On 07Apr2019 0838, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) wrote:
> But, speaking of 'fleets', I'll never believe that there was any way
> that Dulinor could've even come close to stopping the 'Vengeance
> Fleet'.Illelish was, at best, a back-water sector/domain that never
> could've built up enough naval strength in such a short period of
> time.The 3I was just too cumbersome for that w/o some sort of 'full
> mobilization for war" at least a decade in advance. (War? What war?
> Strephon's administrators ask?)

The only reason the Core sector fleet would be any better would be that
its intended use was defence against another round of 'Barrack Emperors'
and frankly, a fleet that's completely un-used to battle would likely
crumple when a veteran frontier fleet came against it. I don't think
Dulinor being able to defeat it with the Illelish fleets is that
unreasonable, especially if he'd spent the last decade or so shifting
his fleets' emphasis from anti-piracy and small task force actions to
major fleet battles, both in training and (as much as he could without
attracting notice) composition.

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First of all if wasn't *just* the Core Sector fleet.

A number of other sectors came too.

Not to mention the rest of Core Domain.

As far as Illelish's forces are concerned they were undoubtedly the least experienced as there was & had been no threat along that Domains broders for centuries. It was a 'back-water'.

(Actually, the only fleets that had any real experience were the ones that participated in the recent 5thFW & Corridor's Sector Fleet incl some of those & guess whose side the Corridor Sector Fleet was fighting on?)

The forces of Illelish, even if by some impossible miracle Dulinor, could've got most of the domain to 'drink the kool-aid', would've been 'pounded like a drum'!

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> (The entire story of how only Lucan
> emerged alive (but now severely deranged) was just another 'zinger'
> that exceeded, by quite a bit, my ability to suspend disbelief)

He didn't start out deranged, just short tempered, and equipped with a
personality utterly unsuited to the office into which he was thrusted.
The stress of the job got to him, basically. There are plenty of
examples of this in history.

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The primary reason was that everyone was required to go insane.

Somehow, that was seen as 'a good thing'.