Sentir Fallon’s end game
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To finalize the series of posts about my plot concerns, I’m wondering about Sentir Fallon’s end game.
We’re still missing a lot of pertinent information regarding his motivation, but we do have enough to wonder about his end game.
I suppose there are three principal scenarios: one in which he’s a unwitting fall guy for Tiernon, one in which he’s a mole for the Parents or a similar actor, and one in which he just got over his head with career and project planning.
If Tiernon’s strange insistence on evidence is based on Sentir Fallon being a double-cover expendable asset to manage relations to Lilith and the Elf Gods, it could well be that Tiernon is suppressing Sentir Fallon’s ability to really consider the end game. In this case, Tiernon is planning to use Beragamos to burn Sentir any minute now.
If the Parents, or another similar entity turned Sentir Fallon, or infiltrated him into Tiernon’s organization, his end game is clear and his actions toward it have been effective and consistent: the shutdown of Tartarus intake, revenge, and slow or off-screen action towards destabilizing Tartarus conditions, if he knows where it is.
If his motivation is proactive career planning, and the two primary branches in his and game are getting away with it until Tiernon forgets about the specifics of the era, or if his game is blown, perhaps the hijacking of some god pools to some multiversal backwater, he’s made some serious strategic blunders it would be hard to believe someone who’s hundreds or thousands of years old would make, unless the doctrine really does rot the brain on the outer planes.
Lilith and Aodh, as well as Aodh’s principals are aware of Sentir Fallon’s betrayal. They could burn him at any time without suffering too many consequences. This would have opened him up to extortion at any time, and at least Lilith wouldn’t have had any reason to abstain, as all of the actors believed they’d done Orcus in, and it’s not like Tiernon would have let it slip outside his organization.
So would the likely consequences have jived with Sentir’s expected end game objectives?
Yes, it makes sense that the Forces of Darkness would use Team Foundation Studio…and they are an all MS shop.
The Forces of Light use github for all their projects, in many ways Mount Doom is like github and the doomalogues are local repositories…and they are all open source
Now, the Forces of Law on the other hand, they use all Apple based products, because they like things very tightly controlled and micromanaged
The Forces of Chaos keep their source code on a random assortment of thumb drives with different versions on different drives and scattered around. They have also been unable to settle on a single platform so they use a combination of linux, macOS, Windows–(they really like Vista the best because nothing works reliably–but Windows 8 is also popular, Win95 was big for a very long time) and DOS, with a little VMS and even CP/M. They finally gave up on PrimeOS, but have some AS400’s z/architecture boxes floating around. Just so they can deal with EBCIDIC translations…really don’t want anything too convenient.
Yes, his motivations are murky yet. And, I am sure, a mix of things that operate at cross purposes.
Reminder, there is another actor who we have not seen yet. He is only mentioned in relationship to a certain evaporated lich.
Sentir Fallon somehow acquired the dagger from said evaporated lich. There are questions as to how he acquired it, and what the terms were.
This is also where Exador comes back into play as Exador was working with said evaporated lich and instigated the downfall of the Nyjyr Ennead in Astlan.
Sentir Fallon was the Attendant Archon of Astlan at that time (pre-Moradel) as well as during the time of the Anilords, when so much of the Church fell under the sway of the Anilords (one of whom was Ramses) and the old Etonian Empire fell.
And very annoyingly I am looking at my “full history” in Excel and some dates that I know were there are no longer there…clearly a version control loss, going to have to go look at alternate savings I have to see where I lost those dates. I had them when I wrote the chapter with Teragdor and Stevos talking about the hierarchy.
Nargh…
Well sentir started “plotting” with Lilith and Aodh for unknown reasons, the reason for so many blunders was EM, the knife affecting him as it did Talarius.
I’ve been thinking of the Phoenix Cycle, and how it means that gods really inherit their organizations and bureucracies from their former selves.
It doesn’t really matter much whether they were reborn, or if they just shed a lot of memories over a long time, they still have to manage organizations they – as the personalities they currently are – wouldn’t have created, and take over long-term plans which might conflict with their current values and objectives, but might be hard to repudiate for the sake of organizational credence.
Maybe Tiernon’s insistence on evidence was an affect of recognizing the inherent danger of the apparent self-sabotage that comes from appearing to question your own long-term plans?
He’s hedging against his own changing nature by limiting himself to acting on strict evidence, and not going to look for things he could use to discredit people like Sentir Fallon, which he could easily do as a god. There’s always dirt, or things which could be construed as such, if one is so motivated.
Gods, as depicted in the Astlan series, would really and truly need an effective internal security apparatus to gather real, unfiltered intelligence on their own organizations. They would need to network with each other, as well, to arrange little “accidents” for those of the others’ underlings who might have managed to centralize a little too much power in their hands over too long a time, and thus become a risk for either a de facto, or a policy influence coup.
All great points.
Very much agree on the Phoenix Cycle. This is one reason most of the followers are loosey goosey on is he the “heir” or Orcus reborn? One the prophecy was not super clear, it sort of said heir, but also the return. One way or the other, there is a new office holder, obligated by their constraints of their office and precedent.
You have to maintain the trust of your bureaucracy, you are as much a caretaker of the office as anything else.
Yes, very true about Tiernon, but also, more simply, he’s a god of Justice. I’d say Law and Order, but I don’t know how to embed thunk thunks in a post.
Justice, for a god, has to seem like Justice to all parties involved, or as close to it as possible. So, now add in your thoughts on it, and that is the answer.
Yes, they would, now they are all linked together, once could envision such systems, particularly for very paranoid “evil” gods who possess and read their avatars for signs of treachery.
Problem is, that just doesn’t work for a god of Justice. You need to be seen as acting fairly, impartially and on objective, observable facts in evidence. If not all the “facts” are in evidence, it’s hard to impose a “Just” solution.
It’s all predicated on how much the gods really believe their own press.
All I’ve read so far indicates: very little, if at all.
But for a god who lives surrounded by his adoring people, the ultimate yes-men, perhaps shedding memories means that they are slowly turning themselves into a manifestation of their own public image.
However, all the rest of their organization would really know, is that Sentir Fallon was found dead one morning in his bath tub, the tragic victim of a self-inflicted animus/mana asphyxiation event (of an apparently sexual nature, is the inside scoop.)
Yeah, but Tiernon is actually supposed to be a “good guy” at least in his mind. You gotta wonder about someone who drops their father and step mother down an infinitely deep well, never to be seen again.
I mean he’s not quite so far gone as certain global powers that claim to be the cowboys in the white had but have “dark sites” in regions they can’t be held accountable for. He at least tries to live by his publicly prophesied ethics.
Of course, people who perceive or identify themselves as pursuing their own interests are more likely to honestly consider the ethics of their actions, even if it’s just to dismiss their conclusion as irrelevant, than people who consider themselves to be good, and by proxy, their actions.
But maybe it’s just us monkeys.
It’s too bad that you’ve introduced the concept of the Universal language, or method of communication, but haven’t really fleshed it out yet. The concept of information loss in communication mars the beauty of the ethical concept of honesty, and makes the communication of an accurate depiction of one’s mental state containing the mental model of a particular aspect of reality relevant to the discussion, impossible.
But what if there’s a Universal language which doesn’t have these constraints, and allows for a perfect communication of the mental model of a true, justified belief? That would make one’s word the cornerstone of equitable interaction, and create a great difference in the ethics and morality between parties capable of conversing in Universal, and those who cannot.
Yeah,
Actually, I believe that much of the orc to elf fight, originally pre-Orcus, and in fact orc to human problems come from language. In many books/mythos (albeit not Tolkien)
Orcs are not great linguists, and are always shown as being non-verbal barbaric thugs. Particularly by the elves who have a very complex natural language, and by humans who are in between in terms of language skills. I suspect the elvish language, in fact is so complex that it partially achieves the ethics differences you mention, which is why elves always seem rather “sneaky” to orcs, and aloof, different, odd to humans.
Orcs always speak human or elvish crudely (possibly due to teeth interfering with those languages–see next release) and so people assume they are barbaric and crude and simple. Add cultural differences, misinterpretation etc.
I needed the universal so that demons could understand their master (somehow they always do in modern mythology). I did not need to give it a “TARDIS” effect, probably shouldn’t have, given how much in these books relies on misunderstanding.
The problem was that if a demon could communicate universally, what happens when he is speaking to an audience of mixed languages that had nothing in common?
I thought about this, but sort of decided that it would add a lot of complications that got in the way of the story. Not sure I still agree with myself, but….
Now, on your point, I think the djinn language is going to be a lot closer to what you describe. Their language is extremely complex and exact, it is, in fact, quasi telepathic. I say quasi, because they can share thoughts, but that is something that is very intimate and not generally done casually or in public,
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