Q:
Where is the orrian army?
A:
@Errant: “Sadly, his efforts were unsuccessful. Not only did he fail to stop the wars tearing Kryta and Ascalon apart, but the attempt to use Orrian troops to stop fighting elsewhere left his own country open for an invasion of its own—by the charr.” http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Orrian_History_Scrolls
The Orrian army were mostly not in Orr at the time – they were sent to Kryta and Ascalon to end the Guild Wars faster. Because of King Reza doing this, the third Guild War was the bloodiest and highest casualties of all three.
This said: most of the surviving Orrians that remain hidden in society (they hide their heritage due to all the dark events of the land) are likely descended from said military.
However, as pointed out by BuddhaKeks, most GW1 Orrian Undead look like they were from the military, so any that were in Orr at the time of the Cataclysm – or returned after – are likely among those numbers, and thus not in Orr when Zhaitan woke up.
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
The Third Guild War also took place in Orr as well as Kryta and Ascalon. Presumably the army was deployed inside Orr itself to end the fighting, and died during the Cataclysm. There’s no evidence that the Orrian Army was sent outside of Orr during the Third Guild War afaik.
This was asked already before, I think.
Personally, I miss them, too. Some Risen with armors would have been nice. We have pirates, wizards, peasants… but no soldiers. Even if they used the soldiers to build monsters and/or elite undead, or if Zhaitan spent them all on the first years, it’s weird we didn’t get to see any.
I would go further and say the Risen have a straight problem with heavy armor. No one of them uses it.
M: Bladedancer – N: Scourge – En: Occultist – Ra: Swampstalker
T: Sharpshooter – G: Sunspear – Re: Hierophant – W: Corsair
The Third Guild War also took place in Orr as well as Kryta and Ascalon. Presumably the army was deployed inside Orr itself to end the fighting, and died during the Cataclysm. There’s no evidence that the Orrian Army was sent outside of Orr during the Third Guild War afaik.
But if they were in Orr, they could have defended it. But it clearly sais that the Orrian army was send elsewhere so Orr was left undefended. Also, amongst the Orrian undead there is a distinct lack of undead Orrian soldiers.
Now that I think about it, there were almost no millitary Orian undead in the first game as well, just priests and wizards and sometimes some achers, but they were the minority.
(edited by Bananamaniac.6472)
They were undead under the control of Kilbron searching kryta for the scepter of orr in GW1. The white mantle and the player characters pretty much wiped them out.
The Third Guild War also took place in Orr as well as Kryta and Ascalon. Presumably the army was deployed inside Orr itself to end the fighting, and died during the Cataclysm. There’s no evidence that the Orrian Army was sent outside of Orr during the Third Guild War afaik.
But if they were in Orr, they could have defended it. But it clearly sais that the Orrian army was send elsewhere so Orr was left undefended. Also, amongst the Orrian undead there is a distinct lack of undead Orrian soldiers.
If they were deployed to the south of Orr or if they were severely weakened by the Guild War they would not have been able to defend the land.
Well most of Khilbron’s undead army seems to be made out of the former Orrian military. Many of them died in Kryta, some hid in the Shards of Orr. I think the rest was turned into Risen Abominations, you know those corpes that were sewn together. And the ghost might be the Risen Wraiths now. Just guessing though.
There’s also the element of… how do we know we’re not facing the remains of the Orrian army?
We’re used to thinking of ‘army’ as meaning a force consisting mostly of, well, warriors in GW2 terms (in GW1 it’d be warriors and rangers), with other professions in the minority and serving in support roles. For most human armies, this would be accurate.
However, consider the Kournans and Margonites in Nightfall. Kournans fit the usual profile – when there are large numbers of Korunans, they’re either warriors or petless rangers (longbow warriors in GW2 terms). The Margonites, however, despite being formerly human, came from a culture that had more magic than the human cultures we see in GW1, and don’t show that bias of martial professions to magic-users.
Meanwhile, there’s an Orrian History Scroll that indicates that the people of Orr were much more magically inclined than their counterparts in Ascalon – and, by extension, the other human nations we see in GW1. Thus, it would be entirely reasonable that their military may have a stronger presence of spellcasters – that Wizards, Preservers, Ravagers, guardian-like Putrifiers, and so on may have served in the Orrian military while they were alive.
People don’t hate Scarlet like Game of Thrones fans hate Joffrey.
They hate her the way Star Wars fans hate Jar Jar Binks.
Margonites as humans had a more magical culture than other human cultures in GW1? I don’t recall this being said anywhere – yes Abaddon was their patron god, but I always saw that as being due to him being the god of the deeps (the ocean) and the Margonites being seafarers, rather than Margonites worshiping the god who granted magic to the races because they’re a magic-mainly group.
Especially since Margonites barely lasted a generation after magic was given out.
As for seeing military in risen… I can somewhat see it, though we do have some Admirals in the risen ranks that are coral coated, so we probably see plenty of Orr’s navy as Risen.
But I’d believe the bulk of their army were survivors or part of Khilbron’s invasion, given the huge number of spellcasters and armored rangers (and note how there were very few warriors, excluding those grasps).
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
Well, we know a couple of things here: first, humans had magic before the ‘gift’ according to the Ecology. As the followers of the god of magic, the Margonites probably had more of a focus there than others. My main point, though, is that the Margonite army as we observed it was fairly evenly balanced among the professions rather than being primarily warriors and archers.
The lack of warriors in the native Orrian part of the Risen army is interesting, but I’m not sure it necessarily means that the Orrian army isn’t represented. Human Brutes and Thralls within Orr could easily have been former Orrian soldiers that weren’t impressive enough to be given special treatment like the spellcasters were, but possibly more tellingly, the similarity between Putrifiers and Guardians has been observed. With Orr’s magical focus, I wouldn’t put it past them for the majority of their army to be Warrior/Monks (aka proto-Guardians) and the anchor-like weapons they use are available as a hammer skin for PCs.
Khilbron having made use of them is certainly also likely – as well as the ghouls, his army also had the Executioners as warriors. Tellingly, the Executioners also have a liking for hammers, just like Risen Brutes and Putrifiers.
People don’t hate Scarlet like Game of Thrones fans hate Joffrey.
They hate her the way Star Wars fans hate Jar Jar Binks.
Actually, the Putrifiers are a lot more dervish-like than guardian-like. Those anchors always “struck” (hehe) me as a special scythe, and their frosty-looking AoE skill reminds me of Grenth’s Fingers. Also, their elite versions in Arah explorable (can’t recall their name) use a deadly Poison Aura, and dervishes had a lot of aura skills in Guild Wars 1.
Also, given the proximity and the slight cultural similarity between Elona (mainly Vabbi and Istan) and Orr, it’s quite likely that the profession either spread from Orr into the continent, or vice versa. And then I haven’t even mentioned the high piousness of dervishes, which is also a common trait with Orr.
As for the Orrian peacekeeping armies, I’d say the Ascalonian contingent got wiped out in or shortly after the Searing, but the Krytan could’ve easily survived (unless they were executed firsthand for believing in the old “false” gods when the Mantle rose to power). And personally, I doubt Khilbron would have bothered to hunt down the remnants of the living army, especially when we consider that aside from a very special case, he didn’t seem to be into reanimating the fallen, as his vast hordes of undead were quite numerous in and on itself. (Besides, that army was mere a temporary one in Khilbron’s eyes. He just needed them in order to find the Scepter and provide distraction while he raced to gain control of the titans.)
However, I agree that an Orrian Settlement in the same style as the Ascalonian one should have been established somewhere in Tyria, providing shelter, home, and familiar company for the last sons and daughters of the sunken kingdom, defended by the remnants of the grand army of Orr… (I hope this was just an oversight, because living Orrian NPCs are really missing from the game – as I pointed this out in my thread deailing with some contradictions.)
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Dervish is another possibility, true, but I’ve considered for a while that dervishes may have been subsumed into guardians (or elementalists). Additionally, the regular Putrifier’s skills are essentially guardian skills – the ‘anchor toss’ is essnetially a single-target Binding Blade, and the symbol looks very similar, if not identical, to the guardian’s Symbol of Wrath. And as I said, you can get the same skin on a hammer
The GW1 dervish is also lacking in poison skills – they can inflict disease through Avatar of Grenth (which is treated as poison in GW2), but avatars are available to all humans in GW1, and the pious Orrians may have been first on that boat. Additionally, the poison aura could be something granted by Zhaitan – poison comes up a lot among the Risen, after all.
Incidentally, we do have lore on the origin of dervishes, and that lore fairly strongly pins them on being of Elonian origin.
When it comes to the fate of the armies… I suspect that whatever portion of the Orrian army that was in Kryta was probably a big part of what was holding the charr off while Saul was rallying what would later become the White Mantle – and probably got massacred in the process.
It’s been stated in the Movement of the World that there are very few people left who have Orrian descent, and most who do keep quiet about it due to prejudices. There’s one spot in Orr where a Pact member mentions that some of the Risen in the area may be her relatives – that’s probably about as much indication of surviving people with Orrian blood as we’re going to get.
People don’t hate Scarlet like Game of Thrones fans hate Joffrey.
They hate her the way Star Wars fans hate Jar Jar Binks.
You are forcing recent gameplay mechanisms on a field of lore that is 250 years old. Back in GW1 there were no guardians, only dervishes. True, I have to agree that unfortunately they got implanted into guardians by now (I actually brought this up in a thread where I made a suggestion of class specialization – it was Dervish and Paragon for Guardian), but back then guardians were not even a concept in the minds of pious people.
You are also forgetting that Zhaitan corrupts the very power of the dead beings it touches, meaning that which is now lethal poison shroud might have been a healing, holy aura back in the life of that risen dervish.
And I did bring up that dervishes might have spread to Orr from Elona, however that excerpt of the Shattered Dynasty Era still does not assert that dervishes and paragons came to existence in the wartorn plains, but that they perfected their magic during those times, while they could’ve easily come from Orr to fight the darkness – especially when we assume that the malefic forces the excerpt speaks of were connected to a well-known, hated enemy of the Five Gods.
Going back to the armies… I disagree. No records speak of the Orrian peacekeeping units. While the same could be said of the Ascalonian ones as well, if we take Adelbern’s hatred for the other two kingdoms into consideration, it might be that he deliberately erased the heroic Orrians who sacrificed their lives for Ascalon. Or, due to aforementioned hate, pride and distrust, he never even let them inside his nation.
Aye, I also brought up that Priory girl in my thread, but that still isn’t enough, imo. What’s more, she might not even have Orrian blood in her veins, as the side of her family that went to Orr and worked and lived on one of those bayts is completely extinct. Her side might be “purely” (not counting the later intermarriages) Ascalonian and Krytan.
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(edited by Thalador.4218)
the symbol looks very similar, if not identical, to the guardian’s Symbol of Wrath.
Pretty sure it’s an ele skill – which also chills opponents.
Most of the Orrian spellcasters appear to me to be either elementalists (putrifier, preserver, wizard, etc.) or necromancers (acolyte, plaguebearer, wraith). Only the special ones seem to be otherwise (mostly mesmers – though there are some special risen that are elementalists or necromancers).
I don’t think I’ve seen a single guardian/monk-like risen.
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
I just went and found a few Putrifiers and deliberately stood in their symbols to test this. They don’t chill. And, like I said, they’re very similar in appearance to a guardian’s Symbol of Wrath – not identical, but then, neither are the skills of the Risen Elementalists identical in appearance to their counterparts (okay, teh lightning skills of the Wizards are, but that’s just one instance). Their trademark hook-shot skill also resembles nothing from the elementalist but is very reminiscent of Binding Blade in a more primitive form.
To be perfectly honest, I’m amazed this is even in dispute.
Thalador, you’re correct in that, as far as we know, Orr did not have true guardians at that stage… but on the other hand, do we know for sure they didn’t? Other nations had their unique professions, it’s possible that magic-rich Orr – the land in which everyone uses magic casually for anything from levitating display tables to finding lost children – too had it’s unique skills and styles that were lost in the Cataclysm and subsequently rediscovered. In fact, I would submit that this is the only possible explanation for what we see of the Orrian risen – the healing through water magic ability of the Risen Preservers, for instance, was unique to Orr at the time of the Cataclysm. It seems that in general the state of Orrian magical theory was closer to what we see now than what we were exposed to in GW1.
So why did Khilbron’s army only show the regular skills that Krytans and Ascalonians knew? Simple – Khilbron probably knew about Signets of Capture, and he didn’t feel like giving away Orr’s knowledge, so he built his forces out of the components of the Orrian army that used the same fighting styles as everyone else. Which would also nicely explain why Orr under Zhaitan was devoid of monks, when theoretically they should still be around just like the Ascalonian ghost monks.
You’re also both missing that the Putrifier ‘anchor’ is available as a hammer skin through the Mystic Forge. It’s a hammer. Sure, the Putrifier’s skills may more closely resemble greatswords, but in GW2 terms the hammer is a weapon for guardians and warriors, and in GW1 terms it’s a weapon for (partial) warriors only. They’re certainly not an elementalist’s weapon of choice. We could say that the Putrifier in GW1 terms may have been regarded as a W/Mo or Mo/W, but again, the ‘hook-shot’ comes into play as a skill requiring blending of magic and martial techniques at a more intimate level than allowed by the GW1 dual-profession system.
Remember that Orr was both the most magical and the most pious of the known human kingdoms during its time. Is it at all surprising that they might have developed a special paladin-like profession unique to their land? Wouldn’t it be more surprising for a nation whose citizens used magic in their everyday lives to not incorporate magic in their fighting styles and instead have their warriors fight using purely or near-purely mundane means just like everyone else?
Also, Konig: We do also see non-special mesmers, in the Risen Ravagers. I also have suspicions that one or two of the other varieties may be sword mesmers.
People don’t hate Scarlet like Game of Thrones fans hate Joffrey.
They hate her the way Star Wars fans hate Jar Jar Binks.
Drax, you are really stretching the boundaries between gameplay mechanics and lore, trying to blend the two together to prove your right.
What you describe in the case of the Putrifiers is called practical thinking. Why would they develop entirely new skills when they could copy existing ones that work well with the dervish concept, but are incidentally guardian in nature (from GW2’s point of view, after all, as we’ve both agreed on; much of the dervish profession was fused into the guardian). Who says Orrian dervishes couldn’t pull their foes to themselves with a scythe throw? Who says that what we see as Symbol of Wrath today, wasn’t an Orrian dervish skill originally, when I can bring up at least three examples that are reminiscent in nature. (Hearty of Holy Flame, Mystic Sandstorm, Mystic Twister).
Again, you are bringing in gameplay. For example: just because the assassin or the ritualist originated from Cantha, it doesn’t mean that only Canthan humans could be assassins or ritualists. Only the players were bound by such limits. We see many Ebon Vanguard assassins in GW:EN and GW:B. We see an Ascalonian ranger turning into a paragon. We see norn ritualists and paragons. These professions are merely part of the culture of the area they come from, but it’s nonsense to assume that only the sons and daughters of that country or continent or race could learn that particular profession. As such, you can bet your kitten that if there was a “unique” profession to Orr, we would’ve seen it one way or the other in Guild Wars 1. And may I add, if my theory about the connection between Orrian and Elonian dervishes is correct, than not only we’ve seen that unique profession, but actually played it too.
I… I really don’t want to comment on the Signet of Capture/Orrian fighting style bit… However, just one thing I’d like to ask you, irrelevant of this… hypothesis: when did Khilbron show signs of caring about Orr after the Cataclysm when all he cared about was the Flameseeker Prophecies and obsessing over becoming that Flameseeker himself? I don’t remember such happening at all. On the contrary, he defiled the memory of his nation by reanimating his fallen countrymen and forced them to his will.
As to why I “missed” the anchor-hammer relation: because I consider it irrelevant. It could be another example of that practical thinking I mentioned earlier: they had a working model that could be used as a weapon, so they made it available to players. It didn’t really fit any of the weapons in shape, but the closest thing it was similar to was the hammer, for which they might not have had a skin. Two birds with one stone… Also, using a “hammeresque” anchor with greatsword fighting style just screams of “Scythe!” to me.
And to the last point: sure they did. They are called dervishes, or holy warriors.
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(edited by Thalador.4218)
Of the dervish skills you list, Mystic Sandstorm is the only one that replicates the effect of a guardian symbol, and that would be expected to give a very different graphic (and if the intent was to harken back to that, they have plenty of whirlwind graphics to choose from). In contrast, a W/Mo has access to two skills of similar nature, one of which is the GW1 equivalent of Symbol of Wrath.
When it comes to professions being limited in geographical location – I actually wasn’t considering assassins/thieves in that because clearly that profession is going to exist elsewhere (Orrian nobles for instance), it’s just that it’s only formally taught to would-be heroes in Cantha (and the Ebon Vanguard sometime after Prophecies). When it comes to the more magical professions, though – every human ritualist we see in Guild Wars 1 comes from Cantha until the War in Kryta, and ArenaNet was actually quite careful about dervishes only being present in humans among the truly sapient races and, again until War in Kryta, specifically Elonian dervishes. Now, clearly these professions were able to spread afterwards, but ritualist and dervish at least seem to have been confined to their relative original locations (among humans in the case of ritualists).
If I was to take your mode of thinking here and extend it to other Risen, then I would conclude that Risen Preservers clearly must be monks. After all, we don’t see any sign that elementalists can heal their allies in Guild Wars 1, and the healing pools they generate could just be a case of reusing existing assets, right? In any analysis of the Risen, at some point you need to come to a recognition that the Orrians had magical knowledge that other human nations lacked, which was lost in the Cataclysm and (in some cases) subsequently relearned. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, chances are ArenaNet actually intended it to be a duck (or, you know, some kind of hideously mutated duck-like monster).
If they can keep something as big as “water elemental magic can heal” to themselves, why not also a profession that observers from other nations might simply assume were warrior/monks? Especially since, from their perspective, it probably started out as warrior/monks that learned how to meld the two disciplines rather than treating them as two separate, distinct skillsets? Furthermore, you and Konig seem to be under the impression that guardians simply couldn’t exist until after Palawa Joko sent the Sunspears scurrying from Elona to get together with Tyrian monks and make a new profession – but while it has been hypothesised that there may have been a change in magic since GW1, there’s nothing to say that it’s changed so much that the guardian profession became possible when it wasn’t in GW1’s time. It appears to have happened with the dervish (ex-human Margonites having dervishes despite having been locked in the Realm of Torment since before the Shattered Dynasties era), so why not what we now call the Guardian?
Something to keep in mind with your insistence that the anchors are “supposed” to be scythes: we have lore on why Elonian dervishes wore the outfits and used the weapons they did. They wore the robes and hoods as a sign of humility, and wielded peasant weapons because they arose as wandering champions of the common folk. The Margonite dervishes might, by contrast, have used scythes as weapons associated with Abaddon (there’s at least one concept art of a statue of Abaddon with a scythe) and Dhuum. For the Orrians that would later become the Putrifiers, however, they would not come with the ideal of being representatives of the people against warring armies, nor would they regard the scythe as a holy weapon to any of the gods still worshiped in Orr. Thus, even if the source of magic is the same as for dervishes, they might make the very sensible decision of using weapons and gear that was actually intended for fighting (scythes actually make pretty poor weapons against anything but grass). And if the unconfirmed hypothesis of a connection between dervish magic and guardian magic is true, then a “dervish” who’s eschewed the hood and scythe for Warrioresque weapons, and who can use those weapons for mixed magic-and-martial skills like the hook-shot, is in modern terminology a guardian.
On Khilbron – I wasn’t thinking there that Khilbron’s motives were to preserve Orr’s secrets, but to prevent them from being used by his foes. A subtle difference, I know, but as you point out, one involves caring about his nation, the other is purely about denying a resource to an enemy.
People don’t hate Scarlet like Game of Thrones fans hate Joffrey.
They hate her the way Star Wars fans hate Jar Jar Binks.
Obviously Tyria works differently than Earth, so comparisons only mean so much. That said, suppose Ascalon and Kryta had roughly the population equivalents of 11th century England and France (roughly 5 million). Suppose Orr sent a huge army of 10,000. Some of them died in the bloody war, so let’s say 8,000 were left. This means Orrians consisted of 0.16% of the population (about 1 in 800). They were presumably left destitute with no land and no family connections in Kryta and struggling with the natives in a seared Ascalon. Likely most never had children. How many would you expect to be around about 260 years later?