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{{quote|''"When all Hell breaks loose on Earth, all Earth breaks loose on Hell."''}}
''[[The Salvation War]]'' is a [[Web Original]] trilogy that premiered online in the beginning of 2008, asking a simple question: what if God announced that everyone's time was up, and that Lucifer was coming to claim the bodies and souls of everyone on earth?
The answer author [http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/default2_bioSS.htm Stuart Slade] gives: the governments of the world [[Rage Against the Heavens|declare war on Heaven and Hell]].
The first book, ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20131228111057/http://www.tboverse.us/HPCAFORUM/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=29 Armageddon
From The Amazing Randi trying to discover how to peer into Hell, to the rampaging demons that appear in civilian areas around the world, to the worldwide mobilization for war, the story covers a worldwide stage. The second volume, ''Pantheocide'', concerns the war with Heaven and shows that the forces of Heaven are far better commanded and more dangerous than the forces of Hell.
''Armageddon'' and ''Pantheocide'' can both be found
Unfortunately, due to the creation and spread of a torrent of the stories, physical publication of the work seems to have been made impossible. The creator has other irons in the fire that still have the potential to be published in dead-tree form, but
▲Unfortunately, due to the creation and spread of a torrent of the stories, physical publication of the work seems to have been made impossible. The creator has other irons in the fire that still have the potential to be published in dead-tree form, but the Salvation War is now radioactive as far as publishers are concerned. Without this incentive, it appears as though the third part of the series, Lord of War, is not going to be written.
----
{{tropelist}}
* [[A Father to His Men]]: {{spoiler|Robert E. Lee}}'s reputation for this gets him a job helping soldiers from various eras adjust to their new reality after being freed from torture in Hell, after he accepts that he can't adjust to modern military tactics.▼
** Abigor to an extent, after his [[Heel Face Turn]]. He genuinely cares about the welfare of his people.▼
* [[Alien Blood]]: The baldricks, of any subspecies, can have blood that is anywhere on the color wheel (usually yellow, green, or purple), or black. Harpies also have acidic, flammable blood. The coloration is likely a result of secondary pigments in the blood, since judging by their genetics they are almost certainly an evolutionary offshoot of the hominid family from Earth; they should have hemoglobin in their blood. Angels' blood isn't immune to the trope either. Sometimes it's red, more often it's white or silver. It seems that daemon and angelic blood pigment is also a type of blood group.
* [[Alien Geometries]]: Some of the physical laws, [[Wrap Around|especially relating to direction]] are... different in Hell.
* [[Almighty Janitor]]: The {{spoiler|head mason of Yahweh's palace}} ends up being in charge of Heaven by the end of the second book. {{spoiler|[[
* [[Alternate History]]: The Message came around in early 2008, so everything since then. The author also made up or resurrected a few military projects (for example, Aurora).
* [[Exclusively Evil]]: Subverted with the Baldricks when taught otherwise from what Satan says.▼
* [[America Saves the Day]]: Averted. While the Americans provide the backbone of Earth's military response to The Message by virtue of having the most powerful military on the planet, it's very much an international affair, with the British and Russians in particular playing very big parts in some of the initial victories, while the Iranians both opened the first battle over Iraq with an aerial attack and commenced the tank charge that broke a demonic army there.
** Chapter 41 of ''Pantheocide'' lays out just how multinational the war really is:''The Salvation War was a truly multi-national enterprise. That was why sub-munitions made in South Africa were delivered to China for installation in 227mm rockets that were shipped in Greek freighters to Hell where they were issued to American MLRS batteries that gained their mobility from oil that had been drilled in Saudi Arabia and refined in Singapore before being carried by Norwegian tankers to Dutch-built storage facilities on the shores of Hell. Early in the war, at least three economists were reputed to have committed suicide after trying to work out how to pay for everything.''
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* [[Bad Boss]]: Devils - that is, baldricks - [[Insistent Terminology|sorry, daemons]] - dealt with bad news by ''eating the messenger''. See also [[Shoot the Messenger]]. Angels are little better. As far as we know Yahweh hasn't killed anyone in his temper tantrums, but every time he gets bad news, the palace's chief mason is hard at work for a long time afterwards. The mason installed a bunker in the throne room early in ''Pantheocide''.
* [[Badass Army]]: To reiterate, an international army of humans with 21st century tech ''forces its way into Hell, trounces [[The Legions of Hell|its legions]], blasts [[Big Bad]] Satan himself, and now has [[Rage Against the Heavens|done the same with Heaven]], and would have done the same with God Himself'' {{spoiler|but Michael beat us to it}}.
** The massive demonic army, too. The author has even stated that the sheer demonic numbers and the enhanced physical toughness of each demon might have still prevailed over humans with [[World War
* [[Badass Boast]]: Uriel's introduction, when he speaks with Jude
{{quote|'''Uriel:''' “I am a traveler in your world, I come and go as I please and where I go death follows me.”
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* [[Big Applesauce]]: Lampshaded by Michael - the last Bowl of Wrath gets poured on New York precisely because it's the city that always gets attacked in fiction.
* [[Big Damn Heroes]]: the defense at Hit, which is protecting one of the flanks of the human army during the first human-demon battle, has gone down to the last defensive perimeter. A suicide bomb car manages to break the demons for some time, and insurgents join the battle with [[RPG]]s. Then...
{{quote|Links looked up, the terrific noise of the firefight was joined by something else, [[Most Wonderful Sound|a rhythmic throbbing]] that shook dust from the ceiling and caused the shelves on the wall to bounce. Over his head, the sky suddenly turned black and red as [[Macross Missile Massacre|a hail of unguided rockets]] passed overhead to slam into the buildings opposite.
“It’s the Apaches!” }}
* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: Pantheocide ends like this. The economy is so focused on war production it would collapse if it stopped. A demonic insurgency, led by Belial, is rising in Hell. The dead are taking little chunks out of the economy, dust storms and hurricanes devastated vast regions of America. And there's always the possibility that the other pantheons aren't nearly so defenseless/technologically behind (or if they are, that they'll quickly learn the recent lessons and upgrade).
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** The mysterious voice in Memnon's head that appears very occasionally, giving him advice. If a 3rd book is ever written, it is likely that this will be a plot point.
* [[Chekhov's Gunman]]: Uriel, strongly hinted throughout ''Armageddon'' to be (more or less) a [[Person of Mass Destruction]] and Yaweh's incoming [[Superweapon Surprise]]. Later is a feared presence throughout the first half of ''Pantheocide'', {{spoiler|killing tens of thousands and aging up hundreds of thousands (not to mention killing nearly all animals in the area of effect), though his effectiveness is greatly limited by tinfoil, short duration, and human willpower. He is finally killed in the Battle of Los Angeles, as detailed by other tropes.}}
* [[The Chessmaster]]: Loads of them, 90% on the human side, with their king being General Dave ''[[Badass]]'' Petraeus (seriously, just look at ''any'' of his scenes), one with an indefinite side (Michael-Lan, see [[Xanatos Gambit]]), and a few on the demon side who were all out-chessed by humanity and end up being [[Unwitting Pawn]]s. Abigor ''thought'' he was one, what with his thinning of his ranks to extend his line to allow envelopment, unprecedented for ''demonic'' warfare...▼
** The author has explained that the way Heaven was invaded is actually the payoff of Petraeus' plan from as far back as ''Armageddon'': not only did holding back in invading Hell (i.e. small units committing probing attacks) [[We Have Reserves|leave much in reserve]], it also left Heaven unprepared for getting "tank rushed" from three directions at once.▼
* [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder]]: In Hell, this is actually a ''way of life''.
* [[Church Militant]]: The Papacy contributes motorized infantry brigades to the HEA, complete with an Archbishop as a brigade commander.
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* [[Combined Energy Attack]]: {{spoiler|Michael is able to borrow powers from his entire club, and even angels throughout heaven, through a network based on synchronized music.}}
* [[Crap Saccharine World]]: Heaven. It's described as having "pretty rolling green hills, nice little forests, and air so clean it tastes like wine." The Eternal City is made out of precious stones and is incredibly beautiful. Don't expect to see too much of it if you're a human, though. Most of them live in slums outside the city, and work as slaves for the Angels. It's also shown that Yahweh isn't a very good leader, and because of that all but the most loyal of the Angels are running some sort of conspiracy against him. Once Lemuel-lan finds out and starts making arrests, paranoia sets in, and people in the Eternal City become fearful and distrustful.
* [[Creator Breakdown]]: Due to [https://web.archive.org/web/20151003220836/http://www.tboverse.us/HPCAFORUM/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=56170#p56170 an act of piracy], Stuart has said there is very little chance of a third book, and that the first two will not be edited and published as previously planned.
* [[Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass]]: ''Bill Clinton'', in his brief cameo appearance; (he {{spoiler|[[Crowning Moment of Awesome|takes down a Succubus with a shotgun]]}}).
** Also Elhamas, a.k.a. {{spoiler|Jesus, or rather the angel who possessed him}}. For all of ''Armageddon'' and half of ''Pantheocide'' he seemed like a stoned slacker, the biggest letdown to a father with unreasonable expectations ever. We get one hint that he's smart before {{spoiler|the army he's in command of gets nuked. But then he comes back at the end and reveals that he survived and admits that Michael's way of guiding humanity is more effective than his... but he'll be watching just in case Michael lets the power go to his head.}}
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** There are hints that although humanity may have Punched Out Hell itself, there may--''may''—be Other Things out there that human weaponry might ''not'' make such clean work out of.
* [[The Documentary]]: '''The Salvation War''' stories, like the author's other works including [[The Big One]] and its sequels, are written in this style.
* [[Doing
* [[Dramatic Irony]]: A captain of a naval vessel repeatedly wishes to have Yahweh "[[Rage Against the Heavens|under my guns]]". Unbeknownst to him, {{spoiler|Yahweh was already dead by the last time he said it, and his body had been dumped in the lake that captain's vessel was maneuvering on at the time}}. So he got his wish, but not in the way he expected.
* [[Dying Like Animals]]: God expects the humans to do just that after the Message. [[Holier Than Thou|Religious nuts]] did - but the huge majority of humanity ''didn't.'' And now they're pissed, so it's the demons of Hell who end up like this. Talk about backfiring.
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{{quote|'''Stevenson''': "And what happened to Elhmas [the angel that possessed Jesus]?"
'''Michael''': {{spoiler|"Most everybody thinks you killed him. Oh, not you personally, you humans. He was in command of the Incomparable Legion of Light when it was nuked. The Host is certain that he died there."}} }}
▲* [[Exclusively Evil]]: Subverted with the Baldricks when taught otherwise from what Satan says.
* [[Explosive Overclocking]]: The ''USS Normandy'' (CG-60) turned up the power to max while targeting {{spoiler|Uriel}}, severely wounding him and mission killing itself, and the [[Frickin' Laser Beams|YAL-1]] prototype skirts this trope, not by overclocking its laser mechanisms, but by taking insane turns, well outside parameters, to stay on target. {{spoiler|It proves too much for the airframe, and it, uh. Explodes.}}
* [[Eye Scream]]: There's several incidents of eyes being lost in combat, from two demons getting stabbed in both eyes (one later during the Battle of Hit, one in Hell by escaping US military undead) to various unfortunate demons {{spoiler|and eventually angels, including Uriel}} from explosions caused by human weapons.
* [[Fantastic Religious Weirdness]]: the whole story, obviously. More specifically, though, people of different religious persuasions reacted differently to The Message. Many devout individuals did indeed lay down and die as they were commanded. Many [[The Fundamentalist|Fundamentalist]] leaders, on the other hand, remained behind and rationalized The Message as being meant for everyone but them, and/or a judgment against their own enemies. Most of humanity seems to have adopted [[Nay Theist]] beliefs with speed that's hard to imagine, but several denominations have come to an accommodation between their beliefs and the war; for example, see references to the Catholic Church elsewhere on this page.
* [[Fantastic Slurs]]: "Baldrick(s)" for demons and, more recently, "Jellies" for angels.
▲* [[A Father to His Men]]: {{spoiler|Robert E. Lee}}'s reputation for this gets him a job helping soldiers from various eras adjust to their new reality after being freed from torture in Hell, after he accepts that he can't adjust to modern military tactics.
▲** Abigor to an extent, after his [[Heel Face Turn]]. He genuinely cares about the welfare of his people.
* [[Faux Pas]]: A photographic interpreter picks a ''very'' bad time to make a seemingly lighthearted joke in Petraeus' Heaven HQ, for which Petraeus just ''stares'' at him until he's "feeling thoroughly miserable." Mind you, the interpreter was being flippant to a general faced with the very real possibility of having to {{spoiler|nuke the Eternal City's walls -- and thus the slums around them -- or to [[Kill'Em All|nuke the place, an urbanized country in size,]]''[[Kill'Em All|en masse]]''}}... the Eternal City holds around 250 million inhabitants, and the human-angel ratio is guesstimated out-of-story as 10:1. Do the math and enjoy the brain bleach.
** When {{spoiler|Detroit is getting destroyed by a lava-portal}}, [[Jerkass|Karl Rove]] remarks that the city's destruction might make the state a Republican one. The rest of the people present were not amused.
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* [[Improbable Species Compatibility]]: The source of Satan's personal mount: it is a crossbreed between a Greater Harpy Herald and a Hydra. The gorgons are the result of a breeding program and are (at least) part harpy, part naga, and part succubus, but this is slightly less because the various breeds of demon (''and the angels'') are all one species with ''wide'' variations in morphology.
* [[Humans Advance Swiftly]]: The real kicker for the baldricks and the angels. To beings who were effectively immortal, checking every couple of hundred years was sufficient to make sure the easily-slaughtered cattle were still easily killable, as in thousands of years of technological development mankind went from hitting each other with bronze swords and spears and riding chariots to hitting each other with steel spears and pikes and riding warhorses with couched lances. Two hundred years ago, smoothbore line-of-sight cannons were the most powerful weapon that mankind could field. Then in a single century mankind jumped to using tanks, missile artillery, jets, and nuclear weaponry. That jump is so mind-boggling that the baldricks spend a significant amount of time simply figuring out what happened when they weren't looking.
* [[Humans Are
* [[Humans Are Cthulhu]]: The above, however, fails to encompass {{spoiler|Abigor's}} opinion after seeing the images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
{{quote|" {{spoiler|Abigor}} was sitting on his couch, mouth agape, staring at the screen as the credits rolled by. What sort of gods were the humans, to be able to destroy a city with a single bomb? He closed his mouth, then shook his head. A single bomb, capable of annihilating an entire city. An entire army would be nothing. They had played with him, when they could have destroyed {{spoiler|him and everyone with him}} with ease."}}
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* [[Punch Clock Villain]]: "Just doing my job" is a fairly good excuse for most of the demons and angels. An interesting subversion appear however when some demons or angels {{spoiler|particulary Uriel}} begin to ''really'' hate the humans because they just refuse to do what was expected, laying down and die.
* [[Puny Humans]]: The Baldricks all tower above most humans, but they learn the hard way that modern weapons tech ''more'' that makes up for it.
* [[The Quisling]]: Anybody sufficiently entranced by a succubus or one of Beilal's seductresses. Also anyone still clinging to notions that humanity wasn't condemned [[For the Evulz]] - such as the guy who stabs Richard Dawkins in ''Armageddon'' or the [[Expy]] of [[Corrupt Church|Westboro Baptist Church]] [[Complete Monster|leader Fred Phelps]] who gets tied to a truck and dragged to death early in ''Pantheocide'' after proselytizing at a military funeral.▼
** There's also Lieutenant Midyan Yitzchak, who {{spoiler|tricks the captain and crew of the ''INS Tekuma'' into launching nukes at no less than five cities. Four ''Arab capitals'' are saved, Tel Aviv is not}}. Worse yet, as of chapter 48 he's the submarine's communications officer, making him the only connection between ''Tekuma'' and the outside world {{spoiler|other than the ships or submarines now hunting ''Tekuma''}}.▼
** Also includes the infiltrator at [DiMO(N)], who was behind {{spoiler|its headquarters being targeted for the Leopard Beast attack}}.▼
* [[Rage Against the Heavens]]: Just in case you didn't notice, this series is a shining example.
** Unlike most such stories, however, God and Satan have a good reason to be afraid.
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** Caesar paraphrases [[Henry V|the St. Crispin's Day speech]], though he's congratulating his men after a battle rather than getting them inspired before going into one.
** When asked if the Targeteer's name, finally revealed after 155 chapters of TSW, was one of the only two historical figures to be introduced in ''Pantheocide'', the author replied, "No, this is just a tip-of-the-hat to an old friend who never quite got the recognition he deserved."
** The ''[[
** There's a ship captain by the name of [[Firefly|Reynolds]] who commands a destroyer. There are also pits reserved (in Hell) for "Some network television executives. The ones who cancelled Firefly" Stuart himself has admitted he's a ''Firefly'' fan.
** Obama says of Belial [[Moby Dick|"That wretched Baldrick tasks us."]]
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** ... or the U.S. Marines.
* [[Translator Microbes]]: Something about the spawning process in Hell also makes people able to understand each others' speech.
▲* [[The Chessmaster]]: Loads of them, 90% on the human side, with their king being General Dave ''[[Badass]]'' Petraeus (seriously, just look at ''any'' of his scenes), one with an indefinite side (Michael-Lan, see [[Xanatos Gambit]]), and a few on the demon side who were all out-chessed by humanity and end up being [[Unwitting Pawn]]s. Abigor ''thought'' he was one, what with his thinning of his ranks to extend his line to allow envelopment, unprecedented for ''demonic'' warfare...
▲** The author has explained that the way Heaven was invaded is actually the payoff of Petraeus' plan from as far back as ''Armageddon'': not only did holding back in invading Hell (i.e. small units committing probing attacks) [[We Have Reserves|leave much in reserve]], it also left Heaven unprepared for getting "tank rushed" from three directions at once.
* [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill]]: The refitting of pretty much every aircraft from the last fifty years to fly again (among them the American B-29s Enola Gay and Bocks Car plus B-52s (called the "Gray Ladies" by the USAF) from the Davis-Montham boneyard), the mass conscription to fill out the ranks, the arming of pretty much every remaining civilian of earth for the duration of the war, and that's not getting into {{spoiler|what the [[Legions of Hell]] do to Sheffield and Detroit later on...}}
** The refitting looks like overkill only up until you see {{spoiler|the entire force of B-2 bombers get taken out}} in the opening of ''Pantheocide'', and in ''Armageddon'' the times when the demons' sheer numbers almost ''did'' turn the tide. Oh, and [[It Got Worse|it gets worse]]: the angels weren't ''nearly'' as doomed in the air. From the looks of it, all of this mobilization is actually needed.
▲* [[The Quisling]]: Anybody sufficiently entranced by a succubus or one of Beilal's seductresses. Also anyone still clinging to notions that humanity wasn't condemned [[For the Evulz]] - such as the guy who stabs Richard Dawkins in ''Armageddon'' or the [[Expy]] of [[Corrupt Church|Westboro Baptist Church]] [[Complete Monster|leader Fred Phelps]] who gets tied to a truck and dragged to death early in ''Pantheocide'' after proselytizing at a military funeral.
▲** There's also Lieutenant Midyan Yitzchak, who {{spoiler|tricks the captain and crew of the ''INS Tekuma'' into launching nukes at no less than five cities. Four ''Arab capitals'' are saved, Tel Aviv is not}}. Worse yet, as of chapter 48 he's the submarine's communications officer, making him the only connection between ''Tekuma'' and the outside world {{spoiler|other than the ships or submarines now hunting ''Tekuma''}}.
▲** Also includes the infiltrator at [DiMO(N)], who was behind {{spoiler|its headquarters being targeted for the Leopard Beast attack}}.
* [[Too Dumb to Live]]: When Satan asks what a [[wikipedia:MQ-1 Predator|predator]] is, a nameless demon gives the definition of "a hunting bird." Not only is this excessively literal, but it's also the definition of a ''raptor''. [[Ludicrous Gibs|You can guess how Satan reacted to that]].
* [[Tower of Babel]]: Near the end of Pantheocide, Petraeus muses on how the Tower of Babel story where Yahweh cursed humans with multiple languages was an attempt to prevent them from uniting against him, similar to what they were doing right now.
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** While originally speculated to be an [[Author Avatar]], he was later revealed to be a tip of the hat to Don Brennan, a friend of the author, who managed to have his entire lawn die in 3 months. All of it. Hence the in-joke that he could kill a plant just by being in the same room with it.
* [[Unperson]]: Abigor is one for Hell from the moment he is sent on a suicide mission for his failure, and until the humans bring him to rule there.
* [[Unusual Euphemism]]: In an interesting example, given that the situation has rendered standard religious expletives obsolete, we are treated to a tank commander (and later on, some of the forumites) swearing by [https://web.archive.org/web/19970212201334/http://www.gdls.com/ General Dynamics Land Systems], the company that made her M1 Abrams.
* [[Unwitting Pawn]]:
** A recursive one via the succubi - Luga never expected ''George W. Bush'' to out-charisma her—the White House's anti-gas grenade vent system diffuses her natural pheromones—and thus gets tapped to play her mistress Deumos for one of these. Deumos in turn is suckered into thinking that the humans agree to give up one third of their dead for demon torture in return for an end to the war, to the point that she actually believed that [[What an Idiot!|that was why the humans seized the area of Hell where the newly dead arrive]]. Abigor lampshades how much of a dumbass Deumos has been. She later got her brain squeezed inside-out and her face burned by ''the exhaust from a missile'' for her trouble. {{spoiler|She does not survive her injuries. Turns out that she was in the same room as Satan when the anti-ship missiles were portaled in.}}
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Fantasy Web Originals]]
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
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