#FORGAL IS OLDER THAN LA

[queer-as-used-by-tolkien]

Storyline Study: Order Mentor

When you joined your Order at level thirty and met your mentor at level forty, each of the three was instantly revealed to be a different person altogether from the other two.

Tybalt Leftpaw, Lightbringer of the Order of Whispers, was on his first-ever field mission. He was very blatantly calling for you in a sort of undercover way, and simultaneously panicking when you tried to mention the full name of the Order. Your supposed mentor was as new to this as you, had a (sometimes very human-teenager) sense of humor, and had a rather sad backstory balanced by his good nature. You knew he liked apples.

Sieran, Magister of the Durmand Priory, was full of reckless abandon, disregard for authority, boundless curiosity and a heart for the little things. She was confident in her role and her ability, and unhesitatingly took you into dangerous places for the sake of exploration and adventure while brushing off rebuke like a tree sheds sap - even when it was heartily deserved. You learned to be rather frightened for her.

Forgal Kernsson, Warmaster of the Vigil, was an archetypal gruff, stern old mentor whose every drop of praise spoke volumes. But he also carried a sort of wildness to him, that rough edge from growing up a hunter in the Shiverpeaks, coupled with every willingness to say it like it was if it was true. He could be surprised, he could observe calmly when something was new, he could snark like the rest of them and even say things he didn't mean from time to time.

They all fought the dragons - they each more or less took it seriously. But Tybalt was a partner and friend, you were keeping Sieran in check, not the other way around, and Forgal trained you mercilessly.

You all grew together - they had each changed for the better by the time they died. Tybalt had learned that he was worth something, Sieran had learned friendship was worth everything, and Forgal had learned... well. He'd found a student to be proud of, a partner to fight with, a friend to trust... a child to carry on his legacy. But I'm not sure, exactly, what Forgal learned - what the point of his story was.

Sieran was more-or-less well suited to her role in the story; she symbolized innocence and cheer and optimism and the beauty of the world - so you could recognize what was being lost by the dragon's onslaught. Tybalt's story was one extremely well-suited to his character; he taught you that working together was vital to survival, even when neither of you knew exactly what you were doing - a valuable lesson as the story progressed. Both of their stories fit well enough into the three-mission story sequence concluding in their death.

But Forgal was different. He was the mentor who dies partway through. He was the one who trained you and taught you all he could, who died imparting one last gem of wisdom. Or, he should have.

I am not attacking Forgal. I am attacking ArenaNet. We had too little time with Forgal for the story Anet was trying to tell with him. He was like Obi-Wan but without showing up again as a ghost, without the prequels, without being able to send Luke to Yoda - without, most significantly, being able to explain why he'd said Luke's father was dead.

We don't know Forgal. We don't understand him. We only know his family died to Icebrood... but why is he with the Vigil, specifically? Why is he a good friend of Almorra's - allowed to butt in and insult a diplomatic ambassador with barely a reprimand? Forgal is the character that tells me the Vigil has been around decades, not a mere five years. Was he in another military? Forgal was over a hundred years old. You don't join a military at that age and, five years later, are a highly self-disciplined warrior such as he was. Maybe he was Lionguard? Hear this: Forgal is actually older than Lion's Arch. If he'd survived, he would have been old enough to bear witness to all three incarnations of that city. But, apart from being able to recognize the Orrian Scout on sight, this is only a trivial piece of lore.

After he judged us worthy, we should have had long training sessions with him - sparring matches wherein he would easily fend off our blows while simultaneously teaching us about the world, all the wisdom he'd gathered, expounding just a bit on the history of the Elder Dragons (perhaps customized for player's race!) - and then we go off and have a real Vigil mission. Perhaps remove the racial sympathy 'choice' and have all five! A sparring match before each one, with a different lesson (the racial sympathy missions were awfully short anyway). And if you want to keep the idea implied by the term 'racial sympathy,' you could change the tone of some of them, make the player more reluctant and Forgal more impatient, have a middle-of-mission lecture on why it's important to work with everyone - this way you joining an Order feels less 'oh you've always been sympathetic to other races' and more 'wait who are these people.' But you know the real kicker? These training sessions would have made us actually feel like we were a treasured part of his life, the kid he never had, that he takes the effort to train us and takes the time to correct us when we're wrong, that he shares his history with us.

And then, at Claw Island, he would place a hand on our shoulder and tell us - hey - don't worry. You did good. You tell my tale and you take my lessons and put them to good use, you hear me? Listen to Trahearne over there - I've told you a bit about him - he's a good kid, he's smart and he knows what he's doing. And - partner? Partner, I need you to put me down if that blasted dragon raises me.

And we're in tears and Trahearne standing there also puts up a fight and tells him not to go, but Forgal goes anyway, roaring his defiance at the dragon - and his famous line, "you may win the battle, dragon, but you will never defeat our spirit!" And maybe he adds - "you may defeat me, but I will be avenged!" like some cartoon villain only you know - you know that means you.

That is the storyline Forgal deserved. (I selfishly also fixed it just a bit with regards to Trahearne, but...) I don't care if we add an extra ten or twenty levels to the game to account for the four extra racial sympathy story chapters.

And see, now you'll argue that that's biased in favor of Forgal, to do all that with him but not the other two - and that's part of the idea.

Forgal isn't like the other two. He shouldn't be compared to the other two. The storyline we have is good for the other two. Extending their stories would feel... false. Yes, there are supposed to be parallels between the three Orders, but... in that case, ArenaNet should have done something entirely different with Forgal.

How about this: Almorra assigns us to someone else for a mentor, but we show such epic promise she switches us to Laranthir. His storyline? It's right in his idle dialogue at the Vigil Keep - he's always sought love. This puts his storyline on par with Sieran and Tybalt. What about Forgal? He's a Lionguard that all three Order mentors know well. We do racial sympathy with Forgal plus our Order mentor (doing those with only one ally is kind of absurd anyway). This can help set-up and foreshadow the tactical significance of Claw Island, too - and hey, maybe Forgal can even survive that! Or maybe he doesn't survive it but our Order mentor does! (Yeah, that fits better, since Laranthir is important in HoT.) And then, once the Pact is formed, their stories end more naturally without regard for the Order parallels, which would keep the story unique - where your choice of Order still matters even when it doesn't anymore. Tybalt didn't have to die - in fact, it's kind of absurd that he did since his story was about finding his own heroism, and then he dies. He can die later, perhaps, after he's thoroughly proved himself. (And hey, throw in an encounter with his old warband! Bonus lore points!) And Sieran 0 maybe Sieran could go through a heartbreaking transformation in Orr, the land of the dead - you see something far more heartbreaking than her death as she loses her spirit, and you and Trahearne both resolve that even if you're super-busy with the Pact, you can still cleanse Orr together to save Sieran. (This makes cleansing Orr a personal thing for you as well as Trahearne!) And Laranthir - well, I don't know what he was doing originally. Maybe he stayed back at the Vigil Keep to manage things, but you still see him now and then and he gives good advice and (since his storyline was about falling in love or something) you get to tease him about whatever's going on in his life, and then later he shows up again in HoT.

I'm going to stop - I already just presented a rough outline of a whole rewrite of core PS, I'm not going to step into HoT territory. (But since his storyline was about falling in love - ? Anything could happen really. Maybe his love died in the crash (we don't actually know of any characters who died in the actual crash. Awful shame) and that's why he takes the lead against Mordremoth. That would give him a cool motive.)

Anet I want this now.

I only wanted to say how unfair Forgal's story was to him, and then I came up with this whole thing - ? Some of it included a few helpful fixes for the Trahearne hate - this isn't something I can write out into a whole fic since I have a main fic and while this is a significant AU it's not quite enough for a whole fic but also far too much for just a headcanon - maybe I'll invent a new Commander.