Guild Wars 2

So, I’m curious for personal reasons, but I’ve read that “captain” is a Seraph in charge of an entire region, and that Jennah has 5-10 typically. But sometimes it seems like a Seraph Captain is merely in charge of a unit.

So, If a Seraph officer is in charge specifically of a unit, what rank would they be? Or is there any sort of detailed rank structure thing that I could look over?

You could browse the wiki for the Seraph ranks we’ve seen and maybe compare it to real world ranks, but there’s no in-universe source for anything under captain. The human lore posts before launch, where that’s drawn from, were all lackluster compared to the other races.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

You could browse the wiki for the Seraph ranks we’ve seen and maybe compare it to real world ranks, but there’s no in-universe source for anything under captain. The human lore posts before launch, where that’s drawn from, were all lackluster compared to the other races.

I’ve seen more then 11 captains(IIRC), 2 commanders, a bunch of lieutenants and sergeants… In the npc list that is.

Commanders seem in charge of specific outposts… so that might be the rank I need. Which would be a unit but not a entire region :P.

Hm… yeah, a quick browse on the wiki pulls up 11 captains counting (although one of them was disgraced at the end of his PS quest- the numbers still add up if the Seraph are operating at max capacity and replaced him within 20 levels or so). It’s possible- I’d even say likely- that this boils down to an oversight, same as the charr ‘captains’ we see around in Fields of Ruin.

I would also argue that some “captains” amongst the Seraph is an oversight caused by not every dev being up to date on lore/muddling up different military’s rankings/not double checking themselves. One such I would argue for is the genericly named Seraph Captain who seems to not know what’s going on if he’s the one in charge – and said generic captain sits in the very same camp as Captain Marshall.

Captain Edwards seems to be another case, as the event chain implies that she works under Commander “Bulldog” Janson. With Mister Generic Captain, Marshall, as well as Blackeye and Ganes from other events, that’s five captains just for Harathi Hinterlands – seems excessive.

But the other six cases are one captain per map with the exception of Tervelan (who is killed in the PS) – Logan in DR, Tervelan (who is killed) and Lindel for Queensdale (placed in the Kormir monestary and Claypool respectively), Rendar in Kesse Hills (also only seen in Personal Story, so easily an oversight ranking too given how many oversights there are in the PS to open world), Bradin Glenavon in Gendarran, and finally Renata in Brisban.

If I were to guess, I’d say that only Ganes – who initiates the Ulgoth event chain – is properly a captain by the lore in Harathi, and that Edwards and Marshall are meant to be a lieutenants (given their role in the game and dialogue, that sounds more befitting). Hard to say for Blackeye given that the wiki has next to nothing on him, but I’d argue the same – meant to be a Commander or Lieutenant in lore given the apparent actions he does.

I wrote up this speculative article on the Seraph.

The Seraph is the largest and second oldest military organization in Kryta and While the Shining Blade is the personal Guard/Service of the reigning King Kryta, the Seraph is closest to what we’d call the “Army” of Kryta.

Appearance

Members of the Seraph guard can easily be recognized as such, due to the wings on their uniform. These represent the wings of Dwayna, the goddess of life and air, who is depicted rising over the ground. Even the seraph badges are stiled as icons of dwayna.
Arguably the most prominent part of a Seraph’s uniform is the Shield, that has been made in the image of a wing with large protruding feathers. It is rumoured, that the edges can be sharpened, to give the shield additional offensive use.

History

Before the Seraph’s founding, the kingdom of Kryta relied on levies the nobility provided to the king to defend itself. This system was proven insufficient, when the Charr attacked. Driven by the mad visions of their shamans, they managed to defeat King Jadon of Kryta on the battlefield.
Having lost the Battle and the support of the Nobles Jadon fled, leaving a power vacuum, which was filled by the followers of Saul d’ Alessio, who, with the help of their masters assaulted the Charr encampment and killed their leaders. The leaderless Charr retreated back into Ascalon, but Kryta remained under the yoke of the White Mantle.

The Seraph was formally established by Queen Salma in 1079, after the defeat of the White Mantle and their mysterious overlords.
The Bartholos, the first captain of the seraph, was tasked to create a new army bound by the principles of faith in the six gods, loyalty to the reigning King or Queen of Kryta and devotion to its people and their safety.
To guarantee the strength, manpower and organizational integrity of the Seraph guard, there is traditionally no division between commoner or noble among servicemen of Kryta.

Organization

The Seraph guard is organized into companies. Each company is commanded by a captain and subdivided into four platoons, each commanded by a trusted lieutenant.
The lieutenant has a seargant as his deputy to command four squads, that are each supervised by a corporal.
During their patrols, the Squads of five people are often further subdivded into patrols of 2-3 Seraphs.
When an operation demands multiple companies to join forces, the senior captain takes control of the operation. There have been exeptions to this rule, though, as in some cases the most distinguished captain took responsibility.
In other cases, such as the appointment of Captain Logan Thackeray, the Queen can elevate a captain to oversee all the other captains.

Future prospects

There has been discussion within the Krytan services, whether or not it makes sense to formalize Thackerays position and create a new rank, that would essentially be playing a major role in larger battles.
Proponents argue, that the population of Kryta and the available manpower has grown significantly since the age of Queen Salma the new rank would allow to organize larger armies and simplify disputes over operational command.
Detracters maintain, that the current highest rank of captain is sufficient and that a major reform might hinder the war effort against centaurs and elder dragons and that the proposed larger armies would drain the krytan treasury.

Interesting read, having skimmed over it. But the appearance part made me shake my head a TINY bit.

Simply because the bulk of Seraph don’t have the T3 cultural armor look. Hell, somebody said my warrior didn’t look like a Seraph (wearing T3 cultural human shoulders and gloves, CM chest, legs, helm, and boots), but it was colored more golden (Like the baseline infantry) instead of silver. :P

Yes, you’re correct on that one. The T3 has been made for officers, while the rank and file soldiers wear a different set. However, this does not seem absolute, as there are sergeants wearing the tier 3 and lieutenants, who don’t. As seen in these pictures, there seem to be 3 types of armor. They seem to be worn sometimes, without regard to rank?
Sergeant Walters
Sergeant Rane
But:
Soldier Reina
Lieutenant Pickins
By the way, is there an official light armor uniform? I could find generic NPC clothing, but other than that, the Seraph, unlike the Pact seem to enforce heavy armor for fighting personnel.
Field Medic Leius
Your point still stands. Seraph armor is not always winged and elaborate. Like any fighting force, they value good armor without wings higher, than impractical armor with wings.
On the other hand, all the Seraph weapons feature wing decoration. The dagger and pistol are more subtle, while the shield, longbow and axe feature prominent wing shapes.
Also, according to the screenshots, it is perfectly valid to substitute some of the human T3 cultural armor for CM reward armor. Particularly the Council guard chest armor, as it can be found on Seraph and Fallen Angels ingame.

There are minis which have Seraph in light and medium armor IIRC. My take was something that was similar to the typical officer tier of soldiers, but making it a little unique (a specific company with a slightly different uniform then baseline Seraph). It seems you can find baseline infantry with golden wing weapons (CM weapons), officers with the Seraph weapons… or even a mix back and forth. I personally went with Kryta’s embrace for shield and Faithful for axe.

As a fun outlier to show not ever Seraph wears the same gear… Caprice Vonne http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Caprice_Vonne.jpg and and Sgt Leavitt http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Sergeant_Leavitt.jpg

In the end, regarding my question, I decided on the rank of “Commander” since it’s a specific unit, but not an entire region. Unless they release information expanding on the Seraph.

Attached is an image of my warrior, who I describe story-wise as a Seraph.

Interesting piece. I largely agree with your conclusions, although I think it is worth reaffirming that that is mostly speculation and maybe a bit of observation rather than anything we’ve been told. Particularly, I don’t think Logan’s position has ever been formalised – other Seraph captains reportedly do defer to him, but this is essentially a ‘first among equals’ treatment. Formally, he’s no higher than the other captains, it’s just that he’s the closest to the Queen and, probably, the most competent.

(And, for the record, he generally is fairly competent when his berserk button isn’t being pressed.)

Regarding appearances: I’ve observed before that the Seraph suffers from ArenaNet… making economic use of development resources when it comes to organisations that are always or nearly always allies. The minis do indicate that the Seraph do have light- and medium-armoured members, and the standard uniforms for them are the Caudecus Manor equipment (IIRC, thematically these are Seraph equipment given to the player as a thank-you, rather than being looted from the dungeon as most dungeon sets are).

Regarding the heavy armours: Remember that the Seraph are underfunded. I think that technically the different armours are supposed to represent different ranks, but in practise you get officers who have received a promotion but the equipment hasn’t arrived, or officers for whom some or all pieces of their equipment is broken and they’ve had to make do, or officers who are wearing gear above their station because their superior got killed and the Seraph can’t afford to let the equipment go to waste.

(Incidentally, the Shining Blade seem to have also been intended to have three styles. Heavy we see ingame – the concept art for the Masquerade set, however, was originally labelled as a Shining Blade set, while the middle human cultural medium armour has Shining Blade symbols on it if you look closely.)