- With the Flame Legion and dredge, she went to each faction saying she got the other working with her already and offered said others’ technology/magic – Flame Legion wanted technology to gain an upper hand, and the dredge wanted flame magic for the same reason. Scarlet went to them saying “hey, I got what you want via this group, come join me” to both groups.
- Inquest she worked with, so I presume she used her old contacts being a “special consultant” – no real explanation given that I’ve seen though.
- With the pirates, all we really get is “work for me or I’ll kill you” and promises of looting.
- Watchknights she hijacked – she was capable of doing such because they’re based off of Steam creature technology and she is somehow related to them (be it reverse engineering or actually tied to them somehow).
- The Nightmare Court is never explained, as far as I know. We know she worked out some sort of deal to get access to Twilight Arbor – said deal later turning out to be the Toxic Alliance, I believe.
- The krait she seemingly threatened using the obelisk shards – “work for me, you get these; don’t work for me, you’ll never get them”. Hard to believe, but if they care enough for the sacredness of the shards it can work.
How does she retain their affiliation? Good question. But overall, as Aaron said, she somehow tricked them into believing that they gain from working for her.
I get all that and while I think almost all of it is flimsy and shallow (I’ve seen most of these points from Angel, Scott or someone else from the writing team) I can understand why someone would think this is a worthwhile explanation.
Compare all those alliances to how the formation of the Pact was handled. The three Orders already have a history of team work an inclusion. The story of Tyria in GW2 is very much about the five major races coming together to utilise each other’s strength to take on a common threat. Even before the Pact the three Orders are made up of the five major races (and others). On top of that, the three Orders share a common goal – to take on the threat of the Elder Dragons (arguably they wanted different things – Vigil wanted to kill, I think one of the others didn’t think the Elder Dragons could be killed only subdued etc) but it’s all in the same ballpark. Despite a shared goal and a demonstrated ability to overcome racial prejudices, forming the Pact and getting the three Orders to work together was a big deal and it took a considerable amount of diplomacy and imminent threats for it to work out. Even when the Pact was formed, the higher level zones of Tyria and Personal Story missions commonly recognise the mistrust or disdain or impatience brought on by three orders working together.
Compare and contrast that with how Scarlet’s alliances are formed. We never see any of Scarlet’s diplomatic skills, we rarely see the characterisation of these alliances recognise how mismatched they are (I think the prison scene post Flame and Frost was one of the only notable examples), hell the alliances barely have any personality or individual goals at all. Before the Living Story these factions had distinct histories, personalities and motivations. Very little of that is recognised in the story and it always seems to be trumped by Scarlet’s objectives. I feel like having these factions be part of Scarlet’s alliances and the way they were handled, it’s a betrayal of their identities and the world that was built prior to Scarlet’s creation.
Apparently the writers thought up identities for the leaders of the Flame Legion faction involved with Scarlet but that was never included in the releases. That’s a big mistake imo. The story of these alliances is very important for us to believe they would be doing what it is Scarlet wants them to do (especially if it would be contentious with established lore), having leaders in the story would have helped explain they are only splinter groups (given their demonstrated numbers, even that’s hard to swallow) and that faction’s role and motivations in the story.
I think the story only focused on the races for their shallow utility value – either their superficial technology contributions or their use as an army (like the krait invading from the sea). It’s especially strange when Scarlet’s motives and plan weren’t supposed to be revealed until now, that left a lot of room for the story to focus on and flesh out these factions. Maybe the first year of the story would have been a lot better if the alliances had been convincing in their characterisation as an alliance, if they had distinct goals we could see them working towards, named leaders to carry their story.
A lot of players still don’t even know where the Aetherblades come from to the point where players are theorising they are from the Mists or a future time line.
