Safehold Unconventional Warfare

I was reading through Off Armageddon Reef once more and it occurred to
me that Merlin has an extremely powerful weapon at his disposal.
Namely, Rakurai.
While up till this point he has essentially lived in fear of
accidentally invoking the power of the orbital weapons platforms, why
does he not instead seek to use them against his enemies. Setting up a
beacon to suddenly start broadcasting a narrow beam transmission
directly at the orbital array would of course lead to the destruction
of the beacon's vicinity, across a presumably large distance. A great
way to, for instance, neutralize the Temple Lands. Not to mention
saying "You thought that Rakurai was an act of God, or at least an act
of Langhorne? Well, how about I call down Rakurai for you? Would that
convince you you've been living under a sham these last few
centuries?"
Not to mention that a slow, steady policy of regularly setting off the
platforms would be a great way to neutralize them by the simple act of
exhausting the weapons supply. Obviously you'd want to limit the
number of strikes per annum, so as not to cause harmful ecological
side effects. Weber, to my knowledge hasn't specified whether they
were energy, nuclear or kinetic based weapons. In the case of energy
it entirely would depend on where the weapons platforms draw their
energy from. Langhorne when setting the platforms up may have well
believed that while it may be necessary for the platforms to last for
millions of years, the occasional display of God's wrath towards any
unwanted advances would curb the need for frequent use, and thus the
platforms would be slow in recharging.
Then again, Langhorne may have been uneasy with Shanwei's defiance,
and felt it prudent to store energy using things like nuclear reactors
and the like which would have a much more finite lifespan.
The orbital platforms having nuclear weapons may well be the best
possibility from Merlin's perspective. A nuke, or two, lobbed once a
year onto Armageddon Reef isn't going to harm anything locally, and
won't have a strong effect on the planet as a whole.
Kinetic weapons are a mixed bag. You have a finite weapons supply, and
there's little fallout. But kinetic weapons don't have to be
particularly large, they're easy to manufacture with the limited
resources available to Langhorne, and they last forever, assuming the
accelerators don't give out, or that they're not designed to just dump
into Safehold's gravitational field.

Ben H wrote:
> I was reading through Off Armageddon Reef once more and it occurred to
> me that Merlin has an extremely powerful weapon at his disposal.
> Namely, Rakurai.
> While up till this point he has essentially lived in fear of
> accidentally invoking the power of the orbital weapons platforms, why
> does he not instead seek to use them against his enemies. Setting up a
> beacon to suddenly start broadcasting a narrow beam transmission
> directly at the orbital array would of course lead to the destruction
> of the beacon's vicinity, across a presumably large distance. A great
> way to, for instance, neutralize the Temple Lands. Not to mention
> saying "You thought that Rakurai was an act of God, or at least an act
> of Langhorne? Well, how about I call down Rakurai for you? Would that
> convince you you've been living under a sham these last few
> centuries?"
> Not to mention that a slow, steady policy of regularly setting off the
> platforms would be a great way to neutralize them by the simple act of
> exhausting the weapons supply. Obviously you'd want to limit the
> number of strikes per annum, so as not to cause harmful ecological
> side effects. Weber, to my knowledge hasn't specified whether they
> were energy, nuclear or kinetic based weapons. In the case of energy
> it entirely would depend on where the weapons platforms draw their
> energy from. Langhorne when setting the platforms up may have well
> believed that while it may be necessary for the platforms to last for
> millions of years, the occasional display of God's wrath towards any
> unwanted advances would curb the need for frequent use, and thus the
> platforms would be slow in recharging.
> Then again, Langhorne may have been uneasy with Shanwei's defiance,
> and felt it prudent to store energy using things like nuclear reactors
> and the like which would have a much more finite lifespan.
> The orbital platforms having nuclear weapons may well be the best
> possibility from Merlin's perspective. A nuke, or two, lobbed once a
> year onto Armageddon Reef isn't going to harm anything locally, and
> won't have a strong effect on the planet as a whole.
> Kinetic weapons are a mixed bag. You have a finite weapons supply, and
> there's little fallout. But kinetic weapons don't have to be
> particularly large, they're easy to manufacture with the limited
> resources available to Langhorne, and they last forever, assuming the
> accelerators don't give out, or that they're not designed to just dump
> into Safehold's gravitational field.
>
>
IMO Merlin will not be doing anything that implies he is an Archangel.
Bring down the Wrath Of God would be such an action. Also, he had a
choice in the first book about destroying a courier ship. While his
decision was more based on the idea that destroying the ship wouldn't be
a big help (it would just delay info being passed on), the morality of
doing so did occur to him. The idea of triggering the orbital weapons
would IMO invoke the same thoughts of Morality on his part.

IMO this action would only be a 'last-ditch' action on Merlin's part.



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Paul Howard
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Need a Wizard? Call on Harry Dresden not that Potter boy. [Very Big Grin]
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