Guild Wars 2

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

This comparison really doesn’t hold up. The player character isn’t a war hero. The player’s character is a high ranking commander still fighting THE SAME war. If you were one of the top ranking commanders in WWII, and WWII was still going on, and you said you wanted to call an emergency meeting for a threat that jeopardized the entire mission, you bet they’d instantly listen.

The player may still be a commander, but s/he also hasn’t been an active member of the Pact for nearly two years. So s/he couldn’t really pull out the “but I’m The Commander of the Pact” after such a long absence, since the player is basically semi-retired at this point.

Don’t get me wrong. The player has built up a lot of credibility and respect over the campaign against Zhaitan and the taking down of Scarlet Briar, but that still doesn’t give him/her the magical ability to summon up all the leaders of the free world to hold summit to go over a grave new threat.

People are always going to do what they believe is best, and that can differ greatly from what you may think. Not to mention there are motives going on in the background as well.

• Jennah recognizes the threat the EDs to everyone, so she easily accepted the invitation.
• Smodur does as well, but he has a lot of other constant threats and problems he has to deal with day by day, and that makes his time extremely valuable.
• Knut is the “leader” of a “nation” of individualist. Like Smodur, he has constant problems to deal with, but he can’t really force the Norn to do anything. He can tell them what is happening and hope they see the threat as well, but he can’t do much else.
• The Arcane Council is going to play politics the most. They understand the threat the EDs pose, but each member has their own agenda as well. The political power plays, on top of the bureaucracy itself, make it hard for them to come up with clear and decisive decisions.

It makes sense to send Kasmeer/Rox/Braham because we can’t be everywhere at once (even though time seems to work differently in Tyria).

DutchRiders.2871:

Secondly, The main character has been in the same devise as scarlet ( just recently passed), yet nobody raises an eyebrow or cracks a joke about the mental state of the personal character. Sure they ask, you feeling fine boss? Or the pale tree mentions something like: The device could fry your brain, yet everybody treats the character like nothing happened.

Couldve sworn they asked me if I felt like destroying the Pale Tree or some variation on that.

Erukk.1408:

• Knut is the “leader” of a “nation” of individualist. Like Smodur, he has constant problems to deal with, but he can’t really force the Norn to do anything. He can tell them what is happening and hope they see the threat as well, but he can’t do much else.

I think if you hung out a poster in Hoelbrak that said “heroes wanted, fame, glory and fighting awaits” you ’d have most of the able-bodied Norn with you.

Zomaarwat.3912:

I think if you hung out a poster in Hoelbrak that said “heroes wanted, fame, glory and fighting awaits” you ’d have most of the able-bodied Norn with you.

If they added free booze to that, that would get most of the population out there fighting.

Can we get someone to draw an “I want YOU! to help me fight the elder dragons!” poster with Trahearne pointing while wearing Uncle Sam’s outfit now?

Evans.6347:

It’s rather funny how quite a few people believe our main character should be able to go anywhere and demand anything from anyone because of their former feats.

I believe this was one of the main complaints against Trahearne?

Kinda. Or how he was instantly introduced (for everybody but Sylvari) as a super respected person by all three orders and they ALL trust him heavily.

So, yeah. It’s basically the same thing. You could take Trahearnes early exposure to the players as a person who could basically walk into any order and go “Hey, the Risen are causing trouble here!” and the order would respond.

Erukk.1408:

People are always going to do what they believe is best, and that can differ greatly from what you may think. Not to mention there are motives going on in the background as well.

• Jennah recognizes the threat the EDs to everyone, so she easily accepted the invitation.
• Smodur does as well, but he has a lot of other constant threats and problems he has to deal with day by day, and that makes his time extremely valuable.
• Knut is the “leader” of a “nation” of individualist. Like Smodur, he has constant problems to deal with, but he can’t really force the Norn to do anything. He can tell them what is happening and hope they see the threat as well, but he can’t do much else.
• The Arcane Council is going to play politics the most. They understand the threat the EDs pose, but each member has their own agenda as well. The political power plays, on top of the bureaucracy itself, make it hard for them to come up with clear and decisive decisions.

Knut and Smodur are similar, in that they not only have to have local threats reduced to free their time up enough to even go to the summit, but also to be able to commit any help or forces.

Can’t send a bunch of charr against the dragon if flame legion, ghosts, and branded are constantly battering down the gates of charr towns…

Kryta is stable mostly now, so Jennah can provide help.

Arcane Council… who knows what they’ll do. When they had information about Scarlet’s impending attack the comment on their reaction was that it’d likely be a “Let’s wait and see.” IIRC, wasn’t the inquest Councilor one of the main ones actually getting stuff done because he’d get funding to projects while the rest bicker?

Kalavier.1097:

Kryta is stable mostly now, so Jennah can provide help.

No, she probably can’t provide too much, lest the opposition to her rule gain some strength of rhetoric again. The most she could do is probably send small amounts of specialists.

Wanderer.3248:

draxynnic.3719:

The first is probably the more important issue. It’s probably not a case of getting them to agree to burn it now, but to arrange that Smodur will provide flamethrower tanks, the asura will provide free gate and waypoint travel to those tanks, the sylvari will smear them with nonflammable gunk that makes them taste bad to plants, and the humans will make balloons to convert those flame tanks into airships that can spray those flames onto the vines from the air.

They could turn tanks or whatever on the existing infestations now. They don’t need a summit to combine Charr, Asura and other tech – the Pact does this already. They don’t need to ask the leaders to do this. The Pact never asked anyone to build their airships.

And rather than some pointless debate, how about sending some more Pact agents into the Jungle, because we still have no idea where Mordremoth is.

Didn’t they? None of the Pact locations we can visit in-game has facilities to build them (Fort Trinity has a dock, but not the facilities to build an airship from scratch). It’s possible that they were built at areas of Vigil Keep or the Priory that we can’t visit. It’s possible they were built at Lion’s Arch (and, well, errrrm, about that…). But as a previous poster mentioned, it is explicitly stated that the Iron Legion was providing industrial support to the Pact.

Even if we do assume that the Pact is self-sufficient, expanding your available resources through alliances is still a good thing – and for an alliance to be effective, partners need to talk to one another. Russia, the US, and Britain all agreed that Germany needed to be fought from 1942 to 1945, but they still held summits so that their strategies worked together. (Although Stalin wanted Britain and the US to concentrate purely on air superiority and to let the Red Army fight the ground war all the way to the Channel if needed – unsurprisingly, Churchill and Roosevelt were a little cynical about his motives.) And in the meantime, your allies might come up with ideas that you wouldn’t have come up with on your own (even if you are a multiracial organisation).

Kalavier.1097:

draxynnic.3719:

I suspect Jennah’s support is a little more ‘under the table’ because of Kryta’s own politics. She’s well aware of the threat of the dragons (it’s why she proposed the truce to the charr in the first place), but if she officially committed Krytan forces to the Pact, she’d probably be castigated by the Ministry for a) sending Krytan forces on a foreign adventure when Kryta has enough problems at home, and b) sending Krytan forces to join a coalition where they might have non-Krytan commanders.

Actually, Kryta is fairly stable right now. With Cauducus living in Jennah’s estate/ in DR all the time he CANNOT direct the bandits/ministry guard to make the Seraph and Jennah look bad. IIRC, it’s implied or stated the bandit troubles got reduced post CM storymode.

And at the same time, the Centaur war is probably at it’s best for humanity. Yes it’s back and forth, but if you were to say, take every heart in Kryta as “complete” by the time of Living story, the Centaurs are weakened heavily. That’s why she likely agreed to the summit instantly. She supports the idea and ATM, humanity can spare Seraph numbers to such a thing. Meanwhile the other races have problems that they must get dealt with before they commit. Sons of Svanir for Norn, Ghosts for the Charr, the waypoint dangers for Asura.

I think you’re exaggerating the improvement there:

The centaurs are on the ‘back hoof’, so to speak, but are still a threat (I put that exact question to Jeff, Ree and Bobby a year ago in an interview).

Caudecus’ ‘protective custody’ ties his wrists a little, but is a long way from tying up all of Kryta’s political problems in a little bow. It hinders his ability to do anything illegal directly… but he’s still free to act in an official capacity as the Leader of the Opposition (an opposition that last we heard was actually in the majority in the Ministry), including criticising Jennah’s policies. Furthermore, it’s possible that he has lieutenants to continue working on his behalf even if something happens to him, and even without that consideration, it’s questionable how much control over the bandits he actually has – we know the White Mantle are involved there, and whether Caudecus is (knowingly) allied to them or not, the Mantle isn’t going to stop just because the Legate Minister is no longer actively plotting. So both the centaurs and the bandits are still threats, albeit reduced (canonically, they’ve probably both been pushed into wilderness hideouts raiding caravans rather than actively assaulting settlements and besieging fortresses as we still see in the open world, apart from the front line in Harathi Hinterlands).

However, I should point out that the comments that you’re referring to are in the context of the second half of the original Personal Story – where, while the turning points you refer to have occurred, it would still have been too early for Kryta to have stabilised enough for Jennah to have been able to officially send Seraph to foreign locations without receiving criticism that she was weakening Kryta’s defenses at a time when there had been enemies at the gates of Divinity’s Reach within the same year. Now, Kryta’s security has probably improved substantially – in fact, the way that the start of the season involves Seraph penetrating deep into Brisban Wildlands in order to investigate a smuggling ring (something that would have been too utterly trivial to waste soldiers on in the desperate days of 1325AE even if it was happening next door, let alone in an isolated part of Tyria) suggests that Kryta’s security and reach has expanded substantially since then, such that it might actually be genuinely the superpower of western Tyria again.

Thinking about what Jennah is likely doing now rather than what she was doing in the second half of the personal story, I’d expect the following:

First, in the wake of the Pact’s success, she’s probably been making whatever support she did provide to the Pact and its individual orders as public as reasonably practical, in order to get some political capital from playing a part in Zhaitan’s defeat.

Second, it really wouldn’t surprise me if Jennah had already agreed to the summit, via the Pale Tree’s ambassador Dagonet, before Kasmeer even reached Divinity’s Reach… and Jennah is just letting the world regard Kasmeer as being the messenger for her own political reasons.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Kalavier.1097:

Kryta is stable mostly now, so Jennah can provide help.

No, she probably can’t provide too much, lest the opposition to her rule gain some strength of rhetoric again. The most she could do is probably send small amounts of specialists.

While true, I meaning more like Kryta isn’t under dire threat and can’t redirect ANYBODY.

Yeah, the Centaurs are still a threat (I’ve never once implied that they are no threat), but they are pushed back and NOT on the offensive. The bandits are weakened/not as organized and that’s not as huge a deal now either.

SURE, in the politics arena and official meetings Caudecus can still cause his issues, but he can’t go and make the Seraph and Jennah look bad with bandit attacks ATM.

Compare that to the Norn or charr, who have Sons of Svanir actively causing trouble in the shiverpeaks (We raid one of their strongholds in this episode) or the flame legion, branded, and ghosts causing trouble for the charr. Flame legion is weakened, but the other two forces are going strong.

Kryta isn’t 100% safe and free, but it’s certainly more stable then it was.

draxynnic.3719:

Didn’t they? None of the Pact locations we can visit in-game has facilities to build them (Fort Trinity has a dock, but not the facilities to build an airship from scratch). It’s possible that they were built at areas of Vigil Keep or the Priory that we can’t visit. It’s possible they were built at Lion’s Arch (and, well, errrrm, about that…). But as a previous poster mentioned, it is explicitly stated that the Iron Legion was providing industrial support to the Pact.

Even if we do assume that the Pact is self-sufficient, expanding your available resources through alliances is still a good thing – and for an alliance to be effective, partners need to talk to one another. Russia, the US, and Britain all agreed that Germany needed to be fought from 1942 to 1945, but they still held summits so that their strategies worked together. (Although Stalin wanted Britain and the US to concentrate purely on air superiority and to let the Red Army fight the ground war all the way to the Channel if needed – unsurprisingly, Churchill and Roosevelt were a little cynical about his motives.) And in the meantime, your allies might come up with ideas that you wouldn’t have come up with on your own (even if you are a multiracial organisation).

There are no facilities anywhere in the game to build most of the things we see in the game, so the omission is hardly surprising.

There is no point forming an alliance to fight … well what … we don’t even know yet. We have no idea of the size or disposition of Mordremoth’s forces, or where they are located, or how to fight them, or even how to defend against them.

There is nothing for the summit to decide.

And if real world history is anything to go by, one of the factions will stick its head in the sand for half the war and only react (in abject surprise) when one of its harbours is bombed and a full on invasion of its coastline is imminent.

The Black Citadel is clearly an industrial hub, just not the areas adventurers are normally in. The facilities held by the Pact and its affiliates – not so much (and apart from the order headquarters, they’re fully explorable).

As for things for the summit to decide… there are plenty of things to discuss:

1) Establishing how much ‘spare capacity’ each group has to turn towards the Mordremoth fight.

2) Getting everybody focused on the Mordremoth threat. Yes, the Pact has its own scientists and researchers… but if non-Pact groups are also on the problem, one of them might think of something the others miss.

3) Finding if there is anything the various groups can do in the meantime to help the others increase their spare capacity.

4) Forming protocols for Mordrem attacks in various locations, so relevant forces know what to do in the event of an attack (particularly if they’re not the ones under attack directly, but a neighbour is) rather than having to make it up as it happens and possibly making things worse.

5) Formation of a reserve to respond quickly to crisis spots (this is probably where the Pact and whatever airship fleet it still has comes in, but they can’t put garrisons everywhere).

6) Establishing protocols so that troop movements in response to 4 and 5 go smoothly – it’d really suck if, say, a Seraph army emerged from Ebonhawke to aid the charr against a mordrem attack, and was attacked by charr thinking that this was an invading army that had broken the truce.

7) Coming up with a unified strategy for securing Brisban Wildlands and exploring Dry Top and deeper into the Maguuma. There are already Seraph, Warden, and Peacekeeper forces in the area, so it makes sense that they should be part of the effort – from the sides of logistics and clearing the area from distractions (such as bandits, Nightmare Court and Inquest) if not actually serving as the ‘tip of the spear’ themselves.

8) Pressuring the Arcane Council representative to officially ban the Inquest from operating in the eastern Brisban and Dry Top area. This won’t stop them, but it will mean that Pact and allied forces won’t have to worry about legal ambiguities when they clear out any Inquest they find.

Annnd that’s just what I came up with in a few minutes of brainstorming.

draxynnic.3719:

As for things for the summit to decide… there are plenty of things to discuss:

1) Establishing how much ‘spare capacity’ each group has to turn towards the Mordremoth fight.

2) Getting everybody focused on the Mordremoth threat. Yes, the Pact has its own scientists and researchers… but if non-Pact groups are also on the problem, one of them might think of something the others miss.

3) Finding if there is anything the various groups can do in the meantime to help the others increase their spare capacity.

4) Forming protocols for Mordrem attacks in various locations, so relevant forces know what to do in the event of an attack (particularly if they’re not the ones under attack directly, but a neighbour is) rather than having to make it up as it happens and possibly making things worse.

5) Formation of a reserve to respond quickly to crisis spots (this is probably where the Pact and whatever airship fleet it still has comes in, but they can’t put garrisons everywhere).

6) Establishing protocols so that troop movements in response to 4 and 5 go smoothly – it’d really suck if, say, a Seraph army emerged from Ebonhawke to aid the charr against a mordrem attack, and was attacked by charr thinking that this was an invading army that had broken the truce.

7) Coming up with a unified strategy for securing Brisban Wildlands and exploring Dry Top and deeper into the Maguuma. There are already Seraph, Warden, and Peacekeeper forces in the area, so it makes sense that they should be part of the effort – from the sides of logistics and clearing the area from distractions (such as bandits, Nightmare Court and Inquest) if not actually serving as the ‘tip of the spear’ themselves.

8) Pressuring the Arcane Council representative to officially ban the Inquest from operating in the eastern Brisban and Dry Top area. This won’t stop them, but it will mean that Pact and allied forces won’t have to worry about legal ambiguities when they clear out any Inquest they find.

Annnd that’s just what I came up with in a few minutes of brainstorming.

I would like to welcome everyone to Guild Wars: Episode One- The Bureaucratic Menace.

While I might enjoy a lengthy text filled dialogue about the different nations arguing over the policies of this whole situation, I don’t think the good majority of the playerbase will as well.

Yeah, I don’t expect all or even most of the above will play out on screen. Assuming the summit somehow manages to avoid the narrative convention pushing for it to be disrupted, we’d probably only be there for the opening parts, and the nitty gritty will happen off-camera.

However, just because it doesn’t make for interesting viewing doesn’t mean it’s completely redundant, as Wanderer was arguing.

Now I almost want a scene of political drama in the next episode. If everyone on the summit will agree on everything instantly, I’ll be a bit disappointed.

If the races all agree in just a few episodes, maybe we can keep Smodur and Jennah there for just another day or two to work out the details of the human-charr treaty thats taking the ambassadors more than 2 years now.

lakdav.3694:

If the races all agree in just a few episodes, maybe we can keep Smodur and Jennah there for just another day or two to work out the details of the human-charr treaty thats taking the ambassadors more than 2 years now.

You mean the treaty that has been finalized and finished… 2 years ago?

If you forgot, the start of the CM dungeon storymode is CELEBRATING the treaty finish. :P

No, it isn’t. It’s celebrating the ceasefire and start of negotiations. To give a real-world analogy, we’re between the 11/11/1918 armistice and the signing of the Versailles Treaty, and unlike WW1 there’s no clear winner to ram their terms down the throat of a clear loser and threaten an immediate resumption of hostilities if the latter doesn’t capitulate on all points and sign immediately.

draxynnic.3719:

No, it isn’t. It’s celebrating the ceasefire and start of negotiations. To give a real-world analogy, we’re between the 11/11/1918 armistice and the signing of the Versailles Treaty, and unlike WW1 there’s no clear winner to ram their terms down the throat of a clear loser and threaten an immediate resumption of hostilities if the latter doesn’t capitulate on all points and sign immediately.

Um, the cease-fire was formed a while ago.. close to right after the brand formed IIRC. Dougal Keane was sent into Ascalon city AFTER the cease-fire, to get the claw of Khan-ur so humans had something to start the peace talks with. And why would they throw a party celebrating the cease fire… a year or two after it happened (Assuming cease-fire happened shortly before Dougal Keane went into AC, which I honestly think it’d form closer to when the brand formed instead, but we have no dates for that.). So a year or two if it formed right before Keane went after the claw, six years or so if it formed right after the brand started. Some of the dialogue in the fields of ruin implies the Charr formed the Sentinals directly after the brand came to be, and a good number of the Charr involved in the siege of Ebonhawke joined that force instantly.

The term used is Detente, which means “an ending of unfriendly or hostile relations between countries” I personally think that’s closer to peace treaty then cease-fire because cease-fire just means everybody stops shooting, it doesn’t mean the nations are friendly at all.

Besides, even if the treaty isn’t finished as of CM, it’s a peace treaty. Those things usually, IIRC, tend to NOT get resolved super quickly.

Uhm… No. As far as i remember the cease-fire was not in effect when Dougal and the others traversed through Ascalon.

Ebonhawke guards attacked them when they saw the charr in the group without prison binds.
Charr attacked them right as they left the Ebonhawke sewers.
They could only transport humans through Ascalon if they pretended that the humans were prisoners.
They could only transport the charr through Ebonhawke if they pretended that she was a prisoner.

Ebonhawke was not under direct attack by the time the book gets there, but it is not the cease-fire yet. Its only a pause between attacks. (Many paranoid human NPCs in the city think the cease-fire is just a pause as well, which shows that there have been on occasion longer pauses in the assault.)

But the point is that if a peace-treaty takes this much time, imagine the length of the discussion concerning moving armies through the other’s territory ‘to lend aid against the big bad.’

It’s been a while since I read the books, but you are telling me that the Charr waited, let Ebonhawke rebuild the shattered gates, and then resumed the sieges. Or that they got more forces out there after the gates got repaired. With the brand RIGHT there, effectively ruining easy travel for supplies to fuel said siege?

That seems very much out of character/out of place. Especially since the “butcher of the siege plains” is said to have joined the Sentinals out of pride for the charr (as opposed to the Vigil) and said charr’s comments basically is “We can sit here and bicker, but right there is proof of the dragon’s danger.”

Just talked to her actually, she has her job at the summit is to remind the delegates there is bigger problems out there then history and racial hatreds. Honestly, if the cease fire only formed a year or less before the tutorial/start of living story, that’s an insane advancement of peace for humans and charr. Still seemed weird that the “butcher of the siege plains” joined the Sentinals because the obvious danger the dragons posed, yet the Charr kept the sieges going for six more years before deciding to call it off because of the danger of the brand and the dragons? <_<.

Okay, so the npc dialogue I’ve found which somewhat supports that, is the foreman at the ruined part of ebonhawke who mentions that the makeshift supports got ruined by ballista fire “four years ago”, two years after Kralk’s awakening. closest we’ll get to a timeline. Wish we had more details on it, because it seems weird for the charr to presumably march a large army through the brand (which is hell to cross in canon) just to resume the sieges when their old siege force got ruined. But I suppose there is evidence of such from the ebonhawke npc dialogues.

Still, 250+ years of conflict won’t get erased easily.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/lore/lore/New-lore-interview-to-Anet-lore-team/first#post4226678

• What is the current state of the charr-human peace negotiations towards the signing of the treaty?

Slow (very slow) but making progress. The Black Citadel and Divinity’s reach are forging a good working relationship and both governments are committed to the peace process, but each has significant portions of its population that are suspicious or even hostile to the notion of peace with their traditional enemies. Hammering out the details of the treaty remains a contentious and time-consuming process.

And…

Your Herald

An Invitation to Caudecus’s Manor

Hail, mighty hero!
I hope that you are well! The neighborhood is buzzing with excitement about you! I’ve had word that there will be a party celebrating the charr/human peace negotiations in Queensdale. The reception will be at the Manor of Lord Caudecus, overlooking the shire of Beetletun, and will be attended by diplomats from all the major races. Captain Logan Thackeray is concerned for the safety of Queen Jennah, will be attending, and will need support. A hero of your merit should attend the soiree and offer what help you can.

—Thanks, Your Herald
PS – We understand that Zojja will be attending as well as part of the asura delegation, but we don’t know why. She is always a wild card, so be cautious.

Okay, let`s chime in again.

Considering the Tyria Alliance (or the T5 )
The escalation to an continental army is just too fast.

Even if we ignore the timeframe (which makes no sense, but how long certain events are appart is not know. It could be days, weeks and in my opinion months… they synced the calendar, so around 4 months since the roar…), there are certain groups in the world who take care of certain things.

Even if we take out the Pact, which for some was an anti-Zaithan alliance, for others it is against every Eldar Dragon, there is still the fact that the sperate Orders still function alone.

If the fact that the pact has knowledge about the EDs is true, then the Orders have it as well.
If the fact that the Pale Tree knew from the roar that it is Mordremoth and is since then bolstering her defences, then it makes a lot of sense that all who need to know about it, do so.

Subsequently as soon as the roar happend, there should be several groups sending their people to scout and be ready to act as soon as the first sign of a dragon appear…

Which was right with the roar!

Mister E send us an mail, saying: “there are rumors of dragons”
Which means since the roar there should at least all Orders be ready to engage, maybe even comming back together to renew the Pact.

First and foremost, they should be present at the front, to ward of danger. They should be visible… (and in extension, inteactable)

We do not even see Vigil around and they are known for smashing then asking (compared to the others).

Jumping from “nothing” to Tyrian Alliance, is ignoring all other means and jumping to “overkill” based on … I have no idea… so far the only difference with Mordremoth is, that he is “suddenly” popping up,… but that is nothing the others can`t do as well. I do not see the reason to escalate to that level…

On our PC
Our PC has in fact the “right”, the “authority” and “connections” to ask the political leaders of each race for an audience.

- He/She earns the right to talk to his nations leader first, as he defends his race`s interests, in the personal part of the PS.
- He has a mentor, who is high ranking in his race and fought by him side by side (Destiny`s Edge Member) in the Dungeons and to bring down Zaithan.
- He earns the right`s to enter one of the Orders of Tyria and raises in their ranks to the top. Each of the Orders is aknowldged and represneted in each city, which means their words have some weight.
- He defends Lions Arch, retakes Claw Island, helps building connections to lower Races and is part of the founding Members of the Pact.
- He helps considerably to cleanse Orr on the side of Trahearn and a lot of high ranking officials saw him.
- He gets a title from the “King of Orr” (sadly not equipable)
- He is buddy buds with Trahearn, who is well known with the Pale Tree.
- He defended Queen Jenna at the Clockwork Chaos
- He takes down Scarlet (but I do not think that really cares anyone outside of LA. Well except Rythlock who annoys Rox with it)

Based on that he can:
- personaly go to his racial leader
- Ask Trahearn, who reprents the Pact, to ask the Leaders to talk about an Alliance (subsequently getting you up to speed and allowing for the story to play out as she did, since you might help out here and there.)
- Ask Destiny`s Edge
- Ask your Order (We all wanted them to come back and do something)

And some other ways as well.
I really do not get why the “biconics” were the first Idea to do so. Aside from their race, they are “not the right people”
- Taimi is a troublemaker
- Rox is not following orders and in shame
- Braham has a mothercomplex
and Kasmeer is a noble fallen from grace.

None of them is really suited to deliver this message and still they did. It could be great story, but since all of it was just brushed over in one episode, it just amounted to nothing in the end.
It just leaves a sour taste in my mouth if I think about the possibilities that were there and the conclusion we got, just to keep the biconics in the story…
I like them as Characters but to be honest… they do not fit the overall story. They bearly filled that role in LS1 and in LS2 are unable to keep up, since the plot is too fast to allow anything to sink in or even worse, to make sense.
The Biconis at this point are just tools and not characters and that just makes me angry.

Kalavier.1097:

It’s been a while since I read the books, but you are telling me that the Charr waited, let Ebonhawke rebuild the shattered gates, and then resumed the sieges. Or that they got more forces out there after the gates got repaired. With the brand RIGHT there, effectively ruining easy travel for supplies to fuel said siege?

That seems very much out of character/out of place. Especially since the “butcher of the siege plains” is said to have joined the Sentinals out of pride for the charr (as opposed to the Vigil) and said charr’s comments basically is “We can sit here and bicker, but right there is proof of the dragon’s danger.”

Just talked to her actually, she has her job at the summit is to remind the delegates there is bigger problems out there then history and racial hatreds. Honestly, if the cease fire only formed a year or less before the tutorial/start of living story, that’s an insane advancement of peace for humans and charr. Still seemed weird that the “butcher of the siege plains” joined the Sentinals because the obvious danger the dragons posed, yet the Charr kept the sieges going for six more years before deciding to call it off because of the danger of the brand and the dragons? <_<.

Okay, so the npc dialogue I’ve found which somewhat supports that, is the foreman at the ruined part of ebonhawke who mentions that the makeshift supports got ruined by ballista fire “four years ago”, two years after Kralk’s awakening. closest we’ll get to a timeline. Wish we had more details on it, because it seems weird for the charr to presumably march a large army through the brand (which is hell to cross in canon) just to resume the sieges when their old siege force got ruined. But I suppose there is evidence of such from the ebonhawke npc dialogues.

Still, 250+ years of conflict won’t get erased easily.

On the bolded part: Hence why it’s worth celebrating. :P Note also that the personal story starts with an invasion of centaurs that reached the gates of Divinity’s Reach itself – CM was probably the earliest time it was reasonable to celebrate the truce (or, well, anything).

On Ebonhawke’s shattered gates in Edge of Destiny: the Charr probably had their hands too full themselves dealing with the first waves of Branded all the way up and down the Brand to take advantage of Ebonhawke’s moment of weakness – especially since the besieging forces were the first victims of Champion Kronon and his branded ogres. The Ebon Vanguard has probably had centuries of experience in defending and quickly repairing breaches to the walls, and meanwhile they still had the rest of the citadel walls to rely on for defense – charr through the Iron Marches and Blazeridge Steppes, on the other hand, were probably more concerned with hurriedly building defenses against the new threat of the Brand to immediately press on to Ebonhawke. Especially since Ebonhawke is on the opposite side of the Brand to the Black Citadel or, for that matter, any charr settlement of real size apart from the siege camps, so the charr couldn’t get a new army to Ebonhawke until they’d gained some measure of control over at least part of the Brand.

It should, however, be acknowledged that negotiations were going on through intermediaries (namely, the Vigil) between Divinity’s Reach and the Black Citadel in this time – but these negotiations were in secret and the new besieging force was still under orders to take Ebonhawke if they got the opportunity. From Smodur’s point of view at the time, in fact, this might even have been desirable – destroying Ebonhawke would have ended that war and allowed the Iron Legion to concentrate on its other enemies without having to make peace (and compromise) with any of its enemies. Fighting stopped (Renegedes and Seperatists notwithstanding) sometime between GoA and the start of GW2, but the technicalities of the treaty have not been worked out last we heard and the treaty has not been signed.

In fact, this has been cited as one reason why Jennah has not shown an interest in pressing a religious claim on Orr – because the treaty negotiations remain the focus of her attention.

Zomaarwat.3912:

It makes sense to send Kasmeer/Rox/Braham because we can’t be everywhere at once (even though time seems to work differently in Tyria).

Yes we can! We have waypoints that instantly teleport us anywhere we want. We could be right in any capital instantly. That was my original point. The current Living Story uses the waypoints as a story element, and then conveniently ignores they exist to suit the plot.

Kalavier.1097:

draxynnic.3719:

No, it isn’t. It’s celebrating the ceasefire and start of negotiations. To give a real-world analogy, we’re between the 11/11/1918 armistice and the signing of the Versailles Treaty, and unlike WW1 there’s no clear winner to ram their terms down the throat of a clear loser and threaten an immediate resumption of hostilities if the latter doesn’t capitulate on all points and sign immediately.

Um, the cease-fire was formed a while ago.. close to right after the brand formed IIRC. Dougal Keane was sent into Ascalon city AFTER the cease-fire, to get the claw of Khan-ur so humans had something to start the peace talks with. And why would they throw a party celebrating the cease fire… a year or two after it happened (Assuming cease-fire happened shortly before Dougal Keane went into AC, which I honestly think it’d form closer to when the brand formed instead, but we have no dates for that.). So a year or two if it formed right before Keane went after the claw, six years or so if it formed right after the brand started. Some of the dialogue in the fields of ruin implies the Charr formed the Sentinals directly after the brand came to be, and a good number of the Charr involved in the siege of Ebonhawke joined that force instantly.

The term used is Detente, which means “an ending of unfriendly or hostile relations between countries” I personally think that’s closer to peace treaty then cease-fire because cease-fire just means everybody stops shooting, it doesn’t mean the nations are friendly at all.

Besides, even if the treaty isn’t finished as of CM, it’s a peace treaty. Those things usually, IIRC, tend to NOT get resolved super quickly.

You need to brush up on your lore.

The entire reason why Dougal was sent into Ascalon City was to obtain the Claw of the Khan-Ur so that negotiations can begin. At the end of Edge of Destiny, we just see a very small fraction of charr working with Ebonhawke and surviving. That was nothing more than a temporary truce, one that ended within a day. The one we see being negotiated over in Fields of Ruin began shortly after Ghosts of Ascalon – 4 years after EoD, and 1 year before the Personal Story. Caudecus’ Manor is just a celebration for the negotiations going well – not started nor finished. Just “going well.” In the eyes of those from Kryta, and not those dealing with Separatists and Renegades. The entire party was nothing but a farce presented by Caudecus to gain popularity with the Queen’s supporters – a political ploy.

There is no treaty, and the nations are not friendly – the leaders hope for the nations to become friendly, but as of the PS and Caudecus’s Manor, they haven’t hit that point (and we’ve seen no progress in the past 2 years thanks to how the Living World functions and Anet’s apparent policy of minimal resources for maximum direct story). That is why it’s called a cease-fire. All they did was stop firing, and offer gifts to convince each other to enter negotiations.

I wouldn’t call the nations “Not friendly.” Sure, they aren’t friends, but they aren’t close to how they once were. The Charr around Ebonhawke are currently working together fine with humans, and frankly, the treaty is going fine for all the implications we see. The best chance the Renegades had for getting the fighting started was to try to make it seem like one ambassador murdered the other. But that failed and the two sides got closer IMO. IIRC, there is one charr who mentions how the treaty will give fields of ruin to humanity, and the tone of it doesn’t make it sound like it’s a far off faint hope, but more like a very real possibility in the future. The treaty isn’t signed yet, but for all purposes the feelings I get from ingame npcs is some treat it as if it basically is. What other times do you see two forces that hated each other, currently in cease fire(Moving toward solid peace treaty) and actively working together in joint operations said to be “Not friendly” :P

Also, it’s been a very long time since I even TOUCHED those two novels. Being as I don’t own either one and read them on loan once, I think that forgives messing up a detail or two. Also details like that are lacking on the wiki, I checked.

If you speak to the NPCs (some must be before their respective heart completion) in Fields of Ruin, then you’ll see that the only humans working with charr are soldiers ordered to do such or very few individuals hopeful of furthering the peace, and the only charr working with humans are Sentinels or those ordered to ‘play nice’ as I recall one wording it.

I would hardly consider such a situation to be two “friendly nations”. They aren’t openly hostile anymore, but they’re not friendly either.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

If you speak to the NPCs (some must be before their respective heart completion) in Fields of Ruin, then you’ll see that the only humans working with charr are soldiers ordered to do such or very few individuals hopeful of furthering the peace, and the only charr working with humans are Sentinels or those ordered to ‘play nice’ as I recall one wording it.

I would hardly consider such a situation to be two “friendly nations”. They aren’t openly hostile anymore, but they’re not friendly either.

Furthermore, in the Black Citadel and other parts, when you delve in the subject and mention (at least as a human) that now we’re allied or something of that sort, the Charr clearly state it’s a cease fire or a temporary truce and nothing else.

And after the hearts are done? It’s probably a lot more positive, yes? I think if we are talking “present day” timeframe, we should go with hearts as “complete” not at start.

Also, Black Citadel, like DR, is timelocked at the very start of the PS story. The one time I recall is when somebody asks a Charr about the treaty, and he responds with “It’s a cease fire right now, not a treaty yet.”

Like in DR you’ll hear people talking about how supply caravans are running late, and the centaur forces are threatening to overrun the Seraph, and the ministers talking about pulling more Seraph to safeguard the city vs actually defending areas further out. Which we know, as of current day, the Centaurs are a threat but not nearly as major as back then.

Either way, off topic to the Episode 3 feedback I think. In general, two years may not be enough for all the details of a Treaty to be worked out.

Both complete and not are a 1325 viewpoint. And those that change usually change to a “yeah, yeah, I get it… But I don’t like it, they just better prove useful allies” rather than openly spitting on the orders while following them.

I didn’t notice it the first time I read Ghosts of Ascalon, but thinking back over it, isn’t it kinda of insulting that the humans offered the charr an artifact that belonged to them, but was looted from territory held by the charr? It’d be like breaking into the Pyramids of Giza, plundering them for Egyptian artifacts then offering them to the Egyptians as a sign of peace.

Ok let me get this straight.

The nations are going to gather some of their most important leaders for a summit, right at the Pale Tree who was a dragon champion of Mordremoth. She has a high chance of getting corrupted by Mordremoth (Hello? Any brains home???). At the same time the Nightmare Court just happens to be the only faction that we didn’t have to “weaken” during Ep3, so they will have their full strength to infiltrate and attack the summit.

If it smells like Idiot Ball…………

The only good thing is that Trahearne will most likely be killed during the summit. So finally the Pact will be lead by someone with half a brain. Which I had hoped and hoped to be Rytlock (LOL right?).

And then, big LOL at the 6 pieces of the Ascalonian crown. We don’t have to go into some epic dungeon to find them. No, they were just misplaced all over the place because it was view as non-important by the soldiers.

Then Rytlock jumped after the sword? WTF? Dude you are in command of thousands of Charrs. Their lives all depends on you. And quite frankly, you were the only commander in this whole story who has half a brain. Every other good guy have the idiot ball. You were the only guy in this whole story who I would entrust the Pact to, and now you are gone.

Only Livia can save us now.

CHIPS.6018:

And quite frankly, you were the only commander in this whole story who has half a brain.

In regards to Rytlock I could just as much say that his feud with Logan early on was pretty stupid. All because Logan chose to go back and he held Logan accountable even though Eir was not only leading of the group but Snaff didn’t die because of Logan – Logan didn’t put Snaff in harms way and then laugh before running off. That’s not to say Logan was any less selfish, he had his issues too but it all came across as a high school drama.

Though I did like how he spoke to Rox and then to you the player. I think he’s sensible when he wants to be.

Shiren.9532:

I didn’t notice it the first time I read Ghosts of Ascalon, but thinking back over it, isn’t it kinda of insulting that the humans offered the charr an artifact that belonged to them, but was looted from territory held by the charr? It’d be like breaking into the Pyramids of Giza, plundering them for Egyptian artifacts then offering them to the Egyptians as a sign of peace.

Isn’t the whole point though that the Charr didn’t manage to get it due to the Ghosts?

I can understand the suspicion against the pale tree. It startet with the line in the animation at the end of part 2: “Do not question the Dream”. That was a clear sign to question all of it.

CHIPS.6018:

Ok let me get this straight.

The nations are going to gather some of their most important leaders for a summit, right at the Pale Tree who was a dragon champion of Mordremoth. She has a high chance of getting corrupted by Mordremoth (Hello? Any brains home???). At the same time the Nightmare Court just happens to be the only faction that we didn’t have to “weaken” during Ep3, so they will have their full strength to infiltrate and attack the summit.

Allow me to straighten you out.

The Pale Tree being a champion of Mordremoth is player speculation and despite the fact we’ve learned the sylvari are corruptible by Mordremoth, nothing truly supports that argument, still. Nothing says the Pale Tree is easily corruptible either, given that she is the one preventing Mordremoth’s corruption. If anything, she is likely fully immune and is sending that immunity to her children.

Secondly, we didn’t weaken bandits or Inquest either. Nor Flame Legion nor Renegsdes nor Separatists nor centaurs. We only dealt with Sons of Svanir and Foefire ghosts.

Jaken.6801:

And some other ways as well.
I really do not get why the “biconics” were the first Idea to do so. Aside from their race, they are “not the right people”
- Taimi is a troublemaker
- Rox is not following orders and in shame
- Braham has a mothercomplex
and Kasmeer is a noble fallen from grace.

None of them is really suited to deliver this message and still they did. It could be great story, but since all of it was just brushed over in one episode, it just amounted to nothing in the end.

Don’t forget that Kasmeer is a good friend of Lord Faren, a well-known noble in Divinity’s Reach. She could easily be in good terms with Countess Anise. By the way, she’s the only Biconic to achieve her goal without our help. Even if Braham and Rox were sent in their respective homeland, our character was in both places to lead the talks.

It makes sense for Braham to chat with her mother (even if he was angry at her, Eir is the most famous person he knows well – apart of us), and it makes sense for Rox to chat with Rytlock (after all, she was trying to enter the Stone warband – she had connections with him). Taimi is an apprentice of Zojja and a so-called genius, I see no problem with her in this episode.

In other way, I have to agree with some people about Rox and Taimi. I don’t want Taimi to be the know-it-all of the LS. And story writers need to clarify the term “free agent”. Is Zirra Silvershot a free agent ? What’s that ?

The free agents seem to be mercenaries. In Harathi there is at least one mercenary camp and they are doing some parts of the centaur war and are hired by the seraph.

lordkrall.7241:

Shiren.9532:

I didn’t notice it the first time I read Ghosts of Ascalon, but thinking back over it, isn’t it kinda of insulting that the humans offered the charr an artifact that belonged to them, but was looted from territory held by the charr? It’d be like breaking into the Pyramids of Giza, plundering them for Egyptian artifacts then offering them to the Egyptians as a sign of peace.

Isn’t the whole point though that the Charr didn’t manage to get it due to the Ghosts?

If it was a tool that had some kind of use to the charr it might matter that they retrieved it regardless of how it was done, but the claw does nothing. It’s not like the blue orb in Fort Trinity that keeps Zhaitan’s undead out, it’s not even confirmed to have the power of Sohothin or Magdaer. For all we know there is nothing special about it. The last owner wasn’t able to officially be recognised as a Khan-Ur and the current owner has it sitting on a wall somewhere. Why does it matter that it’s no longer collecting dust in some crypt – it’s not like the charr are doing anything special with it.

Didn’t Dougal’s group have to sneak into charr territory? If the charr were happy for the team to retrieve it where charr failed, Dougal wouldn’t need to sneak in.

It does hold a rather major value though. It is one of the requirements of reuniting the Charr Legions. Which is something that is very important when it comes to facing the Dragons.

Of course they sneaked in. The Charr wouldn’t allow a group of none-Charr running around in their territory. Just like how Ebonhawke or DR would allow a Charr to run around as he wished in there (at that time). Not all Charr want the Claw retrieved, it is also a matter of pride. They don’t want the “lesser races” to meddle in their affairs.

It’s also worth noting that Ascalon City isn’t really either charr or human even now, let alone at the time. It’s pretty firmly ghost territory. It so happened that a human was in the unique position of, at that time, being the only one who had entered the city and returned alive since the Foefire. Furthermore, the Claw wasn’t really looted from charr territory – it was claimed as spoils of war from a charr who was attacking what was, at the time, Ascalonian territory.

It’s also worth noting that returning things that were taken in wartime can be part of the process of reconciliation after a war – the charr returning religious artifacts (or attempting to, in Sea of Sorrows) is based on a similar idea: the charr returning something of historic value that was looted from humans as a gesture of goodwill.

When it comes to sneaking in – well, of course. Some of the charr higher-ups seemed to know something was going on, but it wasn’t exactly something that could be broadcast openly. On the other hand, a large part of the point of having a charr in the group was so that negotiating with the locals – albeit while employing the ‘prisoner ploy’ – was actually an option.

Regarding the importance of the Claw – it does hold immense symbolic value. There’s a subplot in GoA that if the Flame Legion got the Claw, it might increase their legitimacy enough to turn their insurgency into a full-on civil war that human forces might be able to exploit. Odds are that part of the reason Smodur wanted the Claw as a condition for agreeing to a truce was purely practical – holding the Claw boosted his perceived legitimacy among the charr such that he actually could pull off a move as radical as making peace with a race the charr have viewed as hereditary enemies for over a millenia.

I was just doing some reading and came across an old lore interview with Ree. It actually answers a bit about Smoldur’s importance over the other two Imperators.

http://www.guildmag.com/lore-interview-with-ree-soesbee/

What I found interesting was that he actually commands the soldiers from the other other two legions for as long as they are stationed in his region.

What I thought was really interesting was the idea that Smodur could make peace with the humans but the Ash and Blood legions don’t have to respect it (unless they are in Iron Legion territory). The humans essentially have to make peace with three legions unless there is a Khan-Ur.

Four.

There are four legions, even if one of them isn’t ever going to compromise at peace talks.

Well, as the saying goes, ‘never’ is a long time. Practically speaking, though, peace with the charr means peace with the three legions – at the moment, making peace with the Flame is akin to the charr making peace with the White Mantle.

It’s also worth noting that there are supposedly other smaller legions than the big four, although they’re obviously not as important and we don’t hear much from them.

Politically, Malice from Ash seems to be in favour of the treaty (at least enough that Ember working with the Vigil to help bring it about wasn’t regarded as any conflict of interest). Bangar Ruinbringer of Blood, however, had been noted in now-withdrawn text as being a wild card who hasn’t gotten over his hatred of humanity – however, since the border is Iron Legion territory, he can’t (overtly) do anything about it like order Blood Legion warbands to attack humans.