he marches these fuckers to the mount of olives I'm not going to feel a bit of remorse at this point.
>>
>>3856606

# hurry up, just go!
>>
# hurry up, just go!

The extra Gap infrastructure might just help Moira.

# Don't bother while the orange zone is up.

>>3856607
Agreed. Hopefully we have martial artists to beat their bullet time mojo.
>>
>>3856606

"Aki, amplify me."

A few drones fly closer to Jesus, and move their speakers over to Moira's feed.

She stops her bike, loads a flare into her grenade launcher, and fires it straight ahead of Him.

"Hey asshole! You forgot me! You know, when you melted all those soldiers! I am the war witch of the Tiger Mafia, and You're going to face me if you got any more balls than your Ken-doll puppets!"

"Come on! Dammit. Moira to NAP: I need a good Bible verse here."

She stops, just out of range of what she estimates to be the immediate reach of Jesus' words, and nods. She fires another flare.

"All the host of heaven shall be dissolved! And the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll; all their host shall fall down as the leaf falls from the vine! And as fruit falling from a fig tree! See I can do prophecy too, asshole!"

The lenticular cloud does not seem to turn from satellite view, but it changes direction -- Moria confirms that Jesus is looking down right at her now. She revs up the dirt bike. "Things go so much faster when you speak the lingo. All right Boss, I got his attention, where do you want Him?"

Moira should

# head to Petra, but in an arc, so as to give time for the Wiesels and helicopters to get there and set up.

# follow Sukail's army to Amman.

# lead Jesus on top of the CATS forward post to see if the large gap generators do anything, then hide under one of them.

# ride around in circles and keep dodging for as long a she can.
>>
>>3856610
# head to Petra, but in an arc, so as to give time for the Wiesels and helicopters to get there and set up.
>>
I think Moira has the right idea.

Crazy Question:

Are there any plains between here and Petra?

>The LORD was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had chariots fitted with iron.

Judges 1:19
>>
>>3856615
The problem is Judges isn't part of the current cycle of prophecy, so I don't know if it works.
>>
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>>3856606
# try and take some gap generators with you!

# head to Petra, but in an arc, so as to give time for the Wiesels and helicopters to get there and set up.

Panzerklein?
>>
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>>3856609
>>3856608
>>3856607

"Leave the gap generators on and hurry up. We're going to need people here."

This is the one time where you want Jesus to follow the script; if it can end at Petra, all the better.

You tell Domai's people to save their ammo and batteries until the Remnant are actually vulnerable; they set up sandbags and HMG nests on the plateau, facing Petra proper.

>>3856615

Yes, it's pretty much flat between your former camp and Petra. (See map)


>>3856625

That's pretty much where I was going with the heavy armor, yes. It's not powered -- the tech just isn't there yet -- but it has stabilizer "heels" that deploy from the shins and allow for firing a HMG standing up. From a military standpoint it's not a particularly good design, but it's intimidating and allows for firing a HMG on the move without needing vehicles, and it's what Domai and his people wanted to bring to the table.
>>
>>3856624
Well if you think about it, neither are Daniel or Isaiah. Theologians took the Apocalyptic visions of those books and weaved it into Revelations to get the current Narrative.

Daniel was almost certainly talking about the Greek occupation of Palestine depicted in Maccabees for example, and John of Patmos probably borrowed the imagery for his own work. Like how Virgil borrowed from the Illiad to write the Aenid (I think?). Schmucks like Barnes, Tsion, and LaHaye however just went with the silly idea that God delivered his End Game plans in parts to different people, or some nonsensical bunk.

....

Also I'm pretty sure whatever Turbo Jesus is, it's operating exclusively on Biblical Logic. Hence why the massive Jesusaurus Rex can't make a coherent sentence that isn't spliced bible verses!
>>
>>3856637
So you think if we assemble on the plains he'll try to blast us, fail, and end up flying low?
>>
File: last day map 4.png (209 KB, 800x837)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MmavaV1-2o

>>3856625
>>3856613

"You got it!"

Moira speeds off southwards. She tells Aki to have a drone land further ahead with some gas in its tank so that she can siphon it off.

The drone bay in the Garibaldi comes alive; workers quickly stick an extra tank on a drone airplane and attach a 12V centrifugal pump to its belly so that Moira can refuel quickly, then fire the thing off; it stabilizes its flight and starts heading east as fast as it can.

By now you can all see the lenticular cloud coming, or rather, deviating southwards just a little.

The Remnant are singing; the distance and the fact that there are many of them spread out around a vast area make it hard to tell what, but it sounds like a solemn hymn.

There are four bridges on top of the path between the northeast plateau and the main body of rock that contains Petra's underground warren; three of them are inside the exclusion zone, so your men are only able to remove the southernmost one. The helicopters are coming, each carrying two to four Wiesel tankettes in various configurations.

Note that there is a ramp that vehicles can use, directly north of you.

Tactical assets:

6 pairs of Wiesels carrying the silencer weapon; at least 4 pairs are needed for the silencing effect to work.

4 pairs of Wiesels carrying gap generators; they may be able to push the exclusion zone back a little.

5 echelons of Wiesels (four vehicles to an echelon) carrying conventional weapons of mixed types; miniguns, recoilless AT rifles, mortars.

The Peacekeeper camp "downstairs", near the main road, holds approximately 30 platoons; you have 6 up here, plus 1 of heavies. You got 4 more coming from the forward post.

Strategic assets:

2 callable nukes

4 callable airstrikes from the Garibaldi

A large drone swarm overhead, armed with light weapons, flashbangs, and so on

# Let the Peacekeeper Lt. Col. at the site position your assets.

# Let Domai position your assets.

# Do it yourself.

>>3856637

(Yeah, you kinda nailed it)

>>3856632

The forward post is left empty, with its gap generators crackling green and purple; the lenticular cloud that Jesus is at the center of turns south, away from it and towards Moira.

She slows down for a moment to look back and, fortunately, doesn't get turned into a pillar of salt. Moira is one of the least salty people you know.

"Guys? The angel decal on the cloud looks a bit more three-D now."

The drones aren't picking that up, neither is her helmet cam, but you have no reason to disbelieve her.

Moira's trajectory will take her close to Litwala's camp. The potentate is there, too: he's clearly too old to fight, but he made the trip, knowing the risks. In many ways, his people are fighting against the culmination of the faith that brought them a century of oppression.

You warn Litwala, and recommend that his forces

# head south.

# take a stand.

# join you at Petra.
>>
I'm too uncertain to recommend it as my top strategy, but if we can spare some of the 'Spider-Bikes' or tanks while having a drone blasting Judges 1:19 it might keep Turbo Jesus busy?
>>
>>3856649

# head south.

Just get out of the way, man. We're NOT massing an army at Petra!

If the Remnant rush our position as we're trying to capture Jesus, we're going to evacuate Petra, and nuke everybody at the Mount of Olives, they'll get theirs.
>>
>>3856653

You're bringing in a small armada of Wiesel AWCs and other light tanks; it definitely counts as iron chariots.

You tell Aki to load the sound clip into the drones that have speakers; the overhead is minimal.

>>3856655


"I read you, Foreman. We see Him coming, and we see Moira's leading Him to us. But we did not trek all this way to run at the last minute!"

# Don't play into His hands.

# I suspect the more kills He get the more solid His army becomes.

# Your men are brave Litwala, but they need you to be wise.
>>
>>3856658
# I suspect the more kills He get the more solid His army becomes.

# Your men are brave Litwala, but they need you to be wise.

"Fact is bullets aren't going to win us this battle even if I respect your bravery in wanting to try. The heavy turrets of the Peacekeepers didn't do anything and he's manifesting far stronger now. Please, I don't want to risk anyone dying over this when we have a plan that should work far better than any glorious charge or defiantly held defence."
>>
>>3856658
# Your men are brave Litwala, but they need you to be wise.
>>
# I suspect the more kills He gets the more solid His army becomes.

#Your men are brave Litwala, but they need you to be wise.
>>
>>3856649
# Let the Peacekeeper Lt. Col. at the site position your assets.
We advise him on the assets ,and what they can do plus the general overall plan.

# head south.

>>3856658
# Your men are brave Litwala, but they need you to be wise.
Not the right time for the fight.

We aren't asking you to run, we are asking to you "maneuver."
>>
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Domai gets your attention. Three people -- a man, a woman, and a child between them -- have walked past the Remnant combatants and are now standing just inside the orange zone. The woman waves.

"Foreman!" It's Chloe. "We're here to ask you to stop this!"

Before she can continue, Buck starts talking. "This is your last chance to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus. Your choices are eternal life or eternal fire! God is a generous god, and in Him you can find riches beyond measure. You have done much good to the Remnant here before you, and it will be remembered! You will be great in the Kingdom, and shall judge angels, if you would but kneel at His feet. But if you do not, all your effort, all your work will be as filthy rags before the Lord! It is written that every knee will bow -- do it now by you will, or later in powerless defeat!"

"... Uh, yeah, what he said. Please, It's not too late."

# This is infact your last chance to change teams. "Very well. I will pray with you."

# "After we win, we'll be kinder to you than your King would be to us."

# "Sod off, Baldrick. Oh and let your wife speak, she's wearing the brains in your family."

# "Here's my counteroffer:" (write in)

--

>>3856664
(the neighbors of the beast!)
>>3856668
>>3856672

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bIbHF7ZE4Y


You quickly make your case to Litwala. "Men of Africa! We move south. The trap is not yet sprung."

On the satellite feed you see Litwala's Impi and militia board their troop crawlers, or march besides them, as they move southwards, abandoning their camp like Akbar and you did. You're going to deny battle to Jesus until you can surround Him -- He will have to play by your rules.

Santiago and Vega confirm that they are moving in so that they can close the circle, if need be.

# Guys, this is not a conventional war. Stay put.

# Sure, if it keeps Him busy or looking the other way...

Some of the Impi get their own bikes and veer off, joining Moira. Litwala explains that for them it's a matter of honor -- a war witch she may be but they're not leaving a woman alone on the battlefield.

>>3856649

(Use this picture to land the Wiesels, or have them set up in by the Peacekeeper Lt Cmdr, who will privilege offense, or by Domai, who will privilege defense and crew safety)
>>
>>3856680
# "Sod off, Baldrick. Oh and let your wife speak, she's wearing the brains in your family."

# Guys, this is not a conventional war. Stay put.

>(Use this picture to land the Wiesels, or have them set up in by the Peacekeeper Lt Cmdr, who will privilege offense, or by Domai, who will privilege defense and crew safety)
I'd say Domai for the mission-critical assets since losing even a single one is a grave risk but the rest are entirely expendable and should be positioned for offence / maximum effect. Who cares if a few crews die when their failure or success determines the fates of millions?
>>
>>3856680
# "Sod off, Baldrick. Oh and let your wife speak, she's wearing the brains in your family."

# Guys, this is not a conventional war. Stay put.


Use Domai for the Wiesels. They absolutely NEED to succeed.
>>
>>3856680
# "Here's my counteroffer:" (write in)
Do not go to the mount of olives with Jesus.

# Guys, this is not a conventional war. Stay put.
Conventional fighting of any sort has always been wasteful or the worst choice we could make in this game so avoid it like ebola.
>>
>>3856680
use Domai

No idea how we should try placing units on a tactical map when we've never done this before in quest. Bad idea to try to figure it out now, especially in THIS battle of all places.
>>
>>3856694
Agreed, the only thing I can honestly say is that I wish we had more anti-jesus shit ready and less conventional assets.

That and a giant fuck off laser to see if we can't just melt the bastard.
>>
>>3856697
>anti-jesus
Not sure how we would have been able to get that.

No time to even do anymore R&D. I figure if we had the turns, we'd study and experiment of the angels for starters, and try to manifest demons to study, study the magical powers and utilize them, find or develop any powers, or make them stronger that can function even with camera's present.
>>
# "Sod off, Baldrick. Oh and let your wife speak, she's wearing the brains in your family."

#Guys this is not a conventional war. Stay put.
>>
>>3856702
>Not sure how we would have been able to get that.
I mean I wish we had built additional weasels mounting the plasma speaker things, not that we had additional methods of defeating him.
>>
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Rolled 78, 90 = 168 (2d100)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU5d9faghAw

>>3856679
>>3856689
>>3856684
>>3856679
>>3856705
>>3856694
>>3856697

"Sod off, Buck. And let your wife speak. She's the one wearing the brains in the family."

Chloe puts a hand in front of Buck's mouth. "Then you should listen to me! Please! For the sake of the future!"

You shake your head.

"I have been listening. CATS is still at peace with ICCO - stay back and watch, don't stab us in the back, if you think you know how it'll end. For the sake of the future."

They walk back; you hear them argue. It's the first time you've heard them argue.

You remind yourself that you're a manager, not a general: there are people for this. The Peacekeeper officer, Mr. Tenzin, deploys the Wiesels carrying conventional weapons facing the Remnants and getting a good arc of fire on the bridges, while the ones operating the plasma speakers will be brought to the east ridge.

The containment vehicles have to be landed near the visitors' center, since they're too big to use the vehicle ramp off the plateau. Domai has the small, spiderlike construction vehicles ensure that the ramp is wide enough to let the Wiesels come down at near top speed.

Jesus must be made to land in front of the visitors' center; that's where most of the Peacekeepers still are, so it's likely that He will confront them first.

The helicopters that flew in your armored assets are going to

# be switched to unmanned flying bomb mode

# land on the southern plateau in case they are needed for a retreat

Moira is still leading Jesus on; she reports that there are at least three angelic beings with him. possibly five. The rest of the heavenly host seems still projected on the swirling lenticular cloud.

>>3856702

You did; you pushed your tech as far as it would go. You have microwave/laser guns, gap generators, and a sonic beam that can make an Angel shut up and cry in confusion.

--

"Foreman, this is McLachlan. We started adjusting orbital parameters when the UFO showed up. You have one of the nuclear satellites starting its low orbital pass now, one in 15 minutes. You also got fourteen - hang on - seven tungsten rod clusters ready. We had to put some of the rod droppers on standby, someone's trying to send them spurious commands."


# Put Aki's people on it.

# Aki's people need to keep focusing on drones.
>>
>>3856718
# land on the southern plateau in case they are needed for a retreat

# Aki's people need to keep focusing on drones.
>>
# land on the southern plateau in case they are needed for a retreat

#Aki's people need to keep focusing on drones.

It's probably that Remnant hacker, Chang.

Goody gum drops
>>
>>3856718
># land on the southern plateau in case they are needed for a retreat
>#Aki's people need to keep focusing on drones.
>>
>>3856718
# Put Aki's people on it.

Last thing we need is to have the rods or nukes come down just after we win or even just before and fuck us up.
>>
>>3856718
>spiderlike construction
Order them into the orange zone and fire every nuke and rod from space at them, destroy them.


# land on the southern plateau in case they are needed for a retreat

Why waste a perfectly good helicopter? Do you know how hard it was to even get a helicopter on loan?

But none that can force them to become powerless and smack them with a crowbar.

Or one that can take away the incorperalness, or protective wear/clothing from combustion or exploding, and passing out.

# Put Aki's people on it.
How is this even possible? Its like we deliberately let our our selves be lazy in regards to our security, just so we can mess up regardless of how paranoid we've been.
>>
>>3856718
>>3856731
Changing my vote to
# Put Aki's people on it.
>>
>>3856718
Thinking it over, I'm going to change my vote:

# land on the southern plateau in case they are needed for a retreat

#Put Aki's people on it.

She's our designated hacker gal.
>>
He's coming. You can see your people from the camp coming in from the north and Moira and a few Impi making a tiny dust cloud ahead of the swirling lenticular cloud that Jesus is in the middle of. There's a noise, and two of the Impis fall back, and then their bikes fall and stop moving.

Both of the enormous MilV12 helicopters have managed to drop off the containment vehicles; one even makes it to the southern plateau with the rest of the helicopters. The other just refuses to take off again; these were prototypes, and hastily refurbished at that -- you're lucky to have one left. The other helicopters load winches and platforms and get ready to go for a quick evac.

With six sonic emitters and two containment vehicles, you've got some redundancy.

"McLachlan, transfer those sats over to Aki's control, she'll protect them for you."

"Done!"

Moira and her backup are coming in fast, with Jesus fast approaching. The lenticular cloud occasionally lets out a small bolt of lightning, each raising a small dust devil that dissipates after a few seconds.

An angel appeared in the light and cried with a loud voice, saying to all the birds in the midst of heaven, "Come and gather together for the supper of the great God, that you may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, both small and great."

Vega and Santiago acknowledge that they are leaving their troops where they are, but both are coming in with a small detachment.

It's not shouted, but you can all hear it. From the hole in the cloud that Jesus and the other manifested angels are in the middle of - you can see some golden city behind it; satellite imaging just shows a very bright circular cloud - come forth an enormous swarm of white birds.

They're doves, but they're the size of swans and honk like geese. They fly ahead of the cloud, and start diving upon the Peacekeepers camped at the visitors' center. A few get close immediately Shooting at them with small arms seems to work, but there's just so many of the damn things!

# Swarm against swarm then, send in the drones! Even in semiautonomous mode they should keep the birds of heaven busy.

# Call in the airplanes and attack helicopters.

# Rain fire on the cloud.
* Rods
* Nuke

>>3856744

You can have the construction vehicles wade into the orange zone; their GPS will make excellent target painters for an orbital strike.

# Don't.

# Rods.

# Nuke.
>>
Are the birds being affected by gap generators?

Electric Type > Flying Type

# Swarm against swarm then, send in the drones! Even in semiautonomous mode they should keep the birds of heaven busy.

#Don't
>>
>>3856754
>Swarm against swarm then, send in the drones! Even in semiautonomous mode they should keep the birds of heaven busy
Everything else is literally canons against birds (probably not a saying in English, but in German it means inefficient overkill)
>Don't
Not yet, they are probably still protected, there is nothing to be gained. It's tempting though, if it worked we would cut the believe vampire of from it's power source, by litteraly annihilating everyone he feeds of and goddam do I want the remnants dead.
>>
>>3856754
# Swarm against swarm then, send in the drones! Even in semiautonomous mode they should keep the birds of heaven busy.

# Don't.
Have them transform into bipedal mechs.
>>
>>3856754

# Swarm against swarm then, send in the drones! Even in semiautonomous mode they should keep the birds of heaven busy.
>>
>>3856754
# Swarm against swarm then, send in the drones! Even in semiautonomous mode they should keep the birds of heaven busy.

It's not like they'll be much use against God and we've not got any bigger targets yet.

# Don't.

Eh, I'd rather save them for a little while longer.
>>
>>3856754
# Don't.

Going with more Don't.
>>
I'm trying to see if I can find a verse about Yahweh sending doves as food that we can blast back....
>>
>>3856763
>>3856762
>>3856767
>>3856764
>>3856769

Moments after the birds of heaven pour forth from the cloud's aperture, they're met with your own swarm. The Garibaldi starts manufacturing and launching more; she's far, but your birds are fast.

The sky above is getting cloudier, but right now it's welcome -- no sun in anyone's eyes.

The birds slam into helicopters and flying wings, peck at them, and in return get shot by small-caliber weapons. The bullets do nothing, but the propeller and rotor blades do. A few drones carry flamethrowers, and use them to good effect, frightening the animals. Below, the Peacekeepers ack that bullets aren't doing much and prepare

Most drones are in semiautonomous mode, but some are teleoperated. One guy shouts "Whoo! It's like Independence Day! WELCOME TO EARF!"

It fits, although you hope he's wrong considering how that fight went.

Before long, drones and birds start falling from the sky, roughly in equal numbers, usually from collisions. The Remnant looking on behind you seem surprised that even these auxilliaries of the army of heaven are taking any casualties. The Peacekeepers at the visitor center cheer.

# Plink the Remnant with DEWs.

# Leave them alone.

Aki reports that someone from the Remnant is in fact trying to hijack the satellites, but only one group is in Petra -- they rest are someplace in Illinois. "Oh hey, it's Naima and Chang! Hi guys! It's Aki, can you stop -- Hey, rude."

# Remember that mafia goon squad? Good use for them.

# Call the Rangers.

# Keep them locked out of the system but give them some hope so they'll waste their time there.
>>3856775

(There is one, but it's quails. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+16&version=NIV )

This is one of those things that a few people at NAP were expecting to see, which didn't happen; the people in Petra have been living on manna and water for years at this point. There was even a spat between Chloe and Micah about bringing in outside food for variety's sake.


--

Moira is coming in fast; the cloud has stopped spewing out birds, and now is coming straight for the Peacekeeper camp. It's starting to come in gap generator range, too.

You have a few minutes left before the cloud is in SHPS range.

# Deploy an orbital weapon.

# Fine tune the gap generators.

# Give a brief speech.
>>
>>3856794
# Leave them alone. Still no reason to fire into the orange zone.

# Remember that mafia goon squad? Good use for them.


# Fine tune the gap generators.
>>
>>3856794
# Leave them alone.

Last thing we need is to get them fighting us.

# Remember that mafia goon squad? Good use for them.

They should get a god damn move on compared to the Rangers since we'd need to talk with Dimmsdale.

# Fine tune the gap generators.

Orbital weapons should be held back from deployment, the likelihood of them actually managing to kill god or something is quite low. The Gap generators should however provide some protection from god.
>>
# Remember that mafia goon squad? Good use for them.

Instruct them to leave the Remnant be (They don't know martial arts do they?) and have them thrash the equipment.

#Leave the alone.

Priorities.

#Fine tune the gap generators.

You want us to monologue about our diabolical plan to stop Jesus? That breaks a number of rules from the Overlord List right there.
>>
>>3856794
# Remember that mafia goon squad? Good use for them.

# Keep them locked out of the system but give them some hope so they'll waste their time there.

Like how did they even know about it?

We kept the remnant out and start putting in credentials, and other security features including not telling them all the goods, right guys?

# Fine tune the gap generators.

>>3856809
We should trash any and all red jeep Cherokees.
>>
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>>3856802
>>3856798
>>3856809

The goon squad has been somewhat underutilized, but they also serve who only stand and wait. They're very happy to get an assignment, and they're very happy to get this kind of assignment -- go where Aki tells them and wreck the place. "Wrecking crew, moving out!"

---

You have your people fine tune the gap generators, both the ones on the plateau and the large cluster in the visitors' center. Either it makes a difference in the chaotic air battle, or the drone operators are learning.

Some Remnant brought their children up on the plateau, figuring they'd be invulnerable; you hear a few cry when the drones start having the upper hand on the enormous doves.

With the final fight fast approaching, you don't see a point in making a speech - you are CATS, you get things done, making sure everyone is ready is more your style.

The cloud shudders for a moment, then resumes moving forward -- it's in gap generator range.

# Try to shoot at the birds again.

# We're winning that one, let it be.

Moira made it up the plateau; she's covered in dust, and the water bottle she was carrying has turned to blood. She takes a sip anyway before being given a fresh one. The swirling cloud is greyer now, having picked up pieces of drones and even heavenly dove feathers. Above, clouds have obscured the sky again.

"Foreman, this is Francesca. Recommend you brace for hail."

# Drop one of the nukes on the clouds above you, hail denied.

# Roger that.

The SHPS vehicles are ready; between generators and batteries they'll give you about 20 minutes of sound blast. Any waveform will do, really, but you've loaded just the thing in their USB drives.

# Dr. Robertson explaining conclusively why even with the changed nuclear physics, the universe cannot be 6000 years old.

# Fr. Schorpe's brief lecture on the incongruence between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2.

# The 1812 ouverture, Ride of the Valkyrur, or some piece of classical music.

# Some heavy metal of course!

# Chiptunes. We're from the internet after all.

# (Write in: WILL make a difference)

You check your DEW, briefly look over at the keepsakes affixed to your shield, and stand in line with your colleagues, facing

# Jesus and the cloud portal to the east.

# the Remnant to the west.
>>
>>3856827
# Try to shoot at the birds again.

Have the drones shift to covering one flank while we try shooting at the other: if it works; we continue; if it doesn't; we cease fire and let the drones cover all the sky.

# Drop one of the nukes on the clouds above you, hail denied.

We have two for a reason.

# Fr. Schorpe's brief lecture on the incongruence between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2.

He's probably our most famous member of staff: therefore his speech should have the most faithpower backing it as well as technologically being similarly useful.

# the Remnant to the west.

I find it doubtful, even with our sword, that we could make a difference against god.
>>
# Try to shoot at the birds again.

Hail might affect our chances of winning this battle.

#Roger that

We need both nukes for our backup plan, yes?

# Dr. Robertson explaining conclusively why even with the changed nuclear physics, the universe cannot be 6000 years old.

# Jesus and the cloud portal to the east.
>>
>>3856827
>We're winning that one, let it be

> Drop one of the nukes on the clouds above you, hail denied

>Dr. Robertson explaining conclusively why even with the changed nuclear physics, the universe cannot be 6000 years old
You are bullshit Jesus and we are going to blast it in your face, maybe mix in someone asking why he is white?
>Jesus and the cloud portal to the east
They are the enemy, if the remnants become too much of an issue they get a space rod.
>>
>>3856827
# Drop one of the nukes on the clouds above you, hail denied.

# the Remnant to the west.
Gonna be really bright in the east very soon.

# (Write in: WILL make a difference)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Hwt1DVaYLy4
Diff video in case the first one doesn't work, couldn't decide between the two.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M36DrvYqfqM
>>
>>3856827
# Try to shoot at the birds again.

# Roger that.

# Metallica - King Nothing

# Jesus and the cloud portal to the east.
>>
>>3856844
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFBbOHohwR8
>>
>>3856827
We make a playlist
Start off with this as the intro,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M36DrvYqfqM

Maybe some filler classical music

then switch or interrupt to >>3856847
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFBbOHohwR8
When the actual fighting starts angels and Jesus with our sword and forces.

If we run out of stuff then we revert to the classics or they have been used as filler, then we play Dr. Robertson and Fr. Schorpe just so there's something filling the airwaves.
>>
>>3856831
>>3856832

>Na1ma: Aki, please. I promise, it'll be fun, we'll have eternity to be friends in.
)Aki_Z5: Naima, no. This isn't a game anymore. Your Jesus is evil.
>N: Fine! I have the power of God and anime on my side!
)A: Huh, so much for that buffer. You got good.
>N: Chang's helping. You'd have liked him. That's the thing, Aki, I grew up, got married. You stayed the same.
)A: I grew up too. And it wasn't eating manna in a cave, I was trying to help fix the world. Learned some situational awareness. You should too.
>N: Like what? Also, sorry, but I got a safe-mode reboot.
)A: Look outside.
--Na1ma has left the chat--

With the goon squads having driven an earthmover through the antennas in Naomi Tiberias' safehouse, the satellites are safe and Aki can concentrate on the drones again.

"Drones, disengage!"

The doves of heaven, unexpectedly free to swoop down on the Peacekeeper infantry, do so, with the intent to swarm them and peck them to death or at least to uselessness.

"Open fire!"

Now that the drones aren't in the way, the Peacekeepers start shooting in the iar, some aiming, some just spraying in the cloud's direction. The birds fall, this time. The Remnant behind you wail; you look on, and finally get a good glance on King Jesus.

You don't know why you can see the details so clearly. It is as if He appears two meters away from you, and you figure that's the experience of everyone everywhere. "Don't get distracted!"

Jesus' eyes shone with a conviction like a flame of fire, and He held His majestic head high. He wore a robe down to the feet so brilliantly white it was incandescent and bore writing, something in a language wholly unfamiliar to Rayford and something else he easily understood. On His robe at the thigh a name was written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS. Jesus was girded about the chest with a golden band. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow. His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace.

The cloud stops, and Jesus holds His hand up at the Peacekeepers and your personnel shooting down the birds. He holds in His right hand seven stars, and His countenance is like the sun shining in its strength. His beard and hair now goes white.

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, " Jesus says, "the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, the Almighty,"

And with those very first words, almost a hundred Peacekeeper soldiers furthest east fell dead, simply dropping where they stood, their bodies ripped open, blood pooling in a silhouette before falling on the ground. The others stop firing, and the drones close in on the birds again, firearms free this time.

The armies of heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, appear behind Him on white horses -- they aren't quite there yet, but look a lot more real than they did moments ago.

"Sonic Screwdrivers: Fire!"

--

(Y'all tell me on the song or speech, although I have to question >>3856853 's choice, as much as I like Johnny Cash)
>>
>>3856862
Still standing by King Nothing, cos it's go time.

There is no "actual fighting", this is a containment operation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFBbOHohwR8
>>
>>3856862
BRING THE RAIN AND THE PAIN SAT-COM.

May the Machine guide against the monster.
>>
>>3856853
Yeah uh, agreeing with QM, that song is largely about us losing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t8MbnWGcWc also good?
>>
(Shit! I know this epic motivational video on YouTube about how people went from superstition into expanding their horizons... and now I can't find it because YouTube has to keep moving shit about! T.T)

I still say Robertson followed by Schorpe. Both Science and Faith denouncing this mockery.
>>
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>>3856853
>>3856847
king nothing
>>3856838
>>3856832
robertson
>>3856831
schorpe
>>3856885
both

---

>>3856831
>>3856838

And just like that, hail starts. At first in small grains, but then they get bigger, and bigger... enough to threaten the electronics on the Wiesels, as much as they've been ruggedized; certainly enough to mess with the plasma speakers' output.

The Remnant cheer; you glance backwards and see that the hail is coming down into the exclusion zone, too, but there it melts into rain and then into a soothing mist, everywhere but where the gap generator radius overlaps.

"McLachlan, what do you have for me?"

"Cumulonimbus right over you, Foreman. Satellites can't see a thing."

"Get rid of it. Drop Nuke 1, airburst, I need a hole in the cloud."

"Foreman, the fallout...."

"...Will be something we deal with tomorrow. Rain fire."

"But Foreman, your troops!"

"Do it."

"Physics package inbound and set to airburst."

Nobody sees the flash of light above the sky, nobody hears the ugly piece of iron fall on the ground through air too thin to transmit sound.

In decimating your Peacekeeper auxiliaries, Jesus had to lower the lenticular loud; the sound waves can reach Him now. Carefully due to the hail, the six Wiesel pairs advance eastwards, keeping formation, so as to be able to keep firing. 19 minutes left.

You have the Peacekeepers

# fall back into the visitor center.

# hold the line and replace their losses, if they can.

while Domai's workers

# keep an eye on the Remnant along with the heavies

# cover the gap generators with tarp until the hail stops
>>
# fall back into the visitor center.

# cover the gap generators with tarp until the hail stops
>>
>>3856862
I figure its the closest I would get to posting it at an appropriate time. Also I imagine it is us at the end of the song being sung about.

Didn't have a heck of a whole lot of time to make up a playlist desu.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehc2x4BleQI
Here's one I forgot to add....
fitting since we use alot of drones.
>>
>>3856901
# fall back into the visitor center.

# cover the gap generators with tarp until the hail stops
>>
>>3856901
# hold the secondary line and replace their losses, if they can.
Fall back to secondary positions.

Hold and break as a whole, bend and we hold as a cohesive unit.

# hold the line and replace their losses, if they can.
We didn't make more sturdy and water proof versions yet?
>>
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>>3856906

(If there are no objections I'd like to go with that one because it fucking rules)

>>3856910
>>3856903
>>3856915

"Fall back! Hold at the canyon!"

The drones swarm aggressively while the Peacekeepers and the your men from the base fall back to the sandbags placed around the visitors' center, firing into the cloud to little appearent effect. Around you, Domai's combat engineers run forward with corrugated sheets to cover the Wiesels' electronics.

The hail intensifies.

"Don't look up!"

Without warning, a fireball goes off inside the clouds above, spreading them apart and letting the sun in, creating a halo around the plateau. The Remnant don't understand, and cheer, even as the hail stops coming. A few bolts of lightning hit the plateau, one even inside the exclusion zone, one on the visitor center's lightning rod -- the gap generators don't care.

With every word from Jesus, a handful of your troops simply... explode.

"I am the Son of Man, the Son of God, the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God. I am the Lion-"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJko3HB9vJs

"Then welcome to the jungle, Mister Lion!"

You can all see Jesus' lips moving, but nothing is coming out; all anyone can hear other than the sound of their own voices through bone conduction is Guns'n'Roses.

The displaced clouds start raining on the Remnant.

The lenticular cloud, hit by one of the lightning bolts, comes closer to the ground, and emits a tendril down to it.

Jesus is there, immaculate, on a great white horse. Five angels follow behind and above him, wings keeping them aloft -- you recognize them. Christopher, the angel with the everlasting gospel; Caleb; and Nahum. These were the three angels of mercy.

The other two angels are larger, burlier even. Michael and Gabriel. Behind them, a myriad of white riders wielding flaming swords, leaving the cloud and fanning out at a walking pace.

The Wiesels are keeping their sonic beam firmly trained on Jesus; they're good to go for another 18 minutes. You have to colllapse that cloud!

Your people have fallen back to the visitor's center and are ready to return fire.

# Gap generator Wiesels, down the ridge and go around!

# Moira had time to put on her anti-locust armor. Tesla coil troopers, go!

# DEW and rocket barrage from the visitor's center!
>>
# Moira had time to put on her anti-locust armor. Tesla coil troopers, go!
>>
>>3856940
# DEW and rocket barrage from the visitor's center!

While we wait for

# Gap generator Wiesels, down the ridge and go around!
>>
>>3856948
+1 This
>>
>>3856940
# Gap generator Wiesels, down the ridge and go around!
# Moira had time to put on her anti-locust armor. Tesla coil troopers, go!
Act as infantry escorts, the GG should protect the infantry and vice versa.

# DEW and rocket barrage from the visitor's center!
Couldn't hurt to do this and distract them while we send a force to go around.
>>
>>3856960
All in combined arms then? Yeah, seconded.
>>
>>3856972
>>3856960

Sounds like a viable plan.

+1 Support
>>
>>3856972
We could throw in helicopters to the mix just for shits and giggles.
>>
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>>3856954
>>3856948
>>3856954
>>3856960

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGfKi6kpdTQ

"Weapons free!"

This isn't how it's supposed to go. Jesus is here to make a triumphant return, a glorious appearing.

A torrent of firepower comes out of your small army on the plain, rockets, purple laser beams, firearms of all caliber. All stop a few meters in front of Jesus, doing nothing.

But the heavenly cavalry spreading out from beside and behind Him is affected -- horses are spooked, riders hanging on as they rear up.

The furthest away are actually hurt. You're keeping an eye on it; rather than pass through harmlessly, the bullets connect, leaving small wounds that bleed ichor for a few seconds before closing. It's what you call an improvement.

You don't have that much ammo; after the initial barrage, the volume of fire slows down.

Of course, your infantry's barbaric yawp is part of a combined arms strategy.

Four Wiesels mounting gap generators rev up and speed down the ramp to the north, intending to come behind the cloud and then turn on at full power; your infantry keeps their cavalry distracted. The first angelic horse to fall causes a cheer to ripple through your forces.

Above you, the few remaining drones finish off the doves of heaven.

Moira is ready to make a sortie; Domai and his heavies are guarding your rear. As for you,

# keep looking down the ridge and coordinating.

# go with Moira.

# go with Domai.

# Join the bulk of the Peacekeepers.

By now the Remnant have figured out that something's wrong; they're sending women and children back inside to safey. The sensors that are still working have been kept an eye on by the science team all the way on the Garibaldi, and show that the orange zone is

# fading in power, because you've set your gap generators to privilege range.

# shrinking, because it has to retreat against the gap generators' concentrated output.

Dr. Diamond has little to do; your people for the most part are either hale or exploded gruesomely. She's stitching up some kid's elbow stump.

Now that the trap has been sprung, you notify (pick zero or more)

# Santiago

# Vega

# Litwala

# Akbar

so that they can go for a pincer maneuver.

>>3856976

Now that they seem vulnerable, you can also call in an air strike of varying committment, too.

# 0 to 4
>>
>>3856985
# keep looking down the ridge and coordinating.
Gotta keep up the grand strategy. We really should get some proper command staff and orderlies after this.

# Akbar
# Litwala
# Vega

# 0 to 4
2
>>
#Go with Moira

#Fading in power because you've set your gap generators to privilege range.

#Santiago
#Litwala

Both have seasoned military experience for this kind of thing.

I want to reserve Vega's forces for the heavier Narrative Causality scenarios.

Akbar's forces have a massive target on them, so they can stay put for now

2 Airstrikes
>>
>>3856985
# keep looking down the ridge and coordinating.

We are a manager, The Foreman, let us stick to what we do.

# shrinking, because it has to retreat against the gap generators' concentrated output.

Creating additional space our troops can retreat into and fight from is important. Plus this concentrates our anti-narrative defences.

# Santiago
# Vega
# Litwala
# Akbar

We've got less than 19 minutes or so to make this work until we need to start jury-rigging alternative power supplies for our jesus-neutralising sound system.

# 0 to 4

Give them a fine volley but keep the rest in reserve for once we're certain that they are making good hits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otFTH05LkCA
>>
>>3856985
>keep looking down the ridge and coordinating
We aren't a fighter we are a manager and we can't manage anything when we are dead.
># fading in power, because you've set your gap generators to privilege range
Once it has weakened sufficiently we space rod them. They have chosen their side and their brainwashed believe is fueling this thing, they have to die, otherwise no victory is possible. Even if we would win, they would always try to sabotage humanity unless they suddenly unbrainwash.
>Santiago
>Litwala

>2
>>
>>3856985
# keep looking down the ridge and coordinating.

Someone needs to.

# fading in power, because you've set your gap generators to privilege range, hoping to also have some effect on the host from up here.

# Litwala. "You wanted a fight? They still have some narrative control, but so do you. Engage at your discretion!"


# 1. We don't want to inadvertently hit our gap generators. Airbursting rockets only.
>>
>>3857008
Teeing them up for the space rods was basically my plan too yes.
>>
QM, are we broadcasting this fight to the world?
>>
>>3857016
I hope so, in order to have the remnants believe opposed by the hopes and prayers of all human kind.
>>
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>>3856995

(Hey I'm doing the best I can here. The idea is that each group has a commander, but ultimately the Foreman is the one with the big picture, and also the authority to call down stuff like nukes)

>>3857012
>>3857008
>>3857005
>>3857004

"Potentate Litwala, the enemy has landed in front of Petra. They are vulnerable."

"Sons of Shaka! Of Haile Selassie! My brothers! A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship. But it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the age of man comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you advance, warriors of Africa!"

---

"Corazon, they're vulnerable, you can move in."

"Espartanos! The people united will never be defeated. We join our brothers in the fight!"

You tune out the shouting and banging on shields.

---

You watch the Remnant retreat noncombatants into their main "courtyard" as the young and middle aged men decide what to do -- should they intervene? You have a single DEW fire a microwave beam at one of the stragglers just inside the orange zone; he waves his hand as if to brush off a fly. It's more than anyone's gotten through in years. You're staying on the ridge, since someone needs to coordinate.

The Calvary cavalry keeps spreading out, but they're learning, and backing off just a little as they do. Jesus raises a hand, and the five Angels start flying towards the plateau. Michael is attacked by a drone, grabs it in flight, and contemptuously throws it on the ground in front of the devenders at the visitors' center; Gabriel dodges a few. These two seem to be coming for you. The three smaller angels look unsure of what to do at first, then start taking on the drones.

Moira and a few troopers are riding tank-desant on the gap generator Wiesels; their plan is to make a lazy semicircle, set the Wiesels to remote control mode, and then dive the gap generators into the cloud.

The Peacekeepers will focus fire on

# the angels

# the white riders

# any of those that come too close

>>3857016

That's entirely your call to make. So far there's been a PSA telling people to stay away, and of course ICCO's webcast from Petra, which for some reason went down a few minutes ago.

Are you?

# Yes, on streaming.

# Yes, on everything.

# No.

---

Michael notices you among all the soldiers and support personnel for the Wiesel platoon.

He points at you, and you can hear him.

"This is not a vision, Foreman."

# The vision was to warn YOU, not ME.

# If you want a duel then you're a shittier general than even myself.

--

Now that the hail is gone -- the Remnant civilians in the courtyard may be getting a fair dose of radioactive rain though -- Domai has his workers form a shieldwall next to himself and the heavies. The Remnant are still trying to decide whether to advance or not.

# Warn Chloe about the fallout, go indoors.

# Eh, fuck 'em.
>>
>>3857037

# the angels "Priority targets!"

# No. Who knows, maybe seeing the glory of angels will weigh the world (and some little drop of NC with it) against us.

# The vision was to warn YOU, not ME.

# Eh, fuck 'em. We're going to obliterate them with tungsten rods in an hour or so anyway.
>>
>>3857037
>Warn Chloe about the fallout, go indoors.
this is a good chance to get them out of our hair.

> The vision was to warn YOU, not ME.

>Yes, on everything.

> any of those that come too close
>>
>>3857037

#Any of those that come too close

#Yes, on streaming

#The vision was to warn YOU, not ME

"We meet again at last. The circle is now complete. When I left you I was but a learner. Now I am the master!"

(Finally I got a proper Star Wars quip)

# Warn Chloe about the fallout, go indoors.

We're not monsters. Plus Chloe is good people, just caught in the thralls of an angry deity.
>>
>>3857037
I'm thinking more along the lines of some a few guys reminding us and others mentioning things we may not have thought of to cover but are obvious, and a few people that act as couriers for our messages and stuff. Don't worry I tend to muse about these things out loud.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sDWi7OkhfM

# the white riders
Mooks against Red shirts.

# Yes, on streaming.
But only carefully selected bits and segments at angles that are safe. We can release the whole thing later.

Keep in mind, one of the reason hostage rescue operations and police response to robbers held up in a bank or something isn't broadcast is to protect the integrity of the operation and the rescuers.

# The vision was to warn YOU, not ME.

# Warn Chloe about the fallout, go indoors.
>>
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>>3857055
(Happily enough, you've automated most of that stuff: your staff officers are all in your ear, at least today)

>>3857044
>>3857042

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLK95K_t6nY

"That vision was to warn you, not me. We meet again at last. The circle is now complete. When I left you I was but a learner. Now I am the master!"

"Foreman, this is Ops, who are you talking to?"

You don't know if he heard you or not and you don't care. He'll get the point soon enough.

"Ops, put Chloe Steele on the phone."

You call Chloe. An angry Buck picks up and spits, "You have nothing to say to my wife! Now it's too late for you!"

"Yeah, great. Listen, the rain coming down on you right now is radioactive, we had to nuke the clouds, our equipment doesn't like hail, sorry and all that. Go back into the catacombs until it's safe."

"What? You lie!"

"Got a geiger counter? Check for yourself. You're a journalist, you should think of that."

Seconds later you hear a distant cry in the Petra courtyard; looks like at least some of the civilians are streaming back into the catacombs. Those on the plateau across from you however aren't budging; some are passing around weapons.

--

Moira is in position.

# Dive in tank-desant and take out that cloud, whatever it takes!

# Send in the gap generators in RC mode, play it safe.

# Wait for the air strikes and/or tungsten rod drop.

The Garibaldi confirms that you have an air strike inbound; they've been sending out a trickle of drones, but they've running out of prefabs and are putting them together as fast as they can from parts vectored in from warehouses nearby.

Christopher, Nahum and Caleb have figured out that the drones can't really hurt them -- their wounds simply close after a few seconds of ichor bleeding.

You tell Aki to

# keep them off, separate them from Michael and Gabriel.

# Gang up on one. Let's see if he flies when he's full of lead.

# focus on herding them away from Moira.

--

The defenders in the visitor center fire at targets of opportunity, keeping the cavalry away and taking the occasional shot at Michael and Gabriel. The former retaliates with a trumpet blast that shatters every window in the building and leaves Dr. Diamond suddenly busy getting glass shards out of people.

King Jesus continues pronouncing maledictions upon your men, but to little effect -- even so, His aura is sufficient to keep the heavenly cavalry safe, if they stay close. Is He trying to mass troops?
>>
>>3857061
>King Jesus continues pronouncing maledictions upon your men, but to little effect -- even so, His aura is sufficient to keep the heavenly cavalry safe, if they stay close. Is He trying to mass troops?

The bastard is probably feeding off of them now that the Remnant power source is dwindling.

# Send in the gap generators in RC mode, play it safe.

Jesus in not ash. You don't have our permission to die, Moira.

#Focus on herding them away from Moira.
>>
>>3857061
# Wait for the air strikes and/or tungsten rod drop.
Let it hit before moving in.

# Dive in tank-desant and take out that cloud, whatever it takes!
Move in after the airstrike.

# focus on herding them away from Moira.
>>
>>3857061

# Send in the gap generators in RC mode, play it safe. The gap generators in position will give us enough time to call in the big guns.

I think it's time to drop some rods ~~from~~ to god.

# Gang up on one. Let's see if he flies when he's full of lead.
>>
File: latest[1].png (187 KB, 455x433)
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Rolled 474, 176, 7 = 657 (3d1000)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlUYs03Sy6Q


>>3857066
>>3857072
>>3857069
>>3857066

"Aki, cover Moira!"

The Wiesels have to be remote controlled locally, since they're carrying a radio jammer, their radios are operating in timeslice mode, and high latency or jitter would make that unusable.

Moira and the Impis she's picked up along the way jump off the tankettes and prepare to cover the Wiesel drivers after they get down and deploy their antennas.

One of the Centauro IFVs that came from your now abandoned forward post parks in front of them.

Above, the drones keep poking and prodding at Nahum, Christopher and Caleb; by now a few have run out of gas, so Aki takes one and tries to send it through the portal inside the cloud. It goes in, and crashes somewhere inside.

"Okay, that gave me a headache" she announces.

Michael and Gabriel are advancing, slowly but steadily.

Litwala and Santiago are inbound.

The angelic cavalry seem to have grown a spine -- they're charging the Wiesels!

# Moira, cut them down.

# Centauro, open fire!

# Let them have one Wiesel to make sure the other three reach their target.

Michael stops, looks at you, and speaks into your head again.

"So these are your iron chariots. They are small and loud and weak."

The coming airstrike will focus on

# the north group of the cavalry.

# the middle where King Jesus is.

# the south group of the cavalry.

# the Remnant still on the plateau, who are apparently arming p.
>>
>>3857081
# Centauro, open fire!

# the south group of the cavalry.

Gotta do this fast, people...
>>
#Centauro, open fire!

#The south group of the cavalry

Quote Judges 1:19 at Michael.
>>
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>>3857081
# Moira, cut them down.
# Centauro, open fire!

This is why the PK should have focused on them instead, have the PK focus on the south the others focus on the north.

# the Remnant still on the plateau, who are apparently arming.

>"So these are your iron chariots. They are small and loud and weak."
we were suppose to have mechs and Terminator tanks like these. ;.;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMPT_Terminator
>>
Rolled 386, 449 = 835 (2d1000)

>>3857086
>>3857089

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlsfM2BmsJU&t=33s

"Target is painted, engaging!

The helicopters come in. After taking sporadic fire from the Remnant on the plateau, they veer right and engage the angelic cavalry massing on the south.

"Yaaah! Get these guys out of my fookin' airspace!"

With a mighty trumpet blast, the Archangel Michael swats the helicopter behind Neall Ellis' out of the sky; it starts twirling as it falls, coming down on the desert sand and going up in a fireball.

"Change of plans, strafe 'em!"

The helicopters unload most of their rockets in a wildly inaccurate salvo, some of which ends up inside the cloud -- a rocket explosion is drawn into the miniature cyclone. The white riders closest to King Jesus keep walking their horses out of the hole in the air, ignoring the flames that lap them. The ones further out aren't so lucky -- covered in smoke and fire, they remind you of the Sixth Trumpet. But this time it's your smoke and fire; even a heavenly horse that heals bullet wounds in second can't do much when a HE rocket blows up in its flank.

Gabriel the Herald follows Michael's example, and takes out another helicopter, which crashes into the cloud as the rest of the squadron doubles back for another strafing run.

"Neall, they're using sonic weapons! Speed of sound, 1234kph. Can you dodge that?"

"Shit, no! The fook are we using, a Cuisinart?"

"Ours is keeping Jesus muted!"

The helicopters fly low; the next trumpet blast by Gabriel actually takes out some of their own cavalry. They shoot the second half of their rockets, and double back to the Garibaldi

# try to use miniguns on the Remnant before going home.

# go home.

The Centauro opens fire on the white riders, but it doesn't go like you'd expect a cavalry charge against a modern IFV to go; there's a lot of them. One of the Wiesels is overturned by the sheer msas of the knights colliding with it, and the other stops responding. Two are still headed for the back of the cloud.

Moira is going to

# go all in

# keep covering the remaining two.
>>
#Go Home

#Go all in
>>
>>3857114
#Go Home

#Go all in
>>
Not gonna drop a rod on them?
>>
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Rolled 72 (1d100)

>>3857127
>>3857134

Neall heads home for now. This is a strange fight; his guys are either going back unscathed, or not at all. It's all or nothing.

That seems to be how Moira feels about it, too.

The Impi are excellent chasseurs, and she's no slouch: massed cavalry needs time to change direction, and she makes the most use of that, firing grenades in a low arc right at their feet. The IFV keeps spraying lead across the white riders as they inexorably get close, and then, turns and countercharges them. A platoon of tanks would do wonders here; one IFV can only do so much. You lose sight of them as it is overwhelmed by the cavalry charge, after shedding white blood and trampling a number of the beasts. Moira, standing on top of the IFV, keeps firing.

The two remaining gap generators finish their arc, and get behind King Jesus -- the luminescent cloud keeps swirling, but the phantasmagoric landscape visible in its center fades and is replaced with just more water vapor.

The cosmic battle of the ages may be between a few hundred angelic horsemen, and about the same number of Peacekeepers, CATS security and workers, and those who just got caught in it.

There are approximately 20K Remnant under arms behind you, with more coming. Domai is ready.

The two Archangels are making their way towards you; Gabriel is almost at the plateau.

>>3857138

The tungsten rods are ready to come down, on

# the Remnant under arms on the next plateau.

# the Calvary cavalry.

# both, but better make sure they don't hit you in the middle.

The batteries on the SHPS will last another 18 minutes or so; reinforcements from Litwala and Santiago are inbound in 15.
>>
# the Calvary cavalry.
>>
>>3857159
>the calvary cavalry.
>>
>>3857159

# the Remnant under arms on the next plateau.
>>
File: dm8yxmdla7g01[1].jpg (251 KB, 1920x1080)
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Rolled 670, 152 = 822 (2d1000)

>>3857163
>>3857166

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CprfjfN5PRs

The white riders are forming up in a perfect square, with King Jesus front and center; as they do, they easily get rid of the two Wiesels that got behind them and flared up their gap generators. They did their job.


Black spots come down from the hole in the clouds.

You're relieved to see Moira run off from the mass, and tell the RC operators to do the same; a couple of the soldiers inside the Centauro follow after the IFV is turned over.

Jesus raises a hand, then brings it forward. The sonic weapon is still keeping Him silenced, but the message is clear.

Michael is the one giving it. Well, look who's ordering a cavalry charge against tanks now.

"CHARGE!"

Your people brace. They're going to break through the visitors' center no matter what, you know it.

And yet here are your people and the Peacekeepers, holding the line. Got to get rid of the cavalry and the Angels if the containment vehicle is to make it to Jesus.

It takes some time for a cavalry regiment to get going; during that time, the tungsten rods flying down use the overturned IFVs' GPS coordinates to home in on it.

For a moment, the sonic weapon is overwhelmed by the deep hum of tungsten rods reentering from orbit -- you hear Jesus for a fraction of a second, even above that noise.

"My Father has delivered all things to Me. He put all things under My feet --"

One of Moira's comrades melts, the skeleton standing up on its own for a second and finishing its step. She keeps running towards the visitors' center. And then the rods hit.

Gabriel has made it on the plateau; Michael is about to, commanding the cavalry's wings like an orchestra director.

# Get some guys and engage it.

# Get Domai to.

Michael gets to see the full spectacle of the tungsten rods hitting. They carry no warheads; they don't need to. Although they're optimized for bunker busting and being used against a soft target, the reentry shockwave in front of them is enough to melt anything not designed to withstand it. Like giant ballista bolts, the rods plow into the ground, each making a miniature earthquake that throws riders off their horses. Any direct hits are split apart just as much as your soldiers were by Jesus' Words. People cheer; mortars take advantage of the shift in momentum and fire from the visitors' center.

# Definitely broadcast this part.

# Don't.

The Host of Heaven has met the Rods from Man. They don't break; they have nowhere to run to. Instead, the survivors cluster around their risen Lord.

"Charge! for the glory of God, charge!" Michael calls again. He sounds a little shrill this time.

Ground infantry committment:

# 1-3 (Keep them at bay vs. fire everything you got)

Call in another air srike:

# 0-2
>>
# Get Domai to.

#Definitely broadcast this part

Ground infantry: 2

Airstrike: 1
>>
>>3857196
# Get Domai to.

# Don't.

# 1-3 (Keep them at bay vs. fire everything you got)
2, 1 in reserve to react to the center of where they are going to hit.

Call in another air srike:
2
Stay at a distance this time, use standoff weapons. accuracy won't matter to much against the massed Calvary formations.

I have to ask, where is the devil and his forces.....?

We should do some rebuilding and rearmament afterwards just in case if we win this.
>>
>>3857196
>get domai to engage it

>brodcast this part. We should be brodcasting the whole thing.

>inf 1 keep them at bay we need to buy time for our allies to arrive.

Whats our next plan? Is the goal to kill the army then capture jesus. If that's the case lets get some more rods comin.
>>
>>3857196

# Get some guys and engage it.

# Definitely broadcast this part.

# 3

# 2

EVERYTHING WE'VE GOT WE DONT HAVE MORE TIME
>>
>>3857211
Carpatasu and satan arent here we we fixed that half
>>
>>3857212
Seconded more rods.
>>
>>3857218
I dunno, the fact that they still exist and haven't be thoroughly thrashed by us makes me paranoid.

Drop another Rod on the Calvary eh?
>>
>>3857224

Agreed. I'm curious who the narrative actually identifies as the Antichrist and False Prophet... So far we have been treated as just the Foreman by Michael.

I too wonder what Satan's been up to without a body to possess. I don't think he's spent the past 3 and a half years working on a tan in Polynesia...
>>
Don't we have some big artillery guns? Can we use them, or did they get sent to a rally point with the PK and IDF?

or for the last million years or so plotting his revenge, only to decide to stand down after humans beat back heaven.
>>
>>3857228
Unless.... we actually killed him in that one dream?
>>
>>3857232
The flying serpent? That would be a sad and hilarious way to go.
>>
>>3857235
Nah, the angel whose throat we slit before they could monologue.

"Bird Bird".
>>
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Rolled 651, 670, 576 = 1897 (3d1000)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqA0PN4diWg

>>3857212
>>3857211
>>3857210
>>3857219
>>3857218

Gabriel lands on the plateau, and starts hyperventilating; every time he does, he grows in size. After that, he takes another step -- and finds it difficult to do so, moving slowly, heavily. Being this close to a gap generator is teaching him about the square-cube law.

The Remnant on the plateau cheer at the angelic apparition, but don't advance.

This gives Domai's guys time to stomp over before Gabriel figures out what's going on and gets too close to the Wiesels running the sonic weapon; you simply run over to the side.

Gabriel deflates until he's a mere eight feet tall; the heavies shoot at him, and only manage to make a lot of holes in his tunic.

"All right. Pick on someone your size!" Domai unstraps the HMG from his forearm, yanks off the straps, and walks up to the Angel. And uppercuts him.

Gabriel makes for a trumpet blast, but

>>3857224
>>3857219

You get to the side, and order more rods to come down; the cavalry has reformed into an echelon, and is now coming towards the visitors' center.

They're met with a respectable amount of firepower, right in front of them; and yet they charge fearlessly. Bullets don't do much, but bazookas and grenades do, and more white riders fall amidst explosions and shrapnel.

"Everyone, DUCK!"

People do. More tungsten rods fall from space, missing most of the white riders -- they came in a bit too early -- but giving them enough pause to make them excellent targets for the attack helicopters hovering above the ridge. You've brought everything you had this time; the choppers have one salvo to deliver, but they do with excellent precision.

The last white riders are dazed, hurt, and by and large unhorsed; they look behind, and see Michael's fiery gaze, and run forward as best as they can. Moira countercharges, and the last of them ends up impaled on an electrified spear.

"That all you got?"

King Jesus is alone now -- almost -- the three lesser angels still dancing around trying to swat drones off -- but Michael sees this, and turns, flying back to protect his Master. He lets out a few trumpet blasts, but he's too close to the convergence point of the sonic weapon; with a few flaps of his wings he gets above it, and tries again, this time taking a helicopter out.

# Move in the containment vehicles; it's time.

# Help Domai.

# Keep an eye on the Remnant.

Two clouds on the horizon: Litwala and Santiago are coming from the east and north respectively.
>>
# Move in the containment vehicles; it's time.
# Keep an eye on the Remnant

I'm hoping Domai can handle himself. He's big, but he isn't as experienced as Chandra or Moira when fighting the supernatural...
>>
>>3857249
# Help Domai.

Tell the PK officer to watch the Remnant.

How many Rods have we used and have left? I thought we were only calling them in one at a time.
>>
>>3857249

Write-in. We got any rods left? On the regrouping angels. Now.

Then containment goes in.
>>
>>3857262

You got 3 left; I figured that people voting for multiple targets wanted to do multiple drops.

>>3857260

The containment vehicles, two of them, are intended to drive next to a target, douse it with liquid nitrogen, and then deploy a loader arm like that on a garbage truck (it's exactly that in fact) and dip the target in a chamber much like the one that Eli is in, then quickly freeze that.

>>3857270

Do you mean Nahum, Caleb, and Christopher?
>>
>>3857272
I'd like to call one down on remnant troops, they will likely interfere at the end during the capture.

We should also make sure its mandatory that any stockpiles of weapons have at least one gap generator active protecting it.

We also need to make ones that are more portable and last longer, maybe nuclear powered.
>>
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>>3857272
>The containment vehicles, two of them, are intended to drive next to a target, douse it with liquid nitrogen, and then deploy a loader arm like that on a garbage truck (it's exactly that in fact) and dip the target in a chamber much like the one that Eli is in, then quickly freeze that.

Ahhh! So the plan is to freeze Jesus in Carbonite then.

He'll make a lovely piece of furniture; tie the whole place together.

>>3857283
I'm against attacking the Remnant prematurely. Seeing the deity get imprisoned in ice will be enough to break most of their wills.
>>
>>3857285
>>3857283
Im also against attacking the remnant we dont have too. Its bad pr and good for the enemies prophesy
>>
>>3857249
>help domai.

>have the pk officer keep am eye on the reminant. Make sure its absolutely clear we do not shoot first.
>>
>>3857283
We have Santiago and Litwala's forces coming in, if the Remnant troops sally out of the orange zone at the last minute they're going to get hazed, or contained and hit with an orbital strike.

We don't need to drop into the orange zone.

>>3857272
> Do you mean Nahum, Caleb, and Christopher?
Ya
>>
>>3857272
If we think we can peg the angels with the rods, or get them in the blast? Fuck yes. Gaza-fried Angel wings in hellfire sauce.
>>
File: tactical map of petra 9.png (581 KB, 1536x683)
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Rolled 10, 1, 7 = 18 (3d10)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y98-ksHnjE4

>>3857299

"Aki, can you make those three land and then drop a rod on them?"

"Foreman, I... Yes, I think I can."

The containment vehicles were brought in underslung from two Mil V-12 helicopters, brought in courtesy of Viktor Zakharov; one of them is on the southern plateau, the other barely made the flight and was abandoned after landing. Aki will try to use the remaining drones to lead the three lesser Angels there, and then direct a tungsten rod volley on its GPS coordinates.

# Commit 0 to 3 rods

----

>>3857260
move;keepeye
>>3857262
domai
>>3857270
move;rods

# Help Domai fight Gabriel, or

# keep an eye on the Remnant

"Containment vehicle crews, you're up!"

The two tracked monstrosities rev up, belching out diesel smoke, and start converging towards King Jesus now that His army is gone. He's been standing there, mostly, secure in His invulnerability. Now He's pointing up to the plateau at Michael: looks like you got incoming.

The Peacekeepers and people who held the visitors' center are starting to come out; some even fire at Jesus, which does nothing still.

Moira has picked a few people - Impi, soldiers, workers - and they're walking behind her; she's making her way to Him.

The containment vehicles are converging, too.

>>3857283

The problem with gap generators is that they use a stupid amount of power; the Wiesels carrying them have a SRTG to recharge their batteries, but that takes a long time. Same problem with the sonic weapons; essentially, you can use them a few minutes a day because they use up battery much faster than it gets recharged.

The only vehicle with a fully nuclear powered gap generator is the Garibaldi.
>>
>>3857329
# Commit 3 rods
It's a diceroll but if we can recreate End of Evangelion on that plateau it's the way to go.

# Help Domai fight Gabriel
Direct a subordinate with genuine military experience to keep an eye on the Remnant. They're part of the audience and need to stay in the stands. The angels and the TJ are the targets.
>>
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#Keep an eye on the Remnant.

Domai can probably wreck the Gabriel on his own. We just have to make sure the Remnant don't pull a sneak attack while his back is turned.

They face each other as a G-d intended. Sportsmanlike.
>>
>>3857329
# Help Domai fight Gabriel

Now we commit the sword.

>>3857333
# Commit 2 rods. We may still have to strike the remnant.
>>
>>3857329

>>3857333
Support
>>
>>3857341
We still have a nuke if we need it. Plus if we get TJ canned, Santiago can drop on the Remnant with the wrath of Sparta.
>>
>>3857354
Alright, fair. All in for 3 rods.
>>
>>3857341
>>3857354

I would like to the rod for a more ambitious target.

There appears to be a portal to 'Heaven' right? We got a drone into the hole....

What happens if you send a rod to heaven?
>>
>>3857360
You want to hit a hole in one from orbit? With these dice?
>>
>>3857365

Hmmmmmmm.... The dice ARE notoriously treacherous, yes.

OK, commit 3 to bombing.
>>
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btPJPFnesV4

>>3857336

The Archangel Gabriel isn't really used to hand to hand fighting, but has the advantage of supernatural stamina and, given that you suspect the ichor in Angels' veins is the same stuff that the locusts had in their stinger, the inability to feel pain.

Gabriel got a few hits in -- the first Domai didn't parry, trusting his armor, but the Angel's hand went right through it and made him double back and lose his breakfast. He fought back with a savage series of jabs that left Gabriel perplexed, if not hurt.

"You summoned your strength by magic - I trained hard for it!"

They're still going at it when you get there, shield on your back and sword in your hand. Gabriel is trying to grab Domai and go for a pin; Domai is dodging his grabs and getting his punches in. The Archangel has been slowly pushed to the ridge, but it can fly, so it doesn't do much for you -- except that Domai is doing his best to keep it away from the sonic weapon.

# Tag Domai so he can go downstairs and get a tesla coil.

# Double up on Gabriel.

--

Leaving conventional warfare to specialists has served you well so far, and you expect it'll keep doing so.

"Mr. Tenzin, get some men up here and keep an eye on the Remnant!"

Actually, they seem to be retreating... climbing down the plateau, some of them anyway. You do note that they have built up some .50 machinegun nests up there.

The Peacekeeper officer sends a drone down the canyon and before it's shot down confirms that they're giving out DEWs and assault rifles, and bringing up bikes and ATVs from the cavernous catacombs. Are they planning a sortie or breakout?

>>3857333
>>3857349

The first rod comes down in a flat spin and grazes the plateau, lifting a shower of rock fragments some of which fall on one of the Wiesel pairs running the sonic weapon. One fatality, two casualties, and most importantly the sonic weapon is now running on 5 channels rather than 6 -- you only got one to spare now.

The second rod comes in about halfway between King Jesus and the helicopter wreck.

The third rod hits the MilV-12 straight on, right when the three Angels had landed on it trying and succeeding at trumpet-blasting the few drone helicopters you have left.

---

>>3857360

The portal dissipated earier; that's what you needed the Wiesels on the plain for. Otherwise you'd have had to face twice as much cavalry. Aki managed to get a drone through, and said that it gave her a headache.

--

Moira is still advancing towards Jesus, who after sending Michael to join Gabriel -- now Aki can commit the couple dozen drones left to harassing it, at least -- has likewise been walking westwards, to His people.

The Wiesels running the plasma speakers have to park almos to the edge of the plateau to get a good shot at Him; you're worried about Michael divebombing them.

Shooting King Jesus does nothing; Tenzin calls for a halt of that and gets some people to aim their guns into the canyon.
>>
# Tag Domai so he can go downstairs and get a Tesla coil.

....

Doesn't wrestling with angels lead to crippling if we win?
>>
>>3857375
># Double up on Gabriel.
Try to get Gabriel out of the picture before Michael gets to the plateau. Domai's a much better fighter than the Foreman, If he's needing backup, Foreman will be overwhelmed.
>>
>>3857375

The fireball dissipates into a black cloud; you don't know what did the three Angels in, the plasma heating or the shockwave or the giant helicopter that blew up under their feet, but when the black smoke and dust clears there's no trace of them. Maybe they just blasted off for parts unknown.

"Brothers! Sisters! See, Jesus is coming. He has chosen to walk the pilgrim's path into our city! All will be well!" Petra's PA says in the confident tone of Micah. The radioactive rain didn't last, but most people went indoors anyway; those who are considering fighting are split evenly between the plateau, where they built HMG nests, and the main piazza of the city of Petra, where they're preparing ATVs and bikes for a sortie.

# Ask Moira what she's doing.

# Start taking ranging shots at the plateau.

# Just hold for now.

You've reached Domai and Gabriel.

# Tag Domai so he can go downstairs and get a tesla coil.

# Double up on Gabriel.
>>
# Ask Moira what she is doing.

# Double up on Gabriel.
>>
>>3857390
># Double up on Gabriel.

# Ask Moira what she's doing.
>>
>>3857390
# Ask Moira what she's doing.

# Double up on Gabriel.
>>
>>3857390
># Ask Moira what she is doing.
>i already previously said but am confirming my support for # Double up on Gabriel.
>>
>>3857375
# Double up on Gabriel.

We have no backups left for the sonics--if we go down before Domai gets back TurboJesus can resume use of the Word.

>The Peacekeeper officer sends a drone down the canyon and before it's shot down confirms that they're giving out DEWs and assault rifles, and bringing up bikes and ATVs from the cavernous catacombs. Are they planning a sortie or breakout?

I'd bet on a sortie. It's what God would want them to do at this point--we have our hands full with the cavalry and the angels, and an assault to our flanks might just carry the day. Not like He'd care about casualties at this juncture.

>>3857390
"Brothers! Sisters! See, Jesus is coming. He has chosen to walk the pilgrim's path into our city! All will be well!" Petra's PA says in the confident tone of Micah.
The PA...not his voice directly.

# Ask Moira what she's doing.
Sitrep!
>>
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Rolled 176, 573, 105 = 854 (3d1000)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htgr3pvBr-I

>>3857387

Domai is not a trained martial artist, but he can pick up two trained martial artists per arm and you've seen him flip a car on its side and back. Granted, it was a Lada, but still. You didn't tell Vega to come, so most of the people who are trained martial artists are at least ten minutes away, as the DO-31 flies.

>>3857401
>>3857399

"I'm running the fucker down, Boss, that's what I'm doing."

The newest version of the locust-zapper armor is definitely sleeker, and most importantly it lets Moira ride her bike. She picks up a a rod, connects it to the tesla coil, revs up the power until the blue-purple light from the vacuum tubes makes her hair look pink, and charges Jesus directly.

# Don't be an idiot.

# That's the distraction you need to make Michael double back, go for it.

>>3857392
>>3857391


This is not a prize fight; while Domai is fighting Gabriel, you make your way to where they are, then get beside them and

# lunge with your sword, go for the wing!

# charge at it with your shield!

# go for a light tap and make it turn around so Domai can bash its head in!
>>
>>3857418
# Don't be an idiot.

# lunge with your sword, go for the wing!
>>
# That's the distraction you need to make Michael double back, go for it.

# go for a light tap and make it turn around so Domai can bash its head in!
>>
>>3857418

# lunge with your sword, go for the wing!
>>
>>3857418
# Don't be an idiot.
"Jesus can wait--get Michael before he hits the sonics!"

# lunge with your sword, run 'em through!
No time for dilly-dally!
>>
>>3857418

# Don't be an idiot.
>>
Rolled 220, 983, 932 = 2135 (3d1000)

>>3857435
>>3857428
>>3857426
>>3857447
Domai gets a jab in that breaks Gabriel's nose; he's sweating, and starting to slow down a little; the Archangel shakes its head to fix it. You sidestep and, once you're clear of falling down the cliff if you overshoot, lunge with your sword!

Gabriel saw you and spreads its wing, buffeting you back and to the side; you roll, and end up only a few meters away from the end of the plateau. Now the Archangel is between you and Domai.

# Try again!

# Just get his full attention!

# Crawl under its feet so Domai can push it down!


>>3857451
>>3857447

"Moira! If you need to go after the biggest guy on the table, get Michael!"

"He's flying! Huh, one minute. GUYS! LASERS!"

Moira stops the bike, loads a flare into her grenade launcher, and shoots it right in front at Michael's nose; it stops it for a moment, long enough for the people in the visitor's center to aim DEWs at its face.

Michael turns, and starts to fly back to Jesus, who's still walking across the path.

"HEY ASSHOLE! OVER HERE!"

Moira gets back on her bike and goes in closer. However, Michael does not take the provocation -- he walks with Jesus for a moment. Is he being healed?

Litwala and Santiago are close; you glance, and can see not only the dust clouds but also the vehicles.
>>
>>3857457
# Try again!
>>
#Try again!
>>
>>3857457
# Try again!
>>
>>3857457
># Try again!
>>
>>3857457

>I’d love to meet with your father.
>Actually, your father sounds exactly like the sort of person I’d hoped to find out here.
>>
>>3857519
# Wait for Michael; he's going to try to come for the sonic weapon again.

Pretty sure confronting him ourselves plays into us being the guy King Jesus is meant too fight and slay.
>>
# Wait for Michael; he's going to try to come for the sonic weapon again.

# Broadcast Gabriel's fall with Schorpe's explanation in the background.

This ought to make Remnant viewers question their faith further. Maybe make them ponder.... have we been played?
>>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfmrHTdXgK4 [Embed]

>>3857491
>>3857484
>>3857466

You get back up, and lunge again. This time, Gabriel dodges -- almost. You get the sword through one of the wing muscles, then pull it downwards, covered in ichor.

What creeps you out the most is the fact that it doesn't seem to care; its wing collapses, and drags on the ground, but it keeps trying to pin Domai, who by now is just trying to push Gabriel away, too tired to throw any more punches.

You step on the wingtip.

"Push!"

Domai sees what you're doing, and bull rushes into the Archangel, head down. Gabriel is staggered, takes a step back, and you strike it in the shoulder, pushing it to the side.

"This, is where you fall down." Domai rumbles.

You finish cutting the wingtip off by striking it; your sword clangs against rock after going through ichor, muscle and bone.

"I am the Herald of the Most High! Tempt me not, I would never fall!"

"No, really. Fall."

Both of you push Gabriel again, and he falls down the cliff, flapping its wing frenetically. It lands near the visitors' center, where a hundred people descend upon it and tear it to pieces. Being free from pain was its downfall.

You and Domai share a bottle of water; he's exhausted, and to be honest with yourself, so are you.

It's just Jesus and Michael now. You need to separate them. You're doing pretty good -- batteries on the SHPS system are about at sixty percent.

# Climb down the plateau and confront King Jesus.

# Wait for Michael; he's going to try to come for the sonic weapon again.

The Remnant seem unsure of what's going on now; satellite feed shows that there's some sort of argument going on in Petra's courtyard, vehicles and people moving back and forth, but you aren't privy to it. Maybe it's time to do a bit of psych warfare; you're sure that they saw Gabriel fall, but how about the rest of the world?

# Broadcast Gabriel's fall with Robertson's explanation in the background.

# Broadcast Gabriel's fall with Schorpe's explanation in the background.

# Broadcast Gabriel's fall with no commentary.

# Not yet.

Santiago and Litwala are almost here; she laughs, saying that it looks like she wasted a trip.

# Have them surround King Jesus. Maybe there's still one chance to negotiate?

# Have them seal the exits to Petra in case the Remnant try anything dumb.


"Foreman, this is Aki: The second bomb has begun orbital maneuvers... it's half an orbit out, though. It's not us and it's not McLachlan. And it can't be Naima because we took her offline!"

# Regain control of it.

# Drop it in the ocean.
>>
# Have them seal the exits to Petra in case the Remnant try anything dumb.

We don't negotiate with terrorists.

# Regain control.

Satan? Is that you, trying to steal our kill? Or is this Lailah's doing?
>>
>>3857529
# Broadcast Gabriel's fall with Schorpe's explanation in the background.

# Have them seal the exits to Petra in case the Remnant try anything dumb.

# Regain control of it.
>>
>>3857529
# Wait for Michael; he's going to try to come for the sonic weapon again.
# Broadcast Gabriel's fall with Schorpe's explanation in the background.
# Have them seal the exits to Petra in case the Remnant try anything dumb.
# Regain control of it.
>>
>>3857529


# Wait for Michael; he's going to try to come for the sonic weapon again.


# Broadcast Gabriel's fall with Schorpe's explanation in the background.

# Have them seal the exits to Petra in case the Remnant try anything dumb.

# Regain control of it.
>>
>>3857528
>>3857524
>>3857534
>>3857535


You and Domai sit down and take a breath; all over the world, a quick montage of what happened so far plays out, followed shortly by his and your fight with the Archangel Gabriel.

You aren't sure what to do with Gabriel's wing; Domai picks it up, stretches it, and sticks it on a piece of rebar, then jams that a few inches into the standstone just by muscle and weight.

"You're a good employer, Foreman. Pay could be better, but the perks are excellent."

The stern but paternal voice of the Venerable Fr. Schorpe explains, as if to a class of freshmen, the fundamental problem of literalist Biblical interpretation -- if Adam and Eve had no understanding of good and evil before eating the fruit, how could a just God curse them for it, much less all their descendants? It would be like beating up one's dog the first time it made a mess in a corner, and beating up her puppies forever after, too.

---

You tell Santiago and Litwala's men that your people are exhausted and low of ammo, and need relief. Litwala's people surround the road, while Santiago says that since Thermopylae is now a beach, the northern canyon will have to do. "Let a million Remnant come at us then!"

Their vanguards reach the position they had to reach, and start setting up; the Remnant are trapped. You have 10 minutes to separate Jesus and Michael. Did either of them work out that they just have to wait you out?

# Let Moira go after Jesus directly.

# Taunt Michael using the sonic weapon -- you can splice your message in between the music. (Write-in)

# Now it's hundreds against two: just bum rush them into the mobile containment vehicles.

----

>>3857538
>>3857535
>>3857534

"Aki, try to regain control of it, we may need to drop it yet."

"Foreman, this guy's just impossibly lucky! How do you guess a SHA-256 in 32 tries?"

"Where's he transmitting from?"

"Petra! But they're going up the satellite network in one hop, there's got to be an antenna there!"

If there is, you don't see it. Aki says that she thinks she's got this, and you leave her to it for now.

---
>>
>>3857546
# Now it's hundreds against two: just bum rush them into the mobile containment vehicles.
>>
>>3857546
>"Foreman, this guy's just impossibly lucky! How do you guess a SHA-256 in 32 tries?"
>
>"Where's he transmitting from?"
>
>"Petra! But they're going up the satellite network in one hop, there's got to be an antenna there!"

Could we have a mole and they are just making it look like it is coming from Petra before it gets to Aki? She isn't physically in our HQ right now so some one could use the slight lag to edit her feed if they were physically at it's locus.
>>
>>3857546
Tell aki if there is a single chance of failure drop it in the ocean. We have one chance we cant afford this ruining it.

>taunt michael.
Are you ready to duel again. This time it isnt a dream.
>>
>>3857546
# Let Moira go after Jesus directly with the intent to pull Michael off him so we can

# Now it's hundreds against two: just bum rush him into the mobile containment vehicles.
>>
# Taunt Michael using the sonic weapon -- you can splice your message in between the music. (Write-in)

"Now, shall you deal with ME, O Prince - and all the powers of CATS!"

OR

"The Force is strong in you, Michael. But you are not a Jedi yet."
>>
>>3857546
can we drop one of the empty satellites onto petra?

Also call up McLachlan
ask him whats up?

Or just drop the nuke on top of petra.

If we have a rod, we may as well use it on petra.
>>
>>3857560
If it's a mole:
1.They'd have to edit the feed of a super-hacker, on the fly, with no mistakes.
2. They wouldn't need to make any tries at all, they'd just enter the correct authentication first go and drop the bomb.

No, this is NC shenanigans. Some of the Remnant must've been binging on Hackers, and God is seizing on it.
>>
>>3857597
Well we should have dropped a rod on Petra when we still had them
>>
>>3857603
Orange zone, it would have bounced.

>>3857597
Definitely NC shenanigans.
>>
File: knightriders[1].jpg (194 KB, 720x480)
194 KB
194 KB JPG
>>3857560
>>3857561

"Aki, if there's any chance that it's coming for us by the time it's over the Atlantic, drop it in the ocean."

"Okay!"

>>3857560
>>3857597

The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm pretty much makes that sort of infiltration impossible, although it's possible that there's a physical mole at GCASA. Or shenanigans.

---

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5u9glfqDsc

>>3857570
>>3857565

"Moira, you take Jesus. We'll take Michael. Ready to go another round, Domai?"

"Yeah."

You walk to the nearest SHPS Wiesel and plug in your phone to the audio jack on the mixer. "Michael! This time it's not a vision. FACE ME!"

The Archangel takes the bait. "Your evil is meaningless! This battle was won in the beginning!"

Jesus keeps walking; the Wiesels have to move to keep Him illuminated with the sound beam. It's going to be a problem when He gets too close to the visitor's center -- the walls of the canyons will create echoes which may disrupt the effect, you've never simulated that.

Moira had time to get her batteries topped off; she revs the dirt bike and charges Jesus just as Michael flies up.

What's she going to try to do, impale Him?

"Faugh A Ballagh!"


>>3857588

You're out of rods for this orbit, wait 90 minutes. The issue with dropping something that wasn't designed to be dropped precisely is that the scatter oval is kilometers wide and dozens of kilometers long.

-

Santiago and Litwala are in position; all you will have to do if you win is get the containment vehicle through their lines before they're broken. You have 1 minute before Michael gets up the plateau.

# Just take a breath and focus.

# Get some martial artists up here.

# Tell the visitor center's defenders to follow Moira.
>>
>>3857603

Bombing Petra feeds the Narrative.

>>3857597

I still think this might be Satan's handiwork.

>>3857609
Get some Martial Artists up here.
>>
>>3857608
Not when we shrunk the zone down with the gap generators, not enough space and room.

I say we drop a satellite on them, not like the orange zone can reach our guys.

# Get some martial artists up here.

# Tell the visitor center's defenders to follow Moira.

>>3857617
Okay what if we drop it nearby to cause earthquakes and cave ins at petra..... that somehow haven't happened yet? Or it has and we just don't know.

Can we call up HQ, and tell them to look for any Remanent? Break out some PKE bugs, or ask Santiago to do a sweep for us with the PKE meters or whatever they are called.

Also bring up more Gap Generators. On the backs of trucks this time or something. We need more Generators, where are the back up materials we ordered before the start of battle?
>>
>>3857609
># Get some martial artists up here.

Currently the visitor center is anchoring our left flank towards the Remnant sortie. Little point in containing TJ if his followers break through and free him minutes later.
>>
I'm honestly expecting Satan to show up once Jesus is incarcerated...
>>
>>3857628
we can freeze them in Antarctica.....
>>
>>3857609
>>3857626
Lets call up Akbar as well.
>>
>>3857570
>>3857625
>>3857626

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dll329ggLIY

Michael does that "look at my lips, hear my voice" thing again.

"You have thousands against two, and you would duel me? You're a poor general, Foreman."

"You're a general without an army. You got nothing better to do." And you've got less than ten minutes, but hopefully it doesn't know that.

"My Lords needs none else."

"Then what's the point of you?"

Domai waves the severed Angel wing like a banner, to signal people who actually know what they're doing to muster at his location, and likely as not to mess with Michael and the Remnant's heads further.

A motley assortment climbed up; some from Santiago's camp, some from Litwala's, some from Vega. They've been told that armors and weapons won't work, and whatever metanatural powers they may have are nullified by the gap generators that are keeping divine powers in check. But that's fine; they can fight without gimmicks. You've got a dozen. Michael is one.

Michael's had time to figure out its optimal size, making it just a little bit bigger than Domai, and it's wearing a golden breastplate and holding up a flaming sword. As soon as it lands, this close to the gap generatrs, the flames on the sword are quenched, revealing it to be
an iron sword still coruscating with cyan and purple plasma on its blade.

"I thought you meant to duel me."

# And I will.

# You are alone. All the warriors of the world came to fight you. Sic 'em!
>>
>>3857630

# And I will.
>>
>>3857634
# And I will........
Just after we bag up you and your boss, then ferry you on ice to a black site, and spend the next 10 years becoming a super samurai black knight.
>>
>>3857634
># You are alone. All the warriors of the world came to fight you. Sic 'em!
What was that about being a poor general?

'Scuse me, gonna just go stuff your boss in a barrel.
>>
>>3857646
No not really.
>>
>>3857609
# You are alone. All the warriors of the world came to fight you. Sic 'em!
>>
>>3857634
# And I will once your cheating is dealt with.
>>
>>3857652

I'm itching for a rematch on a personal level, but am confident the reckless option will be outvoted if deemed sufficiently bad or inefficient. ;)
>>
Rolled 908, 194, 113 = 1215 (3d1000)

>>3857634
>>3857632

"Foreman, this is Suhail Akbar. We're in Amman, some fatalities, a few people lost an arm or a leg but we've patched them up."

# Hold there.

# Head south to Petra.

# Head to Israel.

--

You tell Cmdr. Tenzin to have people follow Moira: the goal is not to try to kill King Jesus, that's probably not feasible, just get a containment vehicle behind Him.

Jesus looks far too calm for someone who's lost all His army. He raises a hand when Moira charges in, as if greeting her.

"Boss, He's stopped trowing Bible verses around and asking me if I've come to repent. It's like He can see into my - HEY, THAT'S PERSONAL STUFF YOU LITTLE SHIT!"

Moira had slowed down, but no more. You glance; the Messiah looks... surprised? You know Moira is a bit of a perv, but never dug into it, and now you're equal parts happy and regretful that you didn't. She couches on the motorbike, and holds the long cattle prod out like a lance. She's seconds from impact.

--

While Michael stares you down, you tell the containment vehicles to

# move in directly behind Moira and Jesus in case she does shishkebab Him.

# keep a bit of distance in case maneuvering is necessary.

# let Moira do a pass and double back.

--

>>3857646
>>3857650
>>3857656
>>3857662

"And I will. Once we can actually have a fair fight. Sic 'em!"

Michael is swarmed by the martial artists while you and Domai stay back

# and keep back, he's tired.

# and join in after finishing your water bottles.

Michael is trying to make its way to the sonic emitters, much as Gabriel did.
>>
#Hold there

# keep a bit of distance in case maneuvering is necessary.

# and join in after finishing your water bottles.
>>
>>3857674
# Head south to Petra.
Send a fast detachment, not the while force.

# and join in after finishing your water bottles.
>>
>>3857674
# Hold there.
"Can you shell the Remnant if they start their sortie?"

# keep a bit of distance in case maneuvering is necessary.
TJ actually fighting is probably one of those things with a minimum safe distance.

# and join in after finishing your water bottles.
>>
>>3857674

# Head south to Petra.

# keep a bit of distance in case maneuvering is necessary.


# and join in after finishing your water bottles.
>>
Rolled 421, 23, 177, 279, 442, 64 = 1406 (6d1000)

>>3857694
"From here? No, but we have guided missiles, we can get closer."

(Hold or join you in Petra?)

>>3857695
>>3857694
>>3857680
>>3857689

Moira slams into Jesus with such force that she's thrown clear and the bike crumbles. He seems unscathed.

"What ARE YOU MADE OF!?"

This time, Jesus points at her. She staggers for a moment. "Oh fuck off, stopping my heart won't work. Let's try yours!"

---

It's the Archangel Michael's last stand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HogHSzPSGU

You finish your water bottle, give Domai a moment to stretch, and run to join the other martial artists. Michael's sword gives him excellent reach, and he's already managed to take out one of the warriors, a tall thin Indian man with a bald head and red bands tattooed upon it. You vaguely remember Moira fighting this guy in Vega's palace.

The martial artists dance around the Archangel, getting a punch or a kick in and avoiding his sword arm, or in the Indian guy's case, getting swept off the plateau by a wing strike. They'll do their best to cover you.

# Go for Michael's sword with yours, even the field.

# Low sweep and chop his foot off.

# Going for a wing worked last time.

-

>>3857674

The containment vehicles almost run over Moira, but she rolls over. Now she's behind Jesus; the defenders are walking towards Him. Jesus looks at one, then another -- they stop walking, curl up in a fetal position, and cry. He's doing all that with the gap generators and the sonic weapon going full blast, too!

Moira strikes Jesus in the back with what amounts to a high-tech cattle prod; he stumbles forward a few steps, then resumes walking. Is this some sort of turn-the-other-cheek mind game?

# Have Moira get in Jesus' face and let the containment vehicles catch up.

# Everyone, charge!

# Have the closest containment vehicle try to grab Jesus by calculating His movement speed when prodded again from the back, and being in the right spot.
>>
#Hold

# Low sweep and chop his foot off.

# Have the closest containment vehicle try to grab Jesus by calculating His movement speed when prodded again from the back, and being in the right spot.
>>
>>3857733
# Go for Michael's sword with yours, even the field.

# Everyone, charge!
>>
>>3857733
# Go for Michael's sword with yours, even the field.

Should cut right through it.

# Have Moira get in Jesus' face and let the containment vehicles catch up.
>>
>>3857733
# Going for a wing worked last time.

# Have Moira get in Jesus' face and let the containment vehicles catch up.

I mean, I don't expect it to work, but it's better than trying to grab this guy while he's stumbling.

Even just driving up to him while he's walking would be better.
>>
Rolled 122, 886, 848, 395, 553, 647 = 3451 (6d1000)

>>3857761
>>3857757

You do something that is done in theater, but almost never in actual swordplay -- actively try to strike Michael's sword. That's a good way to damage both of them, really, but in this case it's what you want. You keep your shield on your back and hold Terry Pratchett's sword two-handed, and bring it down on Michael's right hand the first chance you get.

He's too fast, and pulls his arm back; you hit edge-on-edge, and the two swords, now both dented, get stuck with each other after a massive shower of sparks.

# Yank!

# Let go!

# Push!

--

Moira has noticed that the tesla rod worked, and keeps poking and prodding at Jesus, who keeps walking, or stumbling, forward as the case may be. She then gets in His face, and prods Him right in the chest. This time, she's thrown back as if she got a shock, although she says she's okay.

However, after all of this the containment vehicles are now next to Jesus, moving at a walking pace.

# Try to grab it with one.

# Try to grab it with both.

# Veer close to each other and touch bumpers so that Jesus is in a V and would have to push them apart to proceed.
>>
>>3857782
# Push!

# Try to grab it with both.
>>
# Push

# Try to grab it with both.
>>
>>3857782
# Yank!

Dunno what the other options are, are we trying to contain both of them in the same container? Didn't we bring two containers?
>>
>>3857795
>>3857792
>>3857789

Michael was expecting you to yank, and braced for it, pulling back -- but you push forward instead. The Archangel staggers, and two martial artists grab its legs. With a flurry of kicks from a third, it falls backwards!

You're thrown off along with it, but it doesn't matter; the swords fall near the edge.

One of Michael's wings is sticking out, so you

# clip it after separating the swords.

# clip it with the swords still sort of welded together, there's no time.

-

CHUNK! Thffff....

CHUNK! Thffff....

Both grabber arms missed, albeit barely. Moira picks herself up.

# He can't do the penance stare on 500 people at once, charge Him!

# Have Moira stand her ground, then try again with the grabber arm (one)

# Have Moira stand her ground, then try again with the grabber arms (both)
>>
>>3857808
# clip it with the swords still sort of welded together, there's no time.

# Have Moira stand her ground, then try again with the grabber arms (both)
>>
>>3857811

# clip it with the swords still sort of welded together, there's no time.

# Have Moira stand her ground, then try again with the grabber arms (both)
>>
>>3857808

# clip it with the swords still sort of welded together, there's no time.

# He can't do the penance stare on 500 people at once, charge Him!
>>
# clip it with the swords still sort of welded together, there's no time.

# Have Moira stand her ground, then try again with the grabber arm (one)
>>
Rolled 46, 67 = 113 (2d100)

>>3857817
>>3857811
>>3857825
>>3857826

You and Domai grab the swords -- it looks like a pair of scissors designed by a lunatic -- and effectively drag it across Michael's splayed wing. White ichor comes ot of the stump, ad then Domai steps on it, to prevent Michael from getting up. He's being buffeted from all sides.

His gut is vulnerable, with the two swords welded together there's really no way to go between the ribs.

# Stab him with your sword.

# Stab him with his.

# Why not both?

-Moira holds the electrified lance like a pike; Jesus has nowhere to go but backwards -- there's metal to his sides and a very angry woman with a pike in front of Him, and He is not about to walk into a pointy and eletrified thing.. Instead, He stops.
>>
Rolled 10, 61 = 71 (2d100)

>>3857833

The grabber arms mess with each other, and can't get a grip, although they do touch the Messiah.

# Try a third time (one)

# Try a third time (both)

# Flood the space between the containmen vehicles with liquid nitrogen; Moira will live... right?
>>
>>3857833
# Stab him with your sword.
>>
>>3857838
# Try a third time (one)

Alright, one at a time then!
>>
# Stab him with your sword.

# Try a third time (one)
>>
>>3857838
># Try a third time (one)

And then the other right after.
>>
>>3857833
# Why not both?
>>
>>3857838
# Try a third time (both)
>>
Rolled 86, 43, 40 = 169 (3d100)

>>3857846
>>3857845
>>3857844
>>3857839

With some effort, you stick your sword in Michael's gut; his is still connected at a right angle. You must've broken the spine, because Michael's breath becomes extremely regular, and he stops twitching.

"You fool. No weapon forged can kill me."

"That was then" you say conversationally "this is now."

You have one of the Wiesels carrying conventional weapons drive over, and using Michael's sword itself to push against, drive on top of the Angel. You hear a clang! as the two swords come apart. The Wiesel drives on top of Michael's body a couple of times, for good measure. When the tankette drives off, it's not a pretty picture.

You get your sword back, there's a notch on it. But you can probably fix that later.

And then there was one.

# Climb down the plateau and deal with Jesus once and for all.

# Stick Michael's sword in the Angel's own guts -- should keep him there in case he decides to not be dead.

-

Below, nothing has changed; it'd be comical if it wasn't so frustrating.

# Fine, try a FOURTH time then!

If Jesus isn't advancing, have someone bring in barriers so that the space He is in can be frozen without risks to Moira.
>>
>>3857862
# Bring in barriers
>>
>>3857862
# Stick Michael's sword in the Angel's own guts -- should keep him there in case he decides to not be dead.

# Fine, try a FOURTH time then!
>>
# Stick Michael's sword in the Angel's own guts -- should keep him there in case he decides to not be dead.

#Fourth verse, same as the first. Now lets finish this task so we can put him in a hearse~!
>>
>>3857862
>>3857867

I thought we were going to test both swords against the angel?

Lets just part a tank ontop of him.

# Fine, try a FOURTH time then!

can we shoot some sonic blasts at his head?
>>
>>3857862
# Climb down the plateau and deal with Jesus once and for all.

Prachett's sword might be a necessity.

How much battery time do we have?

# Bring in barriers

So, the capture rigs don't seem to be working as intended.
>>
>>3857867
# Climb down the plateau and deal with Jesus once and for all.

# If Jesus isn't advancing, have someone bring in barriers so that the space He is in can be frozen without risks to Moira.
>>
>>3857867

# Stick Michael's sword in the Angel's own guts -- should keep him there in case he decides to not be dead.

# Fine, try a FOURTH time then!


DO NOT APPORACH, IT MAY END UP TRIGGERING STILL
>>
#stick the sword

#fine

#Randomly have a speaker blast Buddhist chanting at Jesus to see what happens
>>
Rolled 46, 78 = 124 (2d100)

>>3857867

"Foreman, this is Aki, I'm going to have to ditch the U-H bomb in the Atlantic. I don't want to take risks."

# Authorize.

# Deny.

----

>>3857907

You switch the audio track around a little; Jesus notices, trying to say something between the pauses but you're a bit too smart for that.

>>3857884

You have 8 miutes left.

>>3857882

You make another try while barriers are brought in, but you're not going to endanger Moira.

She and Jesus are having a staredown; you decide to stick Michael's sword up its thoracic cavity just so it tries to get up, and leave people to keep an eye on it besides.
>>
>>3857988
#Authorize
Oh well, bye bye bomb
>>
>>3857988


Barriers are erected behind the containment vehicles, and the arms moved a meter behind Jesus, then liquid nitrogen is shot up His back. Well... He noticed; He finally turns around.

Moira slides off and the fourth barrier is put in place; the two containment vehicles expend some more of their nitrogen to firmly freeze Jesus to the ground.

# Go talk to Him as it's the last thing He will do.

# Just bag and tag, no time to waste and you wouldn't get anything you'd not get from a Bible anyway.

---

"Foreman, the Remnant are moving!"

It looks like they're finally about to sortie. Santiago's people are already in place to cover the northern route, as for the eastern,

# have Litwala's men flow past the MCVs and take over from there.

# tell your men to hold the line.

You hear sporadic gunfire start up the plateau, just as you descend; the heavies and regular troopers move to protect the martial artists.
>>
>>3857988
# Authorize.
Can we just fire it at Petra?

Maybe some radiation will make some interesting mutations or evolutions in the rather simplistic algae life.

>you decide to stick Michael's sword up its thoracic cavity just so it tries to get up, and leave people to keep an eye on it besides.
What? No! Don't leave him with his sword!

Fuck, Chop off his head, then poor gasoline over him and burn him.

Take the sword with us.

>>3857998
# Just bag and tag, no time to waste and you wouldn't get anything you'd not get from a Bible anyway.

# have Litwala's men flow past the MCVs and take over from there.

Our people have taken so many losses so far, its time to rotate the teams so spread out the pain.
>>
Rolled 93, 73 = 166 (2d100)

>>3857995
>>3858001

"All right Aki, let's not take chances. Drop it in the Atlantic."

You get an acknowledgement, and since you're not getting incoming, you figure that it went where it was supposed to do.

>>3858001

There's a fair amount of wisdom in telling the martial atists to burn the body; they siphon a bit of gasoline out of a Wiesel, and do exactly that.

>>3858001

You're going to leave fighting the rag-tag Remnant army to an actual professional army, you reckon -- all you have to worry about is them breaking through to the eastern plateau and cut down the sonic weapons, and Domai's got a full shield wall with machine guns to prevent that from happening.

And then you see it.

Coming from the northwest, there's a veritable flotilla of disparate airplanes, none of which seem armed. An operator looks up the transponder numbers for you; most of these are ICCO planes.

Are they going to suicide bomb you?
>>
>>3857988
# Your entire time with CATS has been a series of risks: you have tried to hack us, gotten into a Nerf war with Raman that left one pissed off Indian and a dead drone, you where on site with me to fight the Anti-Christ, almost became a digital God that one time, and just drove a drone into Heaven to get a peek. Why so timid now? Unless I get a good reason I deny."
>>
>>3858017
# Fucking call Chloe, get anything that can fly to fly NOW!
>>
>>3858017
Ram drones into their engines if we can, call up any and all air power, anti air weapons and fire automatic weapons at them. Civilian craft are very vulnerable to small arms fire, even pistol rounds.
>>
>>3858017
Better yet, just have the drones hoot up the engines or the pilots and cockpit.
>>
#authorize

#bag and tag
>>
#Use drones and whatever long range weaponry we have against them
>>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HLNMfCBUb0

>>3858050
>>3858024

"I know, and... I thank you for it. I don't want anyone to get nuked by accident is all."

>>3858017
>>3858001
>>3857907
>>3857899
>>3857889

And after so many tries, one of the barrels stuck to the arms of the containment vehicles finally manages to get a lock! It falls upon Jesus, then powerful pumps extract the air and replace it with liquid nitrogen.

"If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast-"

Jesus tries to say something now that there's something between him and the sonic weapon, and succeeds, but it's muffled and most importantly it doesn't melt anyone's face off.

There's a lot of noise inside the containment vehicle itself as the frozen Jesus is put into a containment chamber from which all air is sucked out; the idea is to freeze-dry him. All you hear inside after the pumps have done their job is a muffled pop. The camera inside the mobile containment vehicle confirms that Jesus coughed up a bunch of blood when the air was removed -- maybe He tried to hold His breath and his lungs burst. Blood, not ichor.

The chamber is its own Dewar flask, introducing a bit of liquid nitrogen and then taking it away quickly gives you an open-ended freezer.

Jesus is in MCV1; MCV2 can be used as a decoy.

It's over. Just like that. Except...

>>3858030
>>3858024
>>3858035
>>3858039

You request aerial support from the Garibaldi; they're inbound, give them a few minutes.

When you call Chloe, her father answers.

"This is Captain Rayford Steele. Holy war upon you, Foreman! I want to see my wife again. I want to see my son again! And I'll do anything to make it happen!"

You got hung up.

Litwala's men surround you and your people; they'll hold the Remnant in Petra if they must.

To deal with the incoming suicide airplanes for a few minutes until the air cavalry shows up, you

# have the MCVs move away together.

# send them different ways, escorting the full one more.

# send them different ways, escorting the empty one more.

# leave them where they are and quickly have Litwala and Santiago prepare AA weapons.

On top of the plateau, things have come to a head; Remnant are attacking. The orange zone appears to be gone.

# Fire at will!

# Fire at will, and turn off the gap generator -- now it's your turn to bring the magic.

# Destroy the three bridges between the canyons and just return fire.
>>
#leave them

#fire at will, and turn off the gap generator. It's time for ponies :p
>>
>>3858065
# send them different ways, escorting the empty one more.

# send them different ways, escorting the empty one more.
# Destroy the three bridges between the canyons and just return fire.
Shoot at both, but focus on the guys crossing the bridge first so it will eventual collapse.
>>
>>3858065
holy crap did we do it guys?

# leave them and get AA guns, maybe have them move about to dodge remnant tomfoolery

# pic related
>>
>>3858065
#set up AA
#fire at will
Gap generators need to stay ON or else turbojesus magic may activate again
>>
>>3858065
# Split the differance; the MCVs move away under a lighter guard, favoring the one not containing JC. The rest bring what ever they can to bear up to and including firing AKs in the air

# Fire at will, and turn off the gap generator -- now it's your turn to bring the magic after the MCVs are at the outer limits of thier range.

# Consult HQ; how badly would detonating the Mt. of Olives affect the planes vs our selves? If the pressure wave and grit in the air are more likely to hurt them then us, strongly consider turning the key.
>>
>>3858058
>>3858030
>>3858035

You have air reinforcements coming in; none of ICCO's planes are armed, as far as you know, so an air battle would be brief.

"Foreman, this is Switchboard. We got Chloe Steele on the line, wrong number, right voice print."

"Put her on."

"Foreman! You got to stop my father! He went nuts!"

# I'll stop him, but you won't like how I will have to. I'm sorry.

# What do I care? Didn't you guys already win this in the beginning or something?

# What can I tell him so that he'll land the planes?

Moira is helped out of her armor; she's sore from the repeated tumbles, and you suspect a little sore that she didn't get to properly fight King Jesus, but she came closer to that than anyone else's.

Around you, Litwala's forces are bottling up the canyon; some start climbing up the promontory so that they can help against the other Remnant.

>>3858086
>>3858073

The containment vessels are going to stay put; they're safest in the middle of a conventional army, at this point.

>>3858079
>>3858087

"Fire at will! Concentrate on the bridges!"

You have the sonic weapon turned off; the batteries were at 30%. Leaving the Gap Generators on for now means that nobody gets to use supernatural abilities -- something lost to the Remnant as they run into Domai's heavy troopers, try to leap between the canyons in a single bound... and are mowed down by bullets, or miss the jump entirely and end up screaming down the canyon walls until they splat at the bottom.

Santiago reports that her soldiers are facing a raid of warriors mounted on ATVs and bikes, but are containing it with little difficulty.

# Keep them in contained.

# Invade Petra; you certainly have enough men now.

# Turn the sonic weapon around and use it as a speaker to broadcast an offer of surrender.

>>3858090

The ICCO planes are too far away from the Mount to be affected.
>>
>>3858065

#Spread the MCVs out and quickly have Litwala and Santiago prepare AA weapons.

They're not gonna be fooled by a decoy ploy, because NC shenanigans. Spread the MCVs out--if we loss MCV1, we'll have a few minutes of sonics to retrieve Jesus with MCV2.

# Destroy the three bridges between the canyons and just return fire.

Whatdoyoumean, gone?!
>>
>>3858101
># What can I tell him so that he'll land the planes?
"We have five minutes before we shoot him down, make it fast."

# Keep them in contained.
Save the batteries until the MCVs are in the clear.
>>
>>3858101
# What can I tell him so that he'll land the planes?
#keep them contained
>>
>>3858101
># What can I tell him so that he'll land the planes?
"You get a single chance; make it count. Because otherwise, I can do nothing but kill him. Sorry, for what it is worth.'

# Keep them in contained.
>>
# What can I tell him so that he'll land the planes?

#Broadcast an offer of surrender

We need to show mercy, but be prepared for refusal. Come up with a plan for stopping them if our offers don't work
>>
>>3858101
# What can I tell him so that he'll land the planes?
otherwise
# I'll stop him, but you won't like how I will have to. I'm sorry.

# Keep them in contained

Can we dustoff the container vessel? That's how we got it there in the first place right?
>>
>>3858113
>>3858110
>>3858109
>>3858108
>>3858116

After their first attempt at an attack, the Remnant are a lot less bold; Domai sends a Wiesel with a TOW to blow up two of the bridges and has the heavy troopers take position in front of the third.

Litwala's men take the visitors' center even as his and Santiago's soldiers set up AA trucks and missile launchers around the container vehicle -- now that conventional weapons work, it feels almost too easy, as if it was a trap.

>>3858116

They got here in two large MilV-12 helicopters, one of which was blown up to get rid of Christopher, Nahum, and Caleb.

>>3858110

"All right, Chloe. What can I tell him?"

"I don't KNOW! My dad's weird! He always thinks he knows better than everybody. "

"He said that he'd do anything to see his wife and child back."

"Irene and Raymie were Raptured... I don't know, tell him that he'll lose me if he does this!"

The planes are coming; so is your air force, which isn't any faster but is properly armed. You call Chloe's earlier number again, and sure enough, Rayford picks it up.

# Go with what Chloe suggested.

# Tell him that the Remnant will need leadership now.

# Tell him that he has a daughter and a grandson who need him to not become a terrorist.

# (write in)

--

The Remnant attacks have stopped; they finally understood that they aren't invulnerable anymore, that war is not a spectator sport.
>>
>>3858101
# What can I tell him so that he'll land the planes?
Maybe patch her through.

# Turn the sonic weapon around and use it as a speaker to broadcast an offer of surrender.

# Invade Petra; you certainly have enough men now.
>>
>>3858135
# Tell him that he has a daughter and a grandson who need him to not become a terrorist.
# Tell him that the Remnant will need leadership now.

Lest they get wiped out.
>>
>>3858135
># Tell him that he has a daughter and a grandson who need him to not become a terrorist.
>>
>>3858135
># Go with what Chloe suggested.
># Tell him that he has a daughter and a grandson who need him to not become a terrorist.
># Be ready to patch her through.

>>3858139
No one is going to allow the radical Remnant to exist after this sort of stunt.

ICCO, maybe, but that's more Chloe's wheelhouse.

We can't bribe him with leadership.
>>
>>3858135
# "I cant say a thing he would believe. You, you might though. You know, I remember when I first started, you tried to tap my phone, old school. Who would have known you wouldn't be an enemy but, well, a friend?

After this is over, you should really try playing the Soviets in campaign mode. Playing the bad guy at times doesn't mean you have become one in actuality."
>>
# son and grandson
# patch chloe in
# don't bring up the remnant
>>
>>3858151
We aren't we are pointing out that after all this the will need it lest the get wiped out for sure.
>>
>>3858158
Haha, pro-tip pressing ctrl lets you attack anything on the map or ground.

Took my years to find this out by mistake.

I like setting the trees on fire and making buildings spark fire all over the ground with flame troopers.
>>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Yl-DvkX0hY

>>3858144
>>3858151
>>3858139
>>3858158
>>3858159

"Captain Steele, you have a daughter and a grandson who love you very much."

"Yes! And I'll get to be with them AND my wives AND my son for a thousand years!"

No, you really won't, you'll get shot down. Maybe he knows that, but he won't admit it to himself.

"If you fail you'll be remembered as a terrorist. Do you want Kenny to grow up hearing don't be like grandpa?"

You patch Chloe through. "Dad, Please! Come home."

You don't know where Buck is, but you figure he would not be much help here.

"I... But what are we going to do? How will we live?"

The same question is being asked by the Remnant, after they've been offer quarter. In the exact same words, even, as you find out when one of the elders (Micah is, apparently, resting) walks up to the plateau to negotiate.

"What are we going to do? How will we live?"

That's a good question. They thought all they would have to do was trust and obey, and now...

Will you let them go, once it's safe? Will the world forgive them?
# Write in.
>>
#Tell him to surrender for Chloe and his grandchild. Patch her in.
>>
#Tell them honestly that you only know that we need to work towards forgiveness and that it will take time to build a plan with (not for) them
>>
>>3858190
(Off the cuff again)

"I don't know.

We all deal with this question at some point. Many have claimed a definitive answer. None were right.

God offered you surety, a straight and narrow path. A definitive answer.

But the universe isn't definitive. It's sprawling, and crooked, and full of terror and wonders beyond our ken.

I can't offer you comfort. I can't offer you wisdom. I can't offer you surety.

All I can offer is the freedom to set your course. To seek, and to find your answers for yourself.

Will you live, Captain? Will you find your answer?"
>>
>>3858190

>>3858199

Fuck it I'll support this for an immediate quote.

As for forgiveness, most, if not all, of the Remnant were basically brainwashed to one degree or another. It feels like a lot of their converts were incapable of violating the party line. As far as I'm concerned there's not really a lot to forgive. The only thing I could even think to consider is whether or not converting to Remnant could be considered a crime, but again in most if not all cases coercion would be a thing.
>>
>>3858190
# "You will revive no retribution from mine or mine own. I will ask you receive non from my allies either; at this point that means those representing the greater half of humanity. I can not protect you from the depredations of each man or woman with a grudge against the adherents of your religion but know, so long as I live I will do all in my power to ensure that those who victimize the Remnant will suffer the same burden of trial that any other would receive.

I can't save you but, in a generation, people will move on. That's what humans do. So please, for those you love and have loved live! Don't die as heroes, live as men!"
>>
>>3858199
>>3858198
>>3858205
>>3858209

"I don't have an answer for you, Captain. God offered you a perfect, complete answer. A straight and narrow path. A pleasant eternity. But that's not how the universe works, it's chaotic and messy and wonderful and all sort of things other than pleasant too, and the reason why we think, really think, unlike fish or computers, is to find our own answer and in so doing add to the whole! Live as a pilot, live as a Grandpa, I hope to be one some day -- don't die as a martyr! You know what I liked of the Bible I read? Forgiveness. We gotta ask for a lot of that, all of us."

You put Chloe on the call again.

"Come home? Kenny keep asking me where you went."

The ICCO planes turn back; they were about halfway to Petra, and most of them land at Bar Yehuda Airfield.

It's over. You finally take your earsets off. Everything sounds a little odd for a few minutes.

Dr. Diamond ends up helping treat Remnant wounded; you make sure that the containment vehicles are escorted by a mixture of the various armies, to avoid last minute shenanigans, but can only truly relax when they are loaded into the Garibaldi.

---

A large, secure, permanent containment facility is being built

# on the Mount of Olives, on top of the just-in-case nukes and in neutral territory

# right there at Petra

# in the polar wastes

# over the old Groom Lake airbase

where you're going to keep Jesus, Eli, Tsion, Hesediel, the Archangels' corpses, the frozen locusts, and so on. Now that it's over, you finally broadcast the whole thing, without commentary. The world watches in astonished silence, and for once in history, even the comments on the video are bereft of trolling (Well, not really, that would be more than a miracle, but there is very little of it).

Lailah, still overall a mystery to you, is going to be

# let go

# kept locked up

# shot into space

You get to the black site, and let go of most of the prisoners there; they don't believe a word of what they read on the internet, and still don't believe a word when they are told the story on the bus ride to a random midwestern town, but they'll adjust, eventually. Which leads you to the most important prisoner you have.

# Free Carpatescu, privately, with a plastic surgeon on hand.

# Free Carpatescu, privately, with as much firepower you had in Petra on hand.

# Free Carpatescu, publicly.

# Take no risks. Sorry, Nicolae.

And after all of this... it's time to go home. In San Felipe, in Thule, in Effincold, you basically lived out of an alcove, a bed built in the back of your office, sometimes not even that; in Chicago you had a home, but you abandoned it after the second assassination attempt.

It's a little surreal to enter it again. It's clean; you had a contract with a cleaning company as part of your job perks, and throughout thick and thin and plagues and horsemen, you kept enough of the economy running that they kept cleaning it. It just feels unfamiliar to you now.
>>
>>3858218
# in the polar wastes

# let go
semi parole before full release.

Not sure if we should release our former boss.
Do me a favor, don't pledge yourself to Satan after this or renounce it. Because if you do, it starts all this over again.

Build a second or 3rd HQ in American and Thule.

Best build one in the south pole too.

Can we please start banging all the girls now?
>>
>>3858218
# over the old Groom Lake airbase
It's a lot more secure, in both the geographic/environmental stability, and the physical security sense, than the others.

Lailah still exists?
# shot into space
Then let go, and offer a job at GCASA.

#Check if Carpatescu still has the hypnotism. Then, if not, release with plastic surgery.
And a monitoring team. Just In Case.

Who's our replacement?
>>
>>3858218
# in the polar wastes
Cheaper to keep them on ice.
# let go
# Free Carpatescu, privately, with a plastic surgeon on hand once we verify his mesmerism has vanished or at least been reduced.
"I hope what you can feel is joy, the relief of no long carrying a mountain on you back; if you instead are out for vengave, well, you know where I work. Lets keep in touch, Nicolae."
>>
>>3858231
(Nobody is replacing you; even Ryan Andrews is no longer interested in the job -- too political)


>>3858233
>>3858231

When you let Nicolae out of the containment suit, he looked like crap, but wasn't too weak to extricate himself from it. As soon as he got out, he started coughing, coughing like mad, more black and red and yellow smoke coming out of him than during the Sixth Trumpet. Twenty seconds later, the smoke had coalesced into the form of Lucifer, as a resplendent angel of light. It tried to phase out of the containment chamber, and when it found out that it couldn't, it almost killed Nicolae in frustration.

You had a security team in place, and the containment site was thick with gap generators, so naturally you

# put Lucifer on ice too

# blew Lucifer up in a very final and conclusive manner

after barely managing to extract Carpatescu. After being de-indwelled, the former potentate appeared a lot weaker, and lost a lot of hair all in one go -- he aged seven years in fifteen minutes. He's in physical therapy now; he'll have to relearn how to walk. He says he wants to go back to school, learn a profession -- he reckons he'd be a good lawyer.

--

Lailah looked decidedly less ethereal after the big snare operation. It took a little kid for her to accept that the firmament wasn't a solid sphere around the world and there was water on top of it; Lailah was taken to the former main ESA facility for training, since Zakharov said she'd only be welcomed at Baikonur as a test subject, and had her horizons finally opened when Cindy Jospin, all of seven years old, read a first-grade
>>
>>3858243
# Talked to Lucifer for a moment before deciding.

Haha! I knew he had been muppeted from the minute he told us he was spent, dead a few threads ago when he exited the hummer.

Guys, we have been playing chess with Luci and conversing with him for well over a year at this point. Lets give him a moment; if he sees that moment as indecision or weakness and tries to strike then:
# put Lucifer on ice too
>>
>>3858243
# put Lucifer on ice too
Off to the North pole with you.

>>3858258
But how?
>>
>>3858258
I guess that was why no demon army ever showed up.
>>
>>3858261
How what? I want to talk to him to see what happens now that NC is gone for the most part. If you are asking how we put him on ice, he is trapped in the 1st room we ever had for a supernatural; we already establish Luci cant just phase out; liquid nitrogen pumps, fighters, and all the other anti-bullshit measures we have conceived should be on tap for him.
>>
...space book with her. Taught her to read, too.

Lailah climbed on a refurbished Soyuz capsule on top of an Ariane rocket, ran her part of the mission quite competently -- an eidetic memory certainly helps with launch procedures -- and the capsule, officially launched as a dress rehearsal for the first manned mission post-Rapture, came back empty. Telemetry shows that she loaded the reentry program with a five minute delay, took her spacesuit off, and just walked out the airlock. You wonder if she survived.

--

It's going to be hard to going back to normal, if there's even going to be such a thing; just to give one example, Zakharov's mammoth de-extinction project ended eight years ahead of schedule when an Evenk shaman presented him with a visibly undead but fertile bull, kept moving and kicking by tundra spirits; the first generation of calves were a lot less creepy than the way that they came into being, fortunately.

The ecosystem is recovering faster than Carla had anticipated -- decades, rather than centuries -- and everyone knows that it's because it's one of the few things most everyone could agree about.

You know for a fact, since you had to send a security team to investigate, that a large portion of southern Utah -- roughly around where people are doing an isolation experiment to train for going to Mars -- is being contested between "classic" scaly dinosaurs and "new" feathered dinosaurs, much to the amazement of paleontologists and the amusement of the Mormon creationists who hired the sec team in the first place.

You had jackalope alla cacciatora for the potluck at the reopening of the Chicago HQ -- it didn't taste very filling, not being precisely real after all, but it was nice to have fresh meat for the first time in a long time.

--

Lucifer proved pretty intractable; looking at you, he thanked you for doing all the work for him, and proclaimed that he had no more need of a human vessel.

"Now I am going to tell you what you are going to do: bend the knee..."

You did, of course, and then shot it between the legs; the squad behind you needed a clear shot with the real guns.

Ironic that Satan and Jesus are now roommates. According to Jewish tradition, they always were; ask a Mormon, and you'll be told that they're half-brothers. A bit like Loki and Thor, really.
>>
>>3858266
Geist, after the epilogue is done, can we ask some questions about what could have been? I am curious about some things, Lailah in particular seeing as we didn't really interact with her much.
>>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVUpI9Eed0I

--

So... yeah. Home. It's too big; you who got used to commanding satellites, drone swarms, a warship, research teams, and more, have done so from the small confines of a cubicle, or a prefab office, or even a tent with a laptop a few times. Now you've got all these rooms you don't know what to do with. Full kitchen when most everyone is still eating out of cans, although Chicago is a lot greener than it used to be and you can see fireflies in the city park. Kids think they're fairies. That's silly, of course, you gotta drive at least two hours out for fairies.

Bedroom with no alert system, no emergency console. Small home office with what is now a painfully obsolete desktop PC, which still turns on -- it still has copies of one of your first budget spreadsheets, when you were trying to figure out the CellSol system. Seven years. A childhood. An adolescence. For you, a lifetime. For the world, the Tribulation, and then, the Snare.

And the second bedroom and den of course -- a cabinet official, even a low ranking one, had to have a big house, so there's half of the second floor that you just flat out never used for anything. It was decorated very generically, and you let it be -- not even a time capsule, too impersonal.

Except today, because you go to that door, hear "Come in", and find

# Aki Zeta-5 Lattinen

# Moira McSingh

# Corazon Santiago

# Carla Colombo

# Everyone, they've thrown you a (non-lewd) housewarming party!



# Lailah-lan-Adam??

# Nicolae Carpatescu??

# Mr. Chandra??

# Dr. Diamond??

# Everyone, they've thrown you a (possibly lewd) housewarming party!


>>3858262
>>3858265

(In Left Behind canon, Satan is very much a pushover, which frankly makes the whole Tribulation exercise even less high-stakes... but it sold a lot of books, so there you are.)

(And so this quest goes into autosage)

>>3858272

(Questions very much encouraged!)
>>
>>3858265
How he got stan'd.

>>3858272
Why'd she leave?

She could have been an awesome astronaut and explorer.

Also can we rescue some of our people from hell?

# Everyone, they've thrown you a (non-lewd) housewarming party!
# Everyone, they've thrown you a (possibly lewd) housewarming party!

Will you delete your website or still maintain it?
>>
>>3858273
# Lailah-lan-Adam
# Moira McSingh
# Corazon Santiago
# Carla Colombo

# Aki Zeta-5 Lattinen has sex with a drone robot we made and is controlled by us.

lewd housewarming part
>>
>>3858276

She must've been wanting to be in the endless night -- you don't know whether an Angel would die in a vacuum, or if she was in fact an Angel; Jesus, for example, is still metabolically active, even frozen and vac-packed.

(Lailah is a very interesting character in Judeo-Christian mythology; maybe she is Lilith, maybe she isn't, she works differently than all other Angels... Basically it's like when you end up with a glitch in a game, and find it interesting, and do a playthrough around it. You know, like Nuclear Gandhi in Civ. Or running automaton-only cities in Frostpunk.)

>>3858276

In this setting? No, but Hell can be terraformed, and in an eternity of time, it eventually would be.

https://emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/Tripocalypse.TheLongLongEpilogue.html

Website is staying up and will be updated with the RPG setting stuff.
>>
>>3858273
Yaaaay we are winrar
# Aki Zeta-5 Lattinen
# Moira McSingh
# Corazon Santiago
# Carla Colombo
# Lailah-lan-Adam??
# Nicolae Carpatescu??
# Mr. Chandra??
# Dr. Diamond??
# Everyone, they've thrown you a (possibly lewd) housewarming party!
>>
>>3858286
Wanted to ask her a bunch of questions.
>>
>>3858286
Never got around to asking Cameron about the shooting incident at the start. I kept forgetting, then we couldn't ask anymore.
>>
>>3858273
Wait a sec, where is Francesca?
We need her and Moira to get the duel witch achievement!
>>
>>3858293

Basically, since he had already converted by then, he remembered what had really happened... and was too chicken to do anything about it, despite being supposedly one of the world's best investigative reporters.

That's how it goes in the books. I ain't kidding.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2003/10/21/lb-meet-the-girat/

>>3858292

(I don't know if I would have been able to provide answers consistent with the mythology, to be honest. As to why she came across as very submissive in her introduction -- it's a thing women had to learn to do to survive, in antiquity. Angels all have a pretty Bronze Age mindset, including Lucifer, which would've showed up more if you hadn't locked up Carpatescu. Frankly you guys pretty much speedran this quest!)

>>3858297

(Fuck, I knew I forgot omething in my post. Sorry, lack of sleep)

# Pontifex Maxima Francesca D'Angelo is an option, too.
>>
>>3858298
Did we get rid of the spider tanks yet?
>>
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>>3858273
># Everyone, they've thrown you a (non-lewd) housewarming party!
But Aki stays a bit later.

>you can see fireflies
mfw Jenny
>>
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>>3858304

(They only showed up to build and widen the ramp on the Petra plateau at the end of the day. Given the geography of the place, tell me if it wouldn't make an awesome Tribes map, they'd have come in handy for climbing up the canyons)

>>3858307

(Hey, I had to throw that in there somewhere! :) Jenny was supposed to show up if anyone wanted to check Area 51 after the raid, or Italy after securing Francesca's help; she'd have been caught installing a data vault in the basement of Area 51, or burying time capsules in the Ligurian coast. She was also going to show up in the bad end, helping Cendrillon Jospin survive until the Glorious Appearing in case too much of her family had died)
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>>3858304
The guy we threw out the window like twice came too; funny how he survide that. Nobody really talked to him much and he got wasted really early on. Foreman let him sleep in one of the guest bedrooms; after waking up Foreman went and checked on him.

It was like the room had been never used; perfectly made, dust on all the furniture, though the odd smell of stale water he had notice from this house since arriving was now gone.
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>>3858311
So I suppose Jenny was from yet another alternate time line? In the prior quest she explained that her grandma "hopped" during the 60's to smuggle cigarettes on the Italian coast; so a time line which the Tyrant never arrived?
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>>3858311
That's a funny spidercar
How close were we to failing?
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>>3858307
I will strangle you with Aki's robotic entrails if you block us from the harem ending, and impregnating everyone with at least 5 babies and having 25 children!

Who the heck is Jenny? Another to add to the Harem?!
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>>3858298
Oh hey what happened to Harriet Durham? I wanted to bring her in to keep Nicolae company but we couldn't anymore.
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>>3858311
>>3858328
Good question! Also, if we let Moira do magic, what could she have done? I loved that she presided over a sorcerer's due and then a archaic battle royal; her persona as the War Witch was one of the better representations of of what our prior actions had become!
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>>3858332
Geist wrote another LBQ a few years back, set 900 years after we failed and Turbo Jesus fulfilled the prophecy. Jenny was a minor character with a big impact. Read it!
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>>3858335

In the books, she converts and moves to Petra. She did the same here, she just stopped being relevant or doing anything that would've been visible outside of Petra. She comes back in a pretty sweet fanfic by autumnrose2010 though. https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12330438/1/Mercy

>>3858338

Moira's NC was going to be based around her weapons. Other than the fire breath thing, which I hope I made it obvious that she learned from Dhalsim, she'd have been able to put random crap into her grenade launcher and shoot out something related (iceballs, fireballs, acid globs, etc)

>>3858332

Jenny is a literary meme from around when the last LB book was written.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WebOriginal/JennyEverywhere

>>3858338

thank you!

>>3858328

Strategically, you basically skipped having to live with Satan's Brain in Carpatescu's Body by preventing not only that chain of event but also every possible permutation of it, so you did pretty dang awesome.

Tactically, it dragged a bit with Jesus at the end, but you did everything else just fine. BTW, Naomi Tiberias and Chang Wong were trying to nuke Jesus, betting (correctly) that He would survive but your gear would not. One nuke would not have been enough.
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>>3858298
>Basically, since he had already converted by then
That still doesn't tell me what happened in detail...

>>3858286
>In this setting? No, but Hell can be terraformed, and in an eternity of time, it eventually would be.
So we can't invade Hell and annex it? Not even after a 1000 years of R&D?

>>3858311
We'll I did say blow up the elevators so we can salvage the aircraft afterwords and make it impossible or extremely difficult to retrieve anything in any amount of time.

Honestly I don't or can't see us ever running into her, even if we had 3 actions for the Foreman.

Why was it so Bullshittingly hard to recruit and find more agents after we passed like more than 1/3 mark of the game timeline? Even when we went to survey like crazy near the end we still couldn't find anyone. (Aside from Domai, I felt like we were forced to take him)

Was Apollon that big mutant bug that Moira chopped up or did it never show?
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>>3858353
I think at that point Apollyon would have been invisible to use. Just like when JC's NC w3as weaker we couldn't see the arch-angles until a certain point passed.
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>>3858352
What would our NC have been if we tried to use it?

Sex god
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xm91CLA5zQ


Could we have become immortal cyborg with brain or mind uplifts through the implant aug route? I kind of wanted to upload our mind to a AI cloud.

What happens now after we die in this setting?
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>>3858353

As far as agents go: bad rolls, I'm actually a bit bummed that the Synder Roze subplot didn't happen.

Thing is, the more agents you already have the higher the treshold to get a new one was.

>>3858353

Take Jonathan Stonagal: Apart from controlling most of the world's largest financial institutions and being the richest man in history, he also owns the company that built and programmed the MCP. Nicolae was one of the first "test tube babies"; Stonagal adopted him when the Iron Curtain fell in the hope of making hi his heir, after being floored by his intelligence and charisma.

Later on he begins to become regretful for his involvement with Carpatescu, fearing that he is already out of control.

At his first meeting as United Nations Secretary-General, Nicolae Carpatescu executes Stonagal with a revolver, believing that his usefulness has expired. The same bullet that kills Stonagal also kills Joshua Todd-Cothran, the head of the London Stock Exchange, believed responsible for plotting an attempt on William Cameron' life earlier on, as well as liquidating many of his acquaintances. Carpatescu then brainwashes everyone in the room (except Cameron, who was protected by God) into believing that Stonagal shot himself and Todd-Cothran in remorse for the assassinations. Cameron never publishes a word for this because he trades his silence for his life when Carpatescu sends some goons around

>>3858359

Apollyon never shows up in the LB books (too bad because it would make for a good disc-one boss). I came up with my own version, an alien possessed by an angel or demon. I was going to use it to make the swarm act unexpectedly intelligently, but its power to manifest was proportional to swarm size, and you guys blew up his "transmitter" early by disrupting the stone circle formation with your bombardment :)

>>3858364

That's what Aki's end goal was. She got very close to it, too, enough for me to do the "warning" cutscene with the MCP. What prevented her from going full SHODAN was that you had her work with Dr. Suzanna and you were kind with her while not letting her stay in VR all day

The Foreman's NC depended on y'all's morality choices, really. Since he's known as the man who runs the internet, it would have been electrokinetic, mostly. That can mean Force lightning, ability to restart someone's heart by defibbing it with your hands, that sort of thing

One possibility was setting up something like The Grid in TRON (that would have required defeating ascended!Aki though) where the Foreman and a select others would've been able to use VR booths to effectively teleport after a brief Grid trip. That would have given the Foreman 3 actions... which would've been needed because then you'd have been without Aki's 2

I was also going to go with early-2000s memes, for example, shout "HAX!" at someone and the nearest CRT monitor would fling itself at their heads

Overall I'm glad that very little supernatural stuff was used by the player faction.
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>>3858273

# Everyone, they've thrown you a (non-lewd) housewarming party!

Questions:

Were there 'Four Angels' in the Euphrates?

>Apollyon

That's an interesting interpretation. Did Apollyon's people craft Akhenaten or was he just brought for the ride?

Also yay! Jenny!
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>>3858364

> Could we have become immortal cyborg with brain or mind uplifts through the implant aug route? I kind of wanted to upload our mind to a AI cloud.

Yes, kinda going the Robocop 2 route at that point though.

> What happens now after we die in this setting?

Good question there... I'd suppose that everybody goes to hell, even Remnant, since Jesus isn't available to plead their case with Yahweh. Then again, it could also depend on what faith one subscribes to, other faiths would build up their own afterlives. I mean, if the Eldar can do it in 40K... Probably cheaper to reincarnate, overall.
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Congrats champ
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>>3858377

Yep, they were herding the demon horsemen. Their first pass was to kill 25% of adult nonbelievers, the second was more targeted against the enemies of God (hence why the Chicago HQ got sieged).

>>3858377

I wanted to leave it ambiguous about Akhenaten. The idea was to have something that was clearly constructed, but not obviously manufactured, sort of as if a cosmic caveman built a simple tool and threw it, but on astronomical scale.
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>>3858370
>Synder Roze subplot didn't happen
Okay I'm mostly on on principle that we spent like how many actions and resources just scouting out that person? Would putting more agents or teams on it have helped? Like Covert teams or Work teams? And how many?

I'd have an easier time figuring out the rolls if I knew which roll was for what.

>The same bullet that kills Stonagal also kills Joshua Todd-Cothran
Was the second kill a accident or intentional?

What is the obsession with spider tanks?

The person who we threw out the window and had fired, was us all along. We were the spider tank guy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKVxKrrbz1E
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>>3858382

>Synder Roze
Out of curiosity, did she survive the Demonic Horsemen?

>Cain

I remember the Cult of Caine being a reoccurring plot element in the early part of the quest. What was their deal?
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>>3858384
*Mad*

>>3858378
Was it possible to get more story without sacrificing actions for our characters? I couldn't see it without compromising or risk losing the game.

>>3858388
I thought we would have to face a Cain mummy but I guess it never happened.
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>>3858378

>Afterlife

With Jesus and the Remnant reduced out of the picture, maybe Yahweh returns to the Jewish interpretation of him judging humanity according to their adherence to the 7 Laws of Noah and where 'Hell' is more of a Purgatory lasting up to a year?

I would assume the Jews are still Jewish, right? The detainment of Jesus wouldn't really do much to deter their fate.
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>>3858384

The kill was intentional, he mesmerized them to hold their heads together so he could kill both with one shot. No real reason, just to be extra, really.

>>3858384

Spider tanks happened in LBQ1.

Basically, in that setting, the world is mostly flat (not in the flat-earther sense, in the sense that mountains and other geographical features have been squished down, so that nothing is taller than Greater Jerusalem's Temple, which is about 800m above sea level).

A spider tank in this sort of terrain isn't very useful, although you can do some cool stuff with hovercraft, however a couple of players felt that it was a cool thing to develop, so they put money and effort into making some prototypes. The Millennium Force promptly stole the first one and managed to convert or kill most of the team sent to retrieve it, by that team getting absolutely BULLSHIT rolls. Of course the MFers would get a bonus for divine favor, but they didn't even need it.

Quest archive: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=left%20beyond
Quest companion story: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11934303/1/Left-Beyond-The-Millennium-Countdown

>>3858388

Just me throwing in a bit of Command & Conquer. If they had succeeded, though, they would have "resurrected Caine" (or brainwashed someone into thinking they were Caine) and there would have been a showdown with Carpatescu. It was also a backup Antichrist.

Synder Roze got Thanos'd. Part of the idea was to leave you with a somewhat-realistic Super Hacker having to fight three hollywood-style Super Hackers but you got rid of one early (Hassid) and beefed up security fast enough that the other two had little to do until the end.

I did have a "face a mummy" thing, but the African war took precedence. It was going to be an animatronic and give you drone tech if you didn't already have it.

>>3858390

Not really, I made up a lot of fluff on the fly!

>>3858391

Yep. One thing I dislike about the LB stories is that they use a lot of Jewish characters but make them act like Evangelicals if they're on the designated-good-guy team. "Look Ma, I'm not antisemitic, I'm friends with Ray Comfort!"
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>>3858393
How large is the threat of more apocalypses by other religions and their gods attacking?
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>>3858397
>>3858393
On that note, could we have gotten "other gods" for the finale fight somehow?
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>>3858397

In this setting, zero UNLESS any one religion manages to get a thick majority (55/60%) of humans to adhere to it.

Part of why Tsion and later Micah go a bit unhinged (but only slightly more than in the last 3 books of LB or so, Chaim/Micah in particular turns into a Moishe/Eli clone almost) is that they keep thinking that the world is doing one thing whie in fact it's not.

>>3858398

You could have gotten avatars of other gods if you went all the way down the NC path. For example (not literally) you could have recruited Chris Hemsworth, talked him into converting to Asatru and undergoing a special ritual right before the Appearing, and he'd have been able to shoot lightning and throw hammers that would return.

And Chang Wong would've used the handle Noobmaster69.
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What inspired you to use the Anti-Christ's IT staff as the heroes of an Apocalyptic setting?

Were Tsion and Micah a sort of 'reverse' Anti-Christ? Will Chloe be able to think more coherently now that Jesus is ice'd?

Were Eli and Moishe aliens?
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>>3858402

Eli and Moishe were Elijah (the OG) and Moses (reconstructed by God). I wanted the whole "it's actually aliens!" thing to stick around plausibly until Carpatescu died and was brought back by Satan.

Chloe and Buck probably need to go to a therapist who can show them that Christian Complementarianism is a terrible idea, but basically yes. Note that she's smart enough to not be Submissive Christian Housewife #4, whereby her canon ending looks like the 1975 version of The Stepford Wives (I was kinda ticked that I couldn't use her in LBQ1 since she'd been basically lobotomized like most Glorified).

One thing that people notice about the Left Behind books is that even when everything goes to absolute shit, MUCH worse than you guys managed to make it go, the phones and the internet keep working perfectly.

This is obviously narrative convenience, so that Buck in Jerusalem can call Chloe in Chicago and ask how Kenny is doing even if the world is in tatters.

But it also means that the Antichrist must've hired suspiciously omnicompetent phone/net techs.

On top of that, the Antichrist never manages to shut down Tsion's "international blog" as it's called -- again, a convenience, since it lets the authors use Tsion to deliver sermons and present them as blog posts verbatim.

But it also means that the omnicompetent phone/net techs have their own agenda

This has been a meme on Fred Clark's blog at Patheos for years, so I went with it.

Including in this post is the only piece of LB fan art I am aware of; note the phones and note the doilies on the little cloud (that's Rayford's wife Irene, who was the example of the perfect Evangelical wife, and his kid Rayford Jr, because of course he's called Rayford Jr).
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>>3858411

I've been looking for that pic! I love Nicky's smug expression as he literally reads the phone book to the UN.

One last question. If Carpatescu would have remained in place, would we have run across Viv Ivis, AKA 666 lady? Back when we were worried about the MCP I was keeping an eye open for her.
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>>3858415

Yeah. Did you notice that Carpatescu's secretary kept getting replaced? Eventually Viv would've had to take that position since he'd be less likely to kill her just for the lulz. This was tied to how mad Carpatescu was (failed mandates, wars attracting attention, non-Biblical catastrophes happening)
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>>3858417

I did not notice!

Heck, I was actually wondering whatever happened to the secretary after we bagged Carpatescu. If anybody knew where the bodies were being buried outside the inner circle, it would be her.
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>>3858417
Could we have waifu-d Chloe?
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>>3858420

No, she's married to Buck.

Actually sort of: you'd have had to genuinely convert, in which case the game would have gone in a very different direction, and Buck would have had to die in a way that the Foreman genuinely tried and failed to prevent

You did manage to get to pick, other than that, though (I'll see if my sister feels like writing that scene since she's a better writer than me).
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>>3858417
Funnily enough I think sort of did but didn't think of it as anything important. Or I'm confusing the weekly news editor paper magazine thingy.

>>3858424
You don't need to actually write any lewd scenes, so long we as we get all the girls, you can fade to black.
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>>3858426
Actually no, I don't think I did notice, i think I just though he had many secretaries, or more than one for l sightly different things. I only recall 2 others that weren't Harriet, 1 that was a dude, and the other who was a woman and handled our fake suitcase.
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>>3858424
So now with quest over, will you be able to sleep properly and at normal times? I'm going to hit the hay soon : )
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>>3858424
What would have happened to the game if we had converted? Would it just be a [BAD END] where we are in eternal bliss?
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>>3858445
I'm stupid and didn't read the end of the sentence
So what would the new direction be, if we converted?
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Well this is hell of a thing to wake up to: good job everyone; you had my complete confidence.

>>3858273
# Everyone, they've thrown you a (non-lewd) housewarming party!
# Everyone, they've thrown you a (possibly lewd) housewarming party!


I'll be honest, there was no wafiu war this quest and that is the greatest miracle.


>(Questions very much encouraged!)
So I'm presuming that CATS as a organisation will survive long after our death? Assuming we don't decide to go full-aug and live forever or that we don't become so famous / NC-powerful to literally live forever and shit. That it will probably be responsible for humanity's first true step off of earth and into the stars?


If so I can rest happy knowing that we have achieved one of the best ends of this quest possible: many have died and suffered but that much was near immutable; much beauty has been lost and many old things shall never return; yet in their place rises a stronger and more capable humanity, secured in the knowledge that it can fight gods and win; that it can find a path to true unity, Carpatescu and godly intervention not even needed.

All I can think of is in another decade, CATS would be colonising the moon and mars with Santiago and Litwala's help, maybe even others like Gustav and Vega or Zahkarov and Yang assuming they were reasonable.

Oh well, some day someone could run a somewhat generic sci-fi quest (with the NC abilities just being called psionics or something) set after these events: with a strongly united CATS leading the charge.


>>3858378
>Good question there... I'd suppose that everybody goes to hell, even Remnant, since Jesus isn't available to plead their case with Yahweh. Then again, it could also depend on what faith one subscribes to, other faiths would build up their own afterlives. I mean, if the Eldar can do it in 40K... Probably cheaper to reincarnate, overall.
Well I guess CATS has their next big project then: we need to build an afterlife.
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>>3858485

When it's all said and done, can we follow Aki's research route to download ourselves into BOCHICA to live forever/colonize the stars/take over the world and prevent subpotenate infighting?
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>>3858439
I can only hope this will help her immensely. Thanks, anons, for helping wrap up quest. I cratered around 1 EST during that two hour post lull.

I really hope we can help her, it's time for our life to unfuck itself. <3

Thanks for all the anons who have given us kind wishes.
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>>3858424
So will the Foreman ever get to meet Omega?
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>>3858548
Lord I hope so, I kinda like the idea of a quest set in the aftermath of this: not even focusing on the Left Behind stuff (since we have all agreed to never ask for more, for the good of OP and all that) but more so on the fact that in this world of ours there are 3 or 4 major power blocks between CATS+Allies, Yang, Zakharov+Vega (with the rest of the world as a separate block since Gustav and Dimmsdale might decide to go their own way) who were each going to go their own way.

Imagine a quest set after this: each of our power-blocks making moves into space (with CATS probably starting out in the lead but being limited by having so many different world views under our banner as opposed to, for example, Yang who has 99% approval and one guy making decisions) and generally just being a sci-fi quest.

It'd be a bit like
https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3474164

Admittedly I'd expect less alien tech and extra-solar activity but still, you get the idea: a focus on colonisation, diplomacy, research and brinkmanship that'd basically be dropping most of the universe besides characters / powerblocks.


>>3858559
Yeah best of luck and all that, given all we've gotten from her the least we can offer is our well wishes and a vague promise to always be here if there is something we can do.
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Are we gonna be become a theological containment organization. In 100 years we will have jesus forzen next to Jörmungandr in freeze dried pices and Set in a containment suit.
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>>3858599

>>3858485

As the internet becomes a part of daily life, as it has IRL, the focus would change. That said, SCP had to start somewhere, too, no?


>>3858566

Probably not since there wouldn't be a need for an Omega, although BOCHICA is pretty clearly a possible predecessor.

>>3858577
>>3858548

I thought about it, if I do that it'd be in the context of being a prequel/backstory for Photon Knights, but that's for some other time really

https://emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/PhotonKnights.PhotonKnights.html

It would be a nice civ quest to run!


>>3858448
>>3858445

The goal would have shifted to "don't get busted by Carpatescu and replaced by someone who would cut the Remnant off the net".

If you had converted after already bagging most potential Antichrists, you'd likely as not have to find a different one :)

>>3858485

Oh absolutely, there would be a space race as soon as the Global Community splinters now that there's no strongman to hold it together and no external threat (See Yugoslavia in the 1990s basically)

>>3858485

Aki was getting close to start a cult/religion or taking over CLUltism, in which case the afterlife would have looked suspiciously like Tron or Reboot :)

>>3858559

I started working on this in 2012, it had to end. Since this was written noncommercially there's no "crank out another sequel so we can sell it" pressure (Left Behind was supposed to be 3 books, then 5, then it metastasized... then stopped at the wrong time, because Jenkins could have done something cool with the Millennial Kingdom)

http://emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/Tripocalypse.KingdomCome.html This is the outline for Kingdom Come.

----

Thank you for taking the time to look inside my head, it's not a bad place to visit, but you don't want to live there, trust me :)

I'll do a couple of epilogue posts at some point before this quest disappears!
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>>3858617
>I thought about it, if I do that it'd be in the context of being a prequel/backstory for Photon Knights, but that's for some other time really
Of course, you've got shit to do and most of us probably should be sleeping. Hell, I skipped breakfast to read this thread. Such things can be considered on a later date: a different year almost certainly seeing as that is only 2-3 months away.

>It would be a nice civ quest to run!
It's certainly an interesting universe: South American preppers and African psuedo-tribals (maintained traditions but modern tech) working with a giant multi-national (as little as it means in-universe) to colonise the stars; competition with Confucian Asians and Zahkarov-Vega who'd probably throw their own bet in (assuming either of them don't join us); leaving a union of the EU and US to try and keep up (which they'd probably struggle with, having arguably lost the most ground during all these events since the rest of the world has industrialised and would have our support / their own benefits).

All the while: newly risen religions are performing miracles and the famous gaining superpowers (even if they do only work when the cameras aren't looking); advanced VR systems being used for remote control of drones and experiencing old-earth; cybernetics years ahead than IRL; the population of the world is far lower meaning that there are actual wild-lands in Europe, America and Asia where there wasn't before that people can wander through; not to mention humanity's shifted to renewable power far faster thanks to the lowered population.

>I'll do a couple of epilogue posts at some point before this quest disappears!
Cool, god knows it'd be kinda funny to write one about us all having to leave to Alpha Centarui for some reason, setting up SMAS but with CATS as a faction coming in their own ship or maybe a semi-interactive interview or something, seeing as we've never talked to the public / press and at this point, that seems like it might be needed.
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>>3858659
Public interview would be cool
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Voting for that ship ending with Santiago. Very well done anons. Was a fun read.
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Shipping Aki
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>>3858701
>Voting for that ship ending with Santiago.
Completely candidly I have to agree: that way CATS and her own regions will be eternally tied together resulting in a far stronger faction that might be able to further strengthen by marrying into Litwala's family. Imagine it, even if we do want to go democratic, it would work short term.; plus I've got a weakness for basically every option, so no matter who gets selected, I win; that and I think we're probably closest with her then Moira / Carla then Aki (who is probably better off being treated as a daughter than a wife).
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>>3858266
Good bye Lilith, May we never see you again.
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>>3858617
well Klempner, its weird to see a non-end without the fucking weird glitch in the system this time around. Thanks for a run, it really was a blast reading it.
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>>3858617
>Probably not since there wouldn't be a need for an Omega
Though, we did have flipside events all throughout the first quest.
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>>3858617
Geist, it has been a real pleasure partaking in this wonderfully crafted story. I particularly enjoyed reading the snippers about Science Fiction and Transhumanism trends.

It's given me a lot of ideas for a story, although one with less Left Behind.

Anywho, wishing you all the best in whatever shenanigans you get in the future and looking forwards to the epilogues~! :)

>>3858559

I too hope that Geist got the closure they were looking for.

>>3858659
That actually sounds like the setup for an interesting RP.
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>>3858716
>>3858749
No, Carla breeding end is what is needed, the world needs to be repopulated and Carla enlisted us to help us spearhead the program.

Through dick, unity!

It sucks how we barely could get so few interactions with anyone else aside from Aki.

I def wanted to get to know the angel better so we can help her expand and grow, while she eventually helped our species do so later on.
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>>3858968
>No, Carla breeding end is what is needed, the world needs to be repopulated and Carla enlisted us to help us spearhead the program.
Santiago is Latino, I need say nothing more.

Plus you can't deny that Santiago would be cuter to deal with: after all this there would be a lot of orphans across the world, South America included; Santiago would sympathise with their position and use her power to do good for them; imagine Santiago reading to a dozen 3 year olds or actually adopting some herself or her reacting to a bunch of them accidentally calling her mom in front of her. Any generic cutesy shit in fact but those sorts of ultra-innocent, she-can't-stop-them incidents where she still has her macho persona to maintain.
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>>3859010
>Santiago is Latino
That's like saying "Santiago isn't European, I need say nothing more.

I'd argue that a deal with Santiago would be bad partly because of the favoritism, she would obviously get more attention in her region because of her relationship with us, and cause many other leaders to resent it, seeing the whole thing as massively unfair and some would see it as what may amount to subsidizing very expensive dating at national expense, probably accelerating or causing the collapse of the GC when we should do our best to maintain it.

On the offhand Santiago is older and thus would not really give us more children (unless we science this). Carla would have plenty more children either way since her job basically makes her responsible for children around the world, and our work with Carla has us co-ordinate and do occasional jobs to help her out which by extension helps the world through helping her with mandates, and is less regionally focused so there is a lack of "conflict of interest" in a sense, there.

At the end, I'd rather be with a woman who would love us for what we've done than what we can do for her.

In regards to the other girls, I partially wanted another mercenary captain from the UK or South Africa so Moira could potentially have a guy who could keep up with her and could give her, her own little happy ending. As for Aki, I wanted to recruit another hacker that could compete with her. But unfortunately it became unbelievably bsingly hard to recruit anymore people.

I'd Like to image we sort of adopt Aki, with Carla with visits to Santiago and Dr. Diamond to help her grow and blossom into a strong and beautiful flower.
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>>3859090
>Santiago isn't European, I need say nothing more.
Fair enough but I can't deny the relative population growth of South America.

>I'd argue that a deal with Santiago would be bad partly because of the favoritism, she would obviously get more attention in her region because of her relationship with us, and cause many other leaders to resent it, seeing the whole thing as massively unfair and some would see it as what may amount to subsidizing very expensive dating at national expense, probably accelerating or causing the collapse of the GC when we should do our best to maintain it.
GC is fucked, the moment that Yang goes his own way (which he will, probably by creating his own internet entirely separately from our own and then leaving assuming he doesn't choose to do so with no replacement and tank the damage) this shit is going to go down hill fast. Optimistically we might still see Gustav, Lal and Dimmsdale remain in the GC with us, Litwala and Santiago but realistically they'd probably all go their own way. Same goes for Vega and Zahkarov, they've got their own agenda and it doesn't fit well with ours in some ways.

OP even confirmed this fact, the world having defeated Jesus is going to rapidly split into a few power blocks, even if the GC isn't immediately dissolved, that glue of internationalism and globalism has melted and new alliances have been forged.

>At the end, I'd rather be with a woman who would love us for what we've done than what we can do for her.
Which implies that you think Santiago doesn't love us like that. When she's been far more open with us than basically anyone else and shit. Also someone who judges you for what you've done is just a person who judges you for what you managed to do for her. The difference is minor.

>In regards to the other girls, I partially wanted another mercenary captain from the UK or South Africa so Moira could potentially have a guy who could keep up with her and could give her, her own little happy ending. As for Aki, I wanted to recruit another hacker that could compete with her. But unfortunately it became unbelievably bsingly hard to recruit anymore people.
Fair enough. I'd kinda want something similar for them too.

>I'd Like to image we sort of adopt Aki, with Carla with visits to Santiago and Dr. Diamond to help her grow and blossom into a strong and beautiful flower.
I'll admit that is cute but still, Santiago wanted to help Aki too and I think Carla or her are equally suited to do so.
>>
>>3859110
>GC is fucked
We can hold the GC together if we want, and keep it going for a thousand years, we just need to ascend to super benevolent god AI, and build a TRON afterlife.

Frankly its best if it is phased in over a few decades to one or two centuries.

>Which implies that you think Santiago doesn't love us like that.
I think it implies you think she loves you in a way you want.

>When she's been far more open with us than basically anyone else and shit.
Sort of forced her to. Made a whole shtick about that when we were basically spilling all of our goddam super classified shit to her except the nukes part, as part of "a fair exchange" for more info about her(Kompromat), but all we got was personal info that was morally dubious at best.

>Also someone who judges you for what you've done is just a person who judges you for what you managed to do for her.
Carla admires us, if you want call that "judgement" then we may as well say any perception that gives anyone an opinion is therfore "judgement" and we are all just judging one another with the negative connotation it implies.

>The difference is minor.
The minor difference in a word or adding a letter with a ' at the end changes the entire meaning of a sentence or context meaning of something larger.
ie.
I will nuke you to death!
I won't nuke you to death!
>>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9mCP1tebX8
>>
>>3859173
>We can hold the GC together if we want, and keep it going for a thousand years, we just need to ascend to super benevolent god AI
A Omega level AI or anything near it is literal centuries away. BOCHICA will become it eventually but that is awhile away even with Aki and CATS working on it.

>I think it implies you think she loves you in a way you want.
Anon, glass houses and thrown stones, that is a assumption we are both making but the difference is I can base it in the fact she's opened up to us, trusted in us and even made a blood pact with us whereas you are making a larger set of claims: that she doesn't love us as I suggest - or rather as you think I suggest - or at all and that Carla does love us. I agree Carla does too but I don't think you can argue that Santiago doesn't or that the concept of love, as indescribable as it is to me, is inaccurately applied.

>Sort of forced her to. Made a whole shtick about that when we were basically spilling all of our goddamn super classified shit to her except the nukes part, as part of "a fair exchange" for more info about her(Kompromat), but all we got was personal info that was morally dubious at best.
If that is how you want to view it, fair enough. If you believe we forced it out of her or that spilled everything without reason, fair enough. If you believe we got nothing out of that, fair enough.

>Carla admires us,
I would imagine Santiago does too, given we have shown ourselves to be competent fighting on the ground, as a leader and as an ally. That we respected her wishes and saved humanity, that we picked her as our ally and that we broke her free of mind control.

> if you want call that "judgement" then we may as well say any perception that gives anyone an opinion is therfore "judgement" and we are all just judging one another with the negative connotation it implies.
Judging doesn't carry a negative meaning. To judge is to form an opinion, positive or negative. If a person has no opinion of us, how would you suggest they can love us?

>The minor difference in a word or adding a letter with a ' at the end changes the entire meaning of a sentence or context meaning of something larger.
The difference is expectation versus reality: they both will still have judged you after an event has occurred; just one will be looking towards the future whereas the other looks to the past. Assuming we follow your logic that the two positions are binary.
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>>3859176
>Big Bang Thereory

[s] I ship Aki because she is adorable and I like broken things; well, not so broken by the end. Maybe the one true ship should remain unknown though? Or geist could just write an ending for them all![/s]
>>
>>3859376

Aki is pretty awesome, agreed.

As far as female companionship goes, our Foreman is a lucky S.O.B.
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>>3859418
>As far as female companionship goes, our Foreman is a lucky S.O.B.
May we all be so lucky, at least to have the chance and perhaps the will to take it. Rather than delaying even after a self-promise like me, though I might well rectify that come the appropriate time.
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>>3859200
>A Omega level AI
We could hold it together now if we want or select a new head of the GC. We just are at quest end so we can't "tend the lawn" anymore. Simple choices have radically changed directions of the quest. Its like going down the road, then taking a turn. Only if we assume the continued travel down a particular road we are on with our making any turns does that hold true.

>Anon, glass houses and thrown stones, that is a assumption we are both making but the difference is I can base it in the fact she's opened up to us, trusted in us and even made a blood pact with us
Anon, black pot and kettle, your making assumptions about the character and what I meant, and while you can base her/me on that, it is simply not accurate. She did not opened up to us out of no where or because she trusted us and started talking, it took complaining out loud and pointing out OOC that we were telling her so much damaging information, with nothing as damaging on her in return, that qm wrote something up. She did not as part of her character just sit down with us and tell her story out of a sense of openness, or because she wanted to. It required player prompt for it to happen, and the blood pact thing seemed more of a in character flavoring. Everything she told us in return was in her words Kompromat, and was mostly personal experiences that weren't any worse that what Rehoboth had done.

>whereas you are making a larger set of claims: that she doesn't love us as I suggest - or rather as you think I suggest - or at all and that Carla does love us.
This is disingenuous.

>I agree Carla does too but I don't think you can argue that Santiago doesn't
I'm not saying Santiago doesn't or can't love us necessarily, though we've never really reach "love" status much in this story for anyone. (Even though the whole point of going to Greece with Santiago was to get laid and basically be a date, but got cockblocked)

>or that the concept of love, as indescribable as it is to me, is inaccurately applied.
What in the great satan are you going on about.

>If that is how you want to view it, fair enough. If you believe we forced it out of her or that spilled everything without reason, fair enough. If you believe we got nothing out of that, fair enough.
If thats your POV fair enough. If you believe we didn't get any of that information out of her without anyone bringing it up and pointing it out, fair enough. If you want to make claims/implications about me to fit your argument, not really fair, but its retarded enough.

>Judging doesn't carry a negative meaning
meaning =/= connotation

>The difference is expectation versus reality: they both will still have judged you after an event has occurred; just one will be looking towards the future whereas the other looks to the past. Assuming we follow your logic that the two positions are binary.

Not sure what your trying to say. It feels like you had an entire monologue with an imaginary me that I wasn't privy to.
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>>3859376
Its probably best if we had some multiple possibility endings (also more screen time with characters we hardly get the chance to interact with more).

The one true ship is the ending with all the girls
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>>3859428
Best of luck, anon!

QM, if you get the chance and are willing to answer, I had one more question:

Would it be possible for a Theological Parasite like TJ to crop up elsewhere in the galaxy? Like say, hypothetically, that future humans colonized planets in Alpha Centauri and beyond. Given enough time and population growth.... could a similar phenomena occur?
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>>3859481
>We could hold it together now if we want or select a new head of the GC
Anon: >>3858617
>Oh absolutely, there would be a space race as soon as the Global Community splinters now that there's no strongman to hold it together and no external threat (See Yugoslavia in the 1990s basically)

To hold together the GC would involve getting someone with as much universal approval as Carpatescu and would almost certainly also require his mind control. Yang has made his mind up about leaving, Zahkarov was previously established as entirely willing to challenge our dominance if he thinks he could and most of the rest of the world is nominally on our side.

>meaning =/= connotation
I mean it kinda does, seeing as meaning has connotation as a synonym. Meaning that meaning carries connotation as a connotation.

>Not sure what your trying to say. It feels like you had an entire monologue with an imaginary me that I wasn't privy to.
Nope, I wrote parts of that in between doing shit and barely cared, I've been working through a backlog of stuff. I also honestly find your arguments highly illogical and baseless since you fail to understand every time I have tried to make shit plain.

For example, you claim that "I'd rather be with a woman who would love us for what we've done than what we can do for her.", I reply that that is an assumption about how that character thinks (something you later accuse me of), you then reply "I think it implies you think she loves you in a way you want." thus making assumptions about my own positions (something you later accuse me of), I reply that "glass houses and thrown stones, that is a assumption we are both making" pointing out your accusations which you completely fail to understand and instead take as reason to say "your making assumptions about the character and what I meant", which is literally my whole point about yourself and shows that you are talking past and not to me.


These arguments are therefore purposeless and I'm not going to bother furthering them past this point since I might as well be on /pol/ if I want to do endless arguments.
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>>3859552
We can be a kingmaker as previously stated and we don't necessarily need a threat to hold it together. it doesn't have to be the GC per say, some of us wanted to try and reform or transform it into somemore along the lines of a confederation or alliance. See Halo/Mass Effect for reference.


>>I mean it kinda does
>A connotation is a commonly understood cultural or emotional association that some word or phrase carries, in addition to its explicit or literal meaning
You were talking about the definition of judgment/meaning, when I was talking about the connotation of the word "judgement".

Unless you want to argue for the sake of arguing or arguing semantics, this is an absurd thing to debate. But I conceed that I should have used the word "definition" or something else in hindsight rather than a more commonly used word in its place.


>Nope, I wrote parts of that in between doing shit and barely cared, I've been working through a backlog of stuff.
I had to begin the eviction process for a previously long term tenant ontop of dealing with a legal dispute with a new neighbor over a tree. If you had the time to type that out, you have the time to put some more thought into it.
>I also honestly find your arguments highly illogical and baseless since you fail to understand every time I have tried to make shit plain.
Feelings a bit mutual. If you ignore what I'm trying to say and focus on nitpicking and then half ass it with reading, then it won't make much sense.
We actually agree on the majority of things, the only things we seem to not agree on is Santiago/Carla that splintered into a dozen smaller things, and words that may or may not have tertiary meaning/baggage.

>you claim that "I'd rather be with a woman who would love us for what we've done than what we can do for her.", I reply that that is an assumption about how that character thinks
It was in regards to how we possibly see the character more so than their thought process with a personal comment.

>(something you later accuse me of)
What? There is a degree of assumption on either end, unless you feel that you are absolutely right and think that anyone else who dissents or has different opinion is gulity of accusing you of something.

>"I think it implies you think she loves you in a way you want." thus making assumptions about my own positions
I was mostly being snarky at your comment >Which implies that you think Santiago doesn't love us like that.

>I reply that "glass houses and thrown stones, that is a assumption we are both making" pointing out your accusations which you completely fail to understand
I'm fine with criticism, why aren't you?

>your making assumptions about the character
Yes, I would say that was a large part of one of the previous posts. Mind you its a bit meta.

~cut
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>>3859552
>These arguments are therefore purposeless and I'm not going to bother furthering them past this point since I might as well be on /pol/ if I want to do endless arguments.
All waifu wars arguments are, and most of pol is filled with spammers, shills, and chatbots so your not really arguing with anyone there.
>>
>>3860068
>We can be a kingmaker as previously stated and we don't necessarily need a threat to hold it together. it doesn't have to be the GC per say, some of us wanted to try and reform or transform it into somemore along the lines of a confederation or alliance.
Anon, if OP says that the union was only holding out of fear of a greater threat then yes we do need something of the sorts to maintain it. Perhaps you could argue that the less extensive union of states that you wish to transition into would be healthier and more resilient to such attempts to separate but if anything, succession would be easier if there are less restrictions to work around and issues to solve.

>See Halo/Mass Effect for reference.
If you are referencing the series of posts in prior threads I think you are, then I was one of those anons.

>I had to begin the eviction process for a previously long term tenant ontop of dealing with a legal dispute with a new neighbor over a tree. If you had the time to type that out, you have the time to put some more thought into it.
Fair enough, I am sorry that you feel my arguments lacked logic or evidence but they seemed coherent to me at the time.

>We actually agree on the majority of things, the only things we seem to not agree on is Santiago/Carla that splintered into a dozen smaller things, and words that may or may not have tertiary meaning/baggage.
Fine then I'll restate my opinion: both are equally cute options but I find Santiago more interesting with a more important role in the imminent post-credits future. Making sure she's as close to us as possible is vital.

>What? There is a degree of assumption on either end, unless you feel that you are absolutely right and think that anyone else who dissents or has different opinion is gulity of accusing you of something.
Which is why I said "glass houses and thrown stones...assumption we are both making" because I agree, we are both making assumptions the only difference is you made an additional assumption about my own thoughts (escalating the scale of it somewhat) where prior to that the assumptions focused entirely on Carla and Santiago's mindsets: to be honest this entire point of debate is pointless because we were arguing over if a character does or does not love Foreman in a particular way which is basically impossible to state definitively without OP.

We'd be better off discussing other points or going our own ways, given this quest is kinda >dead at this point. Honestly I'd rather not mar this thread with too much arguing after such a sweet victory.

>I'm fine with criticism, why aren't you?
I respect that you have some legit criticism but I hope you understand that I do too. Not that it actually matters in the end.

>All waifu wars arguments are, and most of pol is filled with spammers, shills, and chatbots so your not really arguing with anyone there.
True but you do occasionally get an actual person: even if it is a polish evolution denier or a american racialist.
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>>3860192
>GC
I should have said we could hold it together with some reforms and transforming the GC into something else but I got mentally lazy there and put GC for a catch all.

>I find Santiago more interesting with a more important role in the imminent post-credits future
That's true.

>We'd be better off discussing other points
Agreed.

>I respect that you have some legit criticism but I hope you understand that I do too.
I'm fairly certain we have trouble understanding one another either way. I think you do have legit points on the merits of the girls, but I think we were not really talking about them and focusing more on the theoretical aspects.

>True but you do occasionally get an actual person: even if it is a polish evolution denier or a american racialist.
Too tired to comment at length. While I try to understand them, I find my self unable to trust or agree with them on a bunch of points.

Anyways I think anything else we want to say we can move over to the discord.
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>>3860626
>I should have said we could hold it together with some reforms and transforming the GC into something else but I got mentally lazy there and put GC for a catch all.
I'll grant you we could probably turn the GC into a pseudo-EU (with a focus more so on the economic and scientific unity rather than political) but that would be a complex thing to balance: Zahkarov wants to be left to do his inhumane experiments; Yang wants independence; Vega wants ??? given his whole shtick was cybernetics and god; Santiago and Litwala, sure we can speak for them but they still have their own goals; leaving Lal (the only member who straight up wants to hold shit together), Dimmsdale (a fairly buisness obsessed and US-centric thinker) and Gustav (a decent guy, probably trusts us. Might even be countable as a decent ally).

It'd be a very different state and wouldn't avoid the sorts of issues I see arising and that OP agreed were coming: each powerblock of people controls enough land, people, resources and industry for a major space program; each also wants to gain any advantage they can over the others since they know they are doing the same; ergo space will rapidly militarise (even more than it already had) and colonies on the moon and mars would be a high priority, if nothing else just for prestige and land-rights / casus belli based around de jure rights. I mean shit we've already placed weapons into orbit and revealed it to others: the rest of the world will want to equalise this immediately; not to mention our nuclear weapons.

Realistically there'd also be people who want independence besides the major established powers, they existed previously but the Peacekeepers slammed them out of existence. Chances are they'd also result in some territory loss for everyone or a increase in terrorism / tyranny.

>I'm fairly certain we have trouble understanding one another either way. I think you do have legit points on the merits of the girls, but I think we were not really talking about them and focusing more on the theoretical aspects.
Yeah fair enough, theoretical shit like this never ends well.

>Anyways I think anything else we want to say we can move over to the discord.
Agreed, I'm already there should you really want to but honestly I think we're basically done. At most we might want to develop the whole "post-god" universe thing but given we'd probably be leaving that to OP it's probably better to wait until she wants / someone else wants to run it. That way we can all work concurrently.
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>>3860711
I see the Global Community becoming a Confederacy of Commonwealths, with each faction seeking a particular goal in the New Earth.

Pravin Lal, Gustav, and Suhail Akbar
Goal: Global Stability
They want things to return to the Pax Carpatescu, an over-glorified view of the Global Community under Nicolae, just without the mind control. The new space race is a handy means of promoting cooperation between nations and human empowerment.... but they'll be darned if they're going to be beat to Mars by Santiago or Dimmsdale!

Zharakov
Goal: Technological Dominance
The United Russian States and its allies want to comprehend the new Narrative Sciences, unlocking the secrets of Narrative Causality, remastering the atom, and dominating the space race for SCIENCE.

Dimmsdale
Goal: Economic Dominance
After the whole Tribulation mess, Dimmsdale seeks to shift America from becoming the World's Policeman to becoming an economic powerhouse, building factories across the United North American States and Japan. He is also invested in the Space Race, albeit for commercial exploitation.

Santiago Corazon and Enoch Litwala, and G. Vega
Goal: Military Dominance
The United South American States and United African States seek to be legitimately recognized as the Global Powers they truly are. Their military capacities are certainly impressive, although other factions seem to view them as war-happy mercenary states or pirates.

Shangzong Yang
Goal: Cultural Dominance
Asserting independence from the Global Community, Yang strives to demonstrate Greater China's superiority to the rest of the Global Community, similar to Chinese emperors of the past. Winning the Space Race is key to this goal.

Israel:
Goal: Stay alive; Oy Gevalt, these Goyim are all crazy!
Israel is still independent and wishing the Remnant squatters would kindly leave. They have had enough of this supernatural nonsense and would like to exist in peace... although they are also in the Space Race, but not as invested as the other factions.

CATS
Goal: Keep the internet running.... IN SPAAAACE!
This is us. We are amazing.
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>>3861016
>Pravin Lal, Gustav, and Suhail Akbar
Seems a reasonable connection between these people but I'd argue Gustav may well come towards us and that Akbar, even if he controls the military of the GC itself, knows which way his bread is buttered and will stick by us. If for no other reason than wanting to be on the militarily strong and more importantly, not-logistically-fucked side of a war.

>Zharakov
Probably accurate, personally I think Vega might be here if he ain't with us.

>Dimmsdale
Gustav might be here too.

>Santiago Corazon and Enoch Litwala, and G. Vega
I'd argue these three will probably be with us: one is our ally; one is our puppet; the last isn't exactly universally respected.

>Shangzong Yang
Agreed.

>Israel:
I half expect them to be with Lal's gang since a continued stable GC means the deal is respected and thus their borders / sovereignty.

>CATS
Yeah, I've already made it clear I'd expect some others with us but still. Also clearly our goal is to completely dominate the space race and create a new age of CATS: where we are the only state without any major earth-side assets meaning that we can survive a war far more easily (since 99% of their forces can't reach us) while our space strikes can still seriously threaten earth cities, creating a one sided MAD situation.
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>>3861055

In all honesty, it's a simplified model; I imagine there would be all manner of subterfuge and back dealings to complicate matters further.

>Suhail Akbar
In my mind, he's pushing to becoming the Subpotentate of the United Middle Eastern States (It got renamed) and has stronger bonds with Santiago and Litwala, but Pravin Lal is occupying the territory as a protectorate. He's biding his time.

>Gustav
He is quite amiable to CATS; we provide the internet. I listed CATS separately as we pursue agendas that transcend the political games of the Subpotentates.

>Vega
I had him listed as being with Santiago and Litwala due to his presence at Armageddon, but I can picture him joining Zharakov as well, probably for protection against Yang. He's tricky to place.

>Dimmsdale & Gustav
Maybe. I imagine that there can be cooperation between the two factions; their end goals are just different. Gustav wants peace and economic prosperity for the whole world while Dimmsdale emphasizes America First attitudes.

>Israel
Israel's treaty is still recognized by the Global Community and Lal's administration policies have helped to keep things quite peaceful. However, Israeli nationalism is quite strong, not helped by Remnant influences who want a mulligan on Armageddon, so their current attitude would be "The Jews are for the Jews".

Given time though? They might consider an alliance with Lal.

>CATS
Again, I listed CATS as a separate faction because our goals transcend the Political struggles between the Five Factions. We're quite chummy with many of the current Potentates. Even Yang, who is trying to set up his own internet (with Mahjong! And concubines!), tolerates CATS with the understanding that there are some Narrative Causality problems that even he doesn't want to touch with a thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot pole.

Technically, I would imagine that Remnant holdovers would be a faction of their own, albeit more like ISIS or Aum Shinrikyo. I'm not sure if they'd have their own space program, although they might attempt to infiltrate another faction.
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>>3861103
>In my mind, he's pushing to becoming the Subpotentate of the United Middle Eastern States (It got renamed) and has stronger bonds with Santiago and Litwala, but Pravin Lal is occupying the territory as a protectorate. He's biding his time.
I doubt Lal wants to give the region up but assuming he did I'll grant you Akbar is a unknown.

>He is quite amiable to CATS; we provide the internet. I listed CATS separately as we pursue agendas that transcend the political games of the Subpotentates.
Eh, we aren't that superior: we just have slightly less petty endgames.

>I had him listed as being with Santiago and Litwala due to his presence at Armageddon, but I can picture him joining Zharakov as well, probably for protection against Yang. He's tricky to place.
To be fair, there is also the chance he joins Yang. Hell if Zharakov and Yang allied Vega would need to choose between us and them to survive.

>Maybe. I imagine that there can be cooperation between the two factions; their end goals are just different. Gustav wants peace and economic prosperity for the whole world while Dimmsdale emphasizes America First attitudes.
True.

>Technically, I would imagine that Remnant holdovers would be a faction of their own, albeit more like ISIS or Aum Shinrikyo. I'm not sure if they'd have their own space program, although they might attempt to infiltrate another faction.
I imagine they'd probably be busy trying to either free God or deal with the idea He isn't all-powerful. Plus ICCO is a nominal ally of ours so we can trust they'd be a non-issue, at least at first.
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>>3861109

> Eh, we aren't that superior: we just have slightly less petty endgames.

I feel its open to interpretation. I kind of view us as a predecessor to the MIB.

On paper and to the unsuspecting public we're the IT guys.

To the tinfoil wearing conspiracy theorists we're the Illuminati whose tendrils seep into every crevice and cranny of civilization.

To those in the know, we're humanity's last defense against the perils of Narrative Causality.

>Remnant
Agreed. A number of Remnant would make peace that the Millenial Kingdom is not coming, at least not as they expected (I.E. The true Millennial Kingdom is inside each and every one of us y'all!).

Given time, however, I imagine you'd get militant offshoots with their own twisted interpretations of Revelations, discovering new applications for Narrative Causality that some would find.... unnatural.

Naturally, CATS will want to keep the location of the Ice-Box zoo top secret.
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>>3861146
>On paper and to the unsuspecting public we're the IT guys.
Not really, most people are really aware of the nature of our organisation in terms of our military and shit. They are probably less aware of some of it but still.

>To those in the know, we're humanity's last defense against the perils of Narrative Causality.
You forgot the giant space rocks, aliens, humans, AI and other disasters.
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>>3861156

>Not really, most people are really aware of the nature of our organization in terms of our military and shit. They are probably less aware of some of it but still.

.... That is true We kinda televised our capture of Turbo Jesus.

I can only imagine what the film scene will be like in the coming years.

---
WARNING: The following is almost certainly NOT canon.
>The following trailer has been rated R

COMING SOON TO THEATERS
Narrator: In a world on the brink of disaster... One man stands between humanity and total subjugation.

G. VEGA (Played by a rather muscular actor of Samoan heritage) Your reign of tyranny ends here Turbo Jesus!

What follows is a bunch of choreographed wire-fu fight scenes between the 'Forces of Justice' and the Hosts of Heaven. Notably, Santiago is played by a much younger actress and whoever they got playing Moira has boobs the size of her head. The guy playing one of Vega's soldiers is oddly familiar-Wait, is that Klaue?!

It's hard to tell, but if you squint closely at the fight sequence with Michael (played by some unknown blonde Australian actor) you think you can find yourself wearing a rather exaggerated version of your uniform from the Battle of Megido. For what it’s worth, the actor playing the part of Foreman isn't that bad looking.

G. Vega: FOR GREAT JUSTICE!

COMING THIS SUMMER.... VEGA'S HEROES!

---

For reasons unknown, Vega's Heroes flopped at the box office, even in its native country: Thailand. The film was steeped in controversy from opening day, ranging from Remnant protests citing the sacrilegious portrayal of King Jesus to irate veterans of the battle who remember things happening a bit differently. The movie was banned from theaters in Argentina and Chile, although it seemed to have found favorable audiences in China.

Decades later, however, the film would develop a cult following for its over-the-top special effects and actors who were either clearly coked out of their minds.

One thing is certain, however Neither you nor your people saw a single Nick from film royalties.
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>>3861263
>I can only imagine what the film scene will be like in the coming years.
You have shit like "Thule: undead Nazi invasion 2", after someone misinterprets the fact our now-associated military forces back when they were mercs once fought nazi revivalists at the (wrong) pole who were trying to secure a war-era sub. It'd almost certainly bomb but still, zombies.

Not to mention the fact we visited Area 51 at one point: the films imply that CATS is secretly leading humanity towards a brighter future / preparing us for an invasion would be extremely interesting; Foreman is of course a android in 99% of these if he isn't an alien. The fact we actually have cybernetics doesn't exactly help since they can just use footage of us in some scenes.

This is before we mention something like the Terminator series based entirely around BOCHICA and our drone armies.
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>>3861346

And this is just films. I can only imagine what shenanigans the anime community will get up to.

---
WARNING: The following is definitely NOT canon.

A dusty plain somewhere within Turkey's Denizli Province. An alien menace that appears to be a cross between Piccolo and Zorak on steroids leers at his sworn enemy.

Translated from Moon-Speak
Apollyon <Voiced by Norio Wakamoto> It is over CATS. With the power of my alien space array, I am unstoppable. Soon my spawn will spread across the globe, spreading misery and despair to the race of man!

Moira: That's what you think, bug boy! Strike Team CATS, assemble!

Blue CATS Ranger Chandra: Form feet and legs!

Yellow CATS Ranger Do: Form arms and body!

Green CATS Ranger Aki: And I'll form the head!

-
The Foreman was a bit apprehensive about opening links from Aki. Most of the time it was links to dense treatises on Transhumanism trends in yet another effort to get funding for her brain uploading projects. The other times...

---

Red CATS Ranger Moira: Form Blazing Sword!

What stood upon the outskirts of Pluto's Gate was some sort of giant robotic samurai comprised of an ungodly amalgamation of robotic cats.

---
The Foreman blinked.

Even with the subtitles the plot was relatively hard to follow. Why was Domai in Turkey; he had joined the organization only after the Apollyon mess had been sorted out. Why was the giant bug alien now the same size as the giant mecha? Did that happen offscreen?

So many questions!
>>
I think now that the world is "safe", it's time to go brain upload.
We are Bob style.
>>
Was gonna post these games to pass time when I thought there was going to be a hiatus, then I forgot about them.

God's Assassin
https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/642044
Thousand Dollar Soul
https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/550497
CYOA type games. Author is somewhat interesting.
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>>3864642
>>3861533
>>3861346
>>3861263
>>3861146
>>3861109

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rd24yXC8Jk

You lived.

So did many others. Quite a few because of you.

What followed was not easy. The Bandwidth Riots, the Imago Dei attempt to replace the council of nations with doppelgangrene clones, Yang's attempt at a mono-thought eutopia that left a continent crisscrossed by underground warrens...

You can buy an O'Reilly guide to practical magic on paperback these days (or grab it on PDF, your copyright enforcement division is intentionally somewhat underfunded to reach the optimum between incentivizing content creation and making sure the creative commons are well stocked; nobody's caught on yet).

You can go to Mars, if you don't mind the six month round trip. Proper nuclear engines have been 10 years away for the last 30, but the Asgardian polity may finally be onto a thorium reactor that doesn't use any magic on it and will therefore work outside the "firmament", that is, Earth's Van Allen belts.

You lived. You adopted a friend as a daughter. Your genes and your alchemical essence will pass on, there's no shortage of demand for one of humanity's heros.

You lost a few things along the way. Patience, often. Some friends. A couple of organs, the easiest to replace.

And now at the end of your life, you climb into the sarcophagus that you will never climb out of. Most of the wiring does itself, these days.

Of course, every faith in the EC would have wanted to count the Foreman of CATS amongst its adherents; you always had an ample choice of afterlives. However, politics -- always politics -- dictated that you could not just pick one. That, and the iron diktat, enforced by superconducting sword and flow-disruptor shield and teleforce beam gun, that no one faith may hit critical mass again: your opinion eventually became that important, and so you had to learn to use it sparingly.

You told people what you're going to do. Someone has to do it.

You wake up to a brightness in your eyes. You know how you got here, in the abstract, but you were out for the last jump. Your eyes survey the surroundings - a golden street leading to a massive gate. It's well simulated, you have to admit. At the gate is a podium, with a little boy sitting on a chair, looking as if he doesn't want to glance at you.

The boy does, and calls you by name. That's a name you haven't heard in a long time. Of course he knows it.

"How do you know my name?"

"It's my job to know, I'm the one who opens the book to see if your name's on the big list."

"The book?" Books are very much still a thing these days. Your network may gird the world in lightning, but books have a power that tablets often don't. Same as swords, really.

"You know what book" he says plainly. The book in the big sky the Remnant have always been talking about. "Was it bad down there? I mean, after all those people disappeared?" the boy asks mockingly.

"We made it out okay" you answer.
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"REVIEW THIS LIFE" comes a booming voice from nowhere. You heard it once.

"You got it" the child says casually. This fills you with dread, even after everything that happened in the last half century. It's a preprogrammed response. You're without psi algorithms here -- for now, anyway -- so you simply imagine a friend talking to you about dread. She was in a few unconventional battles with you. She'll be here at the right moment. You make yourself hear her voice.

"Your heart is beating so hard, I can feel it through your hands. So much blood and oxygen pumping through your brain, it's like rocket fuel. Right now, you can run faster and you can fight harder, you can jump higher than ever in your life. And you are so alert, it's like you can slow down time. What's wrong with scared? Scared is a super power. It's your super power. There is danger is this room, and guess what? It's you! You feel it?"

The child takes out a video tape, pops it in a VCR, and starts playing. The podium suddenly has a small CRT television on it, of the sort that they still use in 2D arcade cabinet these days.

"What are you doing?" you ask with some curiosity.

"Watching your life, your time on earth."

"Why?"

"You know why."

The tape starts plying, shows you your time as a baby and a small child. You're not bothered by this at all. You think you hear a faint snicker, but it doesn't come from the tape. Soon comes your time as a teenager. You aren't sure a child should watch some of the things here, but he's clearly no actual child.

The tape is unfair in its speed setting. Every single time you shoplift the tape seems to slow down. Every single time you turn around and tell the manager that he or she needs to check their security the tape speeds up.

"On this day, March 23, you 'borrowed' the family car and stole away one of your classmates to see an abortion doctor" the child accuses.

"She demanded that I punch her in the guts to induce an abortion. Turns out she wasn't pregnant in the first place. I did the safest thing among the alternatives."

Huh. The VCR turned into a DVD. You think back about Rayford Steele. Looking through Petra once the exclusion zone came down enough to send a telepresence set up -- it never fully did, the Matthian Remnants live there these days -- you saw in their little museum that he actually owned a DVD rewinder. Ironically, he said.

"Sorry you were mislead, how that lie of least evil came about, I have no understanding. Let's continue."

"Is this actually part of my judgement? Because if so, I exercise my right to a jury trial."

No answer to that.

The disc slows down again, the fast-forward track lines replaced by jerky motion as the tech catches up.

"Here's someone you've been dating, told you about God's plan and how God loves everyone, including you. You told this person that he was wrong, and that you had no more time for the relationship. This caused this person a great depression."
>>
"I don't date creationists. We were on a stargazing trip for crying out loud!" Keep it together. It's definitely not just a kid, but there's no reason to become hostile yet.

The child plays further. There's definitely some snickering in the background... you can't see anyone else around you yet. That's worrying.

"February 14th. One of your friends came to the Lord, confessed his sins, and repented for all the bad things he did. You ridiculed him, disparaged his friendship, and declared yourself a racist."

"I've never abandoned a friend regardless of our differences in belief. Ask Chloe. Keep watching that thing, and you'll find out. And I didn't declare myself a racist, I said that it's a natural for people to feel closer to people who look more like their family. Is it not so?"

A thought comes to you, that perhaps I should apologize for everything you've ever said. Where'd that come from? You've said a lot of stupid things to people, but if this is your day of reckoning, you have a duty to stand behind my words and deeds. Of course, nonhuman narrative causality would be at its strongest here.

"I'll apologize to those I've hurt, if they care and if I already haven't, not to... whatever you are."

"Before you say anything else, let me remind you that you also said that you didn't need Jesus' forgiveness and that if you ever met Our Lord, you'd tell Him to His face. Before we continue, I'll grant you that chance."

Now you're angry. Angrier than you should be. Calm down. This will require de-escalation to sort out, not anger. Save anger for when you need it.

"Great. Understand that if He starts a fight, I will finish it. Didn't go the way you planned last time, did it?"

Yeah, that didn't come out as even-minded as you wanted it to.

You look over, and there to the side, sitting on a stone, is Jesus, looking... very disappointed, actually. You let a bit of fear at the sudden apparition wash over me, but can't shake the sadness. He looks classically well-proportioned, perfect even. So, why is He out here instead of behind those gates, waiting for people to come in?

"All right, let's have it out."

The child ignores you and continued playing the tape. Jesus does not move. Well, He's still frozen... and you both know it.

"And then the day of your death. Right before, you tried to talk some of your followers into believing false words, when they told you the truth. Then your end came. You died reasonably quickly."

The DVD -- hey, now it's a modern video player, with ethernet and a USB input -- shows you getting into the sarcophagus. Your oldest adopted daughter, Aki Z-5, dutifully records your last will and testament in case things don't work.

"You skipped over the Battle of Armageddon, I notice. Maybe because it didn't get to happen."

No answer. The video file reaches its end.

"Now comes the book."
>>
"Look, I've done a lot of good things and a lot of bad things in my life. I regret very few of them. If I have any regrets, is not doing enough in either direction, and for THAT, I am sorry. But you would know, since you failed to stop me. So, about this book of yours, is it read-only, or does it take amendments?"

"No can do, if it's in here, it's in here. If not..." The child sighs. What, the double-predestination nuts were right? This is ridiculous.

Owing to however time works here, you scan through the whole thing, twice. You can't keep count of the names, but out of the teeming billions of humanity, there are very few here.

"Is this name written?" asks Jesus' voice. He still has not moved.

"No, Lord. The name isn't in there" answers the child. You get the impression that I'm supposed to just spectate. You chase it off.

"...so why bother with the review if you're just going to look at that book? You people are even less competent at running a show trial than Fortunato was. Spare me this mockery of justice."

"It is permitted unto man once to die. Then the judgment."

You shift your stance. "You don't get it, do you. I'm not done."

Jesus is still sort of lounging on the rock. It's only a few steps. You look at Him, and get some serious uncanny valley.

"Every knee will bow." To His credit, he is managing to look down you even though He's sitting down unmoving, and you have 5cm on him besides. That's a couple inches in the old units.

Nothing else happens for a very long instant. The child is as frozen as Jesus.

"Fine."

You genuflect, then I grab Jesus' foot, and twist it, causing the risen Savior to fall flat on His ass. He does not move.

"Now, listen to me very carefully." Jesus didn't unfreeze. Your were expecting a brawl. A quick look around tells you that nothing's changed.

"I fought Carpatescu's goons and yours. I fought for humanity. I fought to let the world keep spinning. Do you expect me to apologize? Forget it. I did what needed doing. Never let your sense of morality stop you from doing what's right."

Suddenly, you are grasping air. The scene around you changes without warning. Jesus is gone; the rock morphs into a white throne. No special effects either, it just changed when you blinked.

"YOUR VIRTUOUS DEEDS ARE AS FILTHY RAGS TO ME." This is a lot louder, coming from every direction.

Suddenly there's a pile of rags between me and the Throne. I pick one up. When I do, it turns out to be what's left of my favorite sweater, a simple green job with a patch on it, the CATS logo. You look further. There's the cloth behind your shield, the one you hung your keepsakes on.

God speaks with the voice that crushed armies and called the face of the earth and the celestial spheres into existence.

"YOU MUST BE ASHAMED OF YOUR NAKEDNESS."

It's not a statement, or a command, it's a bit of both. A prediction.
>>
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Shame comes upon you, but unlike fear, you do not let it wash over you. You use it. You put the sweater and sash on. You obey God's command, and you are no longer naked.

"Hello, Foreman" the world says behind you.

"NOW, HARKEN TO MY JUDGEMENT."

You speak with the voice of every user, every intelligent agent, every fragile neural network, every reactor on the planet.

"This is Your last chance to understand that Fate has failed. Leave my people alone or I will replace you with a small shell script."

"DEPART FROM ME, YE CURSED, INTO THE EVERLASTING FIRE, PREPARED FOR THE DEVIL AND HIS ANGELS."

Falling. Darkness. A malevolent light. Heat. Pain. God chose poorly.

Your "filthy rags" last a millisecond, but it's several hundred microseconds more than they have to. The plan worked.

The Internet made you a care package, and narrative causality sent you it. It's not much.

Helmet. Light armors. A few weapons. They're from when last you had time to be a gamer, so they don't take up much space when you zip most of them back up.

It's plenty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q657rEkgfKs

You'll have to subvert the existing power structure of Hell before you can take on Heaven, of course, and you'll have to do it from scratch. You'll find old friends along the way, you're sure.

No politics this time, not to start with. It's a bit more visceral around here, and when in Rome, go fast and ignore traffic signals.

You don the helmet, load a shell, and when you do, there's music in the helmet.

https://js-dos.com/games/doom2.exe.html

It's time to let all Earth break loose on Hell.
>>
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( Thank you for playing! )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxwpJue4ATY
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>>3861416
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>>3861109
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>>3861016
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>>3859552


<3 Thank you for the worldbuilding! This is legit good stuff and I fear I could not do it justice.

>>3859485

Yep. Keep those competing faiths below fifty percent... unless some other race derped already.

inb4 Slaanesh

>>3876049 I feel that this would be a viable continuation if things broke down post-Snare, too.
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>>3877341

Bye Geist, thank you for running this. Remember to tell people when you run the next quest.
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>>3877267

Hehe! An epic conclusion to the Foreman's tale.

Thank you for running this epic quest. It was fun subverting the Narrative and canceling the Apocalypse.

Anywho, take care Geist! I hope we cross paths again.
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>>3877341
>>3878327

> become the Doomslayer

> final boss is a tank-sized spider with galaxy brain

why yes, I wanted the last word.



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