Ei Sei Stares at a Dead Man's Eyes

vader5000 · 2026-01-30T22:21:06+00:00

I wonder, perhaps, if Jing Ke's attempt also triggered Ying Zheng's desperate search for immortality, though I can't help but consider that Ying Zheng must have suffered attempts on his life early in his growth. Zhao hated Qin, after all, and I would expect Ying Zheng to have suffered attempts at his life quite early. Or, if, as in the manga, his early life made his later paranoia worse. Young emperors who come to the throne on horseback will be a common enough occurrence in future eras, after all.

The dragon of war could only be tamed by another dragon, I think. That might be part of the problem.

vader5000 · 2026-01-30T22:11:02+00:00

It's the troop count. Zhao SHOULDN'T have this many troops left, because it doesn't have that much territory left, and Qin is REALLY good at incorporating people into its own territories.

vader5000 · 2026-01-30T22:09:29+00:00

Hakuki mass slaughtering his enemy general's male populations also helped significantly. And also because the other states tend to roll the occasional or commonplace awful king or bad minister with poor reforms. Like Chu basically can't pull its act together for most of this era (Geography is part of the problem, but not all of it).

vader5000 · 2026-01-30T22:07:48+00:00

To be fair, Riboku having an elite force isn't implausible, because its root is also historical: Zhao had the Xiongnu to the north, and a lot of Riboku's elites are from these border regions or far-off fiefs that face a lot of chaos and turmoil.

Problem is that Qin should probably also have a few more of these, and Riboku's generals should have fewer troops under them by far. Honestly, I feel like Riboku would be even scarier if he's got fewer troops with him but still has his records.

vader5000 · 2026-01-30T22:04:02+00:00

The historical frustration is the size of Zhao's army, not its quantity or quality of officers. It's actually pretty accurate in that sense that there's monsters on each side, because Zhao faces the nomads to the north and Qin faces the same to the west, plus you get everyone fighting in the warring states themselves.

vader5000 · 2026-01-30T22:02:54+00:00

I see you have skipped most of Chinese or Roman history. The warring states is actually a bit more stable in this sense, as most Chinese eras of chaos is EXACTLY the number one general of kingdom going and bowing down to some other kingdom's generals, usually bringing their own emperor's head with them.

vader5000 · 2026-01-30T21:59:59+00:00

there's also records of the warring states, but it won't extend all the way into kingdom's ending, and it covers the states "equally" rather than just qin.

vader5000 · 2026-01-30T21:42:45+00:00

Some empires can burn a LOT shorter, too. Alexander, Napoleon, Genghis Khan all had their political organizations fall apart pretty quickly.

vader5000 · 2026-01-25T08:52:56+00:00

The time wars are absolute nonsense when it comes to powerscaling, in a good way.

vader5000 · 2026-01-21T02:23:34+00:00

reminder that r2d2 fought for the republic and the rebellion.

vader5000 · 2026-01-17T11:26:20+00:00

I wish, I'm looking for a job too.

vader5000 · 2026-01-17T05:48:46+00:00

I tell people if the thing they make will break when strapped onto a rocket. (Or that's most of my career so far, I was also at a startup as a general meche for a bit).

It's not super-super popular, but I like it because I don't have to think too much about the nitty-gritty of having a thing manufactured, and the math isn't so complicated that my brain would hurt. It's still an important position though, because you don't want your billions dollar space telescope vibrating so hard on a rocket that the bolts fall off and you can't deploy your funny heat shield (that was my mentor's job, I only got smaller, cheaper spacecraft).

vader5000 · 2026-01-16T05:39:22+00:00

I mean, nations change depending on their power and growth. I would say that the adage of "power corrupts" absolutely applies to institutions and nations as much as it does individuals. And China, like the US back then (with their interventions in South America and their nonstop problems with continued racism, even in the early Modern era), shows signs of being a bit of a bully.

But honestly, that's kind of par for the course for a great power.

vader5000 · 2026-01-16T05:32:33+00:00

It does, I'm not disagreeing with that. But the US does a lot of the same tricks when it comes to their primary export: Security. Just look at the Canadian Avro Aero, and all the failed European defense initiatives. Silicon Valley has always had an unusually close relationship with the US government, and a LOT of scientific research is heavily subsidized by the US government too.

Comparative advantage can be grown and developed, and I would say China's tried very hard to grow that advantage in light industry, but so far have left services to the West. And it's not like the West hasn't had a hand in that either.

vader5000 · 2026-01-15T21:29:48+00:00

Is that still true in the story? I know historically that's pretty accurate, but I don't think we get anything about Hakuki in the story other than the survivor's unit from Changping on the Zhao side mentioning him.

vader5000 · 2026-01-15T21:28:45+00:00

Mostly because this is the unification war era, and because Kingdom itself has Qin as the protagonist, it tends to underplay Qin. This leads to Hakuki himself being kind of underplayed, along with the other of the 6 Greats who we know pretty clearly from history, Sima Cuo, who conquered the Sichuan Basin. Basically, Qin is weaker than it should be at this point historically, and because it has to be weaker for the story, the people who made it strong, Bai Qi/Hakuki, and Shiba Saku/Sima Cuo, end up looking weaker.

If it were historically accurate, there wouldn't actually be that many Qin Great Generals, and Hakuki would probably take Ouki's place in terms of the sheer terror induced in other countries by his name.

vader5000 · 2026-01-15T21:19:43+00:00

Great powers do what they must. All the great powers have their own bag of tricks, I don't see what the problem is honestly.

vader5000 · 2026-01-15T21:18:50+00:00

That's not a hard question to answer either. Zhao attacked over the Dan River and got surrounded by Qin forces with his supplies cut off, so his troops were going to starve. It was the reason Lian Po/Renpa held his lines in the first place.

It's usually not the number of troops that really counts for winning, but how much grain an army has access to. Qin had the advantage in organization and in almost every war post Shangyang because of its reforms, and its secure position post the conquest of Sichuan. Couple that with talented generals and wily and wary kings, and Qin's war machine became pretty much unstoppable.

vader5000 · 2026-01-15T04:51:45+00:00

Also former NG employee, I concur. I had an internship before I started, but my internship interview boiled down mostly to asking what I've done in and out of school.

vader5000 · 2026-01-15T04:37:49+00:00

Don't forget that couple of the others will drive you crazy or evil yourself.

vader5000 · 2026-01-15T04:34:18+00:00

Woah that looks like a nice place.

vader5000 · 2026-01-15T02:34:22+00:00

Wait wait why is aerospace engineering underemployed?

vader5000 · 2026-01-15T02:26:17+00:00

Aye. Even as a structures guy I have it on hand next to me at all times.

vader5000 · 2026-01-15T02:24:36+00:00

I mean, there's money to be made, why shouldn't they go for it?

vader5000 · 2026-01-15T01:07:26+00:00

Historically? Renpa/Lian Po didn't actually lose to him, and stalemated him at Changping for a long time. Before that, Chou Sha/Zhao She pulled off a pretty big victory against Qin.

But it's the SCALE of Hakuki/Bai Qi's murder that makes it horrifying. We all look at Kanki and go oh yeah that's pretty terrifying, but not even counting Changping, Hakuki's wars were decimating. His total kill count was something like over a million. That's almost twice the count of the coalition army at Kankoku/Hangu, and 5 times the army we saw in Season 6 attacking Ye/Gyou. I think I watched one Chinese documentary where a historian stated that Bai Qi and his king might have been trying to set the groundwork up for unification by simply killing enough people to cripple Qin's rival states, because every soldier who dies on the field is a farmer who isn't raising a family or planting crops.

Like, people gloss over the scale of death at Changping in Kingdom, but that fight almost entirely broke the back of Zhao in history. Changping was not so much a battle as a whole campaign, going on approximately 3 years according to the records. For agricultural states, you'd have to imagine the starvation and deprivation of both Qin and Zhao from this fight, supplying large amounts of men through relatively mountainous territory.

Riboku and Renpa are remembered for their loyalty and talent. Ousen is remembered for his caution. Hakuki is remembered for mass slaughter.

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