Insect Wars: Dark Zone or Light Universe?
As for the speed or progress of the Divine Order, I don’t know that I agree that it would proceed as explosively as you suggest. HDS did not manifest ‘godlike’ powers, so far as I know, there was effective immortality, possibly longevity of bodies, the memory stealing thing, and a few shadow tricks like walking around without a brain.
I mean, lets face it, being able to walk and talk with your brain removed is a pretty good party trick, but not a lot of material assistance in attempting to take over the Universe.
Looking at the really successful and long lived terrestrial empires, China, Rome, Russia, the US, their expansions seemed to follow patterns. Short bursts of radical expansion followed by long periods of quiescence and consolidation.
If HDS had nothing but time, I could see them playing a careful game, expanding gradually, forever consolidating, bursts and consolidation.
In short, in my view, its entirely possible that the Divine Order existed in some form before the migration to Brunnis.
790’s statement on first reading seems to suggest a recent wave of expansion 2000 years before. But it doesn’t say it was the first such wave, although that inference might be drawn. Nor does it give any background on the prior development. It may be consistent with 790 to say that the expansion referred to was only the latest in a series of them over a dozen millenia.
Alternately, 790 might be considered an unreliable narrator. Certainly, he is a biased and unreliable narrator injecting his personal views and prejudices into other aspects of 790. While he has no special reason to lie about this, we can’t be sure that he has a full complement of historical data, or cares about it. However, I don’t
think I need to go that far, his statements can be considered accurate within my wider theory.
Essentially, Sgt. it seems to me that your
theory calls for disregarding at least some statements. It’s tempting to do so. But I think that a theory which most succesfully incorporates the most statements wins out.