Guild Wars 2

At this point there’s should at least have been an acknowledgment of the problem and the explanation of the very intentional removal of the chapter. The fact that no one is actually saying, “Hey, we actually did do this on purpose” or “Hey, this was a bug” is of itself a VERY telling response.

Do I think this was done on purpose? Yes. Because if it was a bug or a mistake, someone would have said as much one month ago. (yes, we’ve been waiting a month for an answer) The fact that NOONE is saying anything makes me wonder if they are hoping we’ll just roll over and forget which is a very sad tactic to use considering the number of people refusing to do their personal stories until this is fixed.

With each passing day, I grow more despondent with the lack of a true update with respect to correcting the personal story back to what it should be. I hope the silence isn’t caused by putting the story on the back burner and hoping people would just forget about it and leaving it in the mess it is… because that kinda thing would have me “forgetting” to buy gems and to log in… as well as to NOT recommend the game to anyone.

Because I always recommended it to friends and I got a few friends to join… now I’m kinda embarrassed because while we didn’t enjoy the Living Story so much, they, like me, really did enjoy the Personal Story since it showcased their character. (A voiced character at that).

There’s got to be something said about being the star of your own story and then finding out you’re slowly being cut out of that story because someone else wrongfully thought “Hey, lets cut this out, NO ONE would ever notice.”

Uhuh, right. I noticed and I’m not the only person who did.

I am extremely dismayed and horrified at what’s happening with the personal story. (One of the better, written things in the game, and it feels like is been sabotaged.)

Those of us who know what the story is suppose to be like are now being punished with a butchered rendition of this fiasco. People who come in after the fact will KNOW and notice differences and then look up why things don’t make sense and will find posts and other such findings on the internet and they will then complain too. It just boggles the mind that someone thought, “Hey, lets take this established story with taped parts that establishes the order of how events occur and just reorganize it. No one will notice that b will come after y and z will come before l…”

Yeah right. This is the internet, everyone notices.

That would be interesting to see as well as a field of alts all named:

She who milks, the Dairy Dancer, DanceCowster, Utterlysublime…

facepalms

I liked Golem chess just like I liked feeding cows.

I really wish we could have a feature to turn off the stuff aimmed at the ‘so called new people’ and leave in the stuff I liked and enjoyed.

Thia.4891:

Yeah, I regret that not all of my characters got to go through the Personal Story as it was. And I heard that the Journal leave out the ‘Greatest Fear’ chapter as well. So it a way, even if you did it…you really didn’t.

Yeah, but screencaps!

Taking a shotgun to the head might have been kinder then sneaking in changes for things that didn’t need to be “fixed.”

The old saying “don’t fix what isn’t broke” applies here.

The Personal Story wasn’t the greatest piece of literature or the awesomest, but it was a hell of a lot better then the Living Story. (It was and still is strides ahead of the Living Story.) Despite the little foibles it had, I really did like Personal Story because it was a story where I made choices and got to pick things that mattered to me.

I was only lucky to be able to play through it 3 times, but I had planned to do more and was waiting on the husband to join me so that we could experience some stuff together… boy, I wish I had known. I would have rushed ahead to do Personal Story on more characters.

Now suddenly, one of the most important developments is culled…. and for what? So that in the future they can make it replayable for people who wanted to replay it. Just kittens… lots of furry little kittens. Give with one hand and take twice as much away with the other.

I simply do NOT understand how removing a working, functional chapter that allowed character growth that focused on the player’s relationships with characters other than Trahearne makes sense. The whole chapter showed character growth for OUR characters. It lets us deal with an event we could not prevent and then try to overcome it. We need MORE of these chapters. Chapters that focus ON our development with characters who aren’t the pets (like Kasmeer ) and which showed the growth of the character in terms of dealing with events where the player has to deal with death, betrayal and more death.

I’m just… ugh right now. I am hoping this is fixed and put back in. I don’t expect sorry, I just expect corrections.

Editted to add in: (started at 18 and ended at 23)

I attempted to find that out yesterday. I crafted to 3 points shy of 250 for artificing where I got 4 levels and then NOTHING after that except very, very, very, very small increments of exp if any.

Then, just to see if it was nerf to match xp per level where the player was at, I switched to leatherworking and NO levels gain at all and the same very, very, very, very small to nonexistant incremements happened.

I hope it’s bugged, but I feel like its “working as intended”. -_-

I tend to think that the guild the biconics are in would be the guild that you the player character belong to.

I truly hope they suddenly explained this as “bugged” even though it appears that this was an intentional attack on something that works and didn’t need to be “made better.”

Because this is NOT better. This is taking a story that was interesting and fun AND which let you care about characters who were NOT Trahearne while allowing the player to feel grief at events he or she could not control. It was an important step in showing that the player can’t be all powerful or everywhere at once. As well as allowing you the CHOICE of which path to go.

I am lucky that I managed to play through 3 characters and I wish I had time to play through more… but now I don’t know if I want to. I think I’ll wait a little and see if they revert and put this back in.

It does feels like some poor attempt to ready the player story to be made replayable… but only after taking what was fun and what people wanted to reexperience and play OUT OF IT first.

I think we should have 3 viable dialogue choices when we click these text based discussions. This way we get the illusion of choice over the bash my head with one route only.

Between work, new content and leveling x number of characters to 80, I haven’t found much time to post, but I have to agree with most of what was said in the OP. Well written and thought out.

The most interesting thing about the Scooby analogy is that my husband practically thought the same thing about how the biconics, D.E. 2.0, aka characters we’re forced to stick around for the most part, seem to match. I also don’t want to be Scrappy-doo.

I feel like I’m playing through someone else’s story and if I want it to be different I have to rationalize or change things in my head for it to make sense. I really shouldn’t be doing that for story in which my character should be taking charge (is told that he/she is taking charge), but in reality is being lead by other voiced characters.

I was actually a lot more concerned about my human noble being ignored by Anise right at the start of the whole silly event. Proper clothes or no, but if you’re gonna be all gushy and pleasant to Kasmeer re: her nobility status you want her to have back, you need to at least acknowledge my own nobility status at the start of the whole thing too.

@BrunoBRS.5178:

Did you read the post before you said “wrong”. Because I’m pretty sure that the opinion of what I said was that this living story plays out as someone coming from both sides of the fence. They ignore AND not ignore the personal story.

They are trying to make it so that if you didn’t do your personal story you GET NO references to content that came before and if you did your personal story you may get a tag back to it, but(more importantly) not always. To me this is ignoring and not ignoring something that came before the living story part 2. Because now you can go "time travel’ back and complete that and it’ll change small little parts that may tag at you, but it’s NOT anything substantial. They don’t reference your mentors, friends or anything like that.

It’s in the playing of both sides of the fence that we get the glaring discrepancies when you try to look back at the overall story.

I will add this though:

Just because someone says it “counts” for something doesn’t mean it IS a personal story. I played through my personal story on more than 2 characters and each one should not be ignored for Kasmeer deciding she was going to plan out how we got an audience when I could have gone to Trahearne and got my buddy to let me in.

Oh sure, others might not have done the Personal story, but they have the potential to do it which will change their future. I however did my personal story and watching that scene left me feeling left out of the process that I should be looking into… not Kasmeer.

The real problem is that this living story tries to both ignore and not ignore the personal story. I think that’s why its riddled with all these little bits and pieces that by themselves are oddities, but together are jarring big discrepancies when you look back at the bigger picture.

I come from the boat that the story should assume, regardless, that you did your Personal Story. Even one of the three explorers in Dry Top refer to you as Commander, regardless of if you did your story. Meanwhile Belinda only refers to you as Commander if you go into chapter 1 as a character that did enough of the PS to be a commander. Why does she know the difference when the Explorers do not?

Even visiting the Pale Tree (and no, I wasn’t asked for my passport or promised to give them my first born) she had no qualms talking to me and thanking me for killing Scarlett.

Turns out, the money collected was used to fuel the next undead army danceathon: where you dance until you drop takes on new meaning.

Belinda should have had a few soldiers with her after you save them, but they just go awol. (Probably ran away if they were smart.) You only find her body. How odd?

My character’s reaction? If I had any sense of control, I would not have left a lone soldier alone in the keep.

Seriously, who leaves a lone soldier in a keep filled with baddies? Not the Commander. He’s seen a lot of crap go on at Orr to know better than this.

However:

Being forced to play this way, the only reaction he can have is to facepalm and think, “Why do people never listen when I call out the order to group up?” And because he’s seen a lot of senseless death, HE would know how to deal with Jory and Kasmeer so that they’d go off together and he would tell the others what happened.

Chameleon Dude.1564:

Shardelyss.4807:

If we only could pick our party members. I would take Benn, Doern, Eilye Jeyne and Laranthir of the Wild, but I would still keep Taimi though.

If we’re going to come up with party compositions, how could you not go for: The Windmill King, Lord Faren, the child in Queensdale chasing the chicken, the crazy bee lady and Poobadoo?

I do enjoy the BeeLady’s conversation. Just think, every time I kill something, I’ll probably get to hear “You didn’t think I’d get help, but I know people, DANGEROUS people!”

I would like to see more characters from the Personal Stories, but I think what I would enjoy most is having a memorial event for characters that have passed on like our mentors and friends who died in the war against Zhaitan.

It doesn’t even need to occur in the “real” world as it could simply happen in your personal home instance. Time to have a beer with old friends and your friends from your Order. (And the best part is that it doesn’t need to be voice acted so long as there are a lot of branching scripts that are self contained for the mini episode.)

If we only could pick our party members. I would take Benn, Doern, Eilye Jeyne and Laranthir of the Wild, but I would still keep Taimi though.

What I can see happening is that something fails or goes terribly wrong. What could go more wrong then dead ghosts with a fixed modus operandi are ghosts who have some sense of control and direction and can respawn forever.

Or who serve their new plant overlord as new minions. (Reminds me of the magical artifacts which are fed to the Mouths of Zhaitan.) Who knows. Point is something has to go wrong because this is part 1 which means cliff-hanger and it would be too much work having to redesign entire map areas with hearts.

If on the chance it is successful, it’ll be like Orr where stuff is still happening because a. stuck in the past b. you can rationalize it off as clearing the left overs.

Personally, I think things like this could be rectified by creating new areas that are “current” in the time line… so you may be “back in time” in one area, but be in the “present” in another.

While I see Trahearne joining the group as extremely unlikely, this just popped into my head:

Boss: Hey Trahearne, glad you finally joined the team. I will be your boss from now on… please, just call me boss.

Trahearne: Okay, Commander… I mean Boss. Can’t I just call you commander? Calling you boss just makes me so feel…

Boss: Inadequate?

Trahearne: I was going to say that it made me feel like your second, but i’d probably get voiced script and you won’t… so maybe I won’t feel so bad. Boss. BOSs … BoSs… BOss…

Boss: I think I liked you better when you were doing paperwork back at HQ.

Well… Big S…. B. S. No thank you.

I rather be called ‘Commander’, but like I said elsewhere, ‘Boss’ is better than ‘Hey You’.

I think the problem has more to do with the fact that we are chatting with Kasmeer (why her when it should have been Rox, I don’t know but still) and then when we click done – Taimi just rushes in.

What we should have seen was her start to go in after we initiate the chat option with Kasmeer and then TURN on the machine once we finish chatting with Kasmeer. (timing wise this would still have to be fixed as we could easily click click click through dialogue, but I just mean something like this might have been more useful then just seeing Taimi stationary and then RUSHING forward – If I had been Taimi, I’d of snuck in when they were all facing away from me.)

Can first born be corrupted though? As being “mama” favourite among the Sylvari, I think they would have some extra (hidden) protection that the others would lack.

Personally though, I wouldn’t kill Trahearne off either as I’m not in that party of people who a. want a cheap death and b. just want him dead.

Just make him OUR second. Maybe he can do the paperwork in D.E. 2.0 that we currently do when we fill out our journal. (He might even be a bit more accurate and not write that we UNWITTINGLY ran into Omadd’s machine when we went with full intent to knock our friend out)

PopeUrban.2578:

Or he can’t, which isn’t unprecedented. Jora couldn’t become the bear in EOTN because of the influence on her of a certain dragon champion. It’s entirely possible that Braham’s inability to transform comes from an outside source, and might even be a future plot thread. Aside from where he used to live, and his relationship to Eir, we really don’t know much about his past at all.

I was thinking of something along the same lines. It might be a mental block of sorts, something that he will have to overcome in the future. It also could be how he was raised and the importance of those transformations figuring in. Perhaps he thinks he’s good “enough” just being a guardian.

It is rather odd that the pc (at least the ones that did the personal story) do not mention his/her connections and favours s/he can call in with respect to paying a visit to the Pale Tree.

To me it was quite disconcerting having to hear Kas go on about trying to get an audience when it really should have nothing to do with her.

I actually didn’t have much of a problem with this as I figured since my character was a well -learned sort of person who was afilliated with an organization that has tremendous knowledge at its finger tips… that he just knew and had discussed it with the others hence their lack of surprise.

But if I was writing this, I’d of put a previous scene where they see me talking to someone from the Pact before returning with several books that imparts this information. The problem seems to be a fear of having text only scenes that don’t mix with voice acting from the supporting cast.

But something like this is needed, even if it was all text based, we need something where WE move around, talk to people, and then come back and say “LOOK WHAT I FOUND ON MY OWN!”

I don’t know if anyone ever did the personal story where “that guy with the dog” dies.. and Debs (possible player sister if you picked the option) is just idly stretching.

I laughed and then promptly wished she had died instead of that guy with the dog.

Aomine.5012:

Spoiler here:
In the new LS you’re actually the one who’ll see the Eternal Alchemy itself.
That makes you the most important characters of the whole plot.

That still has to be seen in future chapters, but your character does say something along the lines of it came at me and that s/he is somehow tied in with everything. I’m curious to see how this gets played out.

M Steel.2574:

It was implied, I think by either Kasmeer or Marjory, that we intend to unite all the leaders of Tyria against Mordremoth.

PC: We need to work together. Together we will defeat this new threat and keep our world safe.

Leader 1: I agree. But our Countries need a leader.

Leader 2: This is true, but who would lead us?

Leader 3: It can’t be one of us, or we would be seen as being above the others.

PC: Why does this suddenly sound familar? And why do I have a bad feeling that this won’t end well.

Sudden Plot take over: Let Trahearne lead us.

PC: NOT AGAIN!

Trahearne: Thank you. PC, I want you to be my second.

PC: Shoot me now.

cheshirefox.7026:

and this is just me, but when the game wanted our stance on meddling with the machine.. my first reaction was i need to talk with rox
then gw2 told me to speak with kasmeer and i was like immediate facedesk

Yeah. I didn’t like that I had to talk to Rox and Kasmeer re: stuff that should have been directed only to Taimi. All that wasted dialogue on someone who didn’t actually get it, I felt like I was the teacher talking to Kasmeer, telling her stuff and as she mimiced it back, she was the student trying to understand the points.

I keep putting my face in my hands wishing I had someone smart to talk to…oh wait a minute.

What I took from that scene was something along the lines of “I want to shoulder this myself, this is a personal and family matter, but when I am ready to let you in.”

I’ve also noticed that Jory has always made it a point to tell Belinda to talk to their mother for her. Meaning that she didn’t WANT to go talk to momma by herself or see her. There may have been some bad blood split between her and her mother which was why Belinda was their go-between. Now that the go-between is gone and Jory has to go face her… that’s going to be awkward in the best of times, but now with Belinda’s death, who knows what’s going to happen.

I would think that these two have been in a relationship long enough that Jory should have at least been upfront if Kas’s nobility status would have been an issue though.

It would be interesting if that locket doesn’t exactly do what people think it does. It might be a source of great power, but for some other reason altogether and not what it’s “officially” known for.

For the most part, she’s probably the only character that is truly well developed and fleshed out. She has the most spark to her personality than any of the other Scooby gang combined.

My only concern is that at the end of the scene when you turn to talk to someone about what happened, you talk to Rox and Kasmeer…. when it should have all been to Taimi. Not saying they wouldn’t understand, but they just felt tacked on for air time, it made no sense to ignore the little asura who knows and understands far more than both these two especially when it comes to this field of expertise.

Too bad we don’t have 8 – one for each player class.

At this point, neither. Not enough emotional investment in either. If we had seen Belinda a few more times, talked to her and formed a connection, it might have worked. Heck, if we could have had a mission with just her and Majorie and bonded, I think that might have helped alot, but she was killed too soon in order to move and give Jory some “development”.

That’s the kind of development I don’t need to see. It shouldn’t be at the cost of her sister to make her invested in a cause she was already invested in. If anything Jory may “attempt” to break up with Kas because she doesn’t want to care enough to lose another person – so maybe we are in for some future angst. Either way, not the way,

Well, there is that locket in one of the human personal stories where you have to discover what happened to your parents. We’re told, “Oh they were spies for the Queen…”

We were told this. What if your parents weren’t spies – what better way to hide a child born out of wedlock (that other word gets censored into a cat) then by shoving it right in front of everyone’s face? I’m just saying anything can be retconned.

Arghore.8340:

In response to your post, you have inspired me to add something of my own for Kasmeer:

You: What should I do? Should I talk to her?

Kasmeer: Don’t take this the wrong way Boss (or insert your name for a moment of connection), but there’s no way for you to understand what she’s going through.

Option 1: Let it go

You: Kas. Do you really believe that?

Kasmeer: Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for that to sound so… it’s just that… I don’t even know how to help her so why would… you know.

You: …

Kasmeer: …

Option 2: Honour Jory’s wishes.

You: Kas. All this time and you still don’t know me… shakes head sadly But this isn’t about me today or you. You can’t wave a hand here and it’ll suddenly be better. Because something like this CAN NEVER be better.

Kasmeer: You sound like you…

You: I don’t want to talk about him/her.

pause

It doesn’t always get better.

Kasmeer: I’m sorry.

You: Don’t be. Lets just say sometimes you have to smile and laugh even though it kills you inside. She knows you love her… when she’s ready, she’ll let you know.

Option 3: Refer to Orr/Claw Island

You: Kas. Do you honestly believe that I have never lost anyone important to me?

Kasmeer: You? I can’t see the “Commander” as losing anything. Afterall, you were Trahearne’s right hand at Orr. Someone like that is…

You: Tough?

Kasmeer: Yeah and strong and…

You: Alone.

Kasmeer: Boss I…

pause

You: I wasn’t always Trahearne’s second you know. I was also at Claw Island when the attack came. I lost… pause ..my best friend. I couldn’t save him. Couldn’t save a lot of people….

Kasmeer: I… I didn’t know. I shouldn’t have shot my mouth off- I didn’t know.

You: Kas, it’s okay, it’s understandable. I just want you to know that I understand what she’s going through. … more than you know.

Referring to this from the story viewpoint only:

This was significantly better than chapter 1 so it did feel like some of our voices were being heard from previous forum posts. That gave me hope that one day our characters will have real voices again and it’s not some figment of my imagination.

Gotta say that Taimi is the best character ever …of all time. I rather have missions with just her if possible. She seems like the only character that ever actually tries to address the player character as if they’re more than just an IT or idle standby lackey.

I also loved the Braham/Rox route mini mission. And not for the reason you might think. I didn’t really care about them I just really enjoyed all the illusionary choices I was given. REALLY enjoyed being able to pick and choose and seeing someone recognize me. (I have yet to finish up the very last scene of this chapter, due to the other half going to bed on me, but this was my favourite mission so far.)

But there were several things that jarred at me throughout that just left me thinking they could have been handled better. Most people have already touched on this in other posts so I’ll just mention the one point right now that my tired mind can focus on:

Belinda’s death. Used to make us feel pathos with Kas and Jory, only left me feeling sorry for Belinda’s life being wasted for a story development. There are better ways to do this instead of killing off a side character.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Shardelyss.4807:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

In a pinch, maybe you can get in touch with Jason Saldana or Geoff Ramsay. Either would be perfectly acceptable.

Just picturing their voices running amok in GW2 universe…. ha. Just make sure Burnie writes their lines for them though.

Or Miles . . . in a pinch.

No, unless he actually tries to write his own stuff instead of mimicing someone else’s style.

Wow. The corpse isn’t even cold yet.

I’d find it quite odd that anyone would suddenly “forget” about the Commander that helped Trahearne cleanse Orr and then went off to kill a dragon. If they killed Trahearne and things fell to pieces then they have no one to blame but themselves for not seeking out the lynchpin that did all that work to kill that blasted dragon in the first place.

Random Pact Person: We need a leader. Who can we turn to…

Player Character: I wish I could help. I know I was second in command at one point despite coming from XXX order.

Random Pact Person: Will no one help us. They have to be neutral and like to do paper work (cuz no one would ever think to delegate that paperwork to underlings).

Player Character: I quit my order and don’t mind doing paperwork…after all I do the paper work for the kids I mentor now. What about me?

Random Pact Person: You’re hired!

Boneheart.3561:

I don’t think Belinda was the one we were suppose to feel for.

Yeah, I agree with that.

Unfortunately Belinda was the one I felt the worse for. So young, so much potential for development and then wiped out as a plot point to make Jory and Kas go through angst.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

In a pinch, maybe you can get in touch with Jason Saldana or Geoff Ramsay. Either would be perfectly acceptable.

Just picturing their voices running amok in GW2 universe…. ha. Just make sure Burnie writes their lines for them though.

I’d rather they call me commander, but boss is “acceptable” over being called “hey you!”

If I had to compared the mini missions you get for Bram and Rox and then Kas and Jory. I liked the former even though I cringed as soon as they brought up the foot issue that should have already been dealt with and done with in chapter 1. (I get the why it was used, but when something’s over done, its becomes an eyesore. :/)

The later though… I felt like an outsider. This is like reading a book where you have two characters where their paths divide and you switch between chapters and each of those chapters develop per that character’s path…except here, you are in both chapters. I felt that as the player, we did well in Bram/Rox’s route… but not as much as the Jory/Kas route.

It’s probably because in Bram/Rox’s route you feel more involved – even with illusionary choices – it just felt so much better. I liked that episode. That was pretty decent.

Jory and Kas though, it felt like something we needed to see, but shouldn’t have had to play through, if that makes any sense. All you really do is follow Route A to Route B and then wait through redundant conversation to end. I felt painfully embarrassed to be standing over them as they talked… as if I had NO right to be there because (being the third wheel and playing as a male character) I shouldn’t be standing right beside them as if expecting to say something, but lacking the voice to interrupt.

My significant other half got on my case for complaining about this since he thought “there’s nothing for me to say here, not my place…” and yet I thought (with my female mind) I should at least be saying something. Nothing that steals the spotlight, just… I’ve been through Orr, I’ve lost my mentors and my friends…. I should have been able to say something to either of them. But I guess that’s just me.

I don’t know about you and I can’t speak for the posts of others, but I’m pretty sure my post was picking up on the fact that being part of the team should include visible representation in that team.

I don’t even care at this point what pre-rendered placecard would be used because I’m just at the point where anything is better than nothing. (Which is really a sad place for me to be at when I start thinking that good enough is better than simply being good.)

I do feel I need to add that if the demo we watched are just shots to showcase what’s in the game, but not cut –scenes that occur in the story then that’s okay having D.E. 2.0 appearing without the PC as I can rationalize that PC is elsewhere doing the things that need to get done for this group to survive. (Afterall we do the grunt load of all work, we were probably scouting ahead and sent a relay back not to mention as a leader/boss we’re expected to do the boring work they don’t want to show in the trailer – hey Trahearne, I gave up paperwork with you to do paperwork for these guys.)

The problem that might occur though is if these are actual cut scenes that will occur in game, then there’s no real excuse to leave the PC out and not use a placecard for the demo. I think most people would understand the necessity of what a placecard is and accept it. (And yes there will be those people complaining, so you had an Asura in that shot, but I play a sylvari, should have used a sylvari… it is human nature to complain… a lot.)

This is how I answer why my character isn’t in the demo.
——————————————————————————————————————
I went on ahead because unlike the rest of my team, I actually do all the leg work, recon and fact finding. They’re only just now catching up per my relay back to them.

Personally, if I had to comment on this trailer, I rather see a placecard character for the player character instead of nothing at all.

I wouldn’t care if it was a sylvari, asura, norn, human or charr – male or female – engineer/mage/mesmer/necro/ranger/warrior/thief or guardian. As long as someone IS in that shot with D.E. 2.0 then that’s all that matters to me because at least that means the player character matters. I would like to hope that players are smart enough to know that there’s a myriad amount of possibilities for the player character to look like and just cuz they use one doesn’t mean it precludes others.

Fade away shots are perfect for this. As soon as you zoom in on the character, it starts to fade…

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Eh, just file it this way:

The Pact is on a bit of down-time since Zhaitan was killed, their duties right now are in trying to keep a lid on Orr’s Risen (which still remain after Zhaitan died for some reason) and keeping a front active against the Icebrood and Claw of Jormag (yes, that is Pact up there). The Commander is not needed there, so they took leave and wound up sticking their nose into local affairs. (You can even claim it’s to build goodwill.)

Yeah, I’d have to agree with that. It makes a lot of sense that my character took some well needed time off because he went above and beyond the call of duty. And while on his down time, he got involved in this whole Scarlet fiasco…

Dear Trahearne:

Yeah, I’m sorry, I know I said I’d write often, but things got unexpectedly busy.

I did hear that you promoted a few more commanders to take care of things in my absence which was a good call as I don’t think I’d be able to head back any time soon.

There are some issues happening here and I need to look into them. You know how it is, I can’t sit idle without sticking my nose into things. If I don’t do it, who knows who will.

But don’t worry, you know me. I’ll be fine. I’ve taken care of myself this far… and besides there’s a group of kids I have to keep an eye on. Without me, they’ll do themselves a mischief.

I know you always say keep an eye for new recruits for the Pact, but… lets just say Orr is not a place I think they’ll ever be ready for…

I’ll keep sending back periodic reports and I’ll look for your messages in the usual place.

Yours very truly,
Shardelyss,
The Commander