Guild Wars 2

CHIPS.6018:

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.

So basically the Dark Knights failed before they even flayed their first innocent… because no matter what they do, they will always be opposed. There will always be “good” and “evil” factions within a civilization, after all.

CHIPS.6018:

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.

Last I checked, Zhaitan took a giant 2 up the kitten and hasn’t gotten up since.

CHIPS.6018:

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?

Ignoring the fact that the Dark Knights would be that very backstabbing enemy faction in the given scenario.

CHIPS.6018:

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

**COUGH**Zhaitan**COUGH**

CHIPS.6018:

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.

The Pact is already the largest united front the world has ever seen. As for getting everyone to obey you, ask any “evil” faction how their attempts at making that happen for themselves have been going.

CHIPS.6018:

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.”

So what happens when you’re faced with a faction, “good” or “evil”, whom you can’t threaten/torture/murder enough to fear you (perhaps because they’re equally if not more ruthless), and whom perceive you to be the “Stone Summit”? What happens if, say, Palawa Joko decided he would very much like the EDs to succeed for whatever reason (e.g. kittens and giggles), and felt that the Dark Knights were getting in the way of that?

CHIPS.6018:

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.

1) Ascalonian pelts probably never caught on in Charr fashion circles. As for eating them, who’s to say the starving Ascalonians post-Searing didn’t chow down on the perfectly good Charr meat left over after they skinned them?

2) Gwen sure survived a long time in the hands of Charr that have no problem killing every human woman and child they found.

3) Whom would have still been effectively nuked.

4) And they STILL didn’t win, even after taking the nuclear option.

I think this thread needs to be moved to the fan generated content forum.

lakdav.3694:

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.

Yeah I doubt Anet will actually allow us to join one such radical faction with our character. But it will be interesting to have an anti-hero/anti-villain group in the story.

Erukk.1408:

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.

The Dark Knights will be capturing their own prisoners to torture. They won’t be using prisoners from the Pact. I was merely pointing out the fact that the Order of Whispers had many Aetherblade prisoners for a year, and yet got almost zero intelligence from them. This show how far “playing nice” gets them.

I didn’t say we “can only get results from acts of evil”. No. But I am stating a fact that the Order of Whispers played nice and got nothing. When playing nice doesn’t work, maybe it is time to be ruthless?

If the Order of Whispers got results, we won’t need to talk about this at all. There won’t be a thread on “Pact justification”.

Thousands of civilians are dead. If the Order of Whisper got better intelligence, it could have been prevented.

For example if we knew about the miasma gas earlier we could have developed an anti-dope, so we could have saved more of those “dying” in the medical tents (even if we never sent any airship to stop the deployment of the gas).

lakdav.3694:

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 are quite right in saying "Nobody in their right mind in a political world would try to defend these kinds of actions. " Because the Dark Knights do not defend these actions neither. We know they are evil. We do not enjoy it. But it just have to be done for the greater good.

So if you argue with us that “this is evil”, we will agree with you right away. But then we will try to tell you why it needs to be done.

We want no statistics. The best event is no event.

The Dark Knights do not go after inefficient groups of allies. An ally is an ally. We only go after our common enemies.

(Speak of which, who is imaginating things here? The Dark Knights will be relatively small. So think of our priority. Even if we want to go after corrupted LA guards, there are many much higher priority targets that we have to deal with first. )

Our goal is to set up the biggest united front the world has ever seen to face the Elder Dragons. All the “Stone Summits” in the world must either be crushed or leadership destroyed for this to happen.

zwierz.9012:

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.

The Pact captured many Aetherblade prisoners. So explain to me why after a whole year they got almost no intelligence? Show me prove that their current methods (e.g. your suggestions) are effective.

Do not give me the “it isn’t easy to find intelligence” excuse. You would just be agreeing with me that the current methods are ineffective. It is our job to know. People’s lives depends on us.

Like I said if the Pact did it jobs well, we won’t even need to talk about any of this.

achensherd.2735:

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”?

If they find us we would try to run. If they got us cornered, we will surrounder without a fight. No way we would fight our allies head on.

But like I said we are confident in hiding our identities. And the Pact, unless it improve its spy ring and intelligence gathering, would have very little chance of finding out who we are. We would be impressed if they do. ^^

And we plan to stay low on their priority list. I know some of you value us higher than the Flame Legions by this point. But it should be obvious that the Flame Legions kills A ton more than we will ever do. The only reason the Pact will place us on a high priority is if the story writers say so.

“OMG the Dark Knights kills children and families!!!”

Pretty much every single bad guy organization kills children and families, on a much larger scale. What’s your point?

CHIPS.6018:

If they find us we would try to run. If they got us cornered, we will surrounder without a fight. No way we would fight our allies head on.

That’s assuming one of the “good” factions get to you.

CHIPS.6018:

But like I said we are confident in hiding our identities. And the Pact, unless it improve its spy ring and intelligence gathering, would have very little chance of finding out who we are. We would be impressed if they do. ^^

And we plan to stay low on their priority list. I know some of you value us higher than the Flame Legions by this point. But it should be obvious that the Flame Legions kills A ton more than we will ever do. The only reason the Pact will place us on a high priority is if the story writers say so.

Unless you have something to do with an ED or EDs, the Pact probably won’t even acknowledge your existence. The other factions whose families have been disappearing because of you, however, might pay a little more attention.

CHIPS.6018:

“OMG the Dark Knights kills children and families!!!”

Pretty much every single bad guy organization kills children and families, on a much larger scale. What’s your point?

So if every single bad guy organization kills children and families on a much larger scale than the Dark Knights, what makes the Dark Knights think their efforts are going to change anything, especially since their op is “relatively small” as you mentioned in a previous post? In other words, what exactly do you do that is so much scarier than what any of the other “evil” factions already do on the daily, and on a much larger scale?

CHIPS.6018:

The Pact captured many Aetherblade prisoners. So explain to me why after a whole year they got almost no intelligence? Show me prove that their current methods (e.g. your suggestions) are effective.

Do not give me the “it isn’t easy to find intelligence” excuse. You would just be agreeing with me that the current methods are ineffective. It is our job to know. People’s lives depends on us.

Like I said if the Pact did it jobs well, we won’t even need to talk about any of this.

Not to burst the bubble here, but as far as i witnessed there were no prisoners taken ever. We killed all the aetherblades we encountered. The only prisoner was Mai Trin, and she was under Lionguard custody, and the failure to get information out of her once again lies with the Captains Council. Not that it would matter, since Scarlet was still in complete control of the Aetherblades, and im pretty sure no information gained from Trin with whatever method would have been accurate.

And dont assume fully that Trin, the only aetherblade prisoner taken who might actually know something, would break so easily. The lionguard and the Captains Council might have done everything your group would have done too. They had the motivation, Ashfords assassination and all. No laws stopping them either, they are the law in LA.

So what is to be done if torture doesnt work, and the key subject has no relatives or loved ones whatsoever?

Also how are you going to deal with every single stone summit out there if you dont have the numbers to keep them in check? Most of these factions are centered around an idea, not the leaders that could be assassinated.

This is starting to veer into fanfiction territory.

CHIPS.6018:

You are quite right in saying "Nobody in their right mind in a political world would try to defend these kinds of actions. " Because the Dark Knights do not defend these actions neither. We know they are evil. We do not enjoy it. But it just have to be done for the greater good.

So if you argue with us that “this is evil”, we will agree with you right away. But then we will try to tell you why it needs to be done.

Then Braham comes along and tells you that it doesnt matter, because you are finished. Then we stomp the evil snot out of you. Not because its gameplay and bad writing, but because you must be stopped. The necessary and brooding evil is still evil. And your evil will have no allies. It will fail. And everyone will feel safer when you are dead.

CHIPS.6018:

We want no statistics. The best event is no event.

Missing the point. The point is that all you do might be justified in your head with the stuff you tell yourself about saving this many people by killing/torturing this many people, but the reality is just that you killed and tortured people. Thats what the world sees. Thats what the world reacts to. With hostility and hatred, more so than just fear.

Also that suffering is the only thing that your group will witness. They wont leave the torture chambers uneffected either. They will question themselves and your preachings of saving people, because normal and safe is too everyday to make the same kind of impact as the tormented screams and the bodily harm inflicted on feeling beings. Unless you are a sociopath or a psychopath.

CHIPS.6018:

The Dark Knights do not go after inefficient groups of allies. An ally is an ally. We only go after our common enemies.

It doesnt take much to go from “they are inefficient” to “we have someone much more efficient to replace them with.” Dont tell me that a group like you describe would not make political assassinations in the name of “unifying Tyria” under their goals.

Wanderer.3248:

I think this thread needs to be moved to the fan generated content forum.

Zaxares.5419:

This is starting to veer into fanfiction territory.

Yeah, I think the original topic has pretty much been discussed out, and nearly everything after has been fan fiction/personal RP trying to work around existing lore.

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.

It hasn’t been explicitly stated, but we know that the Ascalonians were pushing north into charr territory right up until the eve of the Searing, and the Ascalonians regarded the charr as essentially beasts, nor worthy of being treated as real people. If the Ascalonians haven’t been responsible for massacres of charr noncombatants, it’s only because the charr pulled those noncombatants back. And, frankly, I don’t see how such massacres could have helped the Ascalonian war effort much except as part of a guerilla raid (and Gwen does have that ‘Goremonger’ title which has yet to be fully explained…)

Regarding the dwarves: There’s an important part of the lesson you’ve missed: When Jalis’ back was against the wall, he had allies to help. All those races and factions that threw out the rules, the mursaat, the Stone Summit, and all… they had short-term successes before the others reacted, but eventually they found themselves with no-one willing to help them when everyone who they’d aggravated along the way was ganging up to take them down. As the old joke goes, you must hang together or you will assuredly hang separately.

What real history has shown is that one group or society that flouts the rules… eventually, it comes tumbling down, or it normalises its relations with others and agrees to follow the rules. It may take years, decades, or even generations, but eventually they get stamped out. The most powerful force on Earth today is the collective group of nations and cultures that is referred to, however increasingly geographically inaccurate it becomes, as “the West” – and that’s the group that with a few hiccoughs along the way, by and large follows the rules, and is strongest and most effective when it does so. Yes, it gets blindsided occasionally by someone who flouts the rules, but consider – fifty years ago, people were concerned about the USSR invading Western Europe. Now, people are concerned about Russia invading Ukraine. Sucks for the people on the front lines, but it’s pretty clear who won there.

We can point to the Searing, but the real reason why the charr now hold Ascalon was that they were canny enough to (finally) assume normal relations with the other races and keep it framed as a human-charr conflict with no clear ‘correct’ side. If they’d continued rampant aggression and opportunism in all directions, they would have rallied the norn, asura, and other races behind Ascalon’s banner, and would eventually have lost.

At the bottom line… flouting the rules may grant you short-term gains, but it also turns potential allies into enemies and eventually dooms you to being crushed alone against all the enemies you’ve made. Following the rules may cost you in the short term, but in the long term, it helps you build alliances that make you stronger than any rogue faction, however ruthless.

lakdav makes a good point above. You’re talking about saving other innocent children as justification for torturing (and let’s face it, even if you leave them aside, many people regard that as worse than a clean death[/i] an innocent child.

For most people, when push comes to shove, that justification doesn’t fly. However logically they try to think about it, there’s this little thing called ‘empathy’ that gets in the way. However many lives their logic tells them they may be saving… it’s still them, there, torturing an innocent kid just because he had the wrong father.

Normal people can’t do that. Those sociopaths that are out there who genuinely seek the improvement of society as a whole can. And then there are the sociopaths who’ll see your organisation as a route to power, and the sadists who see a veneer of protection and justification. What proportion of the first group do you think you’re going to ensure you’ll be able to maintain? Because as soon as this drops below 70%, maybe earlier, you have lost control.

Erukk.1408:

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.

Not to mention identifying those that are most genuinely loyal to the ideal, and finding a way to put suspicion on them… at least long enough to get them executed in a kangaroo court.

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.

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.

The OoW has never been stated to have aetherblade prisoners. Neither was the Pact. The only known prisoner was Mai Trin, who was held by the Lionguard.

Anyway. You can’t flip flop between “WE GO STRAIGHT TO TORTURE!” and “Well, we’ll play nice sometimes!”

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.

I’d say the Charr won moreso because of the Searing, and the fact they can physically overpower almost all humans in straight up face to face combat. It has nothing to do with being ruthless and more to do with supplies. Charr obviously could ship supplies south from the more stable regions to the north. Humans were kitten out of luck.

CHIPS.6018:

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.

1: Actually stated to be more of a fear factor/laugh for the Charr then literally (at least as of GW2). Flame Legion might do it, but the others are implied or outright stated to not do it. Either way, neither side saw the other as more then beasts at the time.

2: We actually hear almost NOTHING about those spies and scouts. We know they exist, but we know nothing about what they’ve done. Again, the second part ties into the “We know for a fact both sides viewed the other group as beasts, nothing more.”

3: Wouldn’t have helped. The charr physically overpower humans. Forcing a bunch of farmers into battle would break the human ranks faster.

4: While somewhat true, I recall pre-searing implied the fights were getting worse.

CHIPS.6018:

The Pact captured many Aetherblade prisoners. So explain to me why after a whole year they got almost no intelligence? Show me prove that their current methods (e.g. your suggestions) are effective.

Do not give me the “it isn’t easy to find intelligence” excuse. You would just be agreeing with me that the current methods are ineffective. It is our job to know. People’s lives depends on us.

Like I said if the Pact did it jobs well, we won’t even need to talk about any of this.

No, they didn’t. The Pact/orders aren’t stated to have a single one. The Lionguard has Mai Trin but that’s it.

CHIPS.6018:

If they find us we would try to run. If they got us cornered, we will surrounder without a fight. No way we would fight our allies head on.

But like I said we are confident in hiding our identities. And the Pact, unless it improve its spy ring and intelligence gathering, would have very little chance of finding out who we are. We would be impressed if they do. ^^

“OMG the Dark Knights kills children and families!!!”

Pretty much every single bad guy organization kills children and families, on a much larger scale. What’s your point?

I very much doubt the first line would happen at all. This faction as you describe it wouldn’t surrender. Much less be taken captive as they could pose a threat to major nations leadership.

OoW is the major spy ring. They have spies in groups to the point you only notice it if you are an OoW yourself. Failure to get answers from prisoners that never existed doesn’t make them bad.

Well you see, you present this idea of scale which paints your idea of a “dark knight pact” as being a HUGE faction, capable of storming even an Aetherblade major base (or home base) and WINNING. A small, tiny scale group could not do that.

You now seem to be going “WAIT, we aren’t big enough to warrant such attention or focus!” but at same time going “But we are more then big enough with a decent army that we can storm major enemy bases and silence HUGE threats once and for all.”

Which is it? Tiny group that takes potshots to safeguard from local threats, or a huge force capable to wiping out the bad guys and maybe even dragon forces?

I don’t see why the Pact should regard the Aetherblades as a problem at all. We don’t see them intervening in the Kryta/centaur war, so why would they be worried about a pirate port fighting off some other pirates? Or if they were concerned with absolutely everyone, I sure hope they’re not forgetting centaur civilians, any skritt settlement remotely near an asura lab, etc.

Plus, imagine if this stateless army did just start throwing its weight around – the status quo would be shattered. The Pact takes LA – oh but I think you’ll find that’s ancestral Krytan land and with the lionguard gone we want it back. Or they make Orr the seat of a new power – but it’s charr by right of conquest and you’re getting no more war machines until we get our share. And then other powers react to that, peace breaks down in a flurry of opportunism, and so on.

Might as well ask why isn’t the Pact keeping the humans from taking ogre land?

This….still makes absolutely no sense. Ok you want to lazily have the pact say ’it’s not our business’…but remember who they made the player become? The COMMANDER of the pact? So the commander of the pact is running about saving a city from ruin but couldn’t command even a small unit of the pact to….I don’t even….sigh.

It’s this sort of thing why I say the storytelling in gw2 is just abysmal and seems to want to contradict everything the player does (especially anything related to the personal story). I won’t even get into the ‘logics’ behind making the person whose wyld hunt is to NOT kill an elder dragon, create and lead a pact that killed an elder dragon (…well he technically didn’t kill the dragon but that’s what it’ll be written as-first born created pact and kill elder dragon) while the firstborn WITH the hunt did…well…kinda nothing.

Every time I start thinking about gw2’s story I become even more and more annoyed -__-

It’s kinda sad, yet entertaining to see this guy always move on to another argument whenever the last one crumbles. Will he ever run out of ammo? We’ll have to wait and see, folks!

Imbune.5497:

This….still makes absolutely no sense. Ok you want to lazily have the pact say ’it’s not our business’…but remember who they made the player become? The COMMANDER of the pact? So the commander of the pact is running about saving a city from ruin but couldn’t command even a small unit of the pact to….I don’t even….sigh.

It’s this sort of thing why I say the storytelling in gw2 is just abysmal and seems to want to contradict everything the player does (especially anything related to the personal story). I won’t even get into the ‘logics’ behind making the person whose wyld hunt is to NOT kill an elder dragon, create and lead a pact that killed an elder dragon (…well he technically didn’t kill the dragon but that’s what it’ll be written as-first born created pact and kill elder dragon) while the firstborn WITH the hunt did…well…kinda nothing.

Every time I start thinking about gw2’s story I become even more and more annoyed -__-

Trahearnes Wyld hunt was to cleanse Orr. He had the most knowledge of Orr compared to anybody else. IIRC, Caithe’s Wyld hunt was to kill the dragon as well (or dragons). And she was present at Arah. Trahearne never took credit so I don’t see him getting credit for it other then “He helped form the Pact, which did defeat Zhaitan.”

Also, AGAIN. You and others seem to be missing this giant, glaring, NEON SIGN fact.

Orders make up Pact manpower. Orders were present at Lions Arch and other events in force. Player character is a high ranking member of the order AND second in command of the Pact. Again, the only thing that the Pact didn’t send (in technicality) was it’s leadership elements and heavy gear.

I’m getting amazed at how people can’t understand this SIMPLE fact….

Claw Island gets taken, the three orders meet up. Player suggests pooling resources. Order leaders ponder who could command it (That wouldn’t show clear favoritism). Player Suggets Trahearne, a neutral but respected guy who knows a LOT about Orr and Risen. Order leaders accept.

Pact is formed with the various orders making up the manpower (while still keeping their home forces and actions under Order control) Pact goes on to kill/defeat Zhaitan (depending on your point of view).

LA gets attacked. Orders respond with lots of aid in manpower and getting refugee camps set up. They help reclaim the city aiding the Lionguard.

SO, Yes. Trahearne didn’t order the Pact to storm in. BUT HE DIDN’T HAVE TO. The local order forces (lead by the order leaders) helped the Lionguard in large enough forces to retake the city once the Miasma cleared out. Scarlet took the city in one night/day. We can assume it took a day for the Miasma to clear out, then another to get into the breachmaker and kill Scarlet. Then you have several days of cleanup and all which leads us to the timeline given by an npc medic. ONE WEEK.

This thread (so far):

1. The Pact should have known exactly what Scarlet was up to before even the players did for a fact, thus justifying their involvement versus letting the Orders (ignoring their relation to the Pact) and local forces deal with her as they effectively have for a year.

2. The Pact should have been able to torture out of prisoners held by the Charr and the Lionguard anything they didn’t know, such as the locations of alliance bases and Scarlet’s plans, assuming the Charr and Lionguard kitten at interrogating prisoners, and that the prisoners knew anything critical beyond “follow orders or I’ll kill you all and replace you with holos!”.

3. The Pact should have pulled an indeterminate number of forces back from cleaning up Orr and/or fighting ED champions and minions elsewhere to defend LA, because LA and its inhabitants would have been more immediately important than any of the other places and their inhabitants, and the combined forces of the Orders, Lionguard, and volunteers would have obviously been inadequate for that purpose.

4. The Pact should have known exactly when/where/how/why Scarlet was going to attack LA and have responded accordingly, i.e. by sending enough units to deal with the alliances’ “all-in” attack without setting themselves (and Tyria by extension) too far back later should Scarlet succeed in waking Mordremoth anyway, or elsewhere should any of the other EDs make a move.

5. The Pact is immune to legal/political/logistical repercussions. They can do whatever they want and whenever they want, simply because the PC/second-in-command knows better and wills it. He/she is incapable of making mistakes, and if he/she does, his/her reputation will make everything okay.

6. Scarlet and the leaders of her alliances would have had no way to account for or counter any of the Pact’s actions if any of the above came to pass instead of what did. They would have done things in exactly the same way, with no adjustments in strategy, positioning, timing, etc. if they noticed the Pact became a factor. Scarlet, however much of a genius she was, and her alliances, however established and organized they were, would have been beyond the use of scouts, spies, and intelligence-gathering themselves, which could include Dark Knight methods on a much larger scale.

Something like that.

achensherd.2735:

So if every single bad guy organization kills children and families on a much larger scale than the Dark Knights, what makes the Dark Knights think their efforts are going to change anything, especially since their op is “relatively small” as you mentioned in a previous post? In other words, what exactly do you do that is so much scarier than what any of the other “evil” factions already do on the daily, and on a much larger scale?

I will give a few examples:

1) Camp Raid.

Imagine that you and other Pact members were going to raid a large Centaur camp who had been capturing humans for slavery. Your goal is to save as many humans as you can, although fact is the Centaurs will probably kill most of the humans by the time you reach them. You expect a hard fought, head to head battle where high casualties are expected on the Pact side.

When you guys get there, you find all centaurs either dead or dying. Among the dead are young centaur children. You find most captured humans had been released. But some were dead.

“What happened?”
“Sir! Someone poisoned their water supply. And then they went into the camp and killed most of them.”
“Poison the water? That’s illegal! Tell everyone downstream to stop using the water supply for 3 days immediately!”
“Further more sir, some of the human prisoners were unfortunate enough to drink the same water source. They also died.”
“AHHH It must be the Dark Knights. They used illegal poison. And they action caused the deaths of humans. If we aren’t so tied down I would hunt them down.”
“But sir, because of them the Pact took no casualties. We can now use these men for another mission. And even if we raided the camp directly, the Centaur would still have slaughtered most of these humans out of rage. "
“I don’t care! The Dark Knights are evil!”

Conclusion: The Dark Knights saw the human captures as “sunk cost”. So their aim was to minimize Pact casualties when taking the camp, so they can be used against the Elder Dragons and other threats. They do not care how illegal or immoral their methods are. "Innocent’ centaur children are fair game.

2) Flame Legion leadership

Two Asuras were talking:

“Hi, you heard about that famous Inquest leader? He and his whole family was found hung on a tree yesterday!”
“What??? Who could do such a thing?”
“I heard rumours it was this rogue illegal group called the Dark Knights. I am scared just thinking about them. They had been mercilessly killing like this since 2 months ago.”
“Whoa. I was thinking about joining the Inquest. But I don’t think I will join anymore. I love unlimited and unbounded experiments on humans. But not when my whole family could be killed in their sleep.”
“But didn’t you already signed up to join the Inquest? If you back out now they will kill you and your family regardless.
“Yeah, I will have to ask the Pact for help to protect my family. At least they are reasonable. "

Conclusion: By showing brutal force against enemies who are 130% guilty of their crimes, though spec-ops and assassinations, many will be too scared to join these enemies. This fear will reduce the number of enemies that the Pact have to face.

The Pact should be the light, and be loved. The Dark Knights should be the darkness, and be feared. The best way to protect the people lies somewhere in between.

lakdav.3694:

CHIPS.6018:

The Pact captured many Aetherblade prisoners. So explain to me why after a whole year they got almost no intelligence? Show me prove that their current methods (e.g. your suggestions) are effective.

Do not give me the “it isn’t easy to find intelligence” excuse. You would just be agreeing with me that the current methods are ineffective. It is our job to know. People’s lives depends on us.

Like I said if the Pact did it jobs well, we won’t even need to talk about any of this.

Not to burst the bubble here, but as far as i witnessed there were no prisoners taken ever. We killed all the aetherblades we encountered. The only prisoner was Mai Trin, and she was under Lionguard custody, and the failure to get information out of her once again lies with the Captains Council. Not that it would matter, since Scarlet was still in complete control of the Aetherblades, and im pretty sure no information gained from Trin with whatever method would have been accurate.

And dont assume fully that Trin, the only aetherblade prisoner taken who might actually know something, would break so easily. The lionguard and the Captains Council might have done everything your group would have done too. They had the motivation, Ashfords assassination and all. No laws stopping them either, they are the law in LA.

So what is to be done if torture doesnt work, and the key subject has no relatives or loved ones whatsoever?

Also how are you going to deal with every single stone summit out there if you dont have the numbers to keep them in check? Most of these factions are centered around an idea, not the leaders that could be assassinated.

-Killing all the Aetherblades is a game play mechanic. In history there are always people who deserts/surrenders. Almost never where a battle involves 100% casualty rate.

Back in WW2 both Germany and Russia would shoots deserters on sight. And those who surrenders are treated as sub-human by their enemies. Yet there are still tons of people surrendering on both sides though different periods.

So we can safely say that some Aetherblades did get captured, off screen.

-Torture doesn’t always work. That’s why we bring in their families to “motivate” them.

I do agree that intelligence form tortures may not always be reliable. That’s why it is important to get the “same” intelligence from multiple bad guys, to improve the intelligence’s reliability.

-The Dark Knights do not attack the enemies head on. They lack the numbers to do so. Instead they rely mostly on spec-ops, spies, assassinations and sabotage to achieve their aims. They also use brutality and fear as prime weapons to scare “would be” bad guys from becoming bad guys.

lakdav.3694:

CHIPS.6018:

You are quite right in saying "Nobody in their right mind in a political world would try to defend these kinds of actions. " Because the Dark Knights do not defend these actions neither. We know they are evil. We do not enjoy it. But it just have to be done for the greater good.

So if you argue with us that “this is evil”, we will agree with you right away. But then we will try to tell you why it needs to be done.

Then Braham comes along and tells you that it doesnt matter, because you are finished. Then we stomp the evil snot out of you. Not because its gameplay and bad writing, but because you must be stopped. The necessary and brooding evil is still evil. And your evil will have no allies. It will fail. And everyone will feel safer when you are dead.

CHIPS.6018:

We want no statistics. The best event is no event.

Missing the point. The point is that all you do might be justified in your head with the stuff you tell yourself about saving this many people by killing/torturing this many people, but the reality is just that you killed and tortured people. Thats what the world sees. Thats what the world reacts to. With hostility and hatred, more so than just fear.

Also that suffering is the only thing that your group will witness. They wont leave the torture chambers uneffected either. They will question themselves and your preachings of saving people, because normal and safe is too everyday to make the same kind of impact as the tormented screams and the bodily harm inflicted on feeling beings. Unless you are a sociopath or a psychopath.

CHIPS.6018:

The Dark Knights do not go after inefficient groups of allies. An ally is an ally. We only go after our common enemies.

It doesnt take much to go from “they are inefficient” to “we have someone much more efficient to replace them with.” Dont tell me that a group like you describe would not make political assassinations in the name of “unifying Tyria” under their goals.

-Braham, idealistic hero type, might indeed disagree with us. But he will be too busy dealing with the second and third Elder Dragons to deal with us. That’s what we counted on.

-Its the same way the Pact justify to themselves in their head that they couldn’t do anything save those thousands of civilians in LA. They couldn’t have found intelligence about the Miasma gas earlier to develop an antidote. etc etc.

I just see those as excuses to not saving the people. It is the same way you see mine as excuses to commit evil.

-Between having a good spy network in every major criminal organization, and torturing/killing those who are 130% guilty, the Dark Knights will not have any time to deal with inefficient friendly groups. At best the Dark Knights can place spies in them to ensure no one is betraying the Pact.

Either this is the most amazing troll thread I have seen on these forums, or someone really needs to learn what procedures and protocol are.

Also I’m with the few other posters that have been pointing this out; this thread has essentially stopped being about the Pact’s involvement (or lack there of) with Escape/Battle for Lion’s Arch, and has devolved into some really bad fanfiction brainstorming.

draxynnic.3719:

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.

It hasn’t been explicitly stated, but we know that the Ascalonians were pushing north into charr territory right up until the eve of the Searing, and the Ascalonians regarded the charr as essentially beasts, nor worthy of being treated as real people. If the Ascalonians haven’t been responsible for massacres of charr noncombatants, it’s only because the charr pulled those noncombatants back. And, frankly, I don’t see how such massacres could have helped the Ascalonian war effort much except as part of a guerilla raid (and Gwen does have that ‘Goremonger’ title which has yet to be fully explained…)

Regarding the dwarves: There’s an important part of the lesson you’ve missed: When Jalis’ back was against the wall, he had allies to help. All those races and factions that threw out the rules, the mursaat, the Stone Summit, and all… they had short-term successes before the others reacted, but eventually they found themselves with no-one willing to help them when everyone who they’d aggravated along the way was ganging up to take them down. As the old joke goes, you must hang together or you will assuredly hang separately.

What real history has shown is that one group or society that flouts the rules… eventually, it comes tumbling down, or it normalises its relations with others and agrees to follow the rules. It may take years, decades, or even generations, but eventually they get stamped out. The most powerful force on Earth today is the collective group of nations and cultures that is referred to, however increasingly geographically inaccurate it becomes, as “the West” – and that’s the group that with a few hiccoughs along the way, by and large follows the rules, and is strongest and most effective when it does so. Yes, it gets blindsided occasionally by someone who flouts the rules, but consider – fifty years ago, people were concerned about the USSR invading Western Europe. Now, people are concerned about Russia invading Ukraine. Sucks for the people on the front lines, but it’s pretty clear who won there.

We can point to the Searing, but the real reason why the charr now hold Ascalon was that they were canny enough to (finally) assume normal relations with the other races and keep it framed as a human-charr conflict with no clear ‘correct’ side. If they’d continued rampant aggression and opportunism in all directions, they would have rallied the norn, asura, and other races behind Ascalon’s banner, and would eventually have lost.

At the bottom line… flouting the rules may grant you short-term gains, but it also turns potential allies into enemies and eventually dooms you to being crushed alone against all the enemies you’ve made. Following the rules may cost you in the short term, but in the long term, it helps you build alliances that make you stronger than any rogue faction, however ruthless.

You are right. The Dark Knights will not be popular at all. In fact they will be hated and feared by everyone.

Hence I am not saying the Pact should do what the Dark Knights do. The Pact must remain a beacon of light for the people. A beacon of hope. A beacon of righteousness.

The Dark Knights will do the dirty work as required for the greater good. They are illegal, and hence they got nothing to do with the Pact. Hence the Pact can stand as a force of pure correctness.

Ideally, the Pact and Dark Knights should secretly work together. But this might not come to pass.

TriggerSad.2597:

Either this is the most amazing troll thread I have seen on these forums, or someone really needs to learn what procedures and protocol are.

Also I’m with the few other posters that have been pointing this out; this thread has essentially stopped being about the Pact’s involvement (or lack there of) with Escape/Battle for Lion’s Arch, and has devolved into some really bad fanfiction brainstorming.

Agreed. Im pretty much done here. Nothing else to say really. The concept is not just wrong and unethical or dangerous, but wouldnt live for more than two months for the reasons mentioned and repeated a dozen times already.

And please dont take this as a personal insult CHIPS, but would i know you personally, i would be scared kittenless of you by now, as a human being from another human being. And i have the disturbing feeling that you would like that.

On Scenario 1:

Funny, I seem to recall a few hearts that involve going around poisoning supplies. There’s nothing new there. Unless poisoning those water supplies did, y’know, end up destroying a community or two downriver, at which point your zeal may have done more harm than good.

On Scenario 2:

Alternate version of conversation:

“Hi, you heard about that famous Inquest leader? He and his whole family was found hung on a tree yesterday!”

“Oh, yes, hahah, I heard about that, haha.”

“Why are you laughing?”

“Well, since when did we advertise who our important leaders were? See, we got word that Glorrk was in secret negotiations with the Order of Whispers to blow the whistle on one of our operations. Glorrk would have had a contingency in place were we to go after him ourselves, so we spread some misinformation here, planted some evidence there… and those bloodthirsty bookahs fell for it hook, line and sinker and solved our problem for us!”

“But don’t they catch some of us too?”

“Well, they do, sometimes. But we had a sleeper agent in the Vigil who they recruited because she had the right kind of sociopathy for them, and she’s been subtly directing them against targets of our choosing.”

“Such as Glorrk?”

“And others. See, we’ve got this list of krewes that have refused to work with us. If they just happened to have an accident, then suspicion would naturally fall on us, and we can only divert so much attention through manipulating the Arcane Council. But when they’re found hanging from a tree and there’s evidence in the labs that they had been working with us all along? Well, the Peacemakers go after the ‘Dark Knights’, and we come off as honest krewes being unfairly persecuted by a terrorist organisation.”

In reality (and good fiction), situations are never so neat that you can get the best results just by being as ruthless as possible.

It’s funny how these morally grey organisations always find themselves in circumstances where torturing suspects or killing dodgy looking civilians turns out to be the right choice. Or at least, they succeed often enough that the audience can feel smug about how others just aren’t rational and ruthless enough to ~~put the mission first~~. An equally likely scenario would see the poison kill a crucial spy that nobody knew was there, the Batman wannabes hang the wrong asura, and Rata Sum would be furious at foreigners walking through their lands executing who they please. But then we couldn’t revel in how dark and edgy and kitten it is to kill civilians because of beep logic boop empathy is weakness.

CHIPS.6018:

I will give a few examples:

1) Camp Raid.

If it’s a deadly poison, not only would it cause EVERYBODY at the camp to die (Why would only a few prisoners drink for the water? Unlikely to be several sources of water), but also could kill many others. Say, Gendarren fields. You could easily wipe out the Quaggan village, the farm, pirate camps, maybe even the Vigil Keep.

If it’s fast, you could kill a lot in the camp. If it’s slow, you could affect a handful before everybody else finds out. And Knowing centaurs, they could force the prisoners to drink the water to confirm the poison is there. Why not do a sleeping poison, or something that dulls them? Fairly sure thats what we use on various supplies for hearts.

2) Inquest leadership

As others said, the Inquest would probably love that for killing somebody too stupid to become publicly hated, or use it to get rid of traitors or people they want dead. Or use it to open those guys labs for them to steal stuff from. If somebody was already signed up to Join the inquest, that news wouldn’t phase them,.

Conclusion: By showing brutal force against enemies who are 130% guilty of their crimes, though spec-ops and assassinations, many will be too scared to join these enemies. This fear will reduce the number of enemies that the Pact have to face.

The Pact should be the light, and be loved. The Dark Knights should be the darkness, and be feared. The best way to protect the people lies somewhere in between.

You seem to have ideas, but fail to understand the effects they would truly have. You fail to grasp the realism.

And frankly, if yhe group is well known enough to be openly discussed by people or be the FIRST to be brought up after poison is found, it’s too well known.

As a friend said: "And if they are infamous enough to have people just talking about them in broad daylight… They’re infamous enough for people to hunt them down and try to put a stop to them. "

Wow. I feel this argument has become philosophical, and that it has deeply disturbing implications to the world view of some people here. Proposing a group to be systematically sociopathic is not only troubling, but doomed to burn out quick. You do have to remember the logistics necessary for the upkeep of such group, and from an RL perspective is pretty hard to try and make, what with the ESRB rating of the game.

Advent Leader.1083:

Wow. I feel this argument has become philosophical, and that it has deeply disturbing implications to the world view of some people here. Proposing a group to be systematically sociopathic is not only troubling, but doomed to burn out quick. You do have to remember the logistics necessary for the upkeep of such group, and from an RL perspective is pretty hard to try and make, what with the ESRB rating of the game.

I think the disturbing thing is that guys need to explicitly point out how children died cause of this groups actions.

Sure, it might happen, but it’s like THAT is the major detail to be noticed when walking into the centaur camp in his example. Not piles of corpses, not a few dead humans and most of the cells empty… the dead centaur kids.

I feel he’s one of the types that does the ‘hard/questionable’ action to solve a problem (or chooses thoses for RP/RPGs/fanfics)… but doesn’t understand the lasting effects they can have. Poison that gendarren fields centaur camp… cause the quaggan village downstream to die out because of the water flow.

CHIPS.6018:

1) Camp Raid.

1. It’s unclear why the Pact would get involved in this non-ED-related, “renown heart” hostage situation, but if they were, simply storming in with weapons drawn is very Vigil, but not Priory or Whispers (no offense to Vigils). A joint task force consisting of all three Orders is unlikely to just go with the heaviest-handed option right off the bat in this kind of situation, especially since the time limit is seemingly based on the Centaurs being enraged by an attack on their position than an immediate urge to execute most/all of their slaves for no apparent reason.

2. The presented outcome is very close to a “best case scenario”. Others have already presented other, more likely and tragic scenarios where the DKs not only escalated the situation, they made it far, far worse.

3. As others have already mentioned, if the DKs are infamous enough that a poisoned water supply can automatically and immediately be pinned on them, then they’re too well-known and publicized for the kind of op they are. The other “evil” factions could pretty much start using them as scapegoats for their own atrocities.

4. Watch the climax of The Gods Must Be Crazy for an example of how this situation could have been handled.

CHIPS.6018:

2) Inquest leadership

1. Again, not a Pact matter. Additionally, the DKs getting them involved in this whole thing (i.e. to protect Asuran families from Inquest retaliation) is counterproductive to even their own goals.

2. No one would really bat an eye at this. Being killed and hung on a tree is kind of small potatoes compared to what the Inquest are capable of and do on a much larger scale, including to their own ranks by the facility-load when they deem them expendable or their leaders worthy of a good backstabbing. You’d think the mountains of Inquest dead left in the wake of PCs doing exploration, going through their personal stories (as Asura), and running dungeons (e.g. Sorrow’s Embrace and Crucible of Eternity) would be enough to deter any more Asura from joining their ranks, but apparently not.

3. The DKs are again too well-known for the kind of op they run. With no friends or allies anywhere due to their actions, their intended targets, and the collateral even when things go their way, it’s really only a matter of time before someone gets pushed too far and decides to push back. When the DKs’ actions are well-known enough that people can automatically and immediately recognize their handiwork, it wouldn’t be a stretch for someone to set them up and take them out either directly or via proxy.

IMO… if you’re down with the whole ruthless, “ends justify the means” kind of thing, and are already dealing with corrupt nobles, politicians, and other such powerhouses, organizations like Quantum from the first two Daniel Craig 007 films or HYDRA from the Marvel movies/comics would be better ideas to strive for. Why go around committing relatively small-time terrorist activities, hoping they get the results and send the messages you want, when you can essentially work towards getting important figures on all sides (or at least the ones that can be persuaded/bought/threatened) into your pocket and having them work for you, getting you the results you want even if only as side effects to the collective amassing of power and wealth? In other words, why grind for gold when you can play the TP?

ANYWAY… I think we’re so done with the original topic of this thread that if it was a horse it’d be whipped glue, and if it was a steak it’d be little more than carbon now. The whole Dark Knights thing really should be its own topic/thread since it pretty much has little/nothing to do with the Pact at this point.

achensherd.2735:

The whole Dark Knights thing really should be its own topic/thread since it pretty much has little/nothing to do with the Pact at this point.

Just saying, they’d make a heck of an antagonist to have to deal with. So long as they don’t turn out like Cerberus and produce a Kai Leng, we’ll be good.

lakdav.3694:

TriggerSad.2597:

Either this is the most amazing troll thread I have seen on these forums, or someone really needs to learn what procedures and protocol are.

Also I’m with the few other posters that have been pointing this out; this thread has essentially stopped being about the Pact’s involvement (or lack there of) with Escape/Battle for Lion’s Arch, and has devolved into some really bad fanfiction brainstorming.

Agreed. Im pretty much done here. Nothing else to say really. The concept is not just wrong and unethical or dangerous, but wouldnt live for more than two months for the reasons mentioned and repeated a dozen times already.

And please dont take this as a personal insult CHIPS, but would i know you personally, i would be scared kittenless of you by now, as a human being from another human being. And i have the disturbing feeling that you would like that.

You should watch Walking Dead, if you are so scared about these kind of ideas. I am not an expert on stories with anti-heroes. TV Shows like Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and Blacklist does them much better.

I do agree that we are pretty much done with this topic. We all said our piece.

I will admit that my examples are over the top extreme cases. The main idea is to set up an anti-hero organization.

As for my examples, the centaurs will no longer be a threat in that region from now on. They are totally destroyed, game-over for them there. We did lose civilians. But in the long run it is beneficial. No one will be enslaved or killed there any more. And the Pact can focus its manpower elsewhere.

Sleeping drugs requires the correct dosage. Too much the person will die due to overdose. Too little the centaurs will not fall asleep. Deadly poison is more reliable.

The water is drank to various quantities. Some takes more and some takes less. So there will be survivors, for both humans and centaurs. The difference is that the Dark Knights will move in to kill off all the surviving centaurs. The human survivors won’t be touched and will be helped by the Pact later.

As for the question of “Why would the Pact get involved?”, that is because it is a part of a series of mop up operation. War is often won by “local manpower advantage”.

Think of all of the Pact’s enemies as a bunch of scattered forces, rarely helping each other. The Pact should take advantage of its high manpower and overrun them one by one.

The Dark Knights will assist them in the background to make it easier.

As for the Inquest assassination, the target is 130% guilty. How do we know? Well the great thing about the Inquest is that they are actually considered legal in Asuran world. That means their leaders do not actually hide themselves. That makes them easy targets. And that Inquest leader had been seen by 10+ witnesses (inside and outside of the Dark Knights) to be doing evil acts.

So, I’m guessing your Team Governor then?

He was the one blinded by pride, thinking he’s the one to save the world, and that the ends justify the means. To protect himself, and his people, he butchered innocents to take their supplies or even had the possibility of being a threat in the future to his power or his methods.

It turned out oh so well for him and anyone surrounding him didn’t?

Erukk.1408:

So, I’m guessing your Team Governor then?

He was the one blinded by pride, thinking he’s the one to save the world, and that the ends justify the means. To protect himself, and his people, he butchered innocents to take their supplies or even had the possibility of being a threat in the future to his power or his methods.

It turned out oh so well for him and anyone surrounding him didn’t?

No. I am team Carol (post enlightenment). She sees the world as it is, not what she hoped it to be.

Carol doesn’t see herself as a policing force of the whole zombie world though. The one to judge other people’s actions to either be good or evil, right or wrong. She does what she thinks needs to be done if it could/is effecting her group, and only her group.

Everyone else’s business is their own, and their own to deal with.

Let’s look at the initial post: Pact should be there, but they weren’t. And you sought justification for them to be there by introducing a faction that you say needed to do the things the regular Pact couldn’t do, because then it’d be explicable that they could.

Either you were too hopeful for the Pact (which, to be fair in Scarlet’s case, isn’t their oversight, not to mention that your perspective is highly militaristic) or really wanted them to do what you proposed. And thematically speaking? It’s not really the kind of setup for a T rated ESRB game, and something that you can’t do in lore. Resorting to tactics that entail overwhelming force and such will destroy ANY semblance of PR your group has, and that goes with your support as well.

What Captain Hao Luen and I would like to know is where the other cities were during all of this.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Captain_Hao_Luen

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

I RP Yumiko as her last rank before commander in her order as there can only be one commander and it is not right to RP “I’m a commander.” and the next guy also says they are one too? Yet there can be plenty of magisters, lightbringers, and warmasters in the game and in RP. Its all about the nameless hero thing. We also can’t say I killed Scarlet as 1000s of us probably did too.

In the RP scene, I play as one of the many Vigil Warmasters of Divinity’ s Reach’s branch and she handles more non-dragon stuff, like Scarlet, by getting new recruits and volunteers to fight her armies in the previous LS part that just ended.

Yumi was very kittened that she barely got more than a handful (maybe a few 100) troops (and of her own order) to send to their doom in the Battle for Lion’s Arch. When the guy came form the pact and said what he said, it further reinforced her ire towards Trehearne and the pact, as already she had to bury her own dead and return dog tags to the vigil and Almorra.

Don’t forget that Laranthir (the Pact guy in LA) is also Almorra’s second in command.

Zomaarwat.3912:

What Captain Hao Luen and I would like to know is where the other cities were during all of this.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Captain_Hao_Luen

A: The battle lasted most likely around a week from first strike to “Cleanup graveyard and message boards set up.”
B: Said time was unlikely to be enough to mount a proper response/reinforcement mission due to mobilization times.
C: If the battle literally was “Day one, attack and miasma.” “Day two, wait for Miasma to clear.” and “Day three, attack city, get onto breachmaker, kill scarlet.”

There would be almost no time to respond.

Kalavier.1097:

Zomaarwat.3912:

What Captain Hao Luen and I would like to know is where the other cities were during all of this.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Captain_Hao_Luen

A: The battle lasted most likely around a week from first strike to “Cleanup graveyard and message boards set up.”
B: Said time was unlikely to be enough to mount a proper response/reinforcement mission due to mobilization times.
C: If the battle literally was “Day one, attack and miasma.” “Day two, wait for Miasma to clear.” and “Day three, attack city, get onto breachmaker, kill scarlet.”

There would be almost no time to respond.

Also, Divinity’s Reach and the kingdom of Kryta do not have control or authority over Lion’s Arch . . . therefore no responsibility to aid them unless they choose to. Other races’ cities? Even less reason to stick their hands in there.

Erukk.1408:

Carol doesn’t see herself as a policing force of the whole zombie world though. The one to judge other people’s actions to either be good or evil, right or wrong. She does what she thinks needs to be done if it could/is effecting her group, and only her group.

Everyone else’s business is their own, and their own to deal with.

“Affecting her group” = “affecting the Pact” in GW2.

What does this mean?

Well, Inquests “affects” the Pact. Aetherblades “affects” the Pact. Flame Legion “affects” the Pact. etc etc. All these “backstabbers” affects the Pact. No one can deny this.

And hence we have to deal with the Inquests, Aetherblades and Flame Legion. We do not “go out of our way” to deal with them. We just have to deal with them “along the way” because they did back stab us, and will continue to back stab us unless we destroy them.

If we let these backstabbers run amok, the Pact have no chance of beating the Elder Dragons. We have the prevent these backstabbing. Destroy these backstabbers now, one by one though force concentration and assassinations, before the Elder Dragons start their main assault against us. The time to clean house is now.

As for Carol not policing, you are wrong. (Spoiler Alert)

Here is the part of Carol shooting Lizzie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oayctqQPqvk

Before you get shocked and angry at Carol, here is why:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7EZWow0oCE

When someone as dangerous as Lizzie is around, you have to put her down. Else even more people will be dead. Lizzie is 130% guilty. So yes Carol have to play police and judge for the greater good for the group.

You mentioned The Governor earlier. Well Rick’s group did tried to hunt him down. They knew he is dangerous and he will be back. They just never found him until its too late.

If you have the bigger army (e.g. the Pact), you should use preemptive strikes to destroy your enemies while they are weak (e.g. Scarlet Alliances took heavy losses) or not ready (e.g. before they get stronger). Use spies to break up the evil alliance, and then divide and conquer. etc etc. Stop being so passive.

“There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.”

CHIPs… I really, really don’t understand you.

You admit the Pact should focus more toward dragons, so you put forth a ‘fanfiction’ (not bad to have fanfiction :P) idea of a group. BUT then you keep swinging back and forth so fast and hard it’s crazy between “This is a small group that won’t get noticed.” to “This is either a huge group that can stomp the bad guys!” or “This is a small group that has such a rep EVERYBODY AND THEIR ANCESTOR KNOWS ABOUT THEM.(And thus can act against them or won’t join the ‘dark knights’ because of the rep).”

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

I RP Yumiko as her last rank before commander in her order as there can only be one commander and it is not right to RP “I’m a commander.” and the next guy also says they are one too? Yet there can be plenty of magisters, lightbringers, and warmasters in the game and in RP. Its all about the nameless hero thing. We also can’t say I killed Scarlet as 1000s of us probably did too.

In the RP scene, I play as one of the many Vigil Warmasters of Divinity’ s Reach’s branch and she handles more non-dragon stuff, like Scarlet, by getting new recruits and volunteers to fight her armies in the previous LS part that just ended.

Yumi was very kittened that she barely got more than a handful (maybe a few 100) troops (and of her own order) to send to their doom in the Battle for Lion’s Arch. When the guy came form the pact and said what he said, it further reinforced her ire towards Trehearne and the pact, as already she had to bury her own dead and return dog tags to the vigil and Almorra.

We don’t know the scale at all (sorry for such a late response. Must’ve missed this one).

Hell, I’ve heard numbers that LA had around 50k population as of the battle, and 15k escaped. That isn’t even close to how many we see ingame. I’m sure if we counted every single NPC in DR, we wouldn’t come close to a reasonable huge city population.

I highly doubt the Vigil headquarters only sent “100 soldiers” to LA. We see them help secure one of the major rally points. Sure, less then the lionguard but that’s expected. Because even then, the orders can deploy troops separate from the Pact. What I’m getting from your post (Correct if wrong), is that you basically are saying Vigil keep only had 100 soldiers sitting around, and that’s ALL they sent (and all/most of them died).

Also the fact only part of the orders goes to the Pact. Such statements pretty much would be kittening at Almorra for not sending enough troops to support your char instead of Trahearne.

Kalavier.1097:

CHIPs… I really, really don’t understand you.

You admit the Pact should focus more toward dragons, so you put forth a ‘fanfiction’ (not bad to have fanfiction :P) idea of a group. BUT then you keep swinging back and forth so fast and hard it’s crazy between “This is a small group that won’t get noticed.” to “This is either a huge group that can stomp the bad guys!” or “This is a small group that has such a rep EVERYBODY AND THEIR ANCESTOR KNOWS ABOUT THEM.(And thus can act against them or won’t join the ‘dark knights’ because of the rep).”

-The Dark Knights is small in number (not many people will agree with their radical ideas), but they are effective because they are ruthless. They would poison the water supply and set a forest on fire. They uses all sort of illegal spells and weapons. They do not ask “is this right or wrong?” They ask “Will we win or lose?”

-The group do get noticed (that’s why they are feared), but they stay low on the priority list of the Pact.

-The Dark Knights maybe high on the bad guys’ priority list. But good luck finding all of them. The Dark knights are not one group of guys that stayed in a cave and can be easily found and killed. The Dark Knights have infiltrated all levels of the bad guys’ organizations, and it feels like they are everywhere. As these bad guys tries to hunt the Dark Knights, a lot of loyal bad guys ends up getting killed in the process.

CHIPS.6018:

Kalavier.1097:

CHIPs… I really, really don’t understand you.

You admit the Pact should focus more toward dragons, so you put forth a ‘fanfiction’ (not bad to have fanfiction :P) idea of a group. BUT then you keep swinging back and forth so fast and hard it’s crazy between “This is a small group that won’t get noticed.” to “This is either a huge group that can stomp the bad guys!” or “This is a small group that has such a rep EVERYBODY AND THEIR ANCESTOR KNOWS ABOUT THEM.(And thus can act against them or won’t join the ‘dark knights’ because of the rep).”

-The Dark Knights is small in number (not many people will agree with their radical ideas), but they are effective because they are ruthless. They would poison the water supply and set a forest on fire. They uses all sort of illegal spells and weapons. They do not ask “is this right or wrong?” They ask “Will we win or lose?”

-The group do get noticed (that’s why they are feared), but they stay low on the priority list of the Pact.

-The Dark Knights maybe high on the bad guys’ priority list. But good luck finding all of them. The Dark knights are not one group of guys that stayed in a cave and can be easily found and killed. The Dark Knights have infiltrated all levels of the bad guys’ organizations, and it feels like they are everywhere.

1: How can they be so effective against much larger, far more organized ‘bad guy’ factions. Have you seen the Crucible of Eternity or the other large Inquest labs? The Flame legion forts? The Sons of Svanir lodges all over?

Poison the water, killing countless civilians and natural life by tainting the water supply. This would actually get them very, very high notice by good guys and bad guys alike. Set a forest on fire? Same thing depending on the region and how bad the fire is.

Illegal spells and weapons? What kind?

2: If they are noticed enough to instantly be accused of poisoning the water (aka, the first suspect), and talked about in open daylight, they are TOO noticed. They’ll be on the “Kill/capture” list of every good guy faction. They’ll infact be treated as simply another rogue faction/bad guy group because they won’t be ANY better. See above. Poison the river with very lethal toxins, wipe out all life in the region, including all prisoners in the camp as well as entire villages downstream.

3: The way you describe them, it wouldn’t be that hard. Especially since you laughably say they have infiltrated all levels of the bad guy organizations.

Tell me, how will they infiltrate the Sons of Svanir? The Flame Legion? The Dredge? The Centaurs? You say these are shadows, nobody knows who they are, then you describe them as literally being so open with their actions stuff is easily placed directly on them.

Or, as another person said, it’ll get to the hiralous point of the bandits/inquest/whatnot USING the dark knights as scapegoats. They’ll get bolder and more daring, because hey, entire village just died from poisoning? They’ll accuse those Dark Knight thugs instead of us first thing. Especially if we leave some dead centaurs up-river from the village…(Bandits).

Inquest: “Hey, that krewe is getting very busy.”
“Yeah, they got that device almost entirely done. We really want it.”
“I got an idea, let’s murder any who refuse to join us or help, and string them up in the trees outside. Those Dark Knight idiots will get blamed for it and we’ll get all the devices and maybe some new recruits!”

Or… they kill off somebody planning to betray them, then the Inquest can act all innocent (Especially if it was a not so evil device being worked on). “Oh look, this poor man. He was just working on this device to help deal with dry regions to get more water, and those dark knights murdered him!” (or simply allow them to kill off idiots becoming too public.)

Of course, said dark knights would instantly be opposed by the peacekeepers, ministry guard, and some others. Why? Some ministers being accused of working with bandits. IIRC, a known inquest sympathizer is on the Arcane Council.

Sons of Svanir… well to be among the top ranking of them, you basically have to be icebrood/almost to icebrood status. Good luck having agents there.

Kalavier.1097:

1: How can they be so effective against much larger, far more organized ‘bad guy’ factions. Have you seen the Crucible of Eternity or the other large Inquest labs? The Flame legion forts? The Sons of Svanir lodges all over?

1) CoE is easy. Bomb the entrance portal. Trap whoever is inside CoE in there. Then plan explosives in the whole area. When the Inquest engineers and soldiers comes to try to fix the portal, KABOOM everyone is dead. The Dark Knights then comes out of their hiding and finish off the rest.

We will win without a fight. That is Art of War.

Unfair? Never said the Dark Knights play fair.

Give me something harder. :P

2) In that scenario the amount of centaur killed will, obviously, far outnumber the human deaths. That’s why the Dark Knight would consider poisoning the water in the first place.

But purely due to the fact that humans are killed, the Pact will want to go after the Dark Knights. However consider the priorities. How can the Pact spare any men to chase after the Dark Knights, when they got so many other direct threats to deal with.

Remember, the Dark Knights are not hidden in a cave somewhere. You do not “find” the Dark Knights. The Dark Knights are within the Pact, because they are already part of the Pact.

The Pact will find one or two of their members, who will surrender unconditionally if found and cornered. Without torture, they won’t tell the Pact anything. If the Pact torture them, the Pact has turned into the Dark Knights (which is part of their goal). And those Dark Knight members who surrender won’t know too much. Each unit more or less operates as an independent Splinter Cell. They will know their small circle of members, but not the whole picture.

The high level Dark Knights who knows “too much”, if found and cornered, will commit suicide instead of being captured.

3) Mesmer magic. A robot can pretend to be alive. So you can pretend to be anything, including Sons of Svanir.

If a faction cannot be infiltrated (mesmer fail LMAO!), they will be dealt with by other means.

4) Spy vs spy is always interesting. These bad guys can indeed kill someone and blame it on the Dark Knights. And Dark Knights might try to do the same in another time. Sabotage and assassinations also goes both ways.

For example the Dark Knights have long suspected that Demmi Beetlestone is a spy for her father. So we look forward to looking deep into that. A few of our members inside the Order of Whispers is always observing her closely.

CHIPS.6018:

1) CoE is easy. Bomb the entrance portal.

CoE also has a teleportation lab, and the Asura can set up other teleporters. Again, how would you bomb the portal room if it took a hefty Pact offensive simply to get to it? This falls under the whole “Hey, decide if this is a small group that is very careful with it’s strikes, or a hugely known, big group stomping out bad guy bases!”

Also, the Pact/OoW has you beat in that regard. They made the dungeon look like an accident, so they could follow any Inquest who came to investigate back to other bases, and possibly figure out the entire network. Your plan simply would trash the base but leave little to actually find out more.

2) In that scenario the amount of centaur killed will, obviously, far outnumber the human deaths. That’s why the Dark Knight would consider poisoning the water in the first place.

But purely due to the fact that humans are killed, the Pact will want to go after the Dark Knights.

The Pact wouldn’t go chasing you. However the Seraph, Lionguard, Peacemakers, Wardens, etc WOULD. Also, no. This is again a case of you presenting a plan but failing to understand the true extent of the damage would be. Recall the Queensdale water plant events. If the bandits win, water all the way to Shaemoor/DR gates will be affected, as would the nearby farms. If the poison is extremely deadly and fast, if put into the water source (Which would be the river), you could wipe out Ascalon Settlement, the Quaggan village, maybe even more (Though if the poison reached Vigil Keep, then you’d have them on your kitten.

I get what you are going for, but you REALLY, REALLY seem to fail to understand the implications. You can’t just dump a ton of poison into a river/water source and expect only the Centaur warcamp to be affected. Is it really such a great victory to have the Centaurs in Gendarren fields routed and forced back from the area for a long while/good if half of the settlements (or almost all) are forced to relocate or die out from the water being poisoned?

Remember, the Dark Knights are not hidden in a cave somewhere. You do not “find” the Dark Knights. The Dark Knights are within the Pact, because they are already part of the Pact.

The Pact will find one or two of their members, who will surrender unconditionally if found and cornered. Without torture, they won’t tell the Pact anything.
The high level Dark Knights who knows “too much”, if found and cornered, will commit suicide instead of being captured.

The way you keep describing these guys, I don’t see any of them peacefully surrendering. And Again, they wouldn’t be facing off with the Pact. They’d be facing Seraph, lionguard, wardens, peacemakers, Legion soldiers, etc. You seem to also fail to understand while the Pact is a major force, IT IS NOT THE ONLY PLAYER IN THE GAME.

Really, based on how the human ministers can be and the Arcane council, both nations would be expecting/afraid of strikes. Your faction would not save lives, they’d end lives. They would generate incredible amounts of fear. To the point of say, a Shaemoor person hearing a rumor about the “Dark Knights” being in the area rushing to make sure his family is safe and maybe even taking a vacation. Why? Because of the amount of civilian death/destruction that follows the “Dark Knight appearances” If they typically as in the manner of the two examples you gave.

Also, mesmers can read minds apparently.

3) Mesmer magic.

You cannot effectively pretend to be an icebrood for long periods of time.

4) Spy vs spy is always interesting.
For example the Dark Knights have long suspected that Demmi Beetlestone is a spy for her father. So we look forward to looking deep into that. A few of our members inside the Order of Whispers is always observing her closely.

I really prefer fan made groups and organizations that don’t ‘kitten’ themselves into being overpowered by thinking they flawlessly can fool the OoW. I suppose these guys also know the ID of the Master of Whispers too for whatever reason?

Harsh perhaps, but it seems like this group you’d start (in RP or fanfic or whatever) would be post-Pact/post battle of LA. Where would they get this impressive spy ring? Their supplies? Hell, it sounds like they basically operate across ALL of Tyria (The ingame map, not world) which is very unlikely for a small group.

Okay, really I think you WANT this group to be viewed as a “Rumor says they are in the area. Bad guys panic/grow scared, while civilians are happy and the good guys respond but don’t really care if the dark knights get away.” WHICH IS FINE. But your examples/the way you describe them acting seems to result moreso in something which would cause major civilian fear, and the local good guy armies to actively hunt you down.