The Gathering Darkness (the Connor series) - Dirk B. (Page 38 of 57)

Hard to believe the show only ran 3 seasons. Feels like 10

Note that your time period is generally considered the "birth" of modern statistical analysis. Though the Greeks as far back as Aristotle understood a "midrange" or a "mean", things like averages, medians, or modes would not be possible on large data sets (unless you had a decent abacus!).

A casual google suggests median pops into existence around 1599
http://jse.amstat.org/v11n1/bakker.html
and you can see how theoretical it is from Example 4:

I had considered having the Church consult a well-known mathematician from that era. My preference would have been Isaac Newton, but he wasn't Catholic and he was still a boy. Instead, I'm thinking of changing sharp-eyed to statistically inclined. I'm also still considering changing the date that this all started since 370 years seems very long to topple the Church from within.

I originally chose 370 back when I was still crucifying cardinals every 5-10 years. The A-C had to move slowly, otherwise the Church would have been forced to mount an aggressive defense, which would have spilled into the open. When I switched the A-C's approach to infiltrating at multiple levels, I simply kept 370 as a placeholder until I figured out if it needed adjusting. It does.

Things to consider, though. The Church regularly purges certain offices (just to be unpredictable and to clean house). All the key positions are given to cardinals, who are usually old men with a very limited remaining lifespan. That prevents anyone staying in place too long. The estimated number of infiltrators is 10K. There are 5600 bishops in the world. If the A-C wants a near-perpetual lock on the key dioceses, he has to have obvious replacements in line for those dioceses. He also has to have control of key Vatican dicasteries (departments), plus a few in line to succeed those who head those dicasteries. So, 10K stretches the A-C kinda thin, especially when you consider that a decent number of his followers will be discovered because they blow their covers with bad behavior.

Related to all this is the fact that the A-C has to have his followers at or near their target positions when he takes control of the Church. There's only so long he can stay in power before people realize he's not purely human due to the fact that he doesn't die of old age. He's also racing to beat the clock, because when Jesus returns, times up. If Satan's challenge succeeds, Jesus will be destroyed upon his return and the Church will crumble thanks to the A-C and his followers.

There are actually three members of the Unholy Trinity, one of whom is the False Prophet. In the early Church, it was generally believed that the A-C was a secular ruler (e.g., Emperor Nero) and the False Prophet was a holy man. That made the latter more suited to seizing the Church. However, protestants confused all that by equating the Catholic Pope with the A-C. In modern times, there is no global position of secular power at risk of being seized by the A-C. He would need to engineer control of the US, Russia, and China in order to have a real shot at world domination. So, when choosing which interpretation of Revelation to go with (there are many), I decided the A-C will go after the Church. The False Prophet plays a lesser role, and I punted him to book two. He's a key character in book one, but remains under deep cover, working mischief.

Off to bed.

The purged guys are kicked out of the Church. Since the Church doesn't want a public brawl with the AC, the purge comes in the form of retirement (with a pension!). If it wasn't for holy water, the AC could place demons into the Church, who might be more careful, but they're humanoid, with cadaver DNA, and have human weaknesses, so no help there. I'll add that to the discussion somewhere.

The AC is trying to place his followers into many important positions around the world to lead Catholics away from God before the Final Judgement. Influencing the Pope (through his Council of Cardinal Advisers) about those positions is a key part, but even they are mostly old men. As for the task force, his best bet is to infiltrate that too. I was thinking of using an annoying systems analyst in the task force and making him the infiltrator, but I punted that character, at least for now.

The AC himself is half human, so he can't switch bodies (my rule). As a result, if he became Pope, there's no way to hide an impossibly long lifespan. However, a youngish Pope (say in his sixties) isn't out of the question, and he could rule for at least forty or fifty years before becoming truly suspect. In fact, long life might be viewed as a sign of the Pope having found favor with God.

By the way, there's some big-ass satanic subterfuge going on about all of this, which won't be revealed until the end of the first book.

Luckily I renamed Heaven to paradise so I can get away with caps. I just need a name for Hell

Changed 370 years to 220 years. I would have gone for less, but the AC needs time to secretly recruit and place 10,000 followers in the Church globally, including allowing for turnover in the ranks. I hope I'm done with this s--t now. I'm sick of act one. Time to screw up act two.

Coming in cold, no idea of the plot or the players (except recognizing the final one) it seemed kinda one-sided, but I'll buy it

Nuts. My first murder victim's titular church (next to the cemetery) isn't actually a titular church. I didn't think until yesterday to research if there was a specific list of such churches vs my previous assumption that any church could be one if it was assigned a cardinal. Somewhat surprising that the church I chose isn't one given how big it is. I doubt I'm going to fix it, though. It's too difficult to accurately determine interior and exterior layouts of big churches based solely on internet photos.

It's doable but a royal pain. Probably a day of research, and I won't really know if I got the layout right since I usually have just photos to work with. Also, I took advantage of the outside of Saint Lawrence's Basilica during the shootout with the first demon (eg there really is a small grove of trees for Campana to hide behind).

My line of thinking is his illness will drown among the other illnesses that have been healed (minus the notable blindness). My writing temptation would be to go some completely different route such as de Rosa has insistent debt collectors and his miracle/intercession is the debt collectors are suddenly nice. Or maybe a beam of light shoots through them à la Temple of Doom

Ah, but I didn't mean healing -- only illness. You'd haveto work hard to make it not look like an illness