Hoolay math

[cashew]

I've actually been meaning to bring this point up for a while now...

So, Hoolay is supposed to have been defeated by Jingliu about 700 years ago.

The Sedition of Imbibitor Lunae happened 721 years ago. (Source: see video description. Patch 1.3 date 8100 - Sedition date 7379 = 721 years.)

The other thing we can be fairly certain is that Jingliu loses it while killing the abomination dragon (based on that one egg memory that recalls seeing Jingliu stab the dragon and kills everything around her, so she's clearly losing control). Even if she doesn't immediately go crazy, it's still within a very short time, seeing as she escapes prison in 7380 (the year after Sedition).

And immediately preceding the Sedition was Battle of Shuhu during which time Tengxiao plus >90% of Cloud Knights died.

HOWEVER. The Marshal decided to imprison Hoolay on Luofu as a response to the Sedition of Imbibitor Lunae. In which case, it is highly unlikely that Hoolay was captured before Battle of Shuhu, as that would mean somehow the trial of Hoolay continued while Luofu is suffering through an absolute massacre by Shuhu then immediately had to deal with the Sedition of Imbibitor Lunae. Like, the Marshal just had the trial go on and on while a flagship is getting battered. This scenario seems a bit unlikely.

The other scenario is that in the small sliver of time between Sedition and her arrest, Jingliu went off to capture Hoolay...which also seems immensely unlikely given her mental state.

The only other way I can see this happening is capturing Hoolay was part of the extended Battle of Shuhu, in which case, Hoolay's immense longevity may have something to do with Shuhu. This seems the most likely explanation, but we know from Jingliu that she was assigned to protect Dan Feng during the Battle of Shuhu where he goes batshit, so it's unlikely she could be off capturing Hoolay then coming back to deal with Dan Feng.

In short, none of the explanations I can come up with fits comfortably into the timeline that the story gave us so far. Does miHoyo actually have a timeline or are they just throwing out numbers without looking at what they wrote before?

---

Ok, just watched a little bit of 2.5 and confirmation miHoyo has no timeline, since Jiaoqiu says "整整七百年过去了", meaning exactly 700 years. That would put Hoolay's capture at 21 years after Sedition of Imbibitor Lunae.

Either Jiaoqiu is bad at history or miHoyo is ret-conning.

Comments

[cashew]

their racial philosophy

Yeah, I'll address this in a post soon. It's dumb.

Presumably they don't schedule this to happen while other important stuff is ongoing like war.

The scheduled fighting to the death for leadership is also dumb, which I'll explain in another post in detail.

So once Hoolay was captured by the Luofu forces, and before he could be transfered to another ship for interrogation/sentencing/etc. the only place he could've been held at in the interim was the Shackling Prison.

We were shown in 2.4 that there is a super complicated procedure for holding Hoolay because he's a high security risk prisoner. He's not like the other types of prisoners you've mentioned. Jingliu was placed there bc Jing Yuan knew she wasn't an escape threat (she wanted to be captured). Blade's threat level is minimal. The suspicious cargo was easily deactivated, this not showing themselves to be a jailbreak risk.

Hoolay on the other hand could single-handedly destroy an entire troop of Cloud Knights. He's a high risk prisoner and there was serious concerns of jailbreak. The ridiculous protocol regarding the handling of Hoolay isn't Ten Lords being paranoid, he genuinely warranted that level of scrutiny.

But logistically you can't come up with complex prisoner protocols on the fly. If he was temporarily being held in Shackling Prison while trial is happening in the middle of a war, then he'd be held under much looser protocols, thus making him an escape risk. This is why it's a logistical nightmare.

Again, it's not impossible, the logistics are just crazy difficult. But also there's not a lot of point trying to make sense of this now that I realize miHoyo doesn't have a grand timeline at all and they don't care about inconsistentencies.

[tanithryudo]

Well, someone had to come up with the prisoner protocol for Hoolay in the first place, and he had to be kept somewhere before it was done. I mean, worst come to it, they could have Jingliu stand guard nearby to keep him in check (or just threaten him with her, since it does seem like she gave him PTSD). Though, that is still supposed to be the Ten Lords Commission's job and not the General's or military's job. :p

[cashew]

someone had to come up with the prisoner protocol

I mean it's true, but it's much easier to handle protocol stuff during peace time than when resources are stretched due to an on-going war. I know it basically isn't even thought about as far as HSR is concerned, but people need to get paid, and war is expensive. Paying the prison guards is gonna get difficult when most of the funds are going to fighting for survival...

There's a reason "take no prisoners" was an actual policy during war when fighting got intense. It wasn't even about mercy or showing ethical consideration, it was about the logistical nightmare of taking prisoners while also dealing with battle. POWs only became a thing when prisoner exchange brought about bigger political gains than military confrontation. And given Borisin's cultural attitude, there's no real political value to Hoolay as a prison other than keeping Foxians happy. And that goes back to my previous point of doubting Foxians are gonna be raising a ruckus over Hoolay when there's a battle for their survival on the line.

The entire set up for Hoolay is really poorly thought out and so obviously copied from period drama where no single person is so super-humanly powerful they can destroy an entire freaking army. Taking prisoner of an invading tribe's leader? Makes sense. Taking prisoner of a guy that can destroy an entire army by himself? Impractical.