Guild Wars 2

Hello, hello! I have a few Shining Blade questions and a little request regarding the NPCs in game!

So by now we have an idea that we might start seeing the Shining Blade take a more active role in the Living Story ~one day~, as there’s suddenly a real tangible mention of White Mantle in Maguuma (or elsewhere, dun dun dun). From a lore perspective, I’ve been dying to hear about what Blade people get up to since the start of the game, outside of the small bit in the Personal Story & the couple in Harathi.

My first question is: what the heck are the ranks within the Shining Blade? We know of two for sure — Master Exemplar and Exemplar. Are there only two? How would that even work?

My other question is sort of splinting hairs, so I apologize if this is petty to anyone reading! Right now, Shining Blade NPCs share the same armor model with Ministry Guard (banded armor) outside of the chest piece. This, coupled with the bright blue color of their armor (that doesn’t match their Blade crest/symbol) … they look pretty lackluster. They’re supposed to be the Queen’s Royal Guard, an elite fighting force, but instead they fade to the background next to the Ministry’s force.

Anise, the Master Exemplar, wears shades that match the crest, but her own people do not. I was wondering if we could figure out why that is or perhaps petition someone at Anet to maybe change it by the time we start seeing Blade NPCs more? The medium armor falconer coat even has a Shining Blade badge on it! That, mixed with a little pitch/black and midnight sky dye (or any dark blue) die could look rad.

tl;dr

Can someone at Anet tell us about the Shining Blade ranks? What other ranks are there?
Can we maybe change up the SB NPC armor to make them look different from Ministry Guard?

Well, I’ve never had a problem telling the two apart – even if a lot of the armour pieces are similar, the different colours make them stand out. To be honest, I think that’s a case of the Ministry Guard deliberately copying the Shining Blade as much as they thought they could get away with (consider their crests – the Shining Blade has a sword with a halo, the Ministry Guard has a hammer with a different style of halo…)

It is ironic, though, that there certainly are armours that were intended to be unique Shining Blade armours that have lost that connection. The Falconer’s set you’ve observed – the Masquerade set of light armour is another where the concept was originally labelled as ‘Shining Blade armour’.

Regarding ranks – if there are other distinctions, we haven’t been informed of what they are.

I’m aware that we haven’t been informed what they are, that’s why I wrote this thread haha. I actually sent an email to Anet and they told me to write a thread about all this so they could check it.

I’m not sure why there should be more than two formal ranks. The Shining Blade are the Queen’s bodyguards and agents. They don’t have a wide enough scope of purpose to require an extensive hierarchy to support it, and additional ranks would just put more layers between what’s going on and the person who’s supposed to be in charge. If Anise is able to keep track of everything that’s happening (something we’ve seen no reason to doubt) then three ranks should be more than sufficient- Master Exemplar to direct everything and attend to the Queen’s personal safety, Exemplars to carry out operations that need to be kept secret (and, if Sea of Sorrows is an indication, to protect other members of the royal house/the monarch when they leave the city), and rank and file agents to fill out the royal guard and carry out less sensitive work (things like assassinating centaur leaders).

They’re probably looking to avoid a repeat of the Scarlet’s birthdate controversy.

But yes, as far as I know, Exemplar and Master Exemplar are the only ranks we know of for them, unless we go back to GW1 (and even then I’m not sure off the top of my head if they had a formal rank structure). Assuming Exemplar isn’t a common rank for all Shining Blade, it’s possible that they are a small enough organisation that only three levels are needed as Aaron hypothesises – the overall leader and a rank for specialists and unit leaders.

Sadly, we haven’t been able to see that much storyline about Shining Blade and the White Mantle!!!
Overall I just LOVE them both, I’ve decided to create and copy Shining Blade and White Mantle’s NPCs armors [Those armors that are released to us atleast.]
There’s a concept armor art created by Anet that are named ’’Shining Blade'’ to the artwork. Check it down below!
SADLY, they’ve changed so much of this armor! I’ve tried to create the same to one of my characters, but it’s really hard. I personally love the artwork of this armor, it does look alot better comparing to the released ingame one...
The female one is complete, I’ll make the male one aswell as soon I am leveling him up and I am also going to level up White Mantle’s characters, based on the NPCs in the Aurora Glade.
Thanks for telling me that the Falconer’s set is based on Shining Blade!
Looks like I gained all the armor sets of Shining and White!

The back of the Masquerade shoulders, does resemble the White Mantle emblem. Here’s a screen shot I took to look at.

Shinning Blade armor, you say?

Ministry Guard, though they seem to have lucked out and got the pvp pants that we can no longer get.

Jaher Dal.9503:

Ministry Guard, though they seem to have lucked out and got the pvp pants that we can no longer get.

Oh! I didn’t noticed that! :O
Here’s my Ministry armor.