Guild Wars 2

First of all, I want to make it clear I have no problems with Communism, I’m asking this out of curiosity and nothing more. That said, it has struck me whilst adventuring that the Dredge seem to have been designed with something of a communist theme to their lore. For example, you face veteran dredge commissars in events and in the Priory story line you come up against Directorate Chief Spalaxinov. You also hear dredge miners saying things such as ‘you have collected for the good of the collective’ when wandering about their mines.

What my question is really is why have the dredge developed what appears to be a communist society?

There was some discussion of this in this thread, and I kind of answered in my post here. Basically, they have been slaves in the past and because of the mistreatment they (repeatedly) encountered, they have become very hostile toward other races. Combine this with a strong emphasis on the value of freedom and self-determination (makes sense for ex-slaves) and you get an insular, self-sufficient communist state – it actually makes pretty good sense given their history.

More Leninism than it is Communism, really.

Their problem is that the dredge that they put in charge pretty much took the place of the Stone Summit, because there is a dredge rebellion attempting to overthrow them agian

Thank you, that explains a lot of the questions I had about the Dredge’s lore. Although, I still don’t entirely get how they went from slaves crying out for their freedom straight to a communist collective, it seems rather a leap to make in a short amount of time.

Because it is awesome, that’s why.

I mean, come on…

The Moletariat? Awesome.

The Moletariat is pretty awesome, I remember smiling when I heard one of them say it. It just interests me why they do have a society like that from a lore point of view.

In GW1 there was an Elite Dungeon called Sorrow’s Furnace where the player aids the dwarves in taking down the Stone Summit’s operations in Sorrows Furnace (where the Stone Summit had dredge slaves working for them).

So that is sort of the start of the dredge uprising against the Stone Summit.

ALSO, really important to remember, the Dwarves were all turned to stone and ran off to fight the Great Destroyer and Primordius, thus freeing the Dredge completely. (The Stone Summit didn’t like humans, they were still Dwarves and believed in the Great Dwarf and the Tome of Rubicon so they weren’t exempt from turning to stone and going off to battle).

Well objectively some people at ArenaNet thought it would be cool to reference Russian communism when they were thinking about how the dredge turned out :P

But lore-wise, I think it makes sense. Freed from the people who enslaved them, they would all of a sudden be in charge of their own society. They would be determined to build a better, fairer society, nothing like the atrocities committed against them by outsiders (because naturally, they were better people). Equality for all and all work for the communal good rather than for any individuals all support that view, and fit as a reaction against how they lived before (their work exploited for the benefit of others).

As Narcemus says there are the beginnings of a dredge rebellion in the game, where some dredge want to rise up against those of their own kind of who the rebels see as exploiting dredge just as badly as the old masters. That comes out of history too – the collective good is a great idea, but as soon as certain people start benefiting more than others and control starts to may off, it gets messy.

Yes well all you have to do is look at a couple of key Dredge NPC’s from GW1 and read their stories and names to understand what’s going on xD.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Molachev
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Molenin

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Dredging_the_Depths (GW1 Dungeon with storyline on freeing the Dredge from their Dwarven slave masters)
" Please, help us poor Dredge reunite the moletariate and rise again in unstoppable numbers! You must free my people!"
Parts of which reference Karl Marx. It’s all quite brilliant really.

Haha, amazing. Never took notice of those blind buggers, but now they have gotten interesting

Oglaf.1074:

Because it is awesome, that’s why.

I mean, come on…

The Moletariat? Awesome.

^This.