Quote:
Originally Posted by Edman
...A Shedite could wreck a whole town, without causing a single note of Disturbance, within a day. That's just one Shedite, and one tactic.
|
A slight issue: the moment a news story hits the internet about "one person blacking out and acting completely different", angels show up and investigate. A Shedite might be gone in time, but it might not. Clever, long-lived, and most importantly (to Demon Princes who control access to the Corporeal)
useful Shedim corrupt and destroy without leaving such an obvious trail. They use progressive corruption, so much so that when a human is left holding a bloody knife as the sirens get closer and closer, he believes that the little voice in his head wasn't someone or something else, it was his own urges the whole time.
Even Malphas isn't an anarchist, not in practice (I suppose utter anarchy might be an ideal for him). He loves organized religion for the schisms it creates, for example. He also values subtlety (look at his Principality). He knows that dismantling every single relationship between every single being will take time--a lot of time--and isn't going to unleash a town-wrecking Shedite with orders to cause as much damage as possible in a short time.*
*Obvious caveat: ...unless that provides an excellent smokescreen for some other plot. Malphas is complicated.
Quote:
The defence against that is that it doesn't count for purposes of Fate? Three things.
1) Malphas may not care if he pisses off Kronos if he can strengthen his Word in such a major way.
2) In this particular case, it's the fallout, the lack of trust and the despair of the family members that causes the most trouble, not the demon's infernal will.
3) If that's how the game works, the side that influences the humans the least wins - that doesn't seem right.
|
1) Malphas prides himself on being everyone's friend (to them, of course). And blithely sidestepping Kronos isn't wise in Hell (Kobal's jesterlike role provides some protection, but his bitterness toward Kronos has only created more unhappiness for him...). Even apart from that, the "Symphony fights back" logic doesn't just work on a broad level, it works on an individual level--meaning that a Shedite who tramples that many Fates and Destinies isn't long for existence even if it escapes the Malakim. But even if that weren't true...
2) A single traumatic event doesn't always do as much damage to people's lives as the systematic destruction of a human's psyche that leaves him unable to interact meaningfully with any other human for the rest of his life (a Faction of one...), and that leaves a gaping, irreconcilable hole in the lives of everyone with whom he previously interacted. A single event might be destructive enough, but a more complete Shedimization is guaranteed.
3) That's not true, and the key word is "influence". Given how many more humans there are than Corporeally active celestials, and how humans (as social beings [animals, Jordi would say]) 'trend' and prioritize group cohesion,
influencing humanity is far more important than
changing a human. Put in...other terms, celestials can "hack" a human the way anarchists can take down a website with denial of service attacks, but that's crude and ultimately ineffective--the best celestials are the ones who pump out
memes into humanity. Turning a prude into a depraved sex addict makes that human a slave of Lust, but addicting every teenaged male in America to internet porn is a massive gain for Andrealphus--and Hell. Helping one neighborhood band together for protection serves the Word of Stone, but creating the Neighborhood Watch program is a victory for Stone everywhere, and Heaven's win as well.
The interesting thing about this is that demonic resonances are much better at blunt force hacking and angelic resonances are much better at meme propagation. This explains why the Demon Princes needed to go with a "more but weaker" strategy in the War.