Saints of Tiernon

[quote=Mikey;5176]One question is, if the 5S have these shock troops who can be deployed for free, what’s the backstory for not using them to just roll over every Unlife-infested world to gain Lebensraum and keep them trained up and sharp?[/quote]

The Dark Gods, Gods of Chaos, the gods that are not signatory to the Concord of Conciliation but that do tentatively abide by it.

We will see them in the Lacuna

[SPOILER]
Sutekh,
Zbibk
and their agent Baron(ess) Tartibsizlik
[/SPOILER]

I am not sure if it is in the version you have, but in the current last scene Ramses and Exador get schooled on the Lords of Chaos. They are not signatory’s of the Concord because they refuse to submit to the Tribunal, however, pragmatism means they tend to respect the rules.

You can be sure that if Tiernon brought his super knights onto the field then the Dark Gods would deploy [SPOILER]Knights of Chaos and similar[/SPOILER] the reason for not just sending your knights out to destroy things you don’t like is that you don’t really want to escalate tensions on all sides.

It’s like certain presidential candidates wondering why you can’t just nuke those countries you don’t like. [SPOILER]It’s one, dangerously stupid thing to deploy Knights of Chaos in the Abyss (when you are ‘in charge’ of the Abyss), it’s another thing to deploy them or their analogues on the material planes, a sandbox where all the other gods have their toys[/SPOILER]

[quote=Winter;5179]the gods seem very bureaucratic,

“Dear [u](insert name here)[/u],

We have received your prayers, as a resident of nysegard we would like to assure you that your concerns are our highest priority, however, we regret to inform you that the circumstances of your imminent death do not meet the level of threat necessary to deploy saintly knights. We realize that this is extremely inconvenient and apologize for the imminent and permanent consumption of your immortal soul by the unlife, and regret any inconvenience or discomfort that this may cause.

we look forward to your safe arrival in Tierhallon.

yours Truly

Saint Desultorius

Patron saint of Process, Bureaucracy and Paperwork
“[/quote]

The Etonians/Five Siblings are. Not all gods are so bureaucratic.

Remember, it took them quite some time to even figure out what the hell happened after the end of book 1 because the organizational structure is so bureacratic, they’ve been trying to fix that.

However, the chaotic gods are a lot less organized. Very much less organized. Their operations are closer to Lilith’s, or worse…

Very good point.

The big problem with deploying Saintly Knights and such is that it is a much more serious escalation of events–maybe–

A saint that was a knight, is possibly OK on a single mission task, and in fact, that would have been what was sent into battle in “the old days”
but those giant guys in the palaestra, deploying them is essentially an act of war against someone, they are for fighting other gods/pantheons.

At this point, the Concord of Conciliation and the Tribunal of Conciliation come into play.

This is where Stainsberry comes into play. Think of him as one of those guys in blue helmets from the UN albeit as Knight Magus he’s also a diplomat and investigator.

So, who they deployed, given the circumstances and rather awkward way the attending archons and prophets all showed up, feeling competitive and guilty for prior under performance, what we see is probably logical.

If things had been operating as they used to on Nysegard, we’d have not had attending archons and prophets. We’d have had a mix of knightly, rangerly, seamanly, and sky wardenly saints.

One of the things you will see in Beta 1, after the Beragamos/Tiernon call is Beragamos berating himself for screwing things up.

Now, in order to deploy the big guys, Tiernon would probably need some proof that other gods were directly attacking his people with their avatars.

One might be able to make a case for them this time, given the oddness of the situation. However, it would be touchy, for now.

What I will point out, however, is clues from earlier books. Maelen and Elrose’ prophecy and visions and one of the appendices.

Gotta break, seeing problems with the site, broken links.

Wasn’t the dark apostle a prophet of the unlike God whatever his name was?

Does that count?

I mean he was killed by a wizard name Tisdale but he was still 600ish and probably killed lots of people before that.

Also existential dread would still mean something for these knights.

They have to be doing other things then forever training.

We not talking Valhalla and the einherjar

Imagine Knightly Saints/Holy Knights are the nukes of godly warfare. Now imagine that the Unlife are the terrorists of the Astlanian localverse. The threat has to reach a major threshold before they could be deployed, like having an entire continent solely populated by the Unlife.