Guild Wars 2

In 1326 AE, Scarlet Briar tried to forge an alliance between the tengu and largos, but was apparently unsuccessful. (Source: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tengu).

Wut?

When did this happen?

We can check all the alliances Scarlet tried to do in her Secret Lair.

check this image: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/8/80/AllianceChart.jpg/180px-AllianceChart.jpg

There are drawings in her lair with various lines between races, which indicate the ideas she had for alliances. Most of the lines are crossed out except 3, which are the alliances we now face.

The person who edited the wiki has written that poorly, as those lines don’t indicate that she tried to forge an alliance between them, but that she at least had the idea. She could have thought better against it in the end and not even approached them. Unless I’ve missed an interview somewhere where ANet specifically stated she approached both the Largos/Tengu and was unsuccessful, all we know is that it was an idea of hers at one point.

If that had happened we would be in so much trouble right now….

Uh… yeah. That line needs rewriting – would do it myself but I’m not totally sure what to rewrite it to. Was that chart drawn in 1326 AE or slightly before (do we know how old it is for sure)? Was she considering forging an alliance between the races, or unknown (to us) splinter factions thereof? Did she actually attempt it or just consider?

As far as I know, the answer to all of the above questions is “we don’t know”. The resulting properly-qualified statement would be so complex as to be kind of silly. Does it even belong on the wiki at all?

I’m not always completely 100% correct on lore, so I don’t make contributions to the lore side of the wiki, but I’d remove it, personally. I don’t think a potential alliance that never saw light of day is worth placing on their page.

The actual races who forged alliances have reason to have the alliance placed on their wiki page as it is a part of their race history, but it just seems a bit pointless to add, “Scarlet considered making (race) and (race) an alliance, but for reasons unknown, this did not happen.” on every single race page that could have been in the potential alliances.

Note: It’s that she considered, not attempted.

The wiki article’s line was speculation, added by a user who too often adds in speculation that seems likely as fact.

I’ve removed that line from the wiki because of this, and since it’s not entirely relevant to the tengu article (more of to Scarlet’s article).

It has to be turned down ideas. Even Scarlet, in the full grip of her insanity, could not have possibly thought a quaggan-centaur alliance would do anything for her.

wookiee.4631:

Aaron Ansari.1604:

It has to be turned down ideas. Even Scarlet, in the full grip of her insanity, could not have possibly thought a quaggan-centaur alliance would do anything for her.

Not so sure. Would all the players of the world be able to resist an army of Quaggans riding on Centaurs? They’d all be too busy gushing over the Quaggans to notice their own heads being removed from their necks by Centaur swords.

I understand that you’re joking, but I want to take the opportunity to expand on my point- the making-of-armies portions of Scarlet’s alliance system is just a byproduct. She doesn’t care how strong or effective these groups are. Her strategy towards warfare has been outright stated to be “throw more numbers at them until they’re overwhelmed.” Martial prowess, magical prowess, technological prowess, she doesn’t care how these things carry over to the field of battle. What she’s after, each time, is a very specific result that comes from combining the technology and/or magic of one group with that of another. The Molten Alliance was to get her the probes. The Aetherblades were for an airship fleet. The Toxic Alliance was for the miasma.

Most of the combinations that are crossed out on that chart have no real value in that regard. Going back to the tengu-largos idea that started this thread, what could she get from that? The tengu are known for making quality weaponry and really big walls, but have no unique technology and no magic at all, as far as we’ve seen. The largos, again, have no technology that we know of, and only stealth magic. Unless she wanted to build a massive invisible wall around Lion’s Arch before the invasion, she stood to gain nothing from the combination.

And don’t even get me started on ettins and skritt.

The Largos do have something to offer and you mentioned it: Stealth (the Tengu have nothing to offer, that I can tell, that some other race couldn’t already give to Scarlet’s plan). If Scarlet had been able to get at least the Largos she may have been able to sneak into Lions Arch unnoticed using their stealth magic and found a way to drill without us noticing until it was too late.

She wouldn’t have been able to get the Largos though. The Largos work alone and are assassins by nature. Any time we’ve seen a Largos helping out it’s been as a repayment to a debt, and I imagine Scarlet would have a hard time getting a Largos in debt – she would have to offer them something extremely helpful and I can’t imagine what that would be.

All races have stealth magic though.

Specifically, all thieves do. Mesmers too.

And besides she used that “invisibility magic” that you say she’d go after the largos to get. Has everyone forgotten the big kitten veil of invisibility the Tower of Nightmares is under?

ah, Your right, I did forget about that… Did we ever get an explanation as to how we missed that? Massive mesmer veil?

Kycoo Grim.9463:

ah, Your right, I did forget about that… Did we ever get an explanation as to how we missed that? Massive mesmer veil?

Yep. It was confirmed to be the work of one of the members of the Toxic Alliance, but I forget which faction. Either way, she’d still probably have access to it.

EDIT: It was the Nightmare Court, according to Peneloopee.

Centaur and quaggan?

Imagine an army, quick centaurs with mobile, raged-out quaggans on their backs. The centaurs have speed and reach to a degree, as well as six limbs with which to wreck you; the quaggans are more on-level with human-to-smaller races and have brute strength. The centaurs would be tall enough to deal with norn and other humanoids, the quaggans short enough to deal with shorter-than-norn humanoids, asura, and skritt that manage to get past the centaurs. Not to mention, again, the speed of centaurs and those stomping hooves. Imagine waves of centaurs flooding into a city and dropping their hulk-quaggans, effectively making the army double-sized, since most people in this world don’t use mounts, certainly not mounts capable of strategy and fighting. This would be especially devastating if the city had tried and thought they could bottleneck the entry of the army.

Hilarious as the mental image might be, that is not something with which I would want to screw. Neither has awesome technology or magic, but both centaurs and enraged quaggans are pretty brutal, and the fact of the matter is, magic and technology aren’t the only viable options. Throw them in with the other alliances who do have those things so your massive army is well balanced on all fronts, and you’ve got a serious problem. I think Scarlet’s only issue would be getting quaggans into their dangerous state when she needs them to be, and keeping them there. As well as keeping the quaggans… moist. With LA, that would not have been a problem, with the bay right there.

I don’t like her as a character in the slightest (I’d love to see her blasted to smithereens by her own machinations) and I don’t like how writing is handled around her, but that’s an alliance with some merit. I’d certainly rather deal with the Molten or Toxic alliance than waves of peeved, bloodthirsty, possibly genetically augmented quaggans.
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