Centaurs and humans after HoT ?

Centaurs and humans after HoT ?

in Lore

Posted by: Valmir.4590

Valmir.4590

I know that the core game hasn’t advanced at all on that front since the release, but I would like to talk about the relations between humans and centaurs and how they could evolve in a LS (I don’t see this plotline being able to support an expansion, but it is also too big to be just a subplot in an expansion, if you ask me).

From what I’ve gathered, the situations at the beginning of GW2 has some similarities with the relations of Charrs and humans before Prophecy :

-the centaurs sees the humans has invaders and the humans claim that they have held the lands long enough to be them now, just like the Charrs and humans saw things before the Searing.
-The Centaurs are dominated by one of their clan/tribe (??) just like the Charrs were dominated by one of their Legion.
-the humans are highly divided and unable to mount a coherent defence.

However, there is also one big difference : the two sides in the human-centaur conflict have lost much of their territory. Kryta is the last human kingdom and is effectively land-locked, since the lands south of the Ascalonians settlement seems to be at least partially independent from it. And the centaurs have lost even more lands. They are probably stuck with a tiny bit of the Shiverpeaks and Woodland Cascades as their core territory, and had expanded quite a lot just before the release.

However, the core game experience sees the players repel the Centaur invasion from the gates of Divinity Reach to the northernmost corner of the Harathi Hinterlands. And while it is only my personal belief, I don’t think that they have left most of the centaur ’s forts empty. While the campaign is quite quick in the gaming experience, it is reasonable to suppose that the Krytan forces drive away the Centaurs one region at a time, before they finally gather their forces in the Hinterlands (I know that the Centaurs are still there in the Kessex Hills map after the Tower of Nightmare, but since none of their events has changed, to my knowledge, I must assume that it is just a design choice, not a lore one).

Therefore, it is believable that the Centaurs, having lost their leader (Ulgoth) and most of the territory they claimed (thanks to the work of Caudecus and his bandits/White Mantle cronies) they must be quite in disarray. But as I’ve said before, the centaurs are in a situation where fighting the humans is probably the only way to prevent a total collapse of their population. They are probably far too numerous and crowded to survive for long in a relatively small corner of Tyria by themselves. We have seen that, at the very least, their armies don’t care about the damages done to the land since their bastions are usually surrounded by barren lands, even when the rest of the region is verdant.

So, I assume that being in this state, attacking them in the Woodland Cascades would drive them ever deeper into despair and they could go ever fiercer as the players and the npcs would advance into their territory. Obviously, the humans are probably able now the crush the centaurs, with only a little help, and claiming the Woodland Cascades and every land surrounding Lake Viathan, if they haven’t done that yet, would bolster Kryta, by offering new lands to all the poor people gathering at Divinity reach and turning to banditry to survive, with the right course of laws from the Queen’s faction in the Ministry. It would also greatly secure the position of Jennah.

But is it the only course of action ? We have seen that there exist some centaurs who are friendly toward other species. Couldn’t they help the humans to broke a peace with the Centaurs ? I mean a peace or even the truce like they did with the Charr is probably out of the possibility (because of the lack of territories from both side, contrary to the Charr’s huge swath of lands and Kryta being far more wide than Ebonhawke), but couldn’t there be some way to end this war ? Perhaps a system like the Austrian-Hungarian throne back in the XVIII-th-XIXth centuries ?

What do you believe is feasible ?

Centaurs and humans after HoT ?

in Lore

Posted by: draxynnic.3719

draxynnic.3719

We had an interview that covered what was going on with the centaurs in 2013. Short form:

1) The centaurs have their backs against the wall. They’ve been forced out of their previous lands, and can’t maintain their population without hunting Krytan game and raiding Krytan farms. Of course, constant warfare will whittle down their population too, but they consider that more acceptable.

2) The centaurs have only had the success they’ve had because of Jennah’s human enemies, who have been directly and indirectly sabotaging the Seraph and providing support to the centaurs in an effort to make Queen Jennah look incompetent.

3) The death of the Ulgoth and the offensives that led to it put the centaurs on the back hoof, but did not eliminate them as a threat entirely. They’re more raiding than an organised invasion now, but there’s always the possibility of a new leader rising.

4) Centaurs remain in Gendarran, Kessex, and even Queensdale, and the state of those maps as of mid-2013 was canon even after the Ulgoth’s death. How they haven’t been hunted down and eradicated wasn’t explained in the interview, but the same could be said of all the poorly-hidden bandit camps in the area. Lorewise, the zones are larger than what we see (as indicated in the books – as per Ghosts of Ascalon, it seems to take about a day to traverse a zone, which means that the ‘nations’ are still pretty small but there’s a lot more wilderness than we see) – it’s likely that the centaurs in those zones have hidden hideouts we can’t find, from which they occasionally retake the ones we CAN find. Basically, the centaurs are now bandits with four legs rather than two.

With that said, on the question of peace:

It’s theoretically possible – the fact that human and centaur numbers are what they are suggests that Kryta can support both, particularly if crops and other food sources stopped being spoiled by war. However, it would be a hard ask for humans to forgive, and it would require the centaurs to swallow their pride.

There is a centaur NPC who’s realised that the war is unwinnable in the long term unless there’s another change in circumstances. He was thrown out of the tribes, and the centaurs are currently dominated by the warlike Modniir, who can be expected to continue pushing for war over surrender. However, if the war continues to go against the centaurs – particularly if the humans do start deploying higher technology as Qindova predicts (and there’s evidence that Kryta has its own airship fleet now, or at least had prior to Heart of Thorns) – then Darwinian evolution might win out and a peace faction might develop as the warmongers get killed off.

From the human perspective – according to the Quaggan blog, the queen appears to accept nonhuman refugees into Kryta – however, the quaggan are relatively inoffensive and do not compete for the same resources (fishing, perhaps, but it is probably more efficient to trade with nearby quaggans for fish than do your own fishing). I think Queen Jennah would be willing to come to an accord with the centaurs if she thought the centaurs were genuine, but it would be a tough sell to the rest of Kryta – peace with the charr was bad enough and that war was a long way away and didn’t impact much on most Krytans, while centaurs have rampaged across Kryta and reached the gates of the capital only a few years ago. A truce that even a peace faction among centaurs would be willing to accept would probably require giving the centaur lands to settle within Kryta (or finding them somewhere suitable elsewhere) – and I don’t think most Krytans are willing to accept living alongside those that were killing and enslaving their friends and relatives not so long ago.

To those who think Scarlet hate means she’s succeeded as a villain:
People don’t hate Scarlet like Game of Thrones fans hate Joffrey.
They hate her the way Star Wars fans hate Jar Jar Binks.

Centaurs and humans after HoT ?

in Lore

Posted by: wouw.5837

wouw.5837

Makes me think of the Losaru centaurs.

Could’ve they survived the Elder Dragons?

The river Elon gives them way more living space though.

Are they allied/enslaved with Palawa Joko?

Elona is Love, Elona is life.

Centaurs and humans after HoT ?

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Posted by: draxynnic.3719

draxynnic.3719

Enslaved would be my guess. I doubt the Losaru liked Joko any more than the Veldrunners, and Joko probably wouldn’t have liked having them near his breadbasket without being under his control.

To those who think Scarlet hate means she’s succeeded as a villain:
People don’t hate Scarlet like Game of Thrones fans hate Joffrey.
They hate her the way Star Wars fans hate Jar Jar Binks.

Centaurs and humans after HoT ?

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Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086

Konig Des Todes.2086

It’s also possible that they’re actively fighting Joko, or have been kept separate from Joko’s forces due to the risen’s presence on Elona’s northern border. We don’t really know how far north Joko’s empire reaches in modern times. Could be not on the in-game map, could be as far north as Elona Reach or Seeker’s Passage.

Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.

Centaurs and humans after HoT ?

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Posted by: draxynnic.3719

draxynnic.3719

Since a big deal was made of Joko using the parts of the Crystal Desert that were moistened by the diverted Elon for a breadbasket, I’d be inclined to assume that Joko holds the shores of the river.

Looking at the map, in fact, this might explain the discrepancy between Joko fighting the Risen and fighting the minions of the “desert dragon” (whom we would presume is Kralkatorrik). The Risen would be coming from the west, either by sea or across the Scavenger’s Causeway. After the Dragonrise, any pressure from Kralkatorrik would likely have been coming from the north. So he could have been pushed from two sides there.

To those who think Scarlet hate means she’s succeeded as a villain:
People don’t hate Scarlet like Game of Thrones fans hate Joffrey.
They hate her the way Star Wars fans hate Jar Jar Binks.