Guild Wars 2

Rekka is in charge of the mine in the guild hall. Obviously, not a big character. But, I think there are some interesting subtleties to her that I didn’t want people to overlook.

If you ask her about herself, you learn that she has no magical talent, and she never graduated from school. That’s enough to make any asura an outcast, but she also has tiny ears, so she can’t even make up for it by being pretty.

My point being that she’s at the bottom of the social ladder. Right down there with the asura that end up working on ships owned by bookahs, or other manual labor better suited to a golem.

Her choice of career says a lot about her, though. In one of her idle lines of dialogue, she says something like ‘Asura originally came from deep underground. I honor that heritage.’

I found this to be very telling. Despite the fact that she was so rejected by her society that they wouldn’t stop the mob from stealing her land, it was still a big part of her identity. Despite having no talent in things valued by modern asuran society, she chose to be a miner, just so she could hold on to that connection to who she was as an asura.

Whether she chose Riven valley because it left her closer to Rata Sum, or because it’s was convenient to find work there, I can’t say. Whether she’s empowered by her asura identity, or holds onto it so tightly because she lacks confidence, is hard to say. There’s not a lot to go on, after all.

All of this was told without exposition shoving it down your throat. It was made evident through natural conversations, and the design of the character. A+ writing right there, even if not intentional.