I recently studied the Battle of Thermopylae for a piece of fiction I am writing. There were roughly 4 thousand fighting with Leonidas, counting 300 Spartans, their 900 Helot slaves, and the rest being various other Greek forces. The size of the Persian forces has also been greatly exaggerated by history, with most modern historians estimating about 100 thousand or so, not the million of legend. Thermopylae was also not a victory for the Spartans or the Greeks in general. The Persian advance continued for some time after. At best it was their Alamo, a losing battle against impossible odds that served as an inspirational tale of courage & valor.
Inspiration only works if there's people left behind to be inspired by it. Leonidas didn't have to win, he just had to not lose for long enough that the rest of the Greek army could evacuate. The Alamo similarly would hardly have been inspirational if Sam Houston and his army of illegal immigrants had all been butchered by Santa Ana as he'd done to the Mexican state of Zacatecas. But they failed to post basic security measures when they camped at San Jacinto and here we are.
Destroy the enemy army (by whatever means: as patrick pointed out, that doesn't have to mean direct battle), and you win the war. Fail to destroy the enemy army, and the war continues. George Washington lost nearly every battle he ever fought, but he was a genius at minimizing casualties and maintaining morale, thereby keeping his army intact long enough to make a difference.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
To my knowledge, the 300 Spartans were also backed up by thousands of other Greeks for most of the fight. A bit less one-sided than usually evnvisioned, if only a little.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
I like the idea of the real Kahless coming back. Maybe through the aid of time travel?
Kind of a Babylon 5/ Valen twist...
"I am called Kahless and we have much work ahead of us."
I recently studied the Battle of Thermopylae for a piece of fiction I am writing. There were roughly 4 thousand fighting with Leonidas, counting 300 Spartans, their 900 Helot slaves, and the rest being various other Greek forces. The size of the Persian forces has also been greatly exaggerated by history, with most modern historians estimating about 100 thousand or so, not the million of legend. Thermopylae was also not a victory for the Spartans or the Greeks in general. The Persian advance continued for some time after. At best it was their Alamo, a losing battle against impossible odds that served as an inspirational tale of courage & valor.
The biggest losses Xerxes suffered came from Athens outmaneuvering his navy. That was more about knowing the seas around Greece and using that to their advantage.
I like the idea of the real Kahless coming back. Maybe through the aid of time travel?
Or he's been held captive by the Hur'q in stasis all this time and we accidentally rescue him.
Actually that's sort of what I assumed they'd do in the game to bring Yar back. I never believed alternate-timeline Yar was dead in the show - Executing her didn't seem the Romulan way... Star Trek really underutilised stasis, using it in a couple of episodes as a gimmick, but otherwise ignoring it.
The clones death was some seriously bad writing, that whole mission was. Klingon stealth mission, instantly just shooting up the place isnt stealth not even for klingons. Clone running off to fight big bad solo cause he needs to??? Said who again? Then the big bad agrees to a knife fight for what reason, she viewed us all as bugs she wouldnt come down to our level. Then he dies while royally pi$$ing off the big bad making things even worse, to prove the iconians could be hurt... uh no one thought they were unbeatable gods, note the stack of herald ships we all mowed through to get to that point. All in all you get a bunch of klinks that as supposed to be 'intelligence' agents acting like complete gun happy fools, and their boss runs off to die for no reason.
Ugh that mission was so bad they need to redo it.
Another terrible one, is the one where we 'throw all our forces' at the iconians cause 'reasons' to try and take over 1 ship that wouldnt stop the war or really even slow it down. 'Hey we are losing the war badly, so lets just throw all our ships down their gauntlet and pray something happens!'
Thats writing right up there with 'Hey a new link, lets just kill all the baby jem'hadar that seems like a federation thing to do!'
“What is a clone, but a resurrection born of science? Was it not, in every way that matters, Kahless that exited your alleged cloning laboratory? His genes would be Kahless, his body would be Kahless… his courage, Kahless.”
Kalol folded his arms. Good, thought Juvat. I have him on the defensive.
“Who cloned Kahless, then,” Kalol asked. “For what purpose? If Kahless did not burst forth from the collective faith of his people,” he mocked, “then what would be gained from, well, creating him anew?”
There was a moment of silence, and Kalol took the opportunity to attack. “You, and all those spreading the word of this cloned imposter, and of the returned Hur’q straight from the stories of a child, are simply doing the bidding of those who want to keep us fighting, to keep us bleeding, for their causes. You speak of history in the terms of faith. There is enough glory in our true history that you need not create fables to fabricate more.”
Juvat glanced about the room and could see she had lost the crowd. She was quiet a moment, and then snarled. “You believe Kahless, the savior of our people, to be a myth?”
The room fell silent. Kalol inhaled deeply, but exhaled without words.
“Because if you do, then you do not believe in Klingon culture. You feel our history is a lie, that our forefathers were fools. That the billions of us who have travelled on the barge to Sto’Vo’Kor did so for no reason other than their dedication to children’s tales. You spit upon all that we are, and all that we have become: The concrete evidence that one of the galaxy’s great civilizations was born among these so-called ‘myths.’”
After looking it over a few times i see it is more a question of faith, in the same way religious people say there is a god but it is a challenge to prove such a god exists and isn't a mere imposter merely meant to be used as a tool to the non believers. It is obviously meant to detail how someones faith in something that doesn't exist, can exist and that mocking such faith where it exists is a dangerous things to Klingons after so much culture around the subject, their entire history and identity built around it. It would be one of the gravest insults to every Klingon anywhere who believes in Kahless and the afterlife to cast it aside as such.
Kalol was lucky he was thinking and left.
Is it a prelude to Kahless' return? no, i wouldn't think so.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Kahless' failing was genre blindness. He should've sicced the Player Character at T'ket and gone with the others to finish the mission like a good little NPC. Note when we finally do get to fight an iconian ourselves, we win.
Still, Kahless would have made a good decoy if the game had at least allowed us to finish the mission while he distracted T'ket, instead of making us watch the inevitable.
There were actually quite a lot of battles where lesser numbers held off a larger force simply by drawing them into a bottleneck that reduced the effect of superior numbers. Often involving river crossings such as bridges or fords.
Probably better recorded historically than the spartans which will have been distorted by both time and the graphic novel
> @somtaawkhar said:
> azrael605 wrote: »
>
> There were roughly 4 thousand fighting with Leonidas, counting 300 Spartans, their 900 Helot slaves, and the rest being various other Greek forces. The size of the Persian forces has also been greatly exaggerated by history, with most modern historians estimating about 100 thousand or so, not the million of legend. Thermopylae was also not a victory for the Spartans or the Greeks in general..
>
>
>
> I think most people are aware at this point after how much people rampaged all over the movie 300.
I think you give people far too much credit. After all most people are still unaware that Braveheart has characters wearing kilts backwards and several centuries before they were worn, not to mention how many think William Wallace actually slept with the princess (who was 9 and still in france when Wallace died).
And of course the glacier that swept across lothian after his death that unveiled the volcanic plug edinburgh castle was built on.
There were actually quite a lot of battles where lesser numbers held off a larger force simply by drawing them into a bottleneck that reduced the effect of superior numbers. Often involving river crossings such as bridges or fords.
Probably better recorded historically than the spartans which will have been distorted by both time and the graphic novel
I think you give people far too much credit. After all most people are still unaware that Braveheart has characters wearing kilts backwards and several centuries before they were worn, not to mention how many think William Wallace actually slept with the princess (who was 9 and still in france when Wallace died).
And of course the glacier that swept across lothian after his death that unveiled the volcanic plug edinburgh castle was built on.
Appropriately enough, one of the battles where such a bottleneck defense was used was the real Battle of Stirling Bridge, i.e. the one where Mel Gibson has the Scots flashing the English and then skewering a cavalry charge with spears that are then never referenced again. To give you some idea how absurdly inaccurate Braveheart was, the movie's version didn't even have a bridge in it, and the Scots were more known for use of pike formations, called schiltron in later years, than for charging at the enemy swinging claymores like latter-day Norse berserkers.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
A schiltron would probably have been easier to film and composite more in but holywood loves the generic line of spears for the camera to pan along moments. So as the tactic wasn't ever widely adopted as with most things in the movie they went visual over factual.
> @somtaawkhar said: > starswordc wrote: » > > Considering that this is something that can A, teleport, and B, vaporize humanoids with a wave of its hand, IN WHAT UNIVERSE DOES ATTACKING IT WITH A POINTY STICK SOUND LIKE A GOOD IDEA? > > > > By this backwards logic, in what universe does attacking Xerxes sound like a good idea when his armies outnumbered the Spartans many times over. Why didn't they just bend over and take it? > > By your htinking, why should anyone, at all, ever, try to resist those that are seemingly more powerful then they are?
> @azrael605 said: > > @starswordc said: > > somtaawkhar wrote: » > > > > starswordc wrote: » > > > > Considering that this is something that can A, teleport, and B, vaporize humanoids with a wave of its hand, IN WHAT UNIVERSE DOES ATTACKING IT WITH A POINTY STICK SOUND LIKE A GOOD IDEA? > > > > > > > > By this backwards logic, in what universe does attacking Xerxes sound like a good idea when his armies outnumbered the Spartans many times over. Why didn't they just bend over and take it? > > > > > > > > The universe where positioning themselves and the thousand or so other Greeks who are never talked about in a natural chokepoint allowed them to buy time for the rest of the army to regroup elsewhere, while fighting only the Persian troops that could actually fit into the chokepoint to reach them. I.e. the real world that Frank Miller's 300 is at best an approximation of. Heroic self-sacrifice? Absolutely. Intelligent strategy? Even more so. If they'd just charged the Persians with naked blades the way Emperor Darwin Award did with T'Ket, they would've been butchered to a man on day one. > > > > Like I said in the other thread: use the strategy that plays to your strengths and the enemy's weaknesses. Outnumbered? Find a way to make your enemy's numbers not matter. For example, that wide-area cloak that House Pratfall's ship has with that was conveniently forgotten for the rest of the story. Using that to insert a commando team undetected to do some sabotage? Good strategy. Running off after unnecessary battles while singing about honor at the top of your lungs? Well, that runs counter to the objective and removes your only advantage, that the enemy doesn't know you're there, so it's bad strategy. > > I recently studied the Battle of Thermopylae for a piece of fiction I am writing. There were roughly 4 thousand fighting with Leonidas, counting 300 Spartans, their 900 Helot slaves, and the rest being various other Greek forces. The size of the Persian forces has also been greatly exaggerated by history, with most modern historians estimating about 100 thousand or so, not the million of legend. Thermopylae was also not a victory for the Spartans or the Greeks in general. The Persian advance continued for some time after. At best it was their Alamo, a losing battle against impossible odds that served as an inspirational tale of courage & valor.
Comments
Inspiration only works if there's people left behind to be inspired by it. Leonidas didn't have to win, he just had to not lose for long enough that the rest of the Greek army could evacuate. The Alamo similarly would hardly have been inspirational if Sam Houston and his army of illegal immigrants had all been butchered by Santa Ana as he'd done to the Mexican state of Zacatecas. But they failed to post basic security measures when they camped at San Jacinto and here we are.
Destroy the enemy army (by whatever means: as patrick pointed out, that doesn't have to mean direct battle), and you win the war. Fail to destroy the enemy army, and the war continues. George Washington lost nearly every battle he ever fought, but he was a genius at minimizing casualties and maintaining morale, thereby keeping his army intact long enough to make a difference.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
I think I want to take a trip back to see my 6th grade history teacher and show him an episode of - ARE.
So he will return as William Shatner?
No, that would be if he came back as Raul Julia.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Kind of a Babylon 5/ Valen twist...
"I am called Kahless and we have much work ahead of us."
My character Tsin'xing
Or he's been held captive by the Hur'q in stasis all this time and we accidentally rescue him.
Actually that's sort of what I assumed they'd do in the game to bring Yar back. I never believed alternate-timeline Yar was dead in the show - Executing her didn't seem the Romulan way... Star Trek really underutilised stasis, using it in a couple of episodes as a gimmick, but otherwise ignoring it.
Ugh that mission was so bad they need to redo it.
Another terrible one, is the one where we 'throw all our forces' at the iconians cause 'reasons' to try and take over 1 ship that wouldnt stop the war or really even slow it down. 'Hey we are losing the war badly, so lets just throw all our ships down their gauntlet and pray something happens!'
Thats writing right up there with 'Hey a new link, lets just kill all the baby jem'hadar that seems like a federation thing to do!'
After looking it over a few times i see it is more a question of faith, in the same way religious people say there is a god but it is a challenge to prove such a god exists and isn't a mere imposter merely meant to be used as a tool to the non believers. It is obviously meant to detail how someones faith in something that doesn't exist, can exist and that mocking such faith where it exists is a dangerous things to Klingons after so much culture around the subject, their entire history and identity built around it. It would be one of the gravest insults to every Klingon anywhere who believes in Kahless and the afterlife to cast it aside as such.
Kalol was lucky he was thinking and left.
Is it a prelude to Kahless' return? no, i wouldn't think so.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Still, Kahless would have made a good decoy if the game had at least allowed us to finish the mission while he distracted T'ket, instead of making us watch the inevitable.
Probably better recorded historically than the spartans which will have been distorted by both time and the graphic novel
And of course the glacier that swept across lothian after his death that unveiled the volcanic plug edinburgh castle was built on.
That is Worf's reaction.
This is the cloned Kahless' reaction.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Appropriately enough, one of the battles where such a bottleneck defense was used was the real Battle of Stirling Bridge, i.e. the one where Mel Gibson has the Scots flashing the English and then skewering a cavalry charge with spears that are then never referenced again. To give you some idea how absurdly inaccurate Braveheart was, the movie's version didn't even have a bridge in it, and the Scots were more known for use of pike formations, called schiltron in later years, than for charging at the enemy swinging claymores like latter-day Norse berserkers.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
he is dead, dead, dead
> starswordc wrote: »
>
> Considering that this is something that can A, teleport, and B, vaporize humanoids with a wave of its hand, IN WHAT UNIVERSE DOES ATTACKING IT WITH A POINTY STICK SOUND LIKE A GOOD IDEA?
>
>
>
> By this backwards logic, in what universe does attacking Xerxes sound like a good idea when his armies outnumbered the Spartans many times over. Why didn't they just bend over and take it?
>
> By your htinking, why should anyone, at all, ever, try to resist those that are seemingly more powerful then they are?
Contrary to myth the army wasn't just Spartans.
> > @starswordc said:
> > somtaawkhar wrote: »
> >
> > starswordc wrote: »
> >
> > Considering that this is something that can A, teleport, and B, vaporize humanoids with a wave of its hand, IN WHAT UNIVERSE DOES ATTACKING IT WITH A POINTY STICK SOUND LIKE A GOOD IDEA?
> >
> >
> >
> > By this backwards logic, in what universe does attacking Xerxes sound like a good idea when his armies outnumbered the Spartans many times over. Why didn't they just bend over and take it?
> >
> >
> >
> > The universe where positioning themselves and the thousand or so other Greeks who are never talked about in a natural chokepoint allowed them to buy time for the rest of the army to regroup elsewhere, while fighting only the Persian troops that could actually fit into the chokepoint to reach them. I.e. the real world that Frank Miller's 300 is at best an approximation of. Heroic self-sacrifice? Absolutely. Intelligent strategy? Even more so. If they'd just charged the Persians with naked blades the way Emperor Darwin Award did with T'Ket, they would've been butchered to a man on day one.
> >
> > Like I said in the other thread: use the strategy that plays to your strengths and the enemy's weaknesses. Outnumbered? Find a way to make your enemy's numbers not matter. For example, that wide-area cloak that House Pratfall's ship has with that was conveniently forgotten for the rest of the story. Using that to insert a commando team undetected to do some sabotage? Good strategy. Running off after unnecessary battles while singing about honor at the top of your lungs? Well, that runs counter to the objective and removes your only advantage, that the enemy doesn't know you're there, so it's bad strategy.
>
> I recently studied the Battle of Thermopylae for a piece of fiction I am writing. There were roughly 4 thousand fighting with Leonidas, counting 300 Spartans, their 900 Helot slaves, and the rest being various other Greek forces. The size of the Persian forces has also been greatly exaggerated by history, with most modern historians estimating about 100 thousand or so, not the million of legend. Thermopylae was also not a victory for the Spartans or the Greeks in general. The Persian advance continued for some time after. At best it was their Alamo, a losing battle against impossible odds that served as an inspirational tale of courage & valor.
You ninja'd me.
Anyways I hope Kathless comes back.
My character Tsin'xing