@MacBalance @cstross "When I cast this spell, I discovered that Belphegor is no longer Lord of Eternal Pain, and that I now need to call on Astaroth for that. But the invocation for Astaroth seems to be totally different. Can I still use these black candles, or do I have to throw them away and lay in a stock of hemlock?"

@darkling @MacBalance

"When I summoned Belphegor I wanted a loud shouty demon, not a 1970s Polish jet-propelled biplane cropduster, dammit!"

"Not my fault, guv, it's just a namespace collision!"

@cstross @MacBalance I already looked it up. I'm just...

[the] "decision to adopt jet engine propulsion [...] had been at the insistence of Soviet officials"

@cstross @darkling That looks like a mess of a plane.

I do a tiny bit of work on the edge of tabletop game design and it’s amusing how every good name is taken. Animal names are the go-to for science-fiction units and there’s probably a dozen with the more common names.

@darkling @MacBalance My strong suspicion is that the Belphegor was *perfect* for spraying persistent nerve agents in the path of an enemy advance. Slow, low, huge tankage for pesticides, and a turbofan to provide bleed air for aerosolizing noxious substances … also, crop-dusting is a plausible excuse for "peaceful" forward basing on farms just behind the front line in the run-up to hostilities. (But the An-2 could also do the job and was more numerous and easier to maintain.)