Guild Wars 2

Didnt know if I should write in Archive or Lore&Story.
The white deer story is great, but I have one little distaste after it. Earlier I player the moon shield story and it was also amazing.
But in this one when I got the Nithmare Court Guard to tell me where the deer is I promised her life and to not tell anyone about her betraying N Court secrets.
And the distaste is – even though I told Caithe I gave the Guard my word, she still killed that Guard.
I have really strong dislike towards Caithe after that :P. The moon shield story didn’t leave me hating on any character and feeling like I’ve broken my word.

Maybe that’s just me, but that’s the first thing I didn’t like in any of my character stories. Or maybe I misunderstood and she didnt kill her but it certainly looked like she did.

She definitely killed her. But you made the promise. Not Caithe :P

True, but still. I always imagined Caithe to be the good one with honor and that made the scratch on this image. Now I can’t look at her the same way as before, sadly :P.

I think that was to show you the character of Caithe. Unlike the biconics and some of the other members of Destiny’s Edge, Caithe has a kind of lethality or danger to her. She’s not all flirting, devourer hugging, dolyak pimping, she embodies the traits of Ventari like most Dreamer sylvari but at the same time she has that assassin’s ruthlessness to her.

It’s also important to think about why Caithe would feel so personally about the Nightmare Court. She sees what it does to her people, she saw what it did to the person she loved most. It’s a very personal conflict for her and her people, and her history with it’s current leader, Faolain, only makes it so much more personal.

Finally it says something to you about the allied forces thoughts towards Nightmare Court in Tyria. They truly believe once you are corrupted, there is no coming back. Sparing a Nightmare Courtier makes you accountable for all the evil it will do (and the corrupted are forever that way, so they will do evil again). One of the teachings of Ventari is “Never leave a wrong to ripen into evil”. Caithe knew (or believed) that no matter how remorseful the courtier was, no matter what bargain they made, they would be back twirling their reed moustaches and tying helpless villagers to train tracks as soon as they got the chance.

Weird, see Caithe do that made me like her over any other member of the Destiny’s Edge. She is the only one with potential to some interesting story, the rest of the DE are too dull imo.
Caithe is in the borderline to join the Nightmare Court, she isn’t bound to honor or try to look like a hero.
In a D&D chart she would be a good example of Chaotic Good character.

That was the start of me not liking Caithe. She just seemed borderline evil and if a DE member turned evil it would be her

By the way, a citizen in the Grove explains that it’s normal that there are “evil” sylvaris.
Ventari only said that “injustice” was bad, and he never taught that “evil” was bad. (ambient speech)

Maybe it’s unfair, and unjust to kill an innocent (like in the Arbor massacre), but to kill alone is not unfair if you’ve some good reason (according to Ventari, Caithe, and perhaps most sylvaris), even if convoluted or hidden. Likewise, we could question the sylvari concepts of honorableness and wisdom (neither one nor the other prevents some degree of “evilness”).
Now it’s up to you to decide how death and anger can be natural, but injustice and gratuitous murder aren’t so.

Its not that much about killing innocent – I can understand she hates to see what becomes of her friends when they turn to the Nightmare Court and I know that she lost her dear ones for it too.
But the thing is she should care about her side – like my character – and should not force me to not deliver the promise she knew I made – that’s what made me dislike her. Like she’s without any honor and care for her people.
I like some “evil” characters – like Renvari – I thought he was great. I just can’t help but see Caithe as false person now, who is nice to you to get what she wants but she doesnt necessarily cares about what you may want or need.

Now I also noticed that in moon shield story she didn’t want me to help Tiachren even thought she knew how it is to loose someone to Nightmare Court and hope for the best. She was ready to loose him to the Court/death too if I didnt decide to help him (lucklily I helped him, not her back then). Then I explained it by her wanting to help villagers more, but now I am not so sure – she already had lots of wardens there. She lived through similiar thing like Tiachren and yet couldn’t find compassion in her to help him out and understand him.

Now she certainly doesn’t seem to me like a good mentor to follow –
It’s kinda sad, but after this story I really cannot force myself like her and she used to be my favourite story character.

At least one person felt the same way I’m not alone.

She didn’t really force you to not deliver on your promise though. You just made a promise that you thought was obligating both of you to keep without even checking with her. Your promise was really trying to force her not to kill when she had no intentions of that.

Your expectations of your promise did just what you are faulting her for doing. except, Caithe isn’t trying to dictate your actions. She’s only dictating her own.

edit: Plus, she is working with information that the PC doesn’t have. She knows that once courtiers turn to nightmare that they are lost. At that point, the PC is really just niave about the struggle between Dreamers and Courtiers. It’s a war for the entire existence and spirit of the sylvari and Pale Tree. And Caithe has been on the front line since the start of it.

I think the key with Caithe is that good and evil doesn’t enter into it. She doesn’t care whether an act was “Good” or “Evil” in the eyes of another – she cares about duty, and responsibility, making the choice that pays off for the greater good. She has her own system of morals.

It’s why she doesn’t hate Logan for abandoning them in the battle against Kralkatorrik – she realises he felt he was doing his duty. But she also is very blunt about telling him that she thinks he made the wrong choice, and doesn’t realise why that offends him. She can’t understand why Rytlock, who seems duty-bound, won’t just forgive Logan and move on. She doesn’t realise why Eir is unable to get past her own mistake, and she doesn’t see why Zojja hates Eir so passionately for Snaff’s death even though Eir obviously didn’t kill him.
All she sees if that Destiny’s Edge have a duty to fight the Dragon. So she tries to bring them back together, again and again, and she just doesn’t understand why they can’t let go of their anger, because to Caithe it’s not about emotion, it’s about duty. And if there’s a feeling that this makes her borderline Evil herself, or close to the beliefs of the Nightmare Court… well, we all remember what happens in the Future Vision of Orr that the Pale Tree grants us, don’t we?

But this makes me like Caithe a lot. She’s a Sylvari firstborn, and she highlights something we forget: This entire species is very, very new to the world. There are things that they simply do not understand about other races, about other people. For Caithe, one of those things is how two people can see the same situation but react differently, when logic or duty should dictate a clear course. It’s why she says that Love is dangerous, why she’s so frustrated that Destiny’s Edge cannot let go of the past, and when she executes the Nightmare Court prisoner, she’s eliminating a threat that she knows wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to her.

If you asked, she’d probably wonder why you didn’t kill the prisoner before she did.

Maybe you’re right. But considering that I’m doing almost everything she asks me to do I guess I kinda expected she would listen to my one request. Also – she didn’t force the Guard to talk like in the plan we made, she wanted to fight and threat – I made the promise so the Guard would talk to us about the deer. So I’d say I made the promise to fulfill the mission – mine and Caithe – accordingly with the plan we created.
But yeah – she broke the promise because I made the promise in the first place. But I had to make the promise because she didn’t even try to act like we planned and convince the Guard to tell anything.

Maybe she’s not that false. Maybe she just doesn’t think straight and objectively when it comes to the Nightmare Court.

But I know now why it took my attention so much – in moon shield story I liked the fact that I can act with what Caithe wanted or with what I wanted. In this story I didnt really get to choose what I want to do – just how to do it – and when I chose how to do it like Caithe asked me to, she just didn’t stick to plan I decided on. Maybe that’s why it got me irritated.

Tipper.7354:

If you asked, she’d probably wonder why you didn’t kill the prisoner before she did.

Sadly you may be right with that one xD.
About her not understanding other races – it may also be a point – I guess I always imagined her to be lethal but wise with her decisions and understading to others, maybe I saw her as too much and got dissapointed.

She told the guard to talk or she would cut the guards tongue out. The PC interjects and says “No, wait”. Then goes on to make the promise. when the PC tries to stop Caithe, her reasoning is that she is making sure the guard carries no warning to the Courtiers. Given the permanently corrupted disposition of the courtiers, that was a sure consequence of letting her go.

“Speak or Ill cut your tongue out” isnt exactly convincing.
But you convinced me – thats a good thing, I needed that. Maybe I’ll learn to like Caithe again if nothing like that happens later on. I guess I just felt like she taken my choice from me and I didn’t even think about the possibility the Guard may warn the others – and it’s so obvious … I mean how could I have missed that.

All that she cared about in that moment was that she needed to know what the Nightmare Courtier knew, and she needed to make sure the Courtier didn’t report back to Faolain. Achieving those two goals help the Tree and the Grove. The specifics on how, exactly, she achieves those goals… they don’t matter to her.
In her mind she’s doing something good, and not getting hung up on the details. Which makes sense for an Assassin who doesn’t quite understand how human emotions work. Once you get that’s how she thinks, you get Caithe.