Divine/Ethereal Politics on the Indian Subcontinent

[Pursuivant]

If you look closely, you can actually see serious angelic inroads against the Hindu gods. After all, the Hindu Devi look and act a lot like angels.

First, you had the incursions of Islam in the North and West. It's not hard to see this as a scheme cooked up by Uriel and Khalid:

Uriel: "I've got my hands full with the Aesir and the Faerie, plus the South American ethereals are giving me grief. I don't have the resources to do a decent job keeping the Co-Prosperity Sphere and the Trimurti at bay. Can you do anything to help?"

Khalid: "Sure. Dominic's peeved at how badly Islam's weakened the Byzantines, and Michael wants the Balkans as a training ground for his soldiers, so I'll try to get the Caliphs to turn East. Anyhow, it's about time I paid back Baal for sending the Mongols into Bagdad . . ."

Later on, Jean, Marc, Lawrence and Dominic were more than happy to ride on the coattails of the Raj. They figured that a westernized, secularized subcontinent would be the best way to break the ethereal stranglehold on power.

[Pursuivant]

Fun topic, a pitch-in dinner of food for thought. Here's my entree:

Demons on the Subcontinent, Part I

Despite serious opposition from the Trimurti, the demon princes have always been trying to get their claws into the Subcontinent.

Andrealphus: While he can't (legitimately) claim credit for the Kama Sutra, Andre made sure that was widely published . . . He has tethers in the fleshpots of Bollywood, as wells in the brothels of every major city. He also has a few fading tethers in the palaces of some of the more decadent Rajahs.

Asmodeus: Asmodeus sees the Hindu gods as a useful "third force" to distract the Host. Parts of India are also, effectively, "neutral ground" - useful for covert activities in the corporeal realm.

India is the largest democracy in the world, so Asmodeus makes a point of stationing agents in the capitol of New Delhi. He has at least one tether to the Indian intelligence services building. Pakistan, being a much less stable country, swinging between corrupt democracy and corrupt dictatorship, is much more to Asmodeus' liking. He has numerous tethers there. Other notable tethers include:

* A checkpoint along the India-Pakistan border.

* The secret police headquarters in Islamabad, where suspected terrorists are tortured for information.

* A certain house in Kabul where spies and revolutionaries have lived for over a century. At first, it sheltered Russian agents who intrigued against Britain during the Raj. After the Russian revolution, Soviet agents moved in. Since then, it has been occupied by agents of the Pakistani intelligence service, the CIA, the Taliban, the SAVAK (the Shah of Iran's secret police), the Mossad, and spies from at least four other countries. In every case, at least one secret agent has died when control shifted to a new owner.

Baal: Indians have been killing Indians for centuries. Add to that savage incursions by the Mongols, the Persians and the Muslims, as well as the British and Japanese and you've got hundreds of wars, thousands of battles, and millions of dead. In modern times, you've got a cold-war style nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan, and both countries have tensions with China. On top of that, you've got endless chaos in Afghanistan. At least in the corporeal sphere, Baal is pleased that his word is doing well on the subcontinent.

On the celestial and ethereal fronts, while the Trimurti are a dangerous force, they are just as likely to go after angels who intrude onto their territory as to go after demons. Even better, they can be tricked into attacking angels - especially since the Trimurti never did like Uriel that much. If the Trimurti can be bargained with, they might decide to joint the forces of Hell. Even if they can't be bargained with, if it looks like Hell is winning, they might join on Hell's side - either out of spite for Uriel's crusade or to curry favor with hell.

Baal has numerous tethers, mostly in the northwest of India, in Pakistan and in Afghanistan. Three of his favorites - if only because they're in the middle of India - are:

* The Black Hole of Calcutta - the jail cell where 50+ English officers and civilians where confined for weeks during the Sepoy rebellion.

* The site of the Amritsar Massacre, where English troops machine gunned non-violent independence protesters.

* The site of the British East India Company Delhi military cantonment, where British troops executed leaders of the Sepoy rebellion - by being tying them to the muzzles of loaded cannons, which were then fired.

Beleth: Beleth faces serious competition from the native Hindu ethereals in the Marches. As such, she has very few tethers in India and she keeps them very well hidden. She is hoping that a new tether will form in the Tora Bora caves of Southern Afghanistan. Not only did Al Queda plan terrorist attacks from the caves, but they were also the site of one of the most massive aerial bombardments since Vietnam. Many caves collapsed, the men who weren't crushed by cave-ins or blasted by massive shockwaves suffocated in the darkness.

Belial: No famous tethers, although he's got a number of sites where widows were forced to commit "suttee" by throwing themselves on their husband's funeral pyre. He's also got a few sites where young brides died "when the stove exploded" - when they were actually murdered by greedy inlaws who just wanted the woman's dowry.

Haagenti: To his disgust, Gluttony has very few tethers in India. The Indian village traditions of self-suffiency and communal property make Haagenti ill. Just looking at a picture of Gandhi makes him want to throw up. In the past, he had some tethers to the palaces of particularly self-indulgent Rajahs or British colonials, but they're fading. In recent times, he's had better luck creating tethers in places where people have been self-indulgent at the expense of the poor. He's hoping that with the rise of the Indian high-tech industry will help promote his word.

Haagenti would really love to get his greedy little paws on the Taj Mahal. Shah Jehan spent thousands of rupees, 22 years, and the lives of dozens of workmen just to build a tomb for his wife. As it stands, however, the Taj remains a tether of Eli.

Kobal: Kobal has little influence on the subcontinent and very few tethers. His most recent tether is on the Burmese island of Ramree, where on February 19, 1945, some 900 Japanese soldiers (out of a unit of approximately 1,000) were devoured by crocodiles while trying to retreat from the British.

Kronos: Kronos has tethers among the dangerous and winding hills of the Hindu Kush, where avalanches and rock slides can sweep away hapless travelers.

Lilith: Lilith has also meddled in India, although with little success. Only in modern times have her attempts to break up the caste system and the subjugation of women started to bear fruit. She tries to take credit for Gandhi's independence movement, even though it's got Novalis's fingerprints all over it. It's also worth noting that Lilim in celestial form bear a passing resemblance to Kali, which particularly brazen tempters have used to their advantage. Kali is not amused. Some riot sites briefly became tethers of Lilith before and during the Indian drive for independence. For the most part, they've faded.

[Pursuivant]

Demons on the Subcontinent, Part II


Malphas: Malphas is an "old India hand." He's been inciting strife in Afghanistan, Wazirstan and Kashmir ever since antiquity. With three major religions, plus a number of minor ones, dozens of different ethnic groups, and a dozen different languages, it's easy to stir up factionalism in India. For centuries, Malphas helped keep the various rajahs at each others' throats, and the demons of Social Stigmas, Class Differences, and Outcastes had a field day. After some initial resistance, Malphas decided that the Raj was a good thing, and made sure that the Indian princedoms never were able to make a united show of force against the British East India company. Malphas takes credit for Lord Clive's activities, as well as the 1856 Sepoy Rebellion, the 1948 Civil War and the Pakistan-Bangladesh civil war in the 1960s. (Lilith, of course, resents this, claiming that it was her people who started the latter three).Malphas has dozens of tethers throughout the subcontinent. The more famous ones include:

* The barracks in Delhi where the Sepoy rebellion started.

* Several places in NW India where massacres happened during the partition.

* A barren mountainside along the India-China border, where Indians and Chinese troops have been in a standoff for decades over economically worthless land.

* The Khyber Pass, although Marc's servitors would love to get their hands on it.

* The site of the mosque in Ayodha, a 16th century building torn down by brick by brick by Hindu fanatics amid riots which claimed hundreds of lives. It isn't a tether yet, but Malphas is doing his best to make it one. Khalid is in no shape to object.

Mammon: As the historic land of opulence and riches, as well as shocking poverty, Mammon also appreciates India. While Mammon doesn't have many tethers, he is particularly fond of:

*A section of sidewalk in Calcutta where an entire extended family has lived for generations, begging and scrouging for a living, while never earning enough to buy even a shack in a slum.

Nybbas: Bollywood baby! It's the biggest producer of films in the world, and 1 billion sets of eyeballs is a big demographic! Nybbas also has at least one tether in New Delhi, the capital.

Saminga: Saminga *loves* India; historically, it's been a place of mass starvation, mass slaughter and mass epidemics. Saminga has numerous tethers to massacre sites, plague pits and the like throughout India. He'd love to get his hands on the tether along banks of the Ganges where the bodies of faithful Hindus are cremated. Often families don't have enough firewood to properly incinerate the body, so the charred corpse gets dumped into the river. As it stands, the existing tethers go to the Marches. He also has two "famous" tethers:

* The Towers of Silence in Calcutta. These are open-air towers where the Parsees (Zoroastrians) lay out their dead to be consumed by vultures. The power of this tether is weakening as Zoroastrianism declines. (Oddly enough, Jordi is also concerned about the towers, since the vultures which feed on the corpses are also dying off.)

* An abandoned temple of Kali where the Thugs once worshipped. It's quite weak, ever since the British stamped out the practice of Thuggee. Kali would like it back. The Host would like it destroyed.

* Saminga and Vapula are still squabbling over the tether that formed at the Union Carbide in Bophal. Right now, Vapula has it, but Saminga would like it back.

Valefor: India has thousands of places where people have been enslaved or cheated out of what was rightfully theirs; some of them are tethers of Theft. Among his famous tethers is the original site of the British East India company. He also has a tether on an island off the Southwest coast of India where Captain Bartholemew "The Dread Pirate" Roberts hid the bulk of the treasure he stole after he captured the Mogul's daughter on her pilgrimage to Mecca.

Vapula: While technology has been slower to come to India than to the West, Vapula is doing all he can to give the subcontinent the worst possible mix of third-world poverty and inefficiency along with first-world pollution and dependence on technology. Vapula *likes* the idea of "off-shoring." For that matter, he also loves child labor, sweatshops, and dangerous slums. India has all three! Some of Vapulas recent tethers include:

*The site of the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhophal.

*A site on the east coast where ships from around the world are sent to be "broken." Poorly equipped workers are exposed to toxic chemicals and ruin their health breathing asbestos while working for a pittance. The toxic materials are thrown into the ocean or dumped into landfills, while the steel is smelted into ingots in factories which belch dangerous fumes into the air.

*The Calcutta city dump, where desperately poor people paw through the garbage looking for food or objects they can salvage. Legend has it that Vapula got the idea for the junk piles in Tartarus by watching the garbage diggers. . .

[Pursuivant]

[QUOTE=Pursuivant]Angels on the Subcontinent, Part I

David: David has always resented Janus for having the tether on Mt. Everest, so he was tremendously gratified when a tether opened at the site of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's highest campsite after their successful ascent in 1956. The seneschals of the two tethers maintain an uneasy truce. (It is also worth noting, that should explorers find the cameras carried by the lost 1927 English Mt. Everest expedition, that the faint outline of a winged humanoid appears in at least one photograph . . .). David also maintains other tethers throughout the Himalayas, the tallest and fastest rising range of mountains in the world.

Dominic: Dominic has very few tethers in India. One of his oldest and most valued is the church in Santoma on the Northeast coast. It was here that the Apostle Thomas first brought Christianity to the Indian subcontinent, and it is the site of the oldest Christian community in India.

Eli: He lost a tether when the Taliban destroyed the Bamyan Buddhas, but he still retains a strong tether in the form of the Taj Mahal in Agra. Shah Jehan spent much of his life planning and supervising the construction of the tomb as a memorial for his beloved wife, Mumtaz. The tomb, and the gardens which surround it, is one of the wonders of the modern world.

Gabriel: She used to have lots of tethers associated with the Parsees (Zoroastrians) since the worshipped Ahura Mazdha as a "sacred flame." Time and diabolic schemes have destroyed most of them but there might be a few left. She also has a few tethers where particularly inspired fakirs have practiced firewalking or have otherwise shown passionate devotion to their faith.

Janus: Janus has a tether at the very top of Mt. Everest as well as at the top of K2. He also has tethers along the coasts of India in places where typhoons have struck but have done no harm.

Jordi: He has mixed emotions about India. On the one hand, it has 1 billion people and those people are killing off animals at an alarming rate. On the other hand, many of the people are vegetarians, cows and monkeys are treated with reverence, and there is even a sect devoted to not even harming insects! (The Jhains). As usual, Jordi's tethers are in wild places where few humans have been. They include jungles in central and southern India, mangrove swamps along the coast, and mountain valleys in Nepal.

Lawrence: Although the Arabs got the credit for blades made from "watered" steel, it is an Indian invention and many "Damascene" blades were actually Indian. In a village in Northern India, the smithy where "damascus" steel was invented over a millenium ago is now a tether to Lawrence. There is a similar tether in Nepal, where Gurkha "kukris" are still made by hand.

Marc: Marc has few major tethers in India, since much of India's wealth was taken by force or deception. Even today, many Indian workers work for low wages to produce goods which are sold at a premium in the West. Still, Marc has a few tethers in old city or village markets as well as the India's stock exchanges. To Marc's chagrin, Valefor controls the site of the British East India company headquarters in India, while Asmodeus controls an old tether in the Khyber Pass (traditionally a major East-West trade route, but more recently the site of international tension.)

[Pursuivant]

Angels on the Subcontinent, Part II

Michael: In the foothills of Nepal, in 1814, Lt. Frederick Young was captured by fearsome Ghurkha hillmen. When asked why he didn't flee with his troops, Lt. Young said, "I have come too far to run away." In response, the Gurkhas said "We could serve under men like you." From then on, the Ghurkhas have faithfully served the British (and later the Nepalese) and have earned international reknown as warriors. The village where Lt. Young made his famous alliance is now a tether to Michael. There are also a tether to Michael in an overgrown airstrip along the Irrawaddy river in Burma. Although not as well known as other battles of WWII, from 1942 to 1945 American, Australian and British troops worked together, overcoming some of the worst terrain in the world, to drive the Japanese out of India.

Novalis: Novalis thinks that Buddhism is a great thing. Many sites associated with Buddhism are also tethers to Novalis. Her four favorite tethers on the subcontinent include:

* The site of the Bo tree where the Siddhartha Buddha attained enlightenment. While the original tree is long dead, her seneschal has made sure that its seedlings have grown up to replace it.

* The Potala palace in Lalsa, Tibet. Formerly a huge Buddhist monastery, now a museum. Ever since the Chinese invaded, this tether has been under serious threat by agents of Baal and Asmodeus. (Novalis really likes Nepal and Tibet. She is saddened by the Maoist revolt in the former and the Chinese invasion of the latter.)

* Rajghat, near Delhi, the site of Mahatma Gandhi's cenotaph (his ashes were scattered into the sacred rivers of India). Other sites strongly associated with Gandhi's crusade for Indian independence still have the potential to become tethers. Some of them include Bihar, where Gandhi stayed while trying to quell Hindu-Muslim violence in Bengal, and the Aga Khan jail where Gandhi was held by the British for much of World War II, and where his wife and one of his closest advisors died.

*The mother church of the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta. This is the religious order founded by Mother Teresa, dedicated to ministering to some of the world's poorest people.

Yves: Like Kronos, Yves has little influence and few tethers on the subcontinent. One of the few he has is the site of the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, where Rudyard Kipling first worked as a journalist.

Yves also has a tether to a long-buried Harappan scriptorium in the Indus Valley near the abandoned city of Mohenjo-Daro. The Harappan civilization thrived at about the same time as the Sumerians, but has remained largely unknown because the script they used has never been deciphered. In the scriptorium are clay tablets inscribed in both Sumerian cunieform and Harappan script. If discovered, they will be the "rosetta stone" which allows linguists to decipher the Harappan language. When translated, the rest of the tablets in the library prove to be a series of "myths" concerning struggles between devi (angels), djinni (demons) and "creatures of airy night." If published, the tablets will be as controversial among religious scholars as the Dead Sea scrolls were. They will also prove embarrassing to certain archangels and/or princes. In any case, Yves will take heat - either for "hiding" the tablets for so long, or for "letting" humanity find them. Kronos will also be furious - but nobody can figure out why . . .

[Glamourweaver]

Just thought I'd point out that in recent decades Asmodeus & Lilith have likely been butting heads over the proliferation of the Caste System in one form or another. Lilith's perspective is obvious. The Game loves the Caste System as a strict social hierarchy filled with unjust taboos. Its got The Game written all over it.

I could even see Asmodeus making in roads with some more tradition minded Devi working with them against Heaven's mechanations against the Caste System & its unofficial continuation (none of the Archangels would support the Caste System, they likely range from actively opposed to completely neutral)

[Glamourweaver]

Originally Posted by Archangel Beth

the Marches' geography (marchography? etherography?)

... Oneirography

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Glamourweaver

I could even see Asmodeus making in roads with some more tradition minded Devi working with them against Heaven's mechanations against the Caste System & its unofficial continuation (none of the Archangels would support the Caste System, they likely range from actively opposed to completely neutral)

Of course, the caste system is one of the ways in which the Trimurti keep their hold on the faithful, so I can't see the Host being much better than "neutral" at best. On the other hand, open moves to overturn the caste system are a declaration of war against a powerful co-belligerent, so even archangels who dislike Hinduism and the caste system have to be very careful.