LEPrecon

Lightning Bait

HERMES: DA FUNNY ONE

ZEUS: DA LIGHTNING (NOTE: THOUGHT HE WAS NORDIC, FATHER OF THOR)

POSEIDON: DA SEA ONE

HEPHAESTUS: DA FIRE/FORGING/STEEL ONE

APHRODITE: DA HOT ONE

KRATOS: GOD OF WAR

HADES: DA HELL ONE. ROGUE LIKE

Yes, in every Sui event since Ling's we've had a crowd of officials trying to set things right. But the flipside is that Yan (outside Lungmen, at least) has nothing but government officials and jianghu wanderers.

Leithanien has its academic schools and independent nobles. Columbia has its scientific research institutes. Victoria has a ducal system as well as private enterprise. Kjerag has four-way power-sharing between the three clans and the Vine-Bead Court.

But Yan? Yan only has the singular, monolithic state.

There's nothing to check or challenge its power, and the state very much wants to keep it that way. The Feranmuts are hunted even after Yan establishes supremacy, and the Sui proxies are only tolerated as useful tools—prisoners on parole. Sui itself was an ally, betrayed to ensure power only rested with the throne.

Jie became a threat to the state merely because she sought to record the truth, rather than allow the state to exploit their authority over record-keeping to conceal inconvenient facts. In a very direct sense, she was standing up against state corruption, and the state killed her for it.

I like to say that Arknights steelmans the positions it critiques. It sets up the strongest version of a position—most in line with its advocates' ideal view—before attacking it, so that the flaws it reveals really are fundamental. So the modal Sarkaz really is a heartless illiterate mercenary, because reckoning with how to coexist and seek justice for such a people is a more serious question than if they were all nice and everything said about them was an unfounded lie.

Aegir really is both technologically superior and culturally sophisticated. Columbia really does progress at a rate of knots. The Victorian Dukes really are master strategists... uh, allegedly. And Yan really is a unified state in which the civil servants act selflessly to support its flourishing.

Only, what does that flourishing look like? Crushing rebellion, because the ideal state must be harmonious? Concealing deaths, because the unwise masses might have doubts about your great vision? Never admitting a mistake, because it tarnishes your image? Invading your neighbours, because the world requires your steady hand?

Time to read about the Spaniards. Sure enough, the pirates swear like sailors

Full of holes

On the route

I need to go

Road construction

Lane obstruction

Let me go

Siracusans' movie night