Guild Wars 2

Flashmob.4190:

I think to answer this question we are lacking alot of vital information on the pact at this time:

1.) We don’t know when it happend compared to the personal story

Anet has explicitly said how long it takes. It’s on the timeline even. Modern day living story is 1-2 years after Zhaitan’s defeat.

The Pact mainly has been rebuilding forces, cleaning up orr, and planning their next campaign.

Temihal.8651:

I said in my post that the Pact won’t turn evil now.

I know, and agree. I was talking to the guy who was going on about how he/somebody should form a “Dark Knight pact!” that’d take on these warlords as well as dragons.

Trying to make him THINK.

So, what is there left to discuss?

just one thing here…

If pact did interfere, no dragon… no dragoooooon make sad quuuuuagan.

Erukk.1408:

Why do you seem to think we need airships to defeat the Aetherblades? The only real decisive victory they had was the surprise attack on LA. All previous times we have encountered them (Secret base, TA, Marionette fight, and BfLA) were clear victory against them.

We have to realize that Aetherblades are pirates. That means their goal is to surprise attack a city, kill a bunch of people, loot and escape. They couldn’t care less about holding a city.

Unless the Aetherblade airships are destroyed, they can raid any city they want at any time. And each time thousands of civilians will be dead. Even if the Pact send ground forces in later to drive them out, these will still be Aetherblade victories. Because their objectives are fulfilled, and they can escape with their airships anytime.

Without Pact airships, the Aetherblade airships cannot be destroyed. So yes we need Pact airships to win. We need an air force to defeat an enemy air force. Its that simple.

There is an alternative method, which is to attack the Aetherblade home base directly. Without supplies their airships can’t fly. Good idea, but wake me up when the Order of Whisper finally find out where they are.

As for moral questions:

-Answer to who: There is no diplomacy, because the Dark Knights are considered illegal in most places. But at the same time no one knows who the Dark Knight members are.

For example I might be a Dark Knight member. But you won’t know I am one.

-Govern: The Dark Knights will have leadership. Their leaders will be people who think in similar ways as I do.

-Funding: Funding will come from people of the upper classes who believes in Dark Knight’s vision.

And there are rich members in the Pact. Some are even from the noble background.

-Limit: These are absolutely no limits and laws. That’s the point. Hence the Dark Knights are illegal, and they couldn’t care less if it means saving lives.

For example, the Dark Knights have no problem hurting and torturing the “bad guys”, until they give up the home location of the bad guys. There will never be a trial. Everything is street justice.

If they refuse to say anything, we will locate his/her family and kidnap them. We will see how long these “bad guys” can hold up, while watching their family get tortured in front of them.

Immoral? Depends on your point of view.

These “bad guys” are hurting and killing thousands of civilians. If torturing them means saving the lives of thousands it will be worth it.

If Mai Trin were in the hands of the Dark Knights, she will never walk again. She will be lucky if she still have her right arm when we are done with her. It is that simple. In hindsight, I am sure you would agree it would have been better this way. Now she escaped, fully healthy, and will threaten to kill thousands again in the future.

-Right or Wrong: How about this. I will tell you what is the wrong thing to do:

Sitting by and doing absolutely nothing about the Aetherblade airship threat. Continue to do nothing until they raid another city and kill thousands. Using the Elder Dragons as an excuse for everything.

I will also tell you an universal truth:

The more you love and want to protect “something”, the more ruthless and merciless you have to be against the enemies of this “something”.

If you are not willing to be ruthless and merciless, then you do not love this “something” enough to give up and sacrifice your own honour, moral or whatever you want to call it. And so it is hypocritical to say that this “something” is your top priority, because it isn’t.

-Rogue: They are illegal. They don’t care what people call them.

Temihal.8651:

Am I the only one who thinks that it would have been stranger if the Pact actually showed up?

I don’t think that the Pact it’s so good for everyone.

Sure, they defeat dragons, so they can exist. But that’s it.
I, if I was a nation leader, wouldn’t take so well an entire army marching on my city, even if it’s for helping me.
They are a real political risk for every single nation.
They could even declare Orr their new empire and wage war to everyone (ok, that’s not going to happen because no one in the Pact would fight his on country but I wouldn’t take that as granted forever).

The point I’m trying to make it’s that the Pact it’s a big and indipendent army, they can do what they like and they won’t take orders from anyone.
An army like that it’s a political spark in a gas station.

No leader in their right mind would give them the permission to move that army freely out of Orr and within their own country.
If they just marched on Lion’s Arch to defend it I could even suspect them to be the ones who used Scarlet to destroy Lion’s Arch and obtain the city without a direct war.

We, as players, know that the Pact it’s not an enemy.
But every nation in the game can’t be so sure about it.
A friend today can become an enemy tomorrow. Would you really take that risk?
Just my 2 cents.

I never said that the Pact should force their way into LA. But since they knew that Scarlet is coming, they could have been more prepared. It doesn’t matter how dumb the LA council was. The Pact shouldn’t be dumb alongside with them.

The Pact airships should stay just outside of LA’s territory, but be ready to move in the second the Scarlet began her offensive. Wipe out the Aetherblade airships when they weren’t looking. With their airships gone they can’t deploy the poison gas canisters.

More civilians could have been saved if the Pact were more prepared for something they knew was coming.

Lostwingman.5034:

CHIPS.6018:

Priority is indeed a big topic. The Pact’s priority is the Elder Dragons. My personal priority is to protect the people. These two goals are definitely related, but they are vastly different.

If the Pact insist on limiting itself to only dealing with the Elder Dragons, then I do have to depart from this organization (if Anet gives me this option). I cannot stand by while watching civilians dying from other threats, knowing full well that we could have done better.

Your character is not limited by the Pact to not act, you still have your order.
It’s not even about priority in general, there are ALWAYS bad things happening to innocent people all over Tyria. It is literally impossible to deal with them all at the same time. This is some bizarre savior complex you have going on here.

I can’t think of one NPC in any of the 3 orders that I truly respect. The few people that I do respect are dead.

At one point I thought the orders and the Pact was a great idea. But it is becoming a disappointment.

Look, the Pact is by far the strongest standing army in all of Kryta. It should be going around crushing all our major enemies. Instead it is turtle-ing, saying it need to save resources for the Elder Dragons.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand that small threats like the Separatists can be safely ignored for now. They can only cause so much harm. But threats like Aetherblades with their airships are major threats. They had killed thousands, and will kill thousands again if we do nothing about it.

One point I can’t stress enough, and every one of you keep ignoring: Just because you ignore a threat, it does not mean this threat goes away.

Right now is the best time to deal with the Aetherblade airships. The Aetherblades just lost a lot of their members in LA. The other Elder Dragons hasn’t launch their major offensive. We should crush them, remove them from the “game” totally, before they can regroup under Mai Trin.

If you disagree, then don’t say I didn’t warn you. When the Aetherblades attack another city and kill thousands, all of their blood are on your hands.

So…

Your “Dark Knights” is basically the White Mantle during the WiK, minus the religious parts, but you’ve added a big heaping scoop of CIA at their worst? That’s a very volatile combination, and I personally don’t see it lasting long.

You’ve basically described an organization of lawless fanatics that go around killing and torturing anyone (and anyone connected to them (including innocent family members)) that they see as evil or corrupt. That is NOT going to attract good moral or well meaning people to that organization. If anything, that is going to attract psychopaths, liars, murderers, and basically anyone with dark intentions to that group.

It might start off with good intentions, but it isn’t always going to be that way. The more morally repugnant actions that the “Dark Knights” do, the more that the actual good willing people will leave the group. Leaving the more morally corrupt ones to run the organization.

Given enough time, your group is going to be nothing more than a lawless band of thugs no better than the Aetherblades. Though, I personally think that the Aetherblades would be better than the Dark Knights morally at that point, or maybe a bit earlier as well. Pirates only do what they do for money and loot. The Dark Knights would be a much more dangerous group, because they are doing everything in the misguided belief that they are doing “greater good”.

There is also that other thing that would make it difficult for your group to exist for long. If your group of lawless vigilantes are going to be going from nation to nation, kittening off that powers that be, you will be hunted down.

Im not a military professional, but how about ground-to-air defenses? You dont need a fleet of airships to put down airships, you need only enough damage to take them down. Gunpowder and all kinds of destructive magi-tech beams are fully available in Tyria. I dont think it should be such a challange to simply increase range and possible flight height of bullets. Hell, the magi-tech beams dont even need to deal with basic ballistics. Apart from the limited portal technology, airships have poor manouvering ability, unlike the dragon champions they have been developed against. Practicly they are sitting (or slowly floating) ducks in the air. Pitting airships fleets against airship fleets when there is no ground-level threat that would destroy the defensive ordnance more easily, its just a waste of resources and the risking of soldier lives.

As for my last words on this Dark Knight idea, CHIPS, you seem to have gathered only the part “the hero <Tyria> deserves but not the one it needs right now”, and totally forgot about the “You die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain” part. And from what i gathered from your posts, it would not take much time for this rogue faction to become the villain. And what you end up with is more resources and manpower thrown into a meatgrinder when the local authorities need to put that faction to ice.

Apart from that, no sane man would be able to stand in that faction for long. For all the lives saved, it will be just statistics in the daily witnessed shadow of the suffering they inflict on the would-be criminals innocent families. The people who stay long enough in this faction are probably enjoying it, which would be the sign of a psychopath, or completely lack empathy which would be a sign of a sociopath.

Erukk’s second point is exactly what I was going to say. How many lives are you going to save if you’re busy fighting with the legitimate authorities who are trying to put a stop to your illegal activities? Might you end up doing more harm than good, because you’re too busy ducking the law to carry out your mission, while in the meantime diverting resources that the legitimate authorities might otherwise put towards protecting their people from other threats (and, given your description of how your force would operate, they WILL come to regard you as a threat).

On your point about blood being on the Pact’s hands when the Aetherblades attack again:

I’ve said this before, but you apparently missed it: Presuming that the Pact has limited resources, we don’t know when the next major offensive by a dragon is going to be launched. If you’ve dispatched most of the Pact’s fleet to hunt down pirates and a major dragon offensive comes through a hole you’ve left in your lines because you’ve diverted resources to pirate-hunting and that offensive reaches and destroys a city… than all of their blood will be on your hands.

Until now at least, the Pact had every reason to believe that local forces could and should handle pretty much anything short of dragons. If the Captain’s Council had recognised that Scarlet posed a threat and taken steps, then that could well have been correct. Lion’s Arch already had captured airships to reverse-engineer (if the Pact didn’t just give them the specifications) and flak cannons are things that already exist in the universe and would probably be much more effective against airships than dragon champions.

In the wake of such events, the best response for the Pact may well be just as I implied above – give the nations friendly to the Pact the specifications of how to build airships and let them attend to their own jurisdictions. Not only would this stop the Pact from having to potentially divert resources from guarding against the dragons to engage in firefighting expeditions, it would also provide governments that do not currently support the Pact (such as the Arcane Council) a powerful incentive to get with the program.

Erukk.1408:

So…

Your “Dark Knights” is basically the White Mantle during the WiK, minus the religious parts, but you’ve added a big heaping scoop of CIA at their worst? That’s a very volatile combination, and I personally don’t see it lasting long.

You’ve basically described an organization of lawless fanatics that go around killing and torturing anyone (and anyone connected to them (including innocent family members)) that they see as evil or corrupt. That is NOT going to attract good moral or well meaning people to that organization. If anything, that is going to attract psychopaths, liars, murderers, and basically anyone with dark intentions to that group.

It might start off with good intentions, but it isn’t always going to be that way. The more morally repugnant actions that the “Dark Knights” do, the more that the actual good willing people will leave the group. Leaving the more morally corrupt ones to run the organization.

Given enough time, your group is going to be nothing more than a lawless band of thugs no better than the Aetherblades. Though, I personally think that the Aetherblades would be better than the Dark Knights morally at that point, or maybe a bit earlier as well. Pirates only do what they do for money and loot. The Dark Knights would be a much more dangerous group, because they are doing everything in the misguided belief that they are doing “greater good”.

There is also that other thing that would make it difficult for your group to exist for long. If your group of lawless vigilantes are going to be going from nation to nation, kittening off that powers that be, you will be hunted down.

“good moral or well meaning people”.

That’s the problem right there. You view the above people as good. I see them differently.

“These people value their personal moral, honour more than the protection of what they claimed to love.”

In other words, the protection from these people are conditional.

“I will only protect you if it doesn’t require me to break any laws.”
“I will gather intelligence only to the point that I don’t have to torture anyone.”
“I will only use spells and weapons that are legal and conventional.”
etc etc

If Kryta have to choose between good but dead and evil but alive, they should pick the 2nd option every time.

Look at the Forgotten. They have good morales and good intentions. But where are they today? Pretty much extinct.

Let me just say this:

Good moral is a privilege reserved for people who have absolutely no chance of losing.

CHIPS.6018:

“good moral or well meaning people”.

That’s the problem right there. You view the above people as good. I see them differently.

“These people value their personal moral, honour more than the protection of what they claimed to love.”

In other words, the protection from these people are conditional.

“I will only protect you if it doesn’t require me to break any laws.”
“I will gather intelligence only to the point that I don’t have to torture anyone.”
“I will only use spells and weapons that are legal and conventional.”
etc etc

You’ll have to explain this statement in further detail, because all I’m getting out of it is “The Dark Knights aren’t looking for people of good moral character, because they would only get in the way of what needs to be done.”

You do know that this type of thinking in an organization would be heavily abused by all the wrong sorts of characters right? The organization where there are: “absolutely no limits and laws”, "have no problem hurting and torturing the “bad guys”, and where the torture of innocents is ok because they’re related to the “bad guys” and it’s part of “the greater good”,

So in the end, you’re trying to set up an organization of morally questionable people willing to do what they think is right, arming them, training them, keeping your identities a secret, you get funding from a bunch of unknown upper classes that belief in your ideals, and you give the people you have judged as “bad guys” no trial and simply kill them…?

Congratulation! You’ve basically made an international terrorist organization! Or maybe better put in GW2 terms, you’re an international version of the Bandits/White Mantle.

As for the “lawless” and “we will be hunted down part”, I actually seen this before first hand in my RPing story. Let’s go back to Ascalon 300 years ago.

My family was from a line of necromancers. Necromancy was not just a profession, but a way of life and death.

We had always been against the Order of Necromancers, since the day it was formed. We believe that there should be no limit placed to restrict the human potential. Yet the majority of the people wanted the Order. Our family obeyed their ruling, and we kept our opinions to ourselves.

Over the years many of our members gave up their lives defending Ascalon from all its threats.

When I was a child, my clan tried to teach me their values and believes on morality. But I never take them seriously. Life was good. We were safe behind our Great Wall. Who would have thought that this was a false sense of security.

I was a teenager when The Searing happened. Needless to say, the situation changed dramatically for the worst. Ascalon was on the edge of destruction.

My clan talked to the Order to loosen up the strict rules and laws on magic. They refused. They talk all day long about moral, honour, blah blah blah. They just cannot see though the truth: The End is Near.

It should be obvious by this point that my clan had to take things into our own hands, if we hope to protect and defend Ascalon.

My father sent me away with Prince Rurik. They don’t want me involved. I was young and naive, and I didn’t agree with their point of view. So I was away doing other quests and adventures when the following happened. I only realize later that my family was right all along.

My clan’s plan was to develop a deadly disease that only affects the Charrs. To discover and test this disease, we needed Charrs to test them on. This was the only way.

There is a now mostly forgotten childhood story for the Charrs, where human witches and wizards will come at night to capture the young cubs.

That story wasn’t fictional. Charr cubs were easy to capture. Their young bodies are ideal for the tests. My clan was making great progress and was on the edge of discover the perfect disease.

Sadly, my clan’s experiments were discovered by the Order. Blinded by their “self-righteousness”, they gathered a group of “heroes” and attacked my clan and killed almost everyone. They “saved” the Charr cubs and released them back to the Charr land.

My clan was murdered by the very people that they were trying to protect, because these people wanted to save our enemies. This was the honourable thing to do.

Do you see the irony in this? Do you now have a better understanding of what morality and honour is?

The Order didn’t stop there. They went around the whole world, hunting down members of my clan that were involved. They eventually found me.

The Order deemed me “innocent” because I was never involved in any of this. However my heart wasn’t innocent. Not by far. But I was too heart broken and too weak to do anything back then, so I simply ignored Ascalon from that point on.

Ascalon did end up losing the war. If the Order allowed my clan to develop that disease, the outcome might have been different. But their “self-righteousness” end up being their own downfall.

If the Pact follow the way of the Order, and be constantly limited by moral and honor, then the whole Kryta might go the same way as Ascalon.

Having moral and honour because of a false sense of security is the worst mistake we can make. It doomed Ascalon. And now it might doom Kryta. You might not see the doom of Kryta today right now. But 300 year ago the Order didn’t see the doom of Ascalon neither.

Hope you now understand where I am coming from.

Erukk.1408:

CHIPS.6018:

“good moral or well meaning people”.

That’s the problem right there. You view the above people as good. I see them differently.

“These people value their personal moral, honour more than the protection of what they claimed to love.”

In other words, the protection from these people are conditional.

“I will only protect you if it doesn’t require me to break any laws.”
“I will gather intelligence only to the point that I don’t have to torture anyone.”
“I will only use spells and weapons that are legal and conventional.”
etc etc

You’ll have to explain this statement in further detail, because all I’m getting out of it is “The Dark Knights aren’t looking for people of good moral character, because they would only get in the way of what needs to be done.”

You do know that this type of thinking in an organization would be heavily abused by all the wrong sorts of characters right? The organization where there are: “absolutely no limits and laws”, "have no problem hurting and torturing the “bad guys”, and where the torture of innocents is ok because they’re related to the “bad guys” and it’s part of “the greater good”,

So in the end, you’re trying to set up an organization of morally questionable people willing to do what they think is right, arming them, training them, keeping your identities a secret, you get funding from a bunch of unknown upper classes that belief in your ideals, and you give the people you have judged as “bad guys” no trial and simply kill them…?

Congratulation! You’ve basically made an international terrorist organization! Or maybe better put in GW2 terms, you’re an international version of the Bandits/White Mantle.

Firstly, let’s get one thing clear. The Dark Knights does have honour and morals. They know what is right and wrong. But the difference is these honour and morals does not bind them.

Honour and morals should be guidelines. They should be followed when possible, but broken when necessary. That’s great, and I have no problem with them. But when honour and morals becomes law and rules, it become a huge problem.

As for people who will abuse this system, oh yes I have no doubt there will be people like that. But they got to think:

“If the Dark Knights are so ruthless and merciless against our enemies, what would they do to betrayers who aim for personal gain or personal revenge?”

As for torture of the families, let me break it down for you again.

Let’s say one Aetherblade member knows where the home base of Aetherblades are. He refuse to tell even when we torture him.

So we bring in his family (3 of them) and torture them in front of him. He breaks down and tell us the actual location.

We attack that location and ends the Aetherblade threat forever. Thousands of civilians lives were saved from a potential attack.

So we had to torture 4 people in total (the bad guy, and 3 of his families), and thousands of civilian lives were saved. I would do this any day.

Oh yes, it’s so much easier to make sacrifices for “the greater good” when you’re the one holding the knife isn’kitten Yet if someone came after your family, because they viewed your actions as wrong/evil and they wanted to stop you, it would be a whole different matter now wouldn’t?

That’s all I need to know about the Dark Knights.

PS: The Order probably wouldn’t have been against experimenting on the Charr to craft a weapon against them. They were basically a race of savage animals to the Ascalonians, and they were skinned to make leather armor at times. The Order was against experimenting on humans.

CHIPS.6018:

I never said that the Pact should force their way into LA. But since they knew that Scarlet is coming, they could have been more prepared. It doesn’t matter how dumb the LA council was. The Pact shouldn’t be dumb alongside with them.

The Pact airships should stay just outside of LA’s territory, but be ready to move in the second the Scarlet began her offensive. Wipe out the Aetherblade airships when they weren’t looking. With their airships gone they can’t deploy the poison gas canisters.

More civilians could have been saved if the Pact were more prepared for something they knew was coming.

And the miasma canisters deployed by toxic and molten alliance forces? The aetherblades only deployed a THIRD of the total canisters (going by the events being similar to how the battle actually went). Sure, the airships are gone, but they fly fairly low. Now the debris is hampering Lionguard responses to areas, and the other two groups are basically rampaging freely. Molten around the Fort and farm, Toxic directly in the housing region.

I’ll triple post or such because I know some may break the post limit. I also want to say Chips, your ‘GW1 family’ wouldn’t be targeted by the Order of Necromancers. Note the two necromancers they actually send you after are direct threats to civilians.

I forget the first guys reason, but IIRC he went crazy and was killing as many Ascalonians as he was charr. The second one they OUTRIGHT SAID THEY SUPPORTED HIS RESEARCH/GOALS. Longer lasting minions was something they liked the idea of. They ordered you to kill him because to research that, he kidnapped FELLOW REFUGEES, CIVILIANS, and murdered them to do his studies.

CHIPS.6018:

There is an alternative method, which is to attack the Aetherblade home base directly. Without supplies their airships can’t fly. Good idea, but wake me up when the Order of Whisper finally find out where they are.

Besides the fact Pact fields flak cannons against dragons, as well as most direct fire cannons and megalasers can easily target Airships. Hell, most megalaser emplacements we see are anti-dragon. The thing is, Aetherblades are pirates. They aren’t going to swarm an entire fleet to steal gold from a town. They would only do that in like LA, where they expected to stick around for a while.

Also, A: Home base could very well be in the mists. Which means finding it is almost impossible.
B: It could be mobile. They set up camp here. After a month, they pack up and move to a new location.
C: They could very well have many bases like the Aetherblade Jumping Puzzle set up ALL over. With only that ships crew/base staff knowing the location of an individual base (and maybe a universal meeting point). This means your tracking down lone groups, and overall the Aetherblades are free.

Order of Whispers can’t just pull information from their kitten . Aetherblades have explicitly been noted (Aetherblade path) to willingly charge into combat with heroes who WILL KILL THEM, because “It’s better then what Scarlet would do if we let them pass.” So while she was still alive, you really think they’ve talk?

As for moral questions:

-Answer to who: There is no diplomacy, because the Dark Knights are considered illegal in most places. But at the same time no one knows who the Dark Knight members are.

So that means whenever you march a force, you’ll be assaulted by the local military groups because you are acting as a rogue element or pirate force. Good to know you’ll WEAKEN entire regions because they are more focused on stopping your band of rebels instead of defending themselves.

-Govern: The Dark Knights will have leadership. Their leaders will be people who think in similar ways as I do.

That does nothing to reassure me, and I’m sure others. I don’t see it lasting long.

-Funding: Funding will come from people of the upper classes who believes in Dark Knight’s vision.
And there are rich members in the Pact. Some are even from the noble background.

Corrupt nobles, I suppose you can’t deny that… However, if even one is ousted, the rest will fall or withdraw.

-Limit: These are absolutely no limits and laws. That’s the point. Hence the Dark Knights are illegal, and they couldn’t care less if it means saving lives.

For example, the Dark Knights have no problem hurting and torturing the “bad guys”, until they give up the home location of the bad guys. There will never be a trial. Everything is street justice.

If they refuse to say anything, we will locate his/her family and kidnap them. We will see how long these “bad guys” can hold up, while watching their family get tortured in front of them.

Immoral? Depends on your point of view.

These “bad guys” are hurting and killing thousands of civilians. If torturing them means saving the lives of thousands it will be worth it.

If Mai Trin were in the hands of the Dark Knights, she will never walk again. She will be lucky if she still have her right arm when we are done with her. It is that simple. In hindsight, I am sure you would agree it would have been better this way. Now she escaped, fully healthy, and will threaten to kill thousands again in the future.

Sounds like the Ministry of Purity. You know, the guys who made ENTIRE kittenING FAMILIES disappear. Why? Oh, they were related, in whatever vague way, to a gang member. It hit the point where the hero, alongside plenty of others, outright turned around and started slaughtering the Ministry goons. Hell, if you spare the leaders, in the final battle they ARRIVE TO HELP YOU.

-Right or Wrong: How about this. I will tell you what is the wrong thing to do:

Sitting by and doing absolutely nothing about the Aetherblade airship threat. Continue to do nothing until they raid another city and kill thousands. Using the Elder Dragons as an excuse for everything.

It takes time to deploy airships to various regions around the world. Since the Aetherblades may have a base in the mists, that means there would be ZERO kittenING WARNING. You can’t track them, much less deploy ahead of them.

-Rogue: They are illegal. They don’t care what people call them.

And that means the good, skilled people will avoid them. They’ll get the criminals, the crazies. The ones that want to murder and torture, but not get in trouble for it. Why do you think the bandits swelled? They had a “get out of jail free” card (at least some groups) and thus went crazy with their strikes.

CHIPS.6018:

As for torture of the families, let me break it down for you again.

Let’s say one Aetherblade member knows where the home base of Aetherblades are. He refuse to tell even when we torture him.

So we bring in his family (3 of them) and torture them in front of him. He breaks down and tell us the actual location.

We attack that location and ends the Aetherblade threat forever. Thousands of civilians lives were saved from a potential attack.

So we had to torture 4 people in total (the bad guy, and 3 of his families), and thousands of civilian lives were saved. I would do this any day.

A more realistic version of the situation.

“We captured this guy, but he ain’t talking.”
“Bring in his family, we’ll torture them infront of him.”
“Uh.. okay boss.”

You then torture his innocent mother, wife, and son infront of him until he breaks down and gives up what he knows.

You then raid that location, finding either A: a trap designed to kill whoever is capturing Aetherblades.
B: A base that only fuels/houses/supplies a small portion of the Aetherblades
or C: An empty cave/derelict base that has been abandoned as the Aetherblades keep moving.

These guys aren’t idiots. They are pirates. When do you have pirates place EVERYTHING they have in a single location?

Or, as I just thought of. What if the ground forces don’t even KNOW where the bases are? They stay inside the airship during launch and until they reach cloud level/the target, they simply sit inside the thing playing cards. They won’t know the location of the base.

What if the families disowned them? Or the pirate changed his surname/full name? Or he/she disowned them? Or if they don’t even have families.

You basically are saying your group will gladly torture and murder innocent children to even THINK about getting a lead. Disappearing families will cause questions. More ‘good/decent’ people will leave after finding this out, and oust what they know to the major armies/pact. Funders and suppliers may pull their aid after hearing about all these disappeared families.

Notice how the largest aetherblade base we’ve seen, the one in TA, when we took it out, it didn’t even DENT their fleet or combat ability. And that was three airships + a few more in construction. Even if they had on solid home base, you’d need a huge army to take it. And huge army militant/rogue groups are big targets for local armies dealing with a lot of missing innocents.

You form up to march on Aetherblades, and everybody who wants a piece of your group charges in and routs you before you even get there. Or the Aetherblades simply swoop from above and bombard you into dust. If they had a solid, major base, it won’t be easy to take. Much less the fact oh hey, you started assaulting the front door. Okay, they pack up as much as they can, launch all airships, and flee far away to set up a new base.

What if they base is across a major body or water, or at the top of a mountain range?

If there was to be a vigilante organization in Tyria that conducted medical experiments, genocide, torture, and terrorism, and that creatively defined “honor” and “morals” to answer for its own actions… yeah, we’d so be hunting them down. I’d look forward to seeing how potentially three-dimensional they’d be compared to the game’s existing “evil” organizations, but make no mistake, they’re going down.

And amusingly, if they don’t bring any Elder Dragons into their activities, the Pact still probably wouldn’t get involved.

achensherd.2735:

If there was to be a vigilante organization in Tyria that conducted medical experiments, genocide, torture, and terrorism, and that creatively defined “honor” and “morals” to answer for its own actions… yeah, we’d so be hunting them down. I’d look forward to seeing how potentially three-dimensional they’d be compared to the game’s existing “evil” organizations, but make no mistake, they’re going down.

And amusingly, if they don’t bring any Elder Dragons into their activities, the Pact still probably wouldn’t get involved.

Scarlet’s forces got routed by local Order and lionguard forces.

If such a group was formed, it’d make so many enemies the Pact would just have to sit back and laugh at them. Why I said to take a main aetherblade base, they’d need to form into decent sized groups to assault it. Which could mean either the Aetherblades casually bombard them, or the ‘good guys’ who are kittened off at the group for all the civilians going missing and other kitten, flank them and wipe them out.

achensherd.2735:

And amusingly, if they don’t bring any Elder Dragons into their activities, the Pact still probably wouldn’t get involved.

Even more amusingly, some misguided Pact members would look at all the suffering these so called dark knights commit, and decide that the Pace is not doing enough to protect innocents. So they start thinking of creating a subfaction not bound by Pact politics, to deal with such dangerous deviants…

lakdav.3694:

Even more amusingly, some misguided Pact members would look at all the suffering these so called dark knights commit, and decide that the Pace is not doing enough to protect innocents. So they start thinking of creating a subfaction not bound by Pact politics, to deal with such dangerous deviants…

It’s interesting to note how quickly the Dark Knight idea went from “good intentions” to “literally-Hitler” within like a page or two. It could actually make for a good, new “evil” organization in the game, now that I think about it…

Erukk.1408:

Oh yes, it’s so much easier to make sacrifices for “the greater good” when you’re the one holding the knife isn’kitten Yet if someone came after your family, because they viewed your actions as wrong/evil and they wanted to stop you, it would be a whole different matter now wouldn’t?

That’s all I need to know about the Dark Knights.

PS: The Order probably wouldn’t have been against experimenting on the Charr to craft a weapon against them. They were basically a race of savage animals to the Ascalonians, and they were skinned to make leather armor at times. The Order was against experimenting on humans.

When the time comes and it requires of you, would you be willing to break your morals and honour in order to protect the people you care about?

You must decide this priority for yourself. This is very important. Because look at the past:

Ascalon did fall. So did the Forgottens. So did the Seerers. So did the Dwarfs.

That’s all you and I need to know about moral and honour. They are weak. Let me say this again. Moral and honour is correct, but they are weak.

Don’t get me wrong. I would love to be correct too if I can. But because of our situation, we cannot have any weaknesses. We have no room for weaknesses.

Look at it this way. No race has ever defeated the Elder Dragons before. What makes you so certain that we will beat them?

Moral and honour have failed time and time again. Look at the whole known history of GW. When has moral and honour ever won anything?

We and the Shining Blades didn’t beat the White Mantles fair and square. We assassinated so many of their top members, no trials (obviously). We killed most of the remaining Mursaats (those who survived against the Titans).

When a group of Ascalonian soldiers stole camp supplies from the refugees, we hunted and killed every single one of them to set an example for the rest. There were no trials there neither.

This ideal moral and honour that you are aiming for doesn’t exist, even back in GW1.

The whole world is facing extermination from the Elder Dragons. Every single person knows this. If some people are foolish enough to go around causing problems, weakening our efforts against the Elder Dragons, we should ruthlessly and mercilessly exterminate all of them. And this involves gathering intelligence though torturing them and their families, so be it.

We must put so much fear into our future potential enemies, that they would never even become our enemies in the first place. They would just open a shop and sell something.

As for the family of my main character, they are all dead. They were killed by these self-righteous people. All they care about is being righteous and stopping experiments on Charr cubs. They couldn’t, or refuse to, see the future where the Charrs will exterminate Ascalonians.

That’s the core problem of self-righteous people. They value moral and honour over the lives of those they are supposed to protect.

When you show mercy to your enemies, you are hating on the people you care about.

Kalavier.1097:

Order of Whispers can’t just pull information from their kitten . Aetherblades have explicitly been noted (Aetherblade path) to willingly charge into combat with heroes who WILL KILL THEM, because “It’s better then what Scarlet would do if we let them pass.” So while she was still alive, you really think they’ve talk?

Unless we start torturing, I guess we will never know if they will talk or not wont we?

So that means whenever you march a force, you’ll be assaulted by the local military groups because you are acting as a rogue element or pirate force. Good to know you’ll WEAKEN entire regions because they are more focused on stopping your band of rebels instead of defending themselves.

The Pact can’t even find the Aetherblades. The Tower of Nightmares (a super huge structure) were hidden for ages. Trust me, they have no chance of finding who we are.

And we have seen organizations like the LA council unwilling to spare a single dime to defend against Scarlet. You think they will mobile anything against a rogue group who isn’t their direct enemy?

Corrupt nobles, I suppose you can’t deny that… However, if even one is ousted, the rest will fall or withdraw.

More like nobles who are disappointed at the Pact.

And that means the good, skilled people will avoid them. They’ll get the criminals, the crazies. The ones that want to murder and torture, but not get in trouble for it. Why do you think the bandits swelled? They had a “get out of jail free” card (at least some groups) and thus went crazy with their strikes.

Like I said we do not go out of our ways to break laws. We would follow the laws 99% of the time. But the thing is we view laws as merely guidelines, that’s it. They are meant to be broken when necessary for the greater good.

Kalavier.1097:

You basically are saying your group will gladly torture and murder innocent children to even THINK about getting a lead. Disappearing families will cause questions. More ‘good/decent’ people will leave after finding this out, and oust what they know to the major armies/pact. Funders and suppliers may pull their aid after hearing about all these disappeared families.

I understand where you are coming from. But please open your mind and listen for a second.

What you said above is a very good example of self-righteousness. And I don’t mean it in a bad way. But allow me to show you a different way of thinking.

Firstly, you are right. Torturing and killing an innocent child is evil. This action by itself is purely evil, and there is no other way around it.

However while you are right here, you are only partially right. Why? Because you are not looking at the whole picture.

If that bad guys’s innocent children are the only innocent children in the whole world, then yes you would be totally right. But they aren’t. There are other innocent children in the world.

When that same bad guy dropped a bomb on LA and killed 3 families, 11 people with 4 kids, did he felt sorry about it at all? Did those 11 people and 4 kids even had a chance to defend themselves?

So when I think of the lives of those “4 kids”, I have no problem torturing that bad guy’s children to try to prevent those “4 kids” from dying.

What you said were right partially. You wanted to defend the lives of that bad guy’s children. I understand where you are coming from. But by doing this, you are placing place the lives of that bad guy’s children above the lives of those “4 kids”.

You would be right of accusing us of playing judge. Because in a way yes we did seem to value the lives of the “4 kids” above the lives of that bad guy’s children.

But you just did the same thing yourself by helping the children of the bad guy.

Maybe you disagree, but yes that’s what you just did. You are saying the lives of that bad guy’s children is worth more than the lives of those “4 kids”. Why? Because fact is unless that bad guy’s children dies, those “4 kids” will die.

Now let me be clear: I do not actually value the lives of those “4 kids” above the lives of that bad guy’s children. No. I actually believe they all worth the same and of course I want to keep them all alive. But our world is a dark place, and sometimes it is impossible to have both. We sometimes have to make a choice.

Another thing I want to make very clear. Those “4 kids” will [b]certainly[b/] die, unless we do something about it. That bad guy’s children might not need to die. 99.99% of the time we would only need to torture the kid, until that bad guy breaks. Killing the bad guy’s children is our VERY VERY last resort.

You also have to remember our main goal: the defeat of all the Elder Dragons.

To do this, we cannot have enemies spawning all over the place to back stab us. We will never get enough manpower to actually stop everyone. And so we must fear our potential future enemies so much, that they never became our enemies in the first place.

No one should take the Pact lightly. But the bad guys obviously doesn’t care, that’s why they are spawning up all over the place. If the Pact cannot instil fear, then the Dark Knights will help them do it.

Like I said we cannot have any weakness. No one has ever defeat the Elder Dragons. We must be fully united and fully focused to stand a chance.

All these bad guys spawning behind our backs are saying they couldn’t care less about the Elder Dragons. They are saying “We hate you so much, or we are so greedy, that I rather the Elder Dragons kills all of us, as long as you die too.” Anyone this foolish deserves no mercy.

If you zoom out your lens and see the whole picture, you will understand where we are coming from.

lakdav.3694:

The Pact’s job is to defeat the Elder Dragons. That implies dragons that are already awake. After Zhaitan (who they are still cleaning up after) there are still four awake dragons to fight, three with names and very tangible presence and threat. They have their hands full. If you want to seek blame, blame not the Pact, but the orders that have been present, but failed.

The Priory, who failed to find an antitoxin to the Nightmare Towers evolved miasma.
The Vigil, who failed to mount a sufficent force to aid the lionguard with, standing on the ready.
Most of all, the Order of Whispers, who failed miserably in manipulating the Captains Council into preparing for the attack properly.

Yes, the orders have been there, and tried to help. Would have been much worse without their help. The Pact as such had no business with Scarlet. So who is really to blame (other than Scarlet of course)?

The Captains Council. Even if Gnashblade is just spewing his hatred of Magnus and Kiel all around, he is right in one thing. The Council failed miserably.

Hobo tron had the cure but serif stopped him from using it why should priory find cure for something there was already a cure for?

Vigil troops must be endless right they can disperse them on every map and still have enough to fight off an invading army.

Order of whispers already knew where they where going to attack but the are also willing to sacrifice nations for greater good. Many villages. They point it out when you join their order they are in it for a big picture.

Honestly people could care less about scarlet actions. Maybe lions arch wronged her in some way like killed her kitten. Most people should know by now that syvarie have no concept of death. And don’t feel that much remorse when they kill people. Most people think the dream and nightmare are very different but they are two sides of a sphere and which one is good and which one is bad depends where you shine the light.

achensherd.2735:

If there was to be a vigilante organization in Tyria that conducted medical experiments, genocide, torture, and terrorism, and that creatively defined “honor” and “morals” to answer for its own actions… yeah, we’d so be hunting them down. I’d look forward to seeing how potentially three-dimensional they’d be compared to the game’s existing “evil” organizations, but make no mistake, they’re going down.

And amusingly, if they don’t bring any Elder Dragons into their activities, the Pact still probably wouldn’t get involved.

History in GW speaks for itself. All the races with “high moral” or “high honour” are either dying out or already extinct.

Isn’t it ironic that the most evil of the ancient races, the Mursaat, actually ends up surviving the longest and became the most successful?

The Ascalonians with high moral (under the Order of Necromancers) were on the edge of extinction. The ruthless Charrs, who used the Searing to slaughter thousands, were obviously winning the war.

And no I am not saying we should be as evil as the Mursaat. I am only saying we should band or break our moral barriers as needed to save lives, defeat our enemies and ultimately defeat the Elder Dragons.

Our goal is not to be some kind of moral compass. Our goal is to defeat the Elder Dragons and survive.

It is better to be “evil but alive” than “good but dead”. I cannot stress this point enough.

The Mursaat… the race that betrayed everyone else the last time Tyria unified to bring down the Elder Dragons, and that is as far as we know down to one guy. Yeah, their plans worked out real well for themselves.

CHIPS.6018:

It is better to be “evil but alive” than “good but dead”. I cannot stress this point enough.

Yet, you see doing “evil” as the only option in this situation. Never once looking for a compromise or an alternate solution. Violence to such a degree should only be the final option.

You used the Aetherblade pirate and his family as an example? One spouse and two kids right? You instantly turned to torture as the means of extracting information, and you simply just brought in his family and tortured them as well after he didn’t talk. Pain might be a good motivator, but it isn’t the only motivator nor always the best. When you saw that he cared for his family, you chose the worst way to get him to talk.

Do you know why people become pirate? Some people might enjoy the lifestyle, but they are usually the minority. Most people turn to piracy, or just theft in general, because it’s a fast way to earn money. Illegal, but fast nevertheless. And why to people usually need a fast way to earn money? To support themselves and possibly their family, because they care for them.

What I would do to try and extract information? I would offer him something that he was probably trying to get anyway. A better life for his family. Him turning to piracy, especially the Aetherblades as they are a wanted group, would put his family in a tough spot. The spouse obviously knew about his activities. It would be just horrible if she would be arrested, and the children would be left without parents and had to fend for themselves.

So I would give him two options. Either he gives us the information, and if it proves to be accurate, his family won’t have to worry ever again. That my superiors will either move them to the city and give them well paying jobs to support themselves, or maybe a nice plot of land in the countryside to call just their own. Either way, they will be much better than they are now. And depending on the crimes the Aetherblade is guilty of, he might just have a chance to join them. If not, well… at least they are taken care of.

If he decides to prove more stubborn, this is when you bring in the family. Not to torture, but as motivation. He obviously cares for them, but without him, their life will be much more difficult. Financial support, moral support, physical support for the family… All gone. Not many jobs where he comes from, if he had to turn to piracy to support his family. No one to mind the kids, if mom has to going search constantly for a job. No one to protect the family if the neighborhood gang comes by looking for “payment”. Not to mention, you can always make good on that threat to arrest the wife, and his kids will be left to fend for themselves. Life on the streets for a child is a horrible way to live.

More often than not, people will make the right choice, especially given the right motivation. “You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar” after all.

But you had to choose torture of all things. Do you know how many enemies you have made because of that action? Where you have probably only had one (the Aetherblade), you have now made enemies of AT LEAST that family’s immediate circle. The family is now against you. When they tell their friends, they will be against you. Where ever they live, once they have heard you abduct whole families to torture for information, will be against you.

Extreme actions provoke extreme responses. Your organization might be an extreme response to another extreme action, but your organization’s actions will cause responses of their own. By making enemies of those who you come in contact with, you doom your organization to failure.

To a certain extent… Keep in mind that there is an evolutionary reason we’re not all sociopaths. Sociopathy might be a good option for one or two people kittening everyone else around, but you can’t build a lasting society off of it.

You’ve cited the charr as an example of a species without honour or morality… but what you actually had there is a race without honour or morals towards their enemy. Among themselves – they may be more ruthless than human norms, but they certainly have a society that values loyalty and other forms of honour and morality. And as mentioned above, the Ascalonians back then didn’t treat the charr much better.

The kittenumption you’re making here is that you’re assuming that all these extreme actions will have the effects you think they will. Over centuries of human history, no society based on such “frontier-justice” style methods has proven to be stable. Either they start setting rules governing their behaviour, to prevent abuses of power or honest mistakes from having irreversible consequences… or somebody corrupt reaches a position of power and abuses that to form a tyranny, if a coalition of other powers doesn’t get fed up and wipe them out first. Those rules and laws, the honour and morality you find so inconvenient – have developed over and over again because while somebody who discards them may gain a short-term advantage and adhering to them may lead to some tragedies that could have been avoided by extreme action… in the long term, they’re better than the alternative.

Batman works because at the top there’s Bruce Wayne who is sure of his own honour and morality (which he has a lot of, even if he doesn’t always stick to due process of the law)… and has contingency plans to eliminate any of his allies if they go bad. Including himself.

PS In order to make this even look slightly like a good idea, there are three questions that you need to give solid answers to. No rhetoric about how lives are lost by following the rules. You need to answer these questions to even have a chance of representing a better alternative:

1) Without due process, how are you going to stop innocent lives from being lost or destroyed because one of your people genuinely thought they were guilty, only for new evidence to turn up weeks or months later that exonerates them?

2) Without due process, how are you going to stop people with less altruistic goals than yourself from joining your organisation in order to use it as a vehicle to carry out their own objectives, entirely to Tyria’s detriment?

3) Just how are you going to prevent the other powers on Tyria from regarding you as just as significant a threat as everyone else, hampering your operations (don’t assume that they’ll be so dumb that you’ll be able to give them the slip every time. You won’t. Sooner or later you’ll underestimate the wrong person or just get unlucky) while also diverting some of their resources from defending against other threats, ultimately causing more harm than good?

While i value the idea of a rogue Pact faction as means to get a good/passable story element into the consequentially built Living Story, you must realize that such a faction in now way would be any more symphatetic than the Nightmare Court or the Inquest. Some people would gladly roleplay their broken, unethical or unstable characters as members, but there is no way the faction itself would be ever considered doing the right thing with the right method. And thus, it would be a villain faction.

CHIPS.6018:

When the time comes and it requires of you, would you be willing to break your morals and honour in order to protect the people you care about?

You must decide this priority for yourself. This is very important. Because look at the past:

Ascalon did fall.

That’s all you and I need to know about moral and honour. They are weak. Let me say this again. Moral and honour is correct, but they are weak.

Ascalon fell due to the searing, a magical bombardment that turned the land into a wasteland with tar more common then water. It has NOTHING to do with honor or morals.

We and the Shining Blades didn’t beat the White Mantles fair and square. We assassinated so many of their top members, no trials (obviously). We killed most of the remaining Mursaats (those who survived against the Titans).

There is a difference between killing somebody who explicitly is knowing to commit mass murder and such, and torturing children. Mursaat were a hostile race trying to kill us. Same with the White Mantle really. It was more like war then anything else.

When a group of Ascalonian soldiers stole camp supplies from the refugees, we hunted and killed every single one of them to set an example for the rest. There were no trials there neither.

Actually, I recently glanced at that quests wiki page. The dialogue was more along the lines of “In the wake of Rurik’s Death… we’d be fine with them leaving to go their own path. HOWEVER, they pretty much took ALL OF OUR SUPPLIES. Without those we won’t survive, so we have to recover those supplies and take them out sadly.” So no, it wasn’t about setting an example. It was because they literally sabotaged (willingly or accidentally) the entire refugee caravan.

The whole world is facing extermination from the Elder Dragons. Every single person knows this. If some people are foolish enough to go around causing problems, weakening our efforts against the Elder Dragons, we should ruthlessly and mercilessly exterminate all of them. And this involves gathering intelligence though torturing them and their families, so be it.

We must put so much fear into our future potential enemies, that they would never even become our enemies in the first place. They would just open a shop and sell something.

As for the family of my main character, they are all dead. They were killed by these self-righteous people. All they care about is being righteous and stopping experiments on Charr cubs. They couldn’t, or refuse to, see the future where the Charrs will exterminate Ascalonians.

That’s the core problem of self-righteous people. They value moral and honour over the lives of those they are supposed to protect.

A: You’d make enemies in every nation because they WILL, SWIFTLY turn to the possibility of this “Dark Knight Pact” and it’s leadership deciding… “The Captain’s council is corrupt, we must clear them out and set up a new one!” “Queen Jennah is weak or the ministers corrupt, we must rebuild the human government.” “The Inquest is allowed to openly hang out in Rata Sum and one of their supporters or members is part of the council! We gotta take that threat out!”

Basically, you’d make EVERYBODY afraid of a sudden military attack and take-over. Which means anybody found in the group won’t be treated nicely.

B: Using fear as a tactic backfires. See the Empire from Star Wars. You’ll eventually make an example of something, and that’ll RALLY people against you.

C: Again, the order would care more about human experimenting. Hell, that period of time I don’t see them being against a way to fight the charr better. They might prefer you study on captured adults though. Also, how the hell would they find Charr cubs? Only people on the frontlines were adults. Did these guys sneak into the charr homelands and villages?

D: Is a victory worth it if to win you become what you sought to destroy?

CHIPS.6018:

Unless we start torturing, I guess we will never know if they will talk or not wont we?

There are other ways to get people to talk, especially if they have a family they care about.

The Pact can’t even find the Aetherblades. The Tower of Nightmares (a super huge structure) were hidden for ages. Trust me, they have no chance of finding who we are.

No actually, it wasn’t hidden for ages. As soon as that illusion/magic wall got put up people noticed and started investigating.

And we have seen organizations like the LA council unwilling to spare a single dime to defend against Scarlet. You think they will mobile anything against a rogue group who isn’t their direct enemy?

They, while stupid, had a good point. Typically if one attack fails, an enemy doesn’t charge back again. Yes, they’ll target a rogue group that holds a VERY, VERY good chance of simply trying to kill the council and take over the city.

Corrupt nobles, I suppose you can’t deny that… However, if even one is ousted, the rest will fall or withdraw.

More like nobles who are disappointed at the Pact.

And they’ll leave you too when they find out about murdering children.

And that means the good, skilled people will avoid them. They’ll get the criminals, the crazies. The ones that want to murder and torture, but not get in trouble for it. Why do you think the bandits swelled? They had a “get out of jail free” card (at least some groups) and thus went crazy with their strikes.

Like I said we do not go out of our ways to break laws. We would follow the laws 99% of the time. But the thing is we view laws as merely guidelines, that’s it. They are meant to be broken when necessary for the greater good.

No, you can’t play that game. You can’t say “No limits, no rules.” and “torturing and murdering children is okay if we get the bad guys.” and then say “We follow laws 99% of the time.”

It doesn’t work like that. You either follow the laws but break a few here and there, or you ignore them entirely.

achensherd.2735:

The Mursaat… the race that betrayed everyone else the last time Tyria unified to bring down the Elder Dragons, and that is as far as we know down to one guy. Yeah, their plans worked out real well for themselves.

They still lasted longer, as a civilization, than anyone else from their era.

Erukk.1408:

Yet, you see doing “evil” as the only option in this situation. Never once looking for a compromise or an alternate solution. Violence to such a degree should only be the final option.

You have to remember the context here: The Order of Whisper never got the Aetherblades to talk. The Order of Whisper knows almost nothing about the Aetherblades, even now.

I mean yes of course I agree we should play nice in the beginning. But look at the results! We got no intelligence whatsoever by playing nice.

If the bad guy talked without any sort of tortures (e.g. we would let him into our witness protection program, help his family, reduce his jail sentence, etc etc), then of course we won’t need to torture him.

If the bad guy talked after we tortured just him, then of course we won’t need to torture his family.

etc etc.

So to answer your question, no I am not against playing nice. But when playing nice yields no result, then we have to move on to torture. Else thousands of civilians will be dead.

I do like the idea of using good cop/bad cop to get the bad guys to talk. Perhaps we can try this in the future.

CHIPS.6018:

They still lasted longer, as a civilization, than anyone else from their era.

Is there any reason as to why they didn’t or couldn’t share with the other races the ability to phase out of Tyria? Because, you know, had that option been available to everyone else, things might have turned out differently. No one would’ve had to give up their magic, and many could have been saved during the EDs’ last trip around the buffet lines.

CHIPS.6018:

achensherd.2735:

The Mursaat… the race that betrayed everyone else the last time Tyria unified to bring down the Elder Dragons, and that is as far as we know down to one guy. Yeah, their plans worked out real well for themselves.

They still lasted longer, as a civilization, than anyone else from their era.

Really?

From what we currently know, the Mursaat civilisation was destroyed in 1072AE. The Dwarves survived them by six years – and only in such a short time because of the coincidence of the Great Destroyer rousing so soon after the Flameseeker Prophecies, and the need of the dwarves to sacrifice themselves so everyone had a chance to survive. If they’d refused – which seems like it might have been half of the point of the Stone Summit rebellion – we still wouldn’t have a healthy dwarven civilisation today. We’d have most of Tyria overrun by destroyers, and the dwarves extinct or nearly so either way.

The jotun… well, their civilisation collapsed because they abandoned the same rules and laws that you’re proposing abandoning. The Forgotten… we really don’t know what state they’re in. Depending on how you read a certain quest text in Nightfall, they may have been close to wiped out in Tyria in 1075… but that text could just as easily have been referring to events before Abaddon’s fall. Certainly, the Forgotten seem to have disappeared from the world now… but the very name we use to refer to them shows that this is hardly the first time. Given their presence in significant numbers in the Realm of Torment, and their close relationship with the gods, they could have a perfectly healthy civilisation somewhere out of our reach.

Compare to the Mursaat… at the bottom line, what happened to them in the end? They kittened off pretty much everyone who knew about them (with the exception of the corrupt government they installed) – Glint, the Forgotten, the dwarves, the Seer(s), the Shining Blade, Vizier Khilbron – that they all cooperated to achieve the downfall of the mursaat. Sure, that alliance fell apart as soon as its objectives were completed, but the reward the mursaat received for looking out only for themselves is that eventually they built up a large enough group of enemies that were willing to work together to bring them down and who, in working together, had the resources to do so.

And the same thing would happen to your proposed organisation. Sooner or later, it’s going to make enough enemies that it’s going to be brought crashing down.

Casting aside rules and morality can only bring short-term benefits. In the long run, sooner or later the enemies that you’ve made – enemies that might otherwise had been allies if you had been on better behaviour – will catch up to you. Or your organisation will fall apart from the corruption within.

Still waiting on an answer to those questions I posed, incidentally.

draxynnic.3719:

You’ve cited the charr as an example of a species without honour or morality… but what you actually had there is a race without honour or morals towards their enemy. Among themselves – they may be more ruthless than human norms, but they certainly have a society that values loyalty and other forms of honour and morality. And as mentioned above, the Ascalonians back then didn’t treat the charr much better.

If you want to look at evolution, it is obvious that many ancient races are more powerful than us. Lupi, Forgottens, Seerers, Dwarfs just to name a few. All of them are “good” races.

So why didn’t they survive as a nation/culture? They are so powerful, so what went wrong?

Look at the history of GW. I have yet to see compelling evidence that good tramples over evil, in the long run.

The Dwarfs for example was a great example. Due to weak leadership, a rebel faction (Stone Summits) were formed. Because of this civil war, the Dwarfs were defeated by the Mursaat & White Mantles. Their king was close to getting captured/killed.

Only thanks to the players and the Titans, were the Dwarfs saved from destruction.

Remember my main goal here. I want to stop any new enemy factions from stabbing our backs, so we can focus 100% on dealing with the Elder Dragons.

We cannot have our version of the “Stone Summits” stabbing our backs. This is unacceptable. That’s why the existing “Stone Summits” must be ruthlessly and mercilessly crushed, and future “Stone Summits” be so scared of us that they never even appear.

Our time for mercy and moral have passed. We have no time. Elder Dragons are here.

As for the Charrs, I am glad you agree they were ruthless toward their enemies. This much was obvious. That’s why they won. Ascalonians didn’t became nearly as ruthless, that’s why they lost. Have you ever seen an Ascalonian skin a Charr alive? Have you ever seen an Ascalonian raid party enter a Charr village and kill their “innocent” civilians and cubs? Did Ascalon conscript absolutely everyone into the army? Nope? There you go.

History shows that I am right.

CHIPS.6018:

draxynnic.3719:

You’ve cited the charr as an example of a species without honour or morality… but what you actually had there is a race without honour or morals towards their enemy. Among themselves – they may be more ruthless than human norms, but they certainly have a society that values loyalty and other forms of honour and morality. And as mentioned above, the Ascalonians back then didn’t treat the charr much better.

If you want to look at evolution, it is obvious that many ancient races are more powerful than us. Lupi, Forgottens, Seerers, Dwarfs just to name a few. All of them are “good” races.

So why didn’t they survive as a nation/culture? They are so powerful, so what went wrong?

First of all, labeling entire races “good” and “evil” does not match any of the GW lore. The dwarves had a hostile faction too. The same kind of ruthless kittens your faction would be. The forgotten might have been the servants of the human gods, but they still pretty much annihilated the elonian settlers who came to the Crystal Desert to ascend. Seers we know little about. Jotun fell from grace because of extremist views of purity of bloodlines. We have no idea whatsoever what Lupis were like as a culture.

Every race in the GW universe have “good” and “evil” factions. Dont assume that only because they are close to extinction, they were all good.

CHIPS.6018:

Look at the history of GW. I have yet to see compelling evidence that good tramples over evil, in the long run.

The Dwarfs for example was a great example. Due to weak leadership, a rebel faction (Stone Summits) were formed. Because of this civil war, the Dwarfs were defeated by the Mursaat & White Mantles. Their king was close to getting captured/killed.

Only thanks to the players and the Titans, were the Dwarfs saved from destruction.

Remember my main goal here. I want to stop any new enemy factions from stabbing our backs, so we can focus 100% on dealing with the Elder Dragons.

We cannot have our version of the “Stone Summits” stabbing our backs. This is unacceptable. That’s why the existing “Stone Summits” must be ruthlessly and mercilessly crushed, and future “Stone Summits” be so scared of us that they never even appear.

Our time for mercy and moral have passed. We have no time. Elder Dragons are here.

You still dont get it. This dark knight faction of the Pact would be like the Stone Summit to the dwarves. Extremist to the core, a danger to everyone who dont agree with them or their methods (which would be all the “good” people on Tyria, and the “evil” people the faction stands against), a liability and a weakness in what should be a unified effort against the dragons.

Of course it would be great if we were all unified in agreeing with this rogue factions way of thinking, but that is not going to happen. Ever.

CHIPS.6018:

As for the Charrs, I am glad you agree they were ruthless toward their enemies. This much was obvious. That’s why they won. Ascalonians didn’t became nearly as ruthless, that’s why they lost. Have you ever seen an Ascalonian skin a Charr alive? Have you ever seen an Ascalonian raid party enter a Charr village and kill their “innocent” civilians and cubs? Did Ascalon conscript absolutely everyone into the army? Nope? There you go.

History shows that I am right.

Charr didnt win against Ascalon. They seared it to ash, then pushed into the city… then their victory was robbed from them when Adelbern unleashed the Foefire.
other points:
1) I have seen my GW1 character in charr skin armor. I dont know if the charr was skinned alive, but it was skinned alright. I belive there was salvageable hide on the loot-table.
2) Ascalonians in GW1 never pushed far enough into charr territory to meet “civilian” charr to slaughter. Not because they thought it would be mean and evil, but because they couldnt. No moral implication there.
2.b) It might have happened when the humans first pushed the charr out to settle in Ascalon. Im sure that was all fine by the charr though, and havent in the slightest made them mad at humans to the point of wanting to annihilate them…
3) Charr didnt conscript everyone into the army at the time either. Female charr were forbidden to do anything of the sort until Kalla Scorchrazor toppled the Flame Legion. We havent seen cubs in the GW1 war areas either.

Conclusion: The Charr pushed so far back into Ascalon by pure brute strength and the magic of the Searing, and their success had nothing to do with being “evil” or any more ruthless than the humans there.

draxynnic.3719:

1) Without due process, how are you going to stop innocent lives from being lost or destroyed because one of your people genuinely thought they were guilty, only for new evidence to turn up weeks or months later that exonerates them?

2) Without due process, how are you going to stop people with less altruistic goals than yourself from joining your organisation in order to use it as a vehicle to carry out their own objectives, entirely to Tyria’s detriment?

3) Just how are you going to prevent the other powers on Tyria from regarding you as just as significant a threat as everyone else, hampering your operations (don’t assume that they’ll be so dumb that you’ll be able to give them the slip every time. You won’t. Sooner or later you’ll underestimate the wrong person or just get unlucky) while also diverting some of their resources from defending against other threats, ultimately causing more harm than good?

1) You have to look at the context we are speaking about. We are talking about captured Aetherblade members. These people were caught in the very act of killing and looting civilians; there is 130% prove of their guilt. They are not innocent.

It is these people that we should torture for information. And their families, as required.

2) Yes I am sure some people will join the Dark Knights just to abuse the system. But what did they think the Dark Knights will do to them if they are caught?

3) These “powers” that you are talking about cannot even kill weak factions like Seperatists. They are also the ones saying they cannot spare anything, because of the Elder Dragons.

And now you want them to come after the Dark Knights, who aren’t even a direct threat to them?

We won’t have to worry about this for a very long time.

Kalavier.1097:

And they’ll leave you too when they find out about murdering children.

Kill the child of the bad guy, and save 100 other children.

Leave for what?

If you continue to look at part of the picture, and refuse the see the whole picture, you will never understand.

1) He wasn’t talking about just Aetherblades. He was talking about anyone and everyone your organization might view as “evil” or “a threat” in the future.

For an example, lets say a man is accused of being murder and having suspected ties to the bandits and White Mantle. Your people raid his house, find clothes closely matching WM grab, smudged documents showing the WM insignia, and a bloody dagger. He continually proclaims his innocence, but the evidence suggests otherwise. So your people kill him. You find out weeks later that man was innocent, and those items were planted there by a member of rival family.

2) You will kill them, but that doesn’t stop anything. Your organization will always draw in the wrong sort of people, but you’ll only be killing off the stupid ones. The smart ones know how to cover their tracks, and it will only get worse if one of them obtains a leadership position. S/he would have the ability to influence their subordinates actions and thoughts, and they will have a constant source of peons to throw under the bus should their own actions come under suspect.

3) That’s because they don’t try to kill them. They manage their threat level. Trying to wipe out the Separatists, is like trying to kill an idea. Which is beyond difficult. If the Charr tried to go full scale assault on them, it will only further the Separatist’s cause by drawing sympathy to their group. Which in turn will draw in more troops and probably funds.

And yes, you will become a direct threat to the different nations, if you become a threat to their populace. If you go onto their land, too kill their people, without any approval or recognition from them, you are a direct threat to them and their populace.

CHIPS.6018:

You have to remember the context here: The Order of Whisper never got the Aetherblades to talk. The Order of Whisper knows almost nothing about the Aetherblades, even now.

I mean yes of course I agree we should play nice in the beginning. But look at the results! We got no intelligence whatsoever by playing nice.

No, no, no…

For example, the Dark Knights have no problem hurting and torturing the “bad guys”, until they give up the home location of the bad guys. There will never be a trial. Everything is street justice.

If they refuse to say anything, we will locate his/her family and kidnap them. We will see how long these “bad guys” can hold up, while watching their family get tortured in front of them.

The OoW was never apart of the original statement. Therefore, they can’t be apart of the context of this whole thing. The Aetherblade was in your custody, not theirs.

Even then, you went straight to the most extreme option. You went directly from “playing nice” to “I hope you enjoy the screams of your wife and children”. You seem to think you can only get results from acts of evil, but that isn’t the case. And judging by the different reports and cover-ups on the matter, torture has been proven unreliable when it comes to obtaining information.

The people usually saying it gets results irl are either lying, have been misinformed on the matter, or they have been watching too many movies.

CHIPS.6018:

Kalavier.1097:

And they’ll leave you too when they find out about murdering children.

Kill the child of the bad guy, and save 100 other children.

Leave for what?

If you continue to look at part of the picture, and refuse the see the whole picture, you will never understand.

Leave exactly because nobody wants to be associated with child-slayers. Nobody in their right mind in a political world would try to defend these kinds of actions.

You are not seeing the whole picture either, just a bigger picture that is made out of imaginery statistics. Nobody counts saved people because it cannot be measured. We count casulties.

The whole picture contains the overall reaction of everyone and everything in the world, their interaction with the world in mirror of what you do, and the continuous chain of events leading from “we should have saved more people” through “lets kill this guy and his entire bloodline, relatives, home village and anyone who sold him a sweetroll to set an example” all the way to “we must wipe out the corrupt lionguard, the weakling Pact, the Queen who is growing troublesome, and lets assassinate all the charr imperators while we are at it.”

You keep repeating “torture, torture, torture, wee!” like it was a good method of obtaining information, even in our world.

If torture was effective, alternative methods would never be developed, and there is a reason the alternative methods are used irl.

But we are talking about Guild Wars universe. In GW2 universe, torture is the LEAST effective means to obtain information you could possibly imagine, and using it for that purpose seems like nothing but ungrounded sadism.

In a world where you have: MESMERS to mind control a person to tell you everything and even be your spy when needed, NECROMANCER to simply kill someone, summon his soul and force the soul to tell you what you want, ALCHEMISTS who could probably quite easily obtain the equivalent of skopolamine, and so on and so on, I could go on forever. In THIS SETTING you choose torture as your means of obtaining information? That’s ridiculous.

omg it’s like the Machiavelli-topic all over again /holds head

How did I miss the Machiavelli topic? If this one is anything to go by, must have been fun!

achensherd.2735:

CHIPS.6018:

They still lasted longer, as a civilization, than anyone else from their era.

Is there any reason as to why they didn’t or couldn’t share with the other races the ability to phase out of Tyria? Because, you know, had that option been available to everyone else, things might have turned out differently. No one would’ve had to give up their magic, and many could have been saved during the EDs’ last trip around the buffet lines.

Who knows? Maybe the place where they phase out of Tyria into have limited resources, and they can only feed their own people.

CHIPS.6018:

Who knows? Maybe the place where they phase out of Tyria into have limited resources, and they can only feed their own people.

So what’s to stop the Dark Knights from doing something similar (i.e. running away, hiding, leaving everyone else out to dry) if they eventually find that their shenanigans have basically had the same effect the Aetherblades, Inquest, Nightmare Court, etc., had on the various Tyrian governments and organizations? What they do they do when they find that because of their actions, because the “good” guys expended considerable resources trying to hunt them down, the Pact’s power becomes diminished as a result, causing them to stumble/fail against the EDs? What do they do when the world is crumbling around them and everyone they’ve made enemies of, which in this case would be EVERYONE (i.e. ALL the “good” and “evil” governments/organizations), including the corrupt nobles that funded them, wants nothing to do with them save to capture and kill them out of revenge? “They had it coming for trying to come after us”? “We were only trying to help”? “Oh well, let’s go hide in the Mists”?

lakdav.3694:

First of all, labeling entire races “good” and “evil” does not match any of the GW lore. The dwarves had a hostile faction too. The same kind of ruthless kittens your faction would be. The forgotten might have been the servants of the human gods, but they still pretty much annihilated the elonian settlers who came to the Crystal Desert to ascend. Seers we know little about. Jotun fell from grace because of extremist views of purity of bloodlines. We have no idea whatsoever what Lupis were like as a culture.

Perhaps I wasn’t clear, but that’s exactly my point. There are always “good” and “evil” factions within a civilization. No matter how kind, respectful, honourable and high moral we are, these evil factions will always exist.

Then we look at history. All these ancient races always end up fighting against each other, or within themselves, and so the Elder Dragons wins at the end.

So once again here is my question: If we allow all these enemy factions to stabs us in the back while we deal with the Elder Dragons, how certain are we that we will win?

Once again look at history. This has never happened. And so the Elder Dragons always wins.

To beat the Elder Dragons, we must form the largest united front the world has ever seen. That is the only way we can achieve the impossible. To do this, we need absolutely everyone to obey us.

There is pretty much only two ways to make people obey you: They either love you. Or they fear you.

As I said in my first paragraph, these enemy factions does not love us. In fact they probably will never love us. You can talk your brains out with your nice, respectful, honourable and high moral, it won’t matter. They don’t care. You cannot melt their hearts. This is not a child’s story.

So the only way left is to fear them. And so like I said:

“We cannot have our version of the “Stone Summits” stabbing our backs. This is unacceptable. That’s why the existing “Stone Summits” must be ruthlessly and mercilessly crushed, and future “Stone Summits” be so scared of us that they never even appear.”

As for Ascalon vs Charr:

1) Skinning dead is very different from skinning alive. But either way Charrs literally eats Ascalonians. Can’t top that now can’t we?

2) Ascalon have tons of spies and scouts deep into Charr territory. Never did we see them attack harmless Charr villagers. Not once did they even mention killing Charr civilians.

Charrs have no problem killing every human woman and children they find. Ask Gwen if you don’t believe me.

3) Charr males already outnumbers, by a lot, the whole Ascalon army. This much is obvious. The point is Ascalon should have used conscription.

4) Without the Searing (illegal nuclear weapons, in GW standards), the Charrs won’t have beaten Ascalon this “easily”, if at all. Ruthlessness, merciless, immoral and illegal clearly gave the Charrs an advantage here.

Erukk.1408:

1) He wasn’t talking about just Aetherblades. He was talking about anyone and everyone your organization might view as “evil” or “a threat” in the future.

For an example, lets say a man is accused of being murder and having suspected ties to the bandits and White Mantle. Your people raid his house, find clothes closely matching WM grab, smudged documents showing the WM insignia, and a bloody dagger. He continually proclaims his innocence, but the evidence suggests otherwise. So your people kill him. You find out weeks later that man was innocent, and those items were planted there by a member of rival family.

2) You will kill them, but that doesn’t stop anything. Your organization will always draw in the wrong sort of people, but you’ll only be killing off the stupid ones. The smart ones know how to cover their tracks, and it will only get worse if one of them obtains a leadership position. S/he would have the ability to influence their subordinates actions and thoughts, and they will have a constant source of peons to throw under the bus should their own actions come under suspect.

3) That’s because they don’t try to kill them. They manage their threat level. Trying to wipe out the Separatists, is like trying to kill an idea. Which is beyond difficult. If the Charr tried to go full scale assault on them, it will only further the Separatist’s cause by drawing sympathy to their group. Which in turn will draw in more troops and probably funds.

And yes, you will become a direct threat to the different nations, if you become a threat to their populace. If you go onto their land, too kill their people, without any approval or recognition from them, you are a direct threat to them and their populace.

1) You have to remember the main weapons of the Dark Knight is fear.

The Dark Knights are not going to go around capturing and killing everyone. This is impossible.

Instead our aim is to set an example of what we are willing to do. And to set examples we will be going after those who are 130% guilty. By being totally ruthless and merciless toward these 130% guilty bad guys, the rest will hopefully be feared into submission.

Think of a cop catching people for speeding on a highway. He will catch maybe 0.1% of the people who actually speed that day. But the rest will be so afraid that they keep their speeds under control.

1.5) That guy that you mentioned (50% chance of being a White Mantle) will not be touched. Why would we go after him, when other 130% guilt White Mantle members can be captured and tortured?

When a NPC is red and is named “Flame Legion Shaman”, and 10 of us see him setting innocent people on fire, and laughing about it, I will say he is 130% guilty.

2) Another weapon of the Dark Knights: Ruthlessly gather intelligence and assassinate enemy leadership.

The Dark Knights, being illegal, will all be underground. So they will invest heavily into spy networks. We aim to have insiders spying within every single enemy organization, to gather intelligence and sabotage.

The Dark Knight actually wants the bad guys to know that there are spies inside. Their leadership will be assassinated ruthlessly. This will keep the enemies second guessing each other. They will begin to distrust each other, even those who are actually loyal to the organization. This way we will break these bad guys from within.

Of course it would be better if the Order of Whisper do this, since this is kind of their speciality to gather intelligence and assassinate. But since they are so bad at their job, we will do it for them.

2.5) To answer your question, we hope our spy network will be enough to catch most of these “system abusers”. There will certainly be people who are good at hidding themselves. But you have to keep in mind that this isn’t a fair standard.

The current system isn’t perfect neither. There are tons of corruption and spies in the existing system. And if you recall, we friendly-fired to death a bunch of Pact members, remember? You can never completely prevent friendly-fire and misfire. You can only try your best.

3) If the Pact was successful in “threat managing” the Scarlet threat, we wouldn’t need to be talking about this…