Guild Wars 2

So with the death of Trehearne that Pact will need a new leader which is not going to be easy to fill in.

So far the Pact Leader is required to be…

-Not part of a Order (so the public won’t find a reason the Pact favors “this Order”)
-Must not play favorite over a Order.
-Skilled in Military planning (a lot of military planning will be needed to fight a Elder Dragon)
-Skilled in Politics (obtaining political connections and support for the Pact to obtain necessary resources beyond the 3 Orders and support from the Races even if it means dealing with the bad part of politics.)

and most of all
-Try not to remove the Commander from the Pact because of “Reasons”. (As successful the Commander is with Zhaitan and Mordremoth I got this feeling the Pact Commander’s loyality may come into question no matter what Race he or she is.)

Oh, I don’t know. Trahearne’s the only bar that’s been set, and he had no military planning or political connections. The first, he picked up on the job, and the second he got by without for years, and then had the Tree and us cover that part for him.

I think the only real requirement for the post is being someone the leaders of each Order respect. While at the time of the PS relations between them were acrimonious to the point that the prospect of anyone with affiliations to one was thrown out without consideration, I’m optimistic that three years of fighting together may have led to certain officers earning that respect.

Personally, I think its more probable that the pact will dissolve after this, and the roles of the 3 orders as independent entities will be emphasised more.

The player character cannot become the pact marshal, considering they are an official member of an order, and all the other major characters that appeared within HoT such as DE and DE2.0 are affiliated with other major factions (High Legions, Colleges, Seraph, etc.)

Unless somebody totally random like Crysthanthea takes up the role, Anet will have to introduce a new character to do it, which I think would be a bit unfavourable, because they’d have to heavily focus in on them for much of the future storyline, to show that they warrant being pact marshal, and the last thing we need is a single character taking up all the plot after the Scarlet arc.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Oh, I don’t know. Trahearne’s the only bar that’s been set, and he had no military planning or political connections. The first, he picked up on the job, and the second he got by without for years, and then had the Tree and us cover that part for him.

I think the only real requirement for the post is being someone the leaders of each Order respect. While at the time of the PS relations between them were acrimonious to the point that the prospect of anyone with affiliations to one was thrown out without consideration, I’m optimistic that three years of fighting together may have led to certain officers earning that respect.

Despite Trehearnes lack of military skills he did have political connections which was developed through the course of his life as he explored the lands of Tyria before he appeared on Claw Island during Zhaitan Arc.

All Trehearne Political connections developed through his life as he helped different people against Zhaitan’s minions that often breakout into the lands before Zhaitan’s defeat. Trehearne did more than just study Zhaitan and his Undead minions but also help fight them to keep the corruption under control before the events of Claw Island.

He had personal connections, and several of them did pay off- but we’re talking a blacksmith who can help make weapons, or a scout who can poke around a flooded temple. Nothing political. Besides at the Grove, where he was essentially born into a position of power, he never displays any sway in any of the big population centers, let alone with the institutions who run them. Even in Lion’s Arch- remember how he couldn’t even get the Lionguard to take their own job seriously? When it becomes necessary to win over these groups on the threat of the Elder Dragons, it all falls down to the Commander and Biconics.

Either way it seems there may only be two options for the Pact’s fate…

1) A new leader is selected through the course of Season 3 (not instantly but the character must be built up to why he is chosen)

or

2) the Pact begins to slowly disband due to the disaster when the Pact Fleet was destroyed, the massive loss of members due to the fleet’s destruction, the Sylvari reveal to be Elder Dragon minions, and maybe even consideration of support being withdrawn due to the amount of people lost and how a Sylvari was the leader of the Pact.

A lot of the Pact’s best members was assigned to assault Mordremoth and the Pact has lost a lot of people due to the Fleet’s destruction. I would not be surprised if the Pact starts to fall apart slowly through season 3 as nations question if it is worth to put support into the Pact when they still continue to resolve their own internal issues and yet to insure their own nation’s security.

Tha Pact after all is just what its name implies, a Pact between organizations towards a common goal but if that is shaken and the organizations starts to stray from each other it may fall a part no matter how many members were not with the fleet when it was destroyed. The Pact can only hold if they choose to keep their Pact.

I said it before in another thread, Eir would have been the best successor imo. She was well respected, had experience fighting dragons, had experience leading in combat (at least on the small scale), had connections to powerful people and had no other commitment. But alas she died instead.
The other parts of DE make no good candidates, I think. Logan is too busy with the Queen, I doubt you could pry him away from her. Rytlock has duties with the charr and also isn’t presentable enough. Zojja is too immature, she is smart but she wouldn’t make a good leader. And Caithe is too shifty, not the kind of person that inspires loyalty in her troops. Out of all of them Rytlock is probably the most likely, but then people would start accusing him of being fur-jesus again.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

He had personal connections, and several of them did pay off- but we’re talking a blacksmith who can help make weapons, or a scout who can poke around a flooded temple. Nothing political.

I’d say being respected by the three Orders’ leaders and personally knowing several of their high ranking members counts as “political connections”.

He also, somehow and without our or the biconics’ help, got the Iron Legion to make a formal agreement for assistance (the Pact assists against the Flame Legion, the Iron Legion sends troops and tanks – which makes their role in the World Summit a bit odd).

BuddhaKeks.4857:

I said it before in another thread, Eir would have been the best successor imo. She was well respected, had experience fighting dragons, had experience leading in combat (at least on the small scale), had connections to powerful people and had no other commitment. But alas she died instead.
The other parts of DE make no good candidates, I think. Logan is too busy with the Queen, I doubt you could pry him away from her. Rytlock has duties with the charr and also isn’t presentable enough. Zojja is too immature, she is smart but she wouldn’t make a good leader. And Caithe is too shifty, not the kind of person that inspires loyalty in her troops. Out of all of them Rytlock is probably the most likely, but then people would start accusing him of being fur-jesus again.

I’d argue that Logan makes a good candidate. He has military and leadership experience, and has sworn before to fight the Elder Dragons – the only reason he seemed to have gone back to Kryta was because of ArenaNet’s attempt at storytelling the Living World (“can take place before or after the end of the personal story”) which they later redacted with the finale of S1 and intro of S2 (“all of LW takes place after PS”).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

He also, somehow and without our or the biconics’ help, got the Iron Legion to make a formal agreement for assistance (the Pact assists against the Flame Legion, the Iron Legion sends troops and tanks – which makes their role in the World Summit a bit odd).

I think that is because it was just a personal favor that Trehearne called in why he manage to get those Iron Legion tanks into the fight against Zhaitan. Personal favors aren’t exactly known to be long term agreements nor long term supports after all so any support beyond that favor would require convensing the Leaders that it is worth to provide actual support of their Pact. With the Pact being young back then a lot higher members of society in each race would certainly have doubts back then to provide full support which is why the support the Pact got during Zhaitan Arc was more obtained by favors Trehearne had built up during his life.

Even though the Pact got Tanks into Orr the amount provided was a small amount compared to the much large amount the Iron Legion makes every day. Not to mention it was only one Iron Legion warband that was provided to handle the Tank squad. A full support would have provided more than one warband.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I’d argue that Logan makes a good candidate. He has military and leadership experience, and has sworn before to fight the Elder Dragons – the only reason he seemed to have gone back to Kryta was because of ArenaNet’s attempt at storytelling the Living World (“can take place before or after the end of the personal story”) which they later redacted with the finale of S1 and intro of S2 (“all of LW takes place after PS”).

I don’t really remember such a statement, but I remember they did confirm that Lost Shores takes place after the death of Zhaitan and thus after the PS. And while Lost Shores wasn’t technically part of the LS, all of S1 took place after Lost Shores. So that argument would have never made sense to begin with.
Aside from that I would agree that Logan would make sense as Trahearne’s successor, but unless he moves the Pact HQ to DR, that would mean he would be away from Jennah for long times. That wouldn’t really fit his “protective” personality. I know he has gotten better over the PS, dungeon storymodes and LS and he isn’t quite the lap dog anymore, but moving on to Marshall of the Pact, might be a little too much. So I would still favour Rytlock over him.

They changed policy twice. Lost Shores was clearly stated to happen after Zhaitan’s death… through out-of-game sources, and we now know ArenaNet’s policy regarding out-of-game sources apart from the books. Later in LS1, they came out with the policy that the order in which you played events was the order in which it actually happened, resulting in things like the relationship between Logan and Rytlock being set on ‘ambiguous’ (because it had to be something that was believable with anything between Rytlock wanting to gut Logan with Sohothin and the two having reconciled). Then, towards the end of LS1, they realised how much of a mess this was going to make and reverted to LS1 being entirely after Zhaitan regardless of the order that it’s played in.

I don’t think the new Marshal can be Logan for much the same reason as Trahearne dying – too much of the player base hates Logan for him to be accepted as Pact Marshal. Rytlock has a better rep, but neither Logan nor Rytlock are genuinely independent: both are too bound up in the command structures of their respective nations.

BuddhaKeks.4857:

I don’t really remember such a statement, but I remember they did confirm that Lost Shores takes place after the death of Zhaitan and thus after the PS. And while Lost Shores wasn’t technically part of the LS, all of S1 took place after Lost Shores. So that argument would have never made sense to begin with.

It was a back-and-forth thing.

Matthew Medina made a forum post saying Lost Shores is post-Zhaitan, but as they made Flame and Frost, they said that the Living World would be “taking place at the time you personally are”. Which means that if you play a character who didn’t beat the PS, then Zhaitan was alive while the Molten Alliance was going nuts, but if you play a character who did complete the PS, then Zhaitan was dead.

It, as you said, never made sense to begin with (like other odd storytelling stuff like the calendar retcon). But that was their stance.

BuddhaKeks.4857:

Aside from that I would agree that Logan would make sense as Trahearne’s successor, but unless he moves the Pact HQ to DR, that would mean he would be away from Jennah for long times. That wouldn’t really fit his “protective” personality. I know he has gotten better over the PS, dungeon storymodes and LS and he isn’t quite the lap dog anymore, but moving on to Marshall of the Pact, might be a little too much. So I would still favour Rytlock over him.

At the end of Chapter 3 of the human personal story, Logan comes to acknowledge that being overprotective is just as dangerous as not being protective at all.

At the end of Caudecus’ Manor story mode – though it’s poorly portrayed – he is effectively banished from Kryta until the Elder Dragon threat has been dealt with. The ruling isn’t official, but Jennah basically kicked him onto the curb. “Go kill Elder Dragons or don’t expect to get in my bed” basically. This is why he joins Caithe at Twilight Arbor, assaults the Citadel of Flame, and looks for Zojja at Crucible of Eternity before taking on Zhaitan.

During the PS and dungeon stories, Logan is basically taken out of that overprotective personality. With the exception of his showing during Queen’s Jubilee, after Caudecus’ Manor we only see him with DE and/or with the Pact. He doesn’t even stand near the Seraph who go to work with the Pact during S2, let alone show up for the world summit or is even conversed with to talk to Jennah (unlike Eir with Knut and Rytlock with Smodur), which rather implies that unlike the others he’s out and about more.

Out of all of DE, Logan is the only one who’s not been indicated to wait for the Pact’s next campaign in their racial city. Even though we never see Zojja in S1 or S2, we hear of her remaining in Rata Sum via letters or Taimi. Logan was only in DR from Flame and Frost to Queen’s Jubilee for all we know. He didn’t even show up when the Crown Pavilion was opened for Festival of the Four Winds.

THAT SAID, I fear that ArenaNet will go the pandering-to-vocals route, again, and make the PC the Pact Marshal. Despite the whole “the leader of the Pact must be impartial” and “the PC joined one of the orders”.

Either that, or they’ll remove the Pact from being the primary force and turn the light to the Guild Initiative.

I’d like to point out to the OP, having barely glanced over the topic, that those rules were set up when the Pact was ORIGINALLY FORMED, and may not even be in place for a successor.

The reason those rules were put forth was because the orders DIDN’T TRUST EACH OTHER, and at points even disliked each other!

They made the rules so whoever became leader would favor everybody equally. Now that the orders have worked together closely, and trust each other/like each other much more, I don’t see why they’d be in place. I see no reason why Laranthir would be excluded.

I’d rather not have the pact disbanded either, being honest. I wouldn’t mind it being expanded, with somebody taking the seat of Marshall (Or at least, the army/logistics part.). Then, we have the commander.

So the commander takes charge of a group, at first just destiny’s edge and biconics, but basically expands with recruits and becomes the vanguard, who charge in and clear the bad guys out. The Pact itself handles heavy firepower, holding the ground and fortifying it, and cleaning up remaining bad guys.

I’m weighing in that the Pact Leader you are trying to rescue throughout the Raid story is a valid candidate. At the moment he isn’t listed by name but is “well respected by his peers.” The whole thing has an air of mystery to it. Who ever the person is we are rescuing I feel will be of some importance.

cocowoushi.7150:

I’m weighing in that the Pact Leader you are trying to rescue throughout the Raid story is a valid candidate. At the moment he isn’t listed by name but is “well respected by his peers.” The whole thing has an air of mystery to it. Who ever the person is we are rescuing I feel will be of some importance.

Hmmm…. Now that you mention it… Anet could roll with this as long as they give him a good backstory and they don’t kill him off in the raidstory.

Wonder if we will be getting a new ranger hero ingame,

[SPOILERS]:

No leader.
Pact disbands.
They start to fight each other.
HOOO! Guild wars!

Plot twist, “E” will be the new pact leader.

I will be the pact leader. And I will rule with an iron fist!

Belzebu.3912:

Plot twist, “E” will be the new pact leader.

That would be marvelous! Of course as I’ve posted before my pet theory is that Faren is E, ala the Scarlet Pimpernel. And he’s done such a good job of convincing everyone he’s an idiot that he simply cannot step forward and get any respect now

I’ve pondered the Scarlet Pimpernel theory myself – the problem is, though, that E is no Scarlet Pimpernel. We haven’t heard of any acts of derring-do from an unknown figure that would require a public face as a fop to hide. Another distinction is that the Pimpernel had his support crew of allies who knew his identity – in E’s case, his allies seem to be the only ones who know he even exists, and none of them seem to know who’s behind the alias.

It’s still eminently plausible that Faren could be ‘E’ – because being a fop does not actually stop him from being able to be part of an efficient intelligence-gathering operation. If so, though, the primary component of the disguise is not his foppishness, but his boastfulness – for the Pimpernel the hard thing to believe is that Sir Blakeney can have the physical skills to do the things the Pimpernel does, while for Faren, the hard thing to believe would be that Faren could keep anything a secret when he could boast about it.

I asked myself the same question and please don’t hate me, but I would like to have Canach become leader of the Pact.
He is not part of an order, not part of our guild, learned politics from Anise, shows tactical skill and apparently he is a Sylvari … well, the last point might be the weak point in my idea, but still … I think he could do the job very well.

Canach becoming leader is rather possible. ArenaNet has a habit of killing a character to help develop a progression of another character’s personality.

For Canach, the person who died for his introspection was Trahearne. Seems not unlikely that he’d replace Trahearne.

Canach as pact leader sounds good. There’s a distinct lack of large explosions in this game. Giving the local eco-terrorist pyromanic mastermind total control of the largest military force in Tyrian history may remedy this.

He’s not really a terrorist – his goal was never to terrorize. He was using the wildlife as a distraction against the Consortium and Lionguard so he could burn the contracts. He went overboard, for sure, and poorly thought out his plans. But that doesn’t make him a terrorist.

And he wasn’t a pyromaniac either – though he uses explosives, he doesn’t give off the persona of loving the explosions or fire. They are merely effective tools he can easily use.

The only thing that really draws him back from being Pact leader is the fact that he’s a sylvari and an ex-con. That’s hard to trust. But since he got the Pact Commander to magically go from continuous insults to full trust and pleasantries over the course of 24 hours (from S2 to HoT), with the PC’s support he could be made leader of the Pact.

However, I’d still place bets on either Laranthir or the PC to become leader. Presuming the Pact doesn’t simply fall apart.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

However, I’d still place bets on either Laranthir or the PC to become leader. Presuming the Pact doesn’t simply fall apart.

I still doubt the commander would be chosen to be the Pact leader because it would put too much responsibility over the Commander that lore wise would reduce the amount of time he or she would have to go adventuring.

The only reason why our character had the freedom to do the things they can do from dungeoning, fractal, raids, exploring the world, and etc was because he or she didn’t have to take on the full responsibility for being the leader of the Pact which would have greatly restricted him or her to Pact base and Pact operations only.

With Mordremoth dead, being sylvari will probably warp back around to being an advantage again where Pact leadership is concerned – the vulnerability to a specific dragon is no longer a concern, while the protection against corruption by any of the remaining four remains. This goes double for sylvari who went into the heart of Mordremoth’s territory without succumbing.

However, I can see a few strikes against Canach as a possible new leader:

First, he’s still technically a convict serving his sentence. He says he’s going to ask Anise for his freedom, and given what he’s done, Anise may be inclined to think he deserves it – however, I don’t think she actually has control over that decision. From the discussion around the time of her purchase of Canach’s billet, he’s still technically a prisoner serving his time as far as Lion’s Arch is concerned, and Anise has responsibility for his behaviour: cutting Canach loose without Lion’s Arch agreeing to forgive the remainder of his sentence might not be tenable for Anise. Even if Canach receives an official pardon, Lion’s Arch may not be comfortable with the Pact being led by someone who was so recently a convict.

Second, many of the issues that can be raised for the PC not being the Marshal can also be raised for Canach. He’s a very effective field agent, but there’s little evidence that he can lead a large organisation. Of course, the same was true of Trahearne – but Trahearne at least had the experience of being a Firstborn on his side, as well as being Tyria’s foremost expert on the first dragon in the Pact’s sights. Canach has neither of those advantages. Essentially, any argument that can be leveraged against the PC being the Marshal can also be applied towards Canach, except for the meta-argument that Canach is an NPC and there are complications involved with putting a PC in that position.

Third, let’s be honest here. Canach is more popular as a character than Trahearne, sure, but can we really say he wouldn’t just become the next subject of Kormir syndrome if he were to be given a ‘reward’ that players feel their characters deserved more?

On that last point, it strikes me that another player election may actually be the way to go. That way… you’ll still get gripes, I’m sure, but at least whoever it turns out to be will be someone who can be said to have a fair amount of player support. Just please make it purely about who’s to be the leader of the Pact rather than doing what was done last time and forcing people to choose between their preferred option story-wise and their preferred option future-content-wise.

draxynnic.3719:

First, he’s still technically a convict serving his sentence. He says he’s going to ask Anise for his freedom, and given what he’s done, Anise may be inclined to think he deserves it – however, I don’t think she actually has control over that decision. From the discussion around the time of her purchase of Canach’s billet, he’s still technically a prisoner serving his time as far as Lion’s Arch is concerned, and Anise has responsibility for his behaviour: cutting Canach loose without Lion’s Arch agreeing to forgive the remainder of his sentence might not be tenable for Anise. Even if Canach receives an official pardon, Lion’s Arch may not be comfortable with the Pact being led by someone who was so recently a convict.

Prisoner billets as best I can tell from both the dialogue around Canach as well as Edge of Destiny is simply that all ‘ownership’ and responsibility for the criminal goes to the buyer. Basically if Anise says he’s free to go then he’s free to go, no need to talk to LA about it – but if he commits further crimes that LA cares about, they go to her just as much as they go to Canach.

On that last point, it strikes me that another player election may actually be the way to go. That way… you’ll still get gripes, I’m sure, but at least whoever it turns out to be will be someone who can be said to have a fair amount of player support. Just please make it purely about who’s to be the leader of the Pact rather than doing what was done last time and forcing people to choose between their preferred option story-wise and their preferred option future-content-wise.

I can go with that. And yeah, don’t go tying some ‘one of two content options, the one not chosen will never ever see the light of day’.

I still think they should add that fall of Abaddon fractal.

The impression I had, from Canach and from Edge of Destiny, is that the billet is a combination of an alternative way of paying their debt to society and parole (it seems to be offered under similar circumstances to parole: in situations where the prisoner is deemed to be of low risk of reoffending). Anise owns the debt, and she can give Canach as long a leash as she desires – but she’s still effectively his parole officer.

How long Lion’s Arch considers Canach to still be on “parole” is unclear, but I don’t think Anise can arbitrarily say that she’s no longer responsible for him, and I think Lion’s Arch is still going to regard him as serving his time until it doesn’t. What could happen, of course, is that Anise could decide he’s earned his release and then go to bat on his behalf with the Captain’s Council, possibly along with the PC (who took part in arresting him), Rytlock, Caithe, and Marjory, all of which probably have some influence with the Council (Ellen Kiel in particular).

However, I still suspect that Lion’s Arch wouldn’t entirely trust Canach being given the Pact’s top job right away.

And yeah, agreed regarding the Abaddon fractal. The proponents of it at ArenaNet appeared to feel they had a pretty good idea – it’s a crying shame to declare that it will never see the light of day due to a vote during which a lot of players would have been focusing on other things. I can see it not being their top priority, but there’s a big difference between “we’re concentrating on other things right now” and “never EVER.”

I still think it’d be a good idea to have the Commander to lead a vanguard, while somebody else takes over the Pact.

At first this vanguard can be the Commander + Destiny’s Edge and Biconics, but then expand as people join. Basically, what I said in my last post.

Vanguard charges in and does the elite commando stuff, Pact moves in to research, secure, and clean up the area.

And what if the next pact leader gonna be someone out of the younger races… dont forget, we have an egg actually hatching

I kind of doubt a newborn dragon would lead the anti-dragon organization.

More like be its mascot or best kept secret.

The only real way I could possible see the hatchling leading the Pact is if it turned out to be Glint’s living horcrux. But even then, I would rather see her in an advisor position.

Plot twist: Scarlet hatches from the egg and destroys LA

Someone may have already suggested this, but I think Rytlock is the best candidate.

More than likely there will be at least two candidates who would be considered to be leader from among the pact commanders. The PC will be excluded, as they have other duties elsewhere (or some other explanation). There will be another vote like Cutthroat Politics. Who ever is chosen will have a (minor) effect on the story line.
I don’t think it’ll be anyone from DE 2.0, or DE for that matter. But it makes sense to promote from inside the pact from among the commanders rather than bring in someone from the outside.

Vikkela.7261:

Plot twist: Scarlet hatches from the egg and destroys LA

I can see it happening.

maybe taimi gets really mature with her time in rata novus. I could see her being a shot caller idk why.