The Salvation War: Difference between revisions

* [[Nay Theist]]: [[Zig-Zagging Trope|Played with]]: After a full book of war on hell with everyone confident that Heaven is next, late in ''Armageddon'', the Catholic Church reconciles their beliefs with the reality of Yahweh's dogma by saying that Jesus' lessons are the truths of a God that just doesn't happen to be the one in charge... leading them to excommunicate Yahweh. Since then they've converted to a [[Church Militant]] and the Vatican has fielded several light mechanized brigades, which GEN Petraeus has tasked as reserve brigades for armies' headquarters.

** And by the end of ''Pantheocide'', it seems that they were right.

* [[No Celebrities Were Harmed]]: Well, no morally decent ones, anyway. A smattering of cabinet members from the Bush and Obama administrations (along with the presidents themselves) and James "The Amazing" Randi appear as themselves, but [[Expy|Expies]] are used to explore the consequences of The Message and the current battles on people who achieved celebrity status by being total assholes. (A "Mr. Phlops" given to gay-bashing at military funerals, anyone?)

* [[No Longer with Us]]: Inverted {{spoiler|with Yahweh after the coup as he really is dead.}} The angels get told he's [[Put on a Bus|taking a vacation]]. The humans take nano-seconds to know what really happened.

** Belial was Hell's resident [[Evil Genius]] and the only demon lord who actually did any appreciable damage to humanity. In Pantheocide, {{spoiler|Michael tricked him into running a concentration camp which was supposedly established by Yahweh, and set things up so that said camp will be the first thing the human armies come across when they enter Heaven.}} Needless to say, Belial and Yahweh are going to be in the ''shit'' when that happens (well, ''more'' shit, anyway).

* [[The Uriah Gambit]]: [[Magnificent Bastard|Michael-Lan]] gets rid of those angels who jeopardize his plans by sending them to fight the humans.

** This becomes a complication for the humans in Hell and has already gotten the Russians busy in ''Pantheocide''. It's led to a split between the living and newly dead as opposed to the rest of the dead, to the point that the Human Expeditionary Army is actually guarding the demons from their former victims:

{{quote|"The people on Earth had been cheering their armies on, and still were in some senses, but the film of the battlefields in Hell had stunned them. Especially the scenes along the Phlegethon River with the piles of mangled Baldrick corpses that went on for square mile after square mile. For perhaps the first time, they realized the incredible disparity of firepower that had existed between the human armies and the Baldricks. The sight of the dead where the Baldricks had tried to fight tanks with bronze tridents had changed opinions in a subtle but very marked way. Humans now pitied the Baldricks who had stood so little chance and had died not even understanding what it was that was killing them. It was rumored that change in attitude was also causing trouble in Hell, with the refugees from the pit unable to understand why the newly-dead from Earth should be sickened by the slaughter they'd inflicted."}}