Guild Wars 2

Konig Des Todes.2086:

To your three points CHIPS:

1) More likely event is that Aliyana’s body doesn’t have a soul. Because with your theory you have the question: Where did Zhaitan get these excess souls where he can just ignore the occasional soul like Aliyana and Romke and his crew?

2) Because necromancers cannot learn their minions’ memories? Or if you mean why wouldn’t the undead use the abilities of their bodies’ capabilities while alive, who says they don’t? It’s not like necromancer’s undead – the more evolved kind, not the shambling piles of flesh and bone that are player necromancers’ undead – aren’t without a variety of capabilities.

3) Because he wouldn’t talk. It is a case of psychological attacks. Rather than “I must slay the soulless husk that once was my friend and prince!” it becomes “I must kill the undead self-aware but not self-controlling body of whom was once my friend and prince!” There’s a big difference on the impact of it, and though it didn’t work to players because “mechanics!”, Rurik was supposed to be a liked figure and a friend (same with Togo, Kormir, DE, the Biconics, mentors, and Trahearne).

That was the point of bringing back Rurik – not Rurik’s capabilities, but his ties to the PC. And a mindless, soulless, husk of a mobile body wouldn’t hold the same impact.

1) The biggest reason I do not buy the body memory theory is because of “Death, Good!” Since nearly every Risen says something, it is safe to expect that Aliyana’s body will also say “Death, Good!”

Memories do not give an opinion like that. “Memory” can only say something from back when they were alive (that’s the rule). “Death, Good!” is not from when they were alive, since this is an current opinion.

I mean yes you can argue that person, when he was alive, genuinely believes that “Death is Good!” Sure this can happen. Some people are weird. But we are not talking about just one or two guys. All the Risen can express opinions like this.

Either Zhaitan was talking to us directly though that body or it was another soul inside. All speculations, of course.

Maybe he got those spirits from the Underworld. Maybe he got them from the living world (plenty of ghost around). We don’t know.

2) That didn’t really answer my question though. My question is why would anyone even bother to use minions, when they can have undead using Hundred Blades and Meteor Shower? Why even bother creating these sub-par spells?

If there is memory inside dead bodies, what is stopping the “good-guy” necromancers from using actual undead (instead of minions)? Is it illegal somehow? Are the “good-guy” necromancers so weak and useless that they cannot even get one undead to help them? What was the reason?

It is kind of funny, but back in GW1 my guildmate said this: "The Monk spell “Vengeance” is more necromancer like than necromancer minions. You are rising someone from the dead and he/she is just as strong as when he/she was alive. The only thing missing is that it can only be cast on allies, not enemies. " (The allies’ soul is inside the body during Vengeance, btw.")

3) Ok maybe it was just for taunting. I will buy this.

Remember, remember, the day the Queen gaves us the Watchknights, and they started killing civilians.

/evil

Kalavier.1097:

GW minions don’t resemble humans at all most of the time. Besides, who says meteor shower or hundred blades is the best thing to use?

“Forcing a spirit to fight is illegal” Ahem. Ritualists

Also, Crusader Aliyana… simple. Her role in the squad/as a risen wasn’t needing her spirit to be shackled with it. Just like Romke and her crew.

However a priest of a god or the king? That’s something where the spirit would increase the Risen forms power by a good bit.

Again about Rurik, likely a thing where you can have a powerful minion, but putting the soul into it buffs the power.

Dude that’s my question.

Why bother summoning minions (doesn’t look like humans) from dead bodies, when you can just resurrect+enslave a dead body as it is and it will be nearly as strong as it was when it was alive due to body memory? Why bother summoning something weaker?

If my necro can summon an undead warrior, who are nearly as strong as a real warrior, she would effectively have doubled her personal contribution to a party. My necro is no longer just one necro. It is necro+warrior.

And then the second, and the third. Before we know it my necromancer would be doing the work of 3 or 4 players. This is by far stronger than a bunch of mindless minions.

Orochimaru and Kabuto’s resurrected “S-Rank” ninjas are far stronger than the “mindless” Zetsu army(not really mindless, but you get the idea), for example.

Like you said, having Rurik’s spirit inside his undead body makes the undead Rurik stronger. My question is why didn’t Zhaitan force Aliyana’s spirit to fight? Aliyana might not be the strongest warrior out there, but having her soul inside the Risen is still stronger than a mindless Risen.

The most sensible reason (that I can think of) why Zhaitan didn’t use Aliyana’s spirit is because he putted a “stronger spirit” inside her Risen body.

The second reason would be “Zhaitan did everything” theory. Zhaitan took total control of Aliyana’s body and made her use Hundred Blades. So there is no need at all for Aliyana’s spirit. I don’t really buy this reason but I agree it is possible.

The third reason is “memory inside body”, which I don’t buy at all. Because if its true, my necromancer would be summoning undead elementalists. :P

As for Ritualist, from my understanding, they asks their ancestors/volunteers spirits to help them fight. They didn’t force unwilling spirits to fight. Speculation, of course.

Tuomir.1830:

CHIPS.6018:

Aaron Ansari.1604:

CHIPS.6018:

Has it been stated that Zhaitan have total control over the whole Mist and Underworld? The fact that we can still enter the Mist in GW2 states otherwise.

I believe Zhaitan captures spirits and ghosts from Kryta itself. Spirits and ghosts do exist in the “living” world. But this is of course speculation.

The personal story step with the reaper does say that Zhaitan managed to steal the soul of one of Grenth’s own priests from the Underworld. Assuming Grenth is unlikely to give his own priesthood less protection in death than the rank-and-file dead, that seems to indicate Zhaitan can get to just about any soul in the Underworld.

That does beg the question, though, of rather Zhaitan went to the trouble of deliberately pulling a soul from the afterlife, or if that kind of thing just happens as a side effect of corruption- if the later, it is likely that the vast majority of risen, mooks or not, have souls, and oddly enough remaining in Tyria as a ghost might be the only way to keep out of his reach. If the former, we must then ask also why Zhaitan didn’t do this for all of his minions- assuming as the lot of you do, that the soul is correlated with powerful minions, the cost must have been high enough to make it untenable on a mass scale, which would pose its own questions and implications regarding the interplay between the Elder Dragons, the Gods, and the Mists.

Alright so we can confirm that Zhaitan can pull souls from the Underworld. But I don’t think he got full control over the Underworld. Dhumm would have to be dead/corrupted for that to happen. Maybe this explains why the likes of Gwen, Cynn and Mhenlo (powerful heroes at the time) wasn’t pulled from the Underworld and forced/corrupted to fight for Zhaitan. They reside in an area of the Underworld that remains untouched by Zhaitan.

It is also unclear if all 100% of his minions’ souls came from the Underworld. Because if he can access the underworld, he most likely have no problem taking/corrupting souls in the living world. But then we see all those wondering ghosts in Ascalon and we got to wonder why they aren’t taken/corrupted. It is true that Ascalon isn’t directly under Zhaitan’s corruption. But if he can get to the underworld, one would expect him to get to Ascalon no problem.

Unlike Orochimaru and Kabuto, who can summon from the Underworld whoever they want, there does appear to be some sort of limit to Zhaitan’s ability to gather souls. Else we would see Prince Rurik and many others.

I find the answer to be simple – Zhaitan had no control over Underworld, but since body and soul are tied to each other (otherwise there’d be a whole host of issues regarding resurrection, possession and other instances where a soul might leave the body and return later), the dragon may pull the corresponding soul back to the body, intentionally or consequentially. However, as I presented earlier, the weaker risen are without a soul, remaining as simple drones animated by the corruption, retaining their memory but not the mind.
EDIT: To make it clear, I mean that to pull a soul from the Underworld, the dragon requires the corresponding body.

If what you said is true, there are 3 problems that need to be addressed.

1) Aliyana’s body was turned into a Risen. Zhaitan clearly got full control over her body. So what made her soul “unreachable” by Zhaitan? Why wasn’t her soul forced back into her own body to fight? How was she able to keep her soul from corruption?

Aliyana’s soul wasn’t in the Underworld neither, since she was seen wondering around in the living world. So even if Zhaitan got minimum control over the Underworld, Aliyana should still have been corrupted on the spot in Mount Maelstrom. She was killed by Risen, so Zhaitan knew she was there.

My conclusion: Aliyana’s soul wasn’t needed because Zhaitan already has more than enough “spare” souls to put into dead bodies.

2) If dead bodies have memories, why aren’t the “good guy” necromancers taking advantage of this? Why isn’t there necromancer minions using Hundred Blades and Meteor Shower?

In GW1 necromancers summons minions directly from dead humans all the time. Often times this is done on their very own allies! So morality/legality isn’t the problem here.

My conclusion: Necromancer minions cannot use Hundred Blades and Meteor Shower because those skills requires a soul/mind to use. And forcing a spirit to fight is illegal. There is no memory in a dead body.

3) Prince Rurik’s soul was forced back into his own body, and forced to fight against the players in GW1. Why is this even needed, if his “soulless” dead body will fight just as well by memory alone?

Kalavier.1097:

Or maybe Zhaitan just yoinked souls from the underworld for important Orrian people, like kings/queens, priests, etc.

If he doesn’t know about any of the GW1 heroes, why would he take their souls?

Because GW1 heroes are powerful. They defeated the Shiro’kens, who themselves were considered heroes of their time. They defeated Abaddon and the Great Destroyer.

Very few are as epic as GW1 heroes. So having them as minions will be very valuable.

There is, however, another possible explanation why they aren’t with Zhaitan: Joko was one step ahead of Zhaitan and already got all the GW1 heroes as his minions. I remember Joko saying in GW1 “If only I had guys like you back in the day, I would never have lost.”

If they ever bring back our GW1 characters/heroes as minions, I rather work under Joko. At least we kept our minds. :P

Konig Des Todes.2086:

CHIPS, the difference between Shiro’Ken and what I was talking about is the fact that Shiro’Ken are not undead. They are not corpses, they are objects, which is fundamentally different than full out corpses because one is flesh and bone and the other is not. While one may not think it different from a scientific standpoint (both are matter, after all), it is often taken differently from a fantasy viewpoint, and you can even argue it’s the type of material that changes thing.

I do agree it is speculation. But I was just pointing out that if souls can be put into inanimate objects (e.g. never ever alive), they might also be put into a foreign dead body (e.g. was alive at some point). A soul that’s 300 years old can only be put into a foreign body. His/her original body would have long decayed.

The body’s memory, most likely. Things like reflexes. Or what the brain has known. How the whole “Zhaitan knows all his minions know” thing works is unknown in regards to how much pre-corruption is known – or maybe it was never that warrior’s knowledge, but another’s.

A dead body does not have memory. The soul/spirit is where the memories/training is. In certain sci-fi it is possible to get memory from a dead body (e.g. dead brain cells). But I don’t think that’s the case in GW. Else, what’s stopping us good-guy necros from taking advantage of that? We good-guy necros should be able to summon a warrior minion that can use Hundred Blades and a elementalist minion that can use Meteor Shower, if that dead body have memories.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

CHIPS.6018:

Has it been stated that Zhaitan have total control over the whole Mist and Underworld? The fact that we can still enter the Mist in GW2 states otherwise.

I believe Zhaitan captures spirits and ghosts from Kryta itself. Spirits and ghosts do exist in the “living” world. But this is of course speculation.

The personal story step with the reaper does say that Zhaitan managed to steal the soul of one of Grenth’s own priests from the Underworld. Assuming Grenth is unlikely to give his own priesthood less protection in death than the rank-and-file dead, that seems to indicate Zhaitan can get to just about any soul in the Underworld.

That does beg the question, though, of rather Zhaitan went to the trouble of deliberately pulling a soul from the afterlife, or if that kind of thing just happens as a side effect of corruption- if the later, it is likely that the vast majority of risen, mooks or not, have souls, and oddly enough remaining in Tyria as a ghost might be the only way to keep out of his reach. If the former, we must then ask also why Zhaitan didn’t do this for all of his minions- assuming as the lot of you do, that the soul is correlated with powerful minions, the cost must have been high enough to make it untenable on a mass scale, which would pose its own questions and implications regarding the interplay between the Elder Dragons, the Gods, and the Mists.

Alright so we can confirm that Zhaitan can pull souls from the Underworld. But I don’t think he got full control over the Underworld. Dhumm would have to be dead/corrupted for that to happen. Maybe this explains why the likes of Gwen, Cynn and Mhenlo (powerful heroes at the time) wasn’t pulled from the Underworld and forced/corrupted to fight for Zhaitan. They reside in an area of the Underworld that remains untouched by Zhaitan.

It is also unclear if all 100% of his minions’ souls came from the Underworld. Because if he can access the underworld, he most likely have no problem taking/corrupting souls in the living world. But then we see all those wondering ghosts in Ascalon and we got to wonder why they aren’t taken/corrupted. It is true that Ascalon isn’t directly under Zhaitan’s corruption. But if he can get to the underworld, one would expect him to get to Ascalon no problem.

Unlike Orochimaru and Kabuto, who can summon from the Underworld whoever they want, there does appear to be some sort of limit to Zhaitan’s ability to gather souls. Else we would see Prince Rurik and many others.

Essarious Quw.8946:

A royal wedding type arc in the living story would be awesome, especially if they handle it like they did Gwen and Kieran’s wedding. So long as there aren’t any more bombings in the city. That part of the Living Story left a bad taste in my mouth and I almost walked away from the game.

It wasn’t the first time. Something good are usually followed by something terrible.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

CHIPS.6018:

Seeing Aliyana’s spirit and body separately only proves that Aliyana’s spirit wasn’t inside her own body. But another foreign spirit (I cannot stress this enough) might be inside Crusader Aliyana’s body. Same thing with Romke.

I don’t think this is even possible, given the fact that we’ve never seen or heard of this happening before. Corpses have always had their own souls or no souls put into them when undead were made.

We know for a fact that Shiro’kens do not use their original body. The Shiro’ken mesmers and elementalist looks like a bird (Phoenix). There is no human that looks anything like a phoenix.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Shiro%27ken_Mesmer

They also have bodies that resemble Kirins and Nagas.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Shiro%27ken_Monk
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Shiro%27ken_Ritualist

Some of the victim spirits inside Shiro’kens have died for hundreds of years. Their bodies would have decayed to bones long time ago. Their original bodies cannot be made to fight again.

The official wiki said the following:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Shiro%27ken

“The Shiro’ken are the animated constructs that serve Shiro Tagachi. They appear to be made out of flesh, bones, steel and stone. The bodies of Shiro’ken are referred to as “soul binders.” The soul binders use Soul Stones which contain souls against their will, and in turn utilizing the abilities of the bound spirit. Stronger spirits, such as those of Tahnnakai Temple are capable of resisting the complete control of the Shiro’ken, but cannot control the soul binders themselves. Shiro is capable of possessing and taking direct control of Shiro’ken at will"

If souls can be put into newly constructed “flesh, bones, steel and stone”, souls can also be put into dead bodies of another person.

Why would Zhaitan put new souls in, if he can control souls from the Mists and the body’s natural souls are nearby, in Tyria? Makes no sense.

Has it been stated that Zhaitan have total control over the whole Mist and Underworld? The fact that we can still enter the Mist in GW2 states otherwise.

I believe Zhaitan captures spirits and ghosts from Kryta itself. Spirits and ghosts do exist in the “living” world. But this is of course speculation.

The opinion Zhaitan instills upon them. It isn’t their intelligence, it’s Zhaitan’s intelligence.

Let’s say we see a Risen warrior using the skill “Hundred Blades”. That skill actually would take knowledge/training to use. So who has that knowledge? A spirit/soul inside that Risen? Or was it Zhaitan taking personal control of that Risen and using “Hundred Blades”?

I personal think there is a spirit/soul inside that Risen warrior. But it is speculation. Maybe it was indeed all Zhaitan.

Kalavier.1097:

We know only higher ranking ones have sentience, and thus probably souls. The rest? It’s not really stated.

Yes it wasn’t really stated. That’s why it is up to speculation. But because of their intelligent speeches I lean forward the “Risens have souls/spirits inside” theory.

Shiro’kens and Awakened are stated to have souls/spirits inside. That’s why they are so strong. I believe that Risens/undeads goes along similar designs.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

CHIPS, Romke’s Final Voyage and Crusader Aliyana proves your belief wrong. While some risen have souls, it is obvious that not all do – and those that are confirmed to have souls are the intelligent ones, and by intelligent I mean "can say more than simple phrases like ‘death, good’ and can do more tactical actions than zerging all the things – aka more intelligent than your average risen you encounter, which includes Romke and his crew’s corpses).

Also, I recall the GW1 undead of Orr being outright called soulless. As are risen (‘His soulless army surged from the waters, hungry for destruction.’) on a few occasions.

Seeing Aliyana’s spirit and body separately only proves that Aliyana’s spirit wasn’t inside her own body. But another foreign spirit (I cannot stress this enough) might be inside Crusader Aliyana’s body. Same thing with Romke.

And there is no such a thing as semi-intelligent. It is either totally mindless or do have a mind. Speech, any speech, means intelligence. We can see that all Risen are capable of speech. “Death, Good!” is indeed a very simple thing to say. But the Risen must be intelligent to say this. There is no way a “totally mindless” being can say “Death, Good!”

Furthermore “Death is Good!” is an opinion, further proving the intelligence behind this speech. It wasn’t a simple scream ROAR in anger like an animal.

It is possible that “Death, Good!” actually came directly from Zhaitan himself. In this case then perhaps none of the Risen are intelligent. Every single word we ever heard from any Risen came directly from Zhaitan. I personally do not believe this, but I am not ruling out this possibility.

The narrator’s speech also isn’t decisive. He said “soulless army” as if the whole army is soulless. But even you agree that at least some of thee Risen does have soul/spirit inside of them. By soulless, the narrator probably meant “killing without mercy”.

Kalavier.1097:

Somebody in Anet (I forget who) explicitly said people can use magic to prolong their lives to the point of living to GW2.

It’s not stated to be a necromancer thing in specific.

I am unsure if I believe most undead have a soul/spirit in them as opposed to simply being animated by magic.

Nearly all Risen that you encounter will say something (e.g. “Eat Pain!” or “Death, good!”) before they fight you. Maybe that is “Zhaitan speaking to you” directly. That is possible. But I believe that the Risens actually have souls/spirits inside of them.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

CHIPS.6018:

Undead (also Risen & Shiro’ken) – When a soul/spirit is forced back into a body, it becomes a type of undead. The body might not be the original body of the victim (as seen in Shiro’ken). These undeads are capable of thoughts and feelings. But they rarely have full control of their actions. That means an undead father might end up killing his own daughter and son, because he cannot control himself.

Mostly true, but alas, we have conflicting evidence on the spirit bit. In the vast majority of cases, rather the spirit is bound to the body or not is unaddressed. There are a couple times when a slain undead will with their last words thank you for freeing them, but there is also at least one case where a ghost is complaining about how her body is now an undead. There just isn’t convincing evidence either way.

Most liches does have a master. So the way I see it, liches are just the more powerful version of the undead. The “grand master” put liches in charge of their undead army.

Not true. Most of the liches we know of act independently. Khilbron, Joko, Zoldark, all of them worked by themselves to their own ends. The only so-called liches seen to serve a master are the two risen liches in GW2- and as they are risen, and as said master is an Elder Dragon, there’s a strong case to be made that their circumstances should be considered separately. Mazdak is even more bizarre, and so is even harded to pin down.

As for my thoughts on your origin theory, there’s sadly an almost complete lack of evidence. Assuming Khilbron was not a lich during his tenure as Vizier (an assumption for which there is no evidence, I might add), he was changed in the Cataclysm, which is itself fully mysterious magic. None of the others even have that much- there is no mention of Joko or Zoldak’s lives before turning, and Mazdak and the risen liches may or may not have been liches before Zhaitan corrupted them. The assertion that self-willed liches turned themselves undead is as good a hypothesis as any other, but one we lack the means to test or prove.

EDIT: It occurs to me that you may have been referring to Abaddon when talking about masters. There’s no sign that he played a role in Khilbron’s actions between the Cataclysm and Khilbron’s destruction. If anything, the dialogue with the agent Abaddon had assigned to manipulate Khilbron suggests that they had discarded and forgotten him after the destruction of Arah. Khilbron’s belief that he required the Scepter of Orr is further evidence- if he was obeying Abaddon, he would not have needed some relic to make Abaddon’s servants work towards his ends.

Yes I admit that my views on Lichs are based on speculations. Not everything about them are solid facts. That’s why I said “the way I see it”.

The spirits that say “Thanks for freeing me” were obviously forced to fight. We seen this many times with the Shiro’kens.

The spirits in Orr that said “My body is now an undead” is not inside his/her original body. That body is now an undead controlled by another spirit. The original spirit (e.g. that ghost NPC) wasn’t the spirit controlling her/her body right now. Instead another spirit has entered and took control of that body.

The Shiro’kens were in a similar situation. Shiro made/found new bodies to host the spirits of these “former heroes”.

So the way I see it (specualtion), all undead/shiro’ken/risen that we see do have souls inside of them. Risens for example will always say a sentence before they fight you. But the soul inside right now may not be the same as the original owner of that body. Charr Spirit #103 maybe inside Human Body # 67. Asura Spirit # 43 maybe inside Norn Body # 90. etc.

The reason I have the above speculation is because without a soul, there is no explanation why these undead would have full skill bars. If we look at necromancer’s flesh minions, their skills are very limited. They mostly just go after the foe and start swinging their arms. For the undead to use knowledge in magic and sword swinging skills, a soul (with battle experience) is required.

I guess saying “Lichs have masters” was the wrong wording. I was trying to point out that most Lichs’ power came from another source. But this is indeed all speculation. We do not know where Khilbron and Joko got their power, for example. We do not know how Livia (maybe a lich) survived for hundreds of years neither. The power might have came from another powerful being. Or they “trained themselves” until they got that strong. No one knows.

I do believe that most Lichs are “undead” themselves. Once again this is speculation. Joko might actually be considered alive, for example. And like Livia we have no idea how anyone can actually survive for so many years.

To understand Liches, we must understand undead and spirits.

Flesh Minions – mindless summons by necromancers. These minions does not have a soul. They do not think and do not have emotions.

Undead (also Risen & Shiro’ken) – When a soul/spirit is forced back into a body, it becomes a type of undead. The body might not be the original body of the victim (as seen in Shiro’ken). These undeads are capable of thoughts and feelings. But they rarely have full control of their actions. That means an undead father might end up killing his own daughter and son, because he cannot control himself.

Spirits – Sometimes spirits summoneto fight. In GW1 the ritualists would use willing ancestor spirits. Spirits can also be forced to fight.

The “good guys” are limited to using flesh minions and volunteer spirits. They didn’t force any unwilling spirits to fight.

The bad guys will use unwilling spirits and undead to fight. Their victims becomes bounded to them.

Now liches are usually undead themselves. Most liches does have a master. So the way I see it, liches are just the more powerful version of the undead. The “grand master” put liches in charge of their undead army.

There may be liches that are independent and doesn’t have a master. What is required is these liches bound their own soul to themselves, so they became their own master.

Kalavier.1097:

Jennah is REAL.

She isn’t an illusion. Hell, a devpost basically said the evidence of her being real was there. Making it a fun/oddball theory, but most likely not true.

Yes of course Jennah exists as a person. The question is where is the real her? If even Logan (#1 lover/boyfriend) do not know, who does?

When was the last time they held each other’s hand?

Kalavier.1097:

Logan’s chances of getting a date/girl is limited?

Walk around DR, plenty of women gossiping about him. Even some men NPCs tired of hearing the women talk about him.

Which is exactly why Logan would be a more interesting character if he breaks up with Jennah, go on epic quests, and get tons of other girls. He is much better off being a playboy guardian than the queen’s little puppy.

I agree with Shiren. Logan became a worst character because he had to date Jennah. He is a little puppy that keep chasing Jennah when:

1) Jennah flat out said they can never marry.
2) He doesn’t even know that Jennah is fake, for a long long time now. So clearly they hasn’t even go for a walk and hold each other’s hand for a very long time.
3) Jennah have indicated that she doesn’t trust him completely, because she never told him about her illusion. What other secrets is she holding?

So this girl said she will never marry you. She refuse to even let you hold her hand. She rather entrust her life with another person (Anise and others) than you. Does this sound like a healthy relationship to you?

Now we can go all day long about “But she is the queen and the situation is different! This is how it is gonna be. Logan have to take it or leave it.”

If so, I say he should leave it. It aren’t worth it. Fact is this relationship is BS for Logan. There is no way for this relationship to exist other than Logan being a little puppy. And hence Logan was forced to be a weak character.

Narcemus.1348:

Personal opinion in comparison to what you’ve written:

I agree with some of your points, like adaptability. I just hasn’t read that book. I also never played though the human story since I don’t have a human character.

My opinion on Logan are from reading the wiki and from his actions in the CM dungeon and LS. In there he hasn’t shown much flexibility. “Getting angry and start shouting” in CM and LS isn’t cool. Logan gets angry over “a surprising/changing situation” shows that he isn’t very adaptive

A highly adaptive person is well collected and keeps his emotions in control during a rapidly changing situation. Only with a cool head (instead of anger and panic) can a person make the logical choice here. This is a very important trait for a leader.

Some of the other points are misunderstood. Value for example isn’t about how valuable Logan is as an ally. Value here means “a man who is hard to match by other men.” More specifically it is about “a bit of knowledge in pretty much everything”. It also means “bring value to a conversation” in any situation.

Logan does know A LOT about combat, and that is “value”. He also have a ton of adventure stories to tell girls. That’s great. However it seems that’s all he knows. That means his chances of getting “a girl” is “limited” by whatever that girl is interested in adventures and combat in the first place. If a girl have zero interest in adventures and combat, then Logan will have a hard time getting her. That’s why I gave him a 2/5.

A highly value man (5/5) would know a bit of everything. So whatever hobby/interest that girl have, or whatever topic that happens to come up, that man can talk to her about it for hours.

That said in the GW universe combat and adventure is a HUGE topic. Death and even Armageddon is just around the corner. So in GW there will be a lot of girls interested in combat and adventures. That’s why I said if Logan breaks up with Jennah and then develops a cynical attitude toward women, he have a decent/good chance of success with women.

Strength does include physical strength and fighting ability. But what is more important is his ability to take charge. A man with “strength” means he have a commanding presence. People look up to and respects him and his opinions. On a personal level women feels protected and taken care of by him. He will never get pushed around by a woman. Instead he would listen to her out of his own free will, and he make sure she understand this.

Please read the following to get an overview idea.

http://www.attractology.com/articles/outer-game/creating-attraction/

Never read that book. Probably never will. Is it even worth the $5.99?

Unlike you Konig, I don’t waste my life away digging into every piece of detail about the lore. You might be right to say I don’t know half of the tiny details of the story. But this doesn’t give you the right to take a shot at me. I can say you spent way too much time on it. We would just be hauling insults at each other.

I have no problem with your knowledge of the story. You can correct me if you wish. But when you say “you have a tendency to ignore half of the story to further your argument, I’ve noticed, and trying to argue otherwise is like batting one’s head upside a wall.” you are just trying to start a fight for no reason. I wasn’t even talking to you.

I use Neil Strauss’ LAS VEGAS system, when determining love/hate relationships in fictional stories.

Look at Logan’s LAS VEGAS rating (each rating out of 5):

Looks 5 – Yes he got good looks. I am not certain if he is a 5 here. But I will give it to him.
Adaptability 0 – He is too straight forward to adapt to the changing situation. He doesn’t crack jokes. He isn’t spontaneous and rarely surprise anyone.
Strength 2 – He is very strong in fighting ability. But he got no mental power to push his own agenda. He just does whatever the Queen tells him to do. But I guess he can still force people to do things by displaying power. So I gave him a 2.
Value 2 – LOL what value? He doesn’t seem to know anything except protect the queen. But I guess he can tell you all about using weapons and guardian spells. And he can probably share quite a few battle scar stories in a pub. So I give him a 2 here.
Emotional Connection 1 – I guess Logan must have chatted a lot with the Queen, and understand her a bit, off screen. But we have no idea.
Goals 0 – Protect the queen. Protect the queen. Protect the queen….
Authenticity 0 – He looks like a strong and tough guardian on the outside. But inside he is a small puppy that just wish to follow Jennah all day long.
Self Worth 0 – The queen already said they cannot marry, and can never marry. Read again: NEVER! And yet Logan still sticks around like a puppy. Why would Logan be worth anything to Queen Jennah if she never had to work/sacrifice anything for him? Come on, even a no-name city guard is worth more than that.

So the queen said they can’t marry. Well then forget her and go find another woman. If Jennah doesn’t think Logan is “worth the risk” of losing her status and power, then neither is she worth his time. Stop sticking around like a little puppy. Go on epic quests, kill legendary monsters, loot legendary treasures, go to a bar, tell high tales and charm tons of women. Jennah is beautiful yes, but there are millions of other beautiful women out there.

So Logan is 10/40. That’s barely enough points to date bad/average woman. So I personally don’t think their relationship would work out. I am sorry, but women do not like men that they can “manipulate” 100%.

Logan would have to target very specific kind of women. Those who love strong and good looking men, and love listening to high tales on monster slaying and adventures. And if he (after breaking up with Jennah) start displaying the bad boy, cynical about women attitude he will increase his chances.

If Anet, right from the start, give indications that they actually listens to the community, they would be respected and none of this would have happened.

Ascended gear (nearly all GW1 players hate) is the prime example. Dhuumfire (nearly all necromancers hate, before it was released) is another.

I do agree that the community is now highly toxic. There are generally two types:

1) Anet bashers.
2) Anet die hard fans.

The first type would of course bash Anet none stop, even when it isn’t fair. The second type would defend Anet’s action no matter how little sense they made.

What we need are more people in the middle somewhere.

Erukk.1408:

CHIPS.6018:

Ritualist Necromancer

1) Summon the spirit of the recently killed.
2) Ask the spirit who killed him/her.
3) Profit.

Problemo?

Fixed that for you.

Yes Ritualist isn’t in GW2. But they will make the better detective. Nothing can beat asking the victim himself/herself directly.

Ritualist

1) Summon the spirit of the recently killed.
2) Ask the spirit who killed him/her.
3) Profit.

Problemo?

1) I believe that teleportion lab can only sent in one guy at a time, with a huge cooldown period. It will take forever to sent in a team of engineers inside that way. And how about the supplies, tools and equipments needed for the repair? The most obvious method is to walk up to the entrance outside and fix it.

More importantly, it was the outside gate that got bombed. They cannot fix it from the inside (that one aren’t even broken).

You question was "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? "

I gave you an answer to how a smaller force have no problem destroying the whole CoE. This directly answers your question.

So please don’t turn around and say “But it is better if CoE was never destroyed in the first place, so we can gather intelligence!”

If you want to gather intelligence inside CoE, the Dark Knights can use spies. But that wasn’t your original question.

2) I already stated in my scenario that centaur deaths will far far far outnumber the human deaths. The Dark Knights did consider the extent of the damage, and yet choose to carry on with that plan for good reasons.

Maybe that river doesn’t lead to any major human settlements. Instead it leads deep into centaur territory. Maybe the poison’s affects wears off as it gets washed down river, so the people will only feel sick but won’t die. etc etc.

You cannot turn around and say that I “failing to understand the true extent of the damage would be.” It is my scenario, and it isn’t up to you to change it. That’s like the story writer say “Dumbo can fly”, and you turn around and say “No he can’t.”

All these factions might want to come after the Dark Knights. But finding them will be difficult. And then they see in plain sight all these red mobs who are direct threats . What’s the priority here?

3) Again it isn’t up to you to change my scenario. I stated that the Dark Knights will surrender without a fight to the Pact, or commit suicide to protect their secrets. You cannot turn around and say “No they won’t.”

I do think that I had spoken enough on this whole idea. Anet should have a decent idea of it by now.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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:

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:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

lakdav.3694:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As for Ascalon vs Charr:

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

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

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

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

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

achensherd.2735:

CHIPS.6018:

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

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

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

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.

draxynnic.3719:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

draxynnic.3719:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

History shows that I am right.

Erukk.1408:

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

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

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

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

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

etc etc.

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

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

achensherd.2735:

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

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

achensherd.2735:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kalavier.1097:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kalavier.1097:

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

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

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

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

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

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

More like nobles who are disappointed at the Pact.

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

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

Erukk.1408:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erukk.1408:

CHIPS.6018:

“good moral or well meaning people”.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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