#Formerly my gw2 charr

[placesyoucallhome]

Catalina Mecavsch, former Blade of Gunnhildr, currently wandering merc

[rabbitgardens]

welcoem to my fuck house

Red | 21 | it/its | main blog

making this sideblog to meet people to play games with and justify my ffxiv subscription!

I dont have very much experience with mmos, and my histories with both gw2 and ffxiv are Falling Madly In Love With It Before Ive Even Beaten The Tutorial and Buying All The Expansions and immediately falling off because of some kerfuffle or another game catching my attention. But i wanna get back into them now!

this blog is a big fat work in progress so mind the dust, I’ll make a proper character list with art/pictures and shit Later

(current list under readmore!)

GUILD WARS 2 CHARACTERS

Revylin- it/any sylvari, cycle of dusk,mesmer. Just call it Revyl! My current main im using to relearn the game! Got converted to the nightmare court as a sapling for its higher than usual magical aptitude, had an Awful Time and was rescued by the Wardens before it could become a knight. Now travels around tyria pursuing a wyld hunt he cant remember (itll be fine!! itll come back to him itll be fiiiiiine) working as a dancer/storyteller before getting tangled up in the Plot

Irysel- she/they sylvari elementalist. max level commander from my original 2019 playthrough! idk if i’ll ever play her again but i remember having such a blast with elementalist i’ll probably try her again eventually

Rika Sunstalker- he/they ash legion charr thief. old dnd character made gw character! the campaign he was in stopped so now he only exists here! a gladium, formerly rika sunblaze, who got his warband killed?? Somehow??? and took the stalker name/joins a pirate crew of other disgraced charr to travel and see the world (still working his details out adldjd)

(I havent made these next few characters ingame yet, but plan to once im farther along!)

Irene- he/she sylvari, cycle of noon, guardian. Warden turned adventurer turned revyl's travelling partner (and eventual co-commander and lover!) Very devout dreamer with a strong sense of justice and desire (read: overwhelming uncompromising need) to be the pale tree's most devout, prized, heroic son. Travels around tyria working up the ranks of the vigil, trying very very Vewy hard to fuffil a wyld hunt she cant remember (all he knows is that it Must be tied to revyl. thats why she feels that way whenever revyl looks at her, right?)

-------------

Pyrotechnician Taz- she/mirror asura, college of dynamics, engineer. do not let her get in contact with revyl shenanigans will ensue

FFXIV CHARACTERS

Ciel D’luxe- he/they viera summoner/archer hes my little meow meow so full of problems. hes a drag queen. he has trust issues. hes trying to find love even though he thinks hes the wettest most miserable man in eorzea. his ex is hunting him for sport. the only reason he became a summoner was because he saw a carbuncle for the first time and Lost It. hes a bitch hes a lover hes my little booboo bear

(havent made these characters ingame yet but plan to!)

alta haragin- she/it au'ra pugilist/lancer (or pugilist/gladiator? i know i can technically have all three but shes gotta have two Mains yknow), Rapscallion Criminal turned pit fighter turned adventurer turned ciels girlfriend and co-captain of ciels adventuring party

drakaz verkach-he/him hroth hhhhheavy armor class of some sort. maybe he'll be the gladiator. the beavis to altas butthead. just here for a good time! please pay no attention to my myriad mental health issues/simultaneous identity crises

(this last guy is a joke character but i honestly cant gey him out of my head maybe ill make him a retainer like i wanna do with kaz)

nagayuki ittetsu-any pronouns au'ra(?) spellcaster who wants to ammase enough power to Become A Primal. he is always and forever getting tricked by ascians/beast clans/random fucking guys and gets Almost Murdered several times-

[anghraine]

I'm celebrating the new year with self-indulgent Guild Wars 2 stuff of limited interest to anyone but me. I'm on vacation, I do what I want.

...yes, this is the long GW2 post with copious footnotes that I was threatening awhile back. Apparently "what I want" is citations for my headcanons.

I'm really fond of my GW2 main, a human female mesmer named Althea, and all the fic pieces and headcanons I've come up with for her. That said, I also have another human mesmer, inevitably named Gwen—I liked GW1's Lady Althea a lot, but my #1 GW franchise blorbo is Gwen Thackeray.

My two mesmers are similar in some ways. They've been shaped by the same general tragic event (loss of a sister in the Seraph), end up in the Order of Whispers, and come from proudly Ascalonian families. But Althea's families are wealthy aristocrats, like the original Althea's. Gwen's are the exact opposite.

Born to homeless parents in Divinity's Reach, she's dealt with poverty for her entire life¹/². From her youth, she has faced and trounced some of the worst threats in the city³. Where Althea initially gets by in her social circle through composure and repartee, Gwen gets by on the streets of Divinity's Reach⁴ through her personal charisma⁵, attractiveness⁶, and the ability to switch from charm to menace at a moment's notice⁵.

Gwen is just as fiercely Ascalonian in her identity and sympathies as Althea, but until the story starts, she's never been able to make as much of a production out of it. In fact, it's frustrating to her that the Ascalonians who are most able to speak for the community and get heard also tend to be the least representative of it (it's canon⁷ that Ascalonians rarely own land and have little representation in Kryta's government).

It's even more frustrating to her that the most extreme Ascalonian partisans, the Separatist terrorists, are used to de-legitimize all Ascalonian criticism of the Krytan government and the specifics of the peace with the Charr. Gwen herself is no Separatist. This is partly because she can't afford to travel to Ascalon in the first place, and partly because she thinks their tactics are stupid.

But she has many reservations about the price of Kryta's protection and Queen Jennah's assumptions of authority over Ascalonians everywhere⁸. In fact, those reservations are part of the reason she's so close to her friend Alice, a firm anti-monarchist and revolutionary. And it's easy for Gwen and Alice to see how the Separatists make for a convenient rhetorical prop to silence dissent.

Meanwhile, since Gwen also has the missing sister backstory, there is a version of Deborah in the Pact Commander Gwen continuity, but their dynamic would have been wildly different, given the game's implications that the PC from the streets was formerly part of a bandit gang.

(Sidenote: this also means that the Althea in the Pact Commander Gwen 'verse is a spoiled only child, which amuses me.)

While still quite young, Gwen and Alice ended up in a local bandit gang per canon, along with their friend Quinn and some other long-standing acquaintances. For some, like Gwen and Alice, this was partly for their own protection and partly in hopes of forcing change. Soon, Gwen and Alice in particular had proved their usefulness among the bandit gang, and gained respect from other bandits (the dialogue implies that the PC's absence created a power vacuum).

Gwen's older sister Deborah, on the other hand, was equally fierce, but resolutely rule-abiding and squeaky clean. She ended up seizing a chance to join the Seraph, the main branch of both military defense and law enforcement in Kryta, both out of conviction and in order to make a new life for herself. She was appalled at Gwen joining a group of bandits.

The sisters had a massive falling out—Gwen fell in with the bandits at about the same time that Deborah got recruited into the Seraph, and though their paths had diverged well before that point, they'd been very close as children and stuck together on the streets for years. Gwen saw Deborah as selling out, while Deborah saw Gwen going down a destructive path where she couldn't help her. They were basically estranged from that point.

Deborah chose to serve in the military arm of the Seraph, however, rather than local law enforcement. She quickly rose to become a sergeant in one of the Seraph's most successful and decorated companies⁹, one wholly dedicated to defending Kryta's people from numerous threats, but mostly centaurs. Gwen quietly followed Deborah's career and had complicated feelings about it, but they hadn't spoken in more than a year when the Seraph tracked her down.

It had nothing to do with the banditry. They informed Gwen that Deborah's company had been wiped out by centaurs. She didn't even leave a recognizable body to bury or grieve over; the attack had been brutal.

Gwen was deeply shaken by this. She'd been growing increasingly disaffected with the bandits by then. Alice had suspicions, and Gwen much stronger ones, that their leaders didn't really care about revolution¹⁰, and were instead exploiting the vulnerable in much the same way as the aristocracy, but on a more immediate and personal level. None of her friends were willing to leave, even Alice, but Gwen felt increasingly guilty and dissatisfied with using her flair with illusion magic for nothing better than petty crimes.

Now she used it to plot her escape.

Up to this point, Gwen had occasionally managed to sell her services as an illusionist separately from banditry—some of these services were benign (the carnival!), some less so. At this point, she quietly amped up her efforts on the "legitimate in the eyes of the law" side, aided by her ability to create believable illusions of herself back with the bandits. Once she'd secretly saved enough to support herself, she snuck away from the bandits with little but a purse, the clothes on her back, and a nicked sword she stole as she left.

Gwen managed to obtain various odd jobs over the next year, sometimes through her charm, sometimes through the usefulness of her raw abilities with chaos magic and illusions (and sometimes both, of course). She managed to scrape by with a roof over her head and even occasionally give a little money to Quinn, who she stayed in contact with—his mixture of loyalty and terrible ideas worried her. All in all, she felt like she'd made something of herself¹¹. Deborah might even be proud.

But that wasn't enough.

She wanted to do more with her life than drift between unstable and unpredictable positions in the city. And part of her wanted to make up for helping the bandits prey on random people. It wasn't enough just to survive¹². But the highly stratified society of Divinity's Reach made it difficult, nearly impossible, to do much of anything. Finally, she decided to leave the city altogether, and see if she could find better luck¹³ and higher purpose in the wider world.

She'd scarcely walked through the gates of Divinity's Reach and towards the garrison of the nearby village of Shaemoor, however, when she found the locals in chaos. A large group of centaurs was assaulting the village and had broken through the defenses put up by a small group of Seraph and Captain Logan Thackeray, who even Gwen knew¹⁴ had defended Divinity's Reach faithfully for years.

Gwen thought of Deborah, and decided her time had come.

If she could handle anything, it was chaos.

-----

¹"she's dealt with poverty for her entire life": the intro screen says, I grew up on the streets. Although I have friends, my life has always been hard.

²Also, the hero story screen says, my people are dirt poor and I've struggled all my life.

³"she has faced and trounced some of the worst threats in the city"—the intro screen says, I've faced the worst this city could throw at me, and I sent it home bleeding.

⁴"the streets of Divinity's Reach": the human origin options in character creation are noble, commoner, and "street rat." I chose the last for Gwen.

⁵"personal charisma ... the ability to switch from charm to menace at a moment's notice": in character creation, your general personality options are dignified, ferocious, or charismatic/charming (these evolve further throughout the game, though with minimal impact on play). I chose "charming" (No one can resist me when I'm at my best), though given the personal story, I imagine her with a broad streak of ferocity as well.

⁶"attractiveness": if you choose Lyssa as your patron, the hero story screen says I was blessed by Lyssa, goddess of beauty.

⁷"it's canon that Ascalonians...": in the Upper City, a random citizen wonders why there aren't more Ascalonians in government. Another citizen responds, "The usual. No land, no vote."

⁸"Queen Jennah's assumptions of authority over Ascalonians...": either Jennah or the Krytan royal line in general has assumed the title of "Regent of Ascalon," listed after "Queen of Kryta" on two separate occasions. One of them is in-game; the title is listed on a legal document in The Dead End in Divinity's Reach during End of Dragons. Neither the Charr nor the Ascalonians of Ebonhawke seem at all likely to agree with Kryta on this point.

⁹"one of the Seraph's most successful and decorated companies": the PC describes it in "The Fall of Falcon Company" as "One of the most decorated units of Seraph" and the successes of the company are repeated throughout the storyline.

¹⁰"none of their leaders really cared about revolution": Alice says in "Going Undercover" that Pete "doesn't care about the struggle at all."

¹¹"she felt she'd made something of herself": the initial hero story screen says "I've made something of myself."

¹²"It wasn't enough just to survive": in the intro screen, she says, "I'm done living hand to mouth ... I can take care of myself, but that's not enough anymore. Someone has to help those who can't."

¹³"to see if she could find better luck": in the intro screen, she says, "I stepped outside Divinity's Reach, hoping to find better luck outside the city."

¹⁴"even Gwen knew": the PC of any origin will say in "Defending Shaemoor" that "Captain Thackeray's never failed Divinity's Reach."

[praise-joko]

Hey! I’m MagpieShrike but you can call me Maggie if you like. She/He/They

I’ve been playing GW2 off and on for years but just recently got back into it. Started creating my own non-Commander characters and got way more invested in the story.

I’ll be posting GW2 art (when I finally finish a piece) and some griffon flying escapades as well as reblogging content from other members of the community. Feel free to send asks about my characters, it’ll help me develop them and actually get stuff written down. You can find them bellow the cut.

Interactions will come from my main blog @mjrral

Will be fleshing this out more later but for now some basic descriptions and playlists will suffice.

Charr

Chaskana - 🎵 - Guardian, Gladium (formerly Chaskana Havocwreaker), Sunspear.

Brylox Havocsinger - 🎵 - Warrior -> Forged -> Reforged Warhound Jackal

Havoc Warband - 🎵

Deceased members of the Havoc Warband:

Craval Havockeeper

Druvark Havocweaver

Selara Havocmaker

Sylvari

Basmani - 🎵 - Scourge, Order of Shadows Creator

Emcras - 🎵 - Ranger, Priory Scholar (Druid?)

Basmani/Emcras playlist

Pyrifea - 🎵 - Daredevil, Soundless -> Pirate -> Icebrood

Brydolon - Revenant

Evil!Brydolon - demon corrupted

Aimvara - Mesmer tailor (virtuoso)

Aimvara & Brydolon Playlist

Trychinebau - 🎵 -Mirage

Andwyol - Deadeye, recovering mordremvari

Warder Dameg - Elementalist, mordrem beasty

Asura

Gate Technician Ips - Engineer

Operative Iava - Guardian, Inquest

Norn

Strix Wyvernkeep - Ranger, Pact Commander (but not the Commander)

Mounts

Sunchaser - 🎵 - Grand Lion Griffon

Sunspitter - Cobra Noble Skyscale

Sunny - Raptor

Heuldro - Cobra Noble Skyscale

Tywodfaen - Sand Lion Warclaw

Squall - Lightning Wyvern

[wyldblunt]

hi im ira and this is my gw2 sideblog!

adult | it/she/he | 🔞 18+ only please 🔞

likes/follows/replies will come from @baph0meat , more art at @iraprince which is essentially my main

i mention my wife a lot bc we love making ocs together and most of our lore is intertwined. she’s not on tumblr, but just fyi, her name’s marina and she uses she/they/he pronouns!

NAVIGATION:

⭐ my art - what it says on the tin

⭐ others ocs - also what it says on the tin. browse some beautiful blorbos

⭐ my ocs and marina ocs are mostly just little organizational heads-up tags, since i post about his ocs just as often as mine; i usually only bother throwing this on art, not text posts

⭐ oc notebook - non-art posts abt my + my wife’s ocs, general rambles (edit: this tag and the one below are kind of outdated now bc i never remember to actually use them lol)

⭐ oc aes - aesthetic/shitpost reblogs assigned to characters. posts for canon characters may sometimes be carelessly hit w this tag

⭐ answers - responses to ask games/questions; ones with art will additionally be tagged drawn answers

characters are tagged by name; [character]/[character] or a combined ship name is for ship dynamics, [character] + [character] is for platonic/friendship dynamics. spoilers will be tagged with abbreviations (i.e. “EoD spoilers,” “LWS4 spoilers,” etc)

⭐ character list below cut: ⭐

UNDER CONSTRUCTION, eventually i’ll have a cut with a proper illustrated oc directory here but for now here’s a bunch of direct links to characters i talk about a lot for quick access. 💛 means my oc, 💙 means marina’s oc!

THE BIG RELATIONSHIP CHART

(moooostly up to date, missing a few new courtiers/our charr and current art)

MAIN PLOT:

💛 glyndwr (my commander) - bitchy edgy ex-nightmare deadeye (previously the knight of deceit). insists he doesn’t want to be doing any of this save-the-world shit but also refuses to step down. merrit’s mentor/adoptive father. gender=mean old homosexual, he/him

💙 alan (marina’s commander) - radiant vigil posterboy (who is getting tired of being the posterboy). guardian, champion of aurene, hero of tyria, steadily splintering under the pressure. lorelei’s mentor. gender=battle angel, he/they

💛 lorelei - lieutenant commander. ambitious but naive vigil druid, formerly a tournament jockey from the grove. dragonslayer on a lacrosse scholarship. cute and kind, but often tactless; always dreamed of a life of adventure and has now kind of bitten off more than they can chew. gender=lesbian, they/he (+occasional she)

💙 merrit - lieutenant commander. miserable wet neurotic ex-courtier. once a spy for nightmare, fled and ended up under glyn’s wing. has shaken off a lot of the Evil, but not the aesthetics. midwest emo dyke transplanted into high fantasy. virtuoso. gender=lesbian, any pronouns

💛 viper squad - consists of daimhin (chronomancer, they/she/occasional he), damage (harbinger, she/her), and donner (daredevil, he/him) in addition to merrit. glyndwr’s personal task force (the guys who show up when he pops the ‘thieves guild’ elite skill). each is extremely annoying in their own special way.

💛The Dog - glyn’s dog. he refuses to name it because it doesn’t need a name to respond to commands. canach has named her pepper. alan has named her soot. merrit calls her ‘buddy’ but is too nervous to actually impose a name on her. donner has named her gamble. damage has named her Vice-Commander Big Fuck

COURTIERS

💛 callas - count of malice, spymaster, tempest. previously had authority over glyndwr, and later merrit; has gone absolutely apeshit with vindictive rage now that they’ve both escaped. building a new faction of the court in the power vacuum post-HoT. she/he, occasional they

💙 lisk - captain of the vanguard, berserker. once served under leurent, count of blood, but got bored of him and obsessed with callas, and helped her overthrow his former master. has some extremely Out There opinions (such as believing the dragons are inherent allies of nightmare). tirelessly helping her mistress hunt down court deserters. gender=lesbian, any pronouns, leans she/he

💛 fidelma - callas’ personal squire + bodyguard. extremely strange. seemingly chipper, but with a yawning emptiness behind it all. it is deeply loyal to callas, but even more loyal to nightmare, and will choose chaos (even if it inconveniences its liege) over anything else 9 times out of 10. believes nightmare is already the natural order of things and that the court shouldn’t have to put this much effort to spread it. it/she

💛 sorcha - vanguard hound, warrior. dipshit mean girl jock who just wants attention, but will settle for bullying everyone around her instead. desperately in love with lisk, and was perfectly content to share her with everyone until callas began entirely monopolizing her attention. she/he/they

💙 sigvas - scout/archer, under rhys until post-HoT, then afloat in the schism. a poisoner/alchemist (cough cough party drug synthesiser) who WANTS to be the game-of-thrones master manipulator of the court but is too busy freaking the fuck out, both /pos and /neg, over their own reflection. desperately in love with lisk. they/them

💙 tarahnis - scout/beastmaster, under rhys until post-HoT, then afloat in the schism. a ranger/thorn hound trainer who does his nightmare duties with an unusual amount of relaxed optimism. just here for a good time. desperately in love with lisk, but also wants to surpass her. he/they

💛 rue - squire/provisioner, in service of rhys’ scouting squads until HoT, then afloat in the schism. a weird little himejoshi who is just happy to be creeping around admiring all the nightmare knights that surround them. does not dream of advancing in the court at all, just of kind of skittering around and polishing everyone’s armor and sniffing their clothes. desperately in love with sorcha, sigvas, and tarahnis. they/he/she

(sorcha, sigvas, tara, + rue are all gender=sapphic and are collectively referred to as The Problemcule.)

FLOATERS/NON-PLOT-ADJACENT

💛 clooney - secondborn pirate, with the jackdaws. mechanically a ranger but in lore has no specific profession. believes that the only way to counteract the pain and horror that filters into the dream through life’s experiences is to devote oneself to having as much fun as possible before you die; takes this extremely seriously. has a side gig smuggling people to safety from tight situations (ex-courtiers, pact deserters, etc). eventually becomes alan’s lover. he/him, but he’ll use any pronouns for fun

💙 rhys - (technically could go up with the nightmare courtiers, but he’s not part of the same group as all the above ones.) a nightmare count disgusted with what the court has become, frustrated with the way it’s been entirely derailed by vanity and internal politics and mindless violence. after fighting mordremoth, decides to form a splinter faction of the court on his own. gender=lesbian, he/they.

💛 bowyn - part-time actor, full-time con artist, professional babe. mesmer. though they insist they’re “strictly non-political,” they become involved with rhys and end up traveling with him and his new court. secretly feels deeply guilty about the fact that they had absolutely no involvement with the fight against mordremoth. they/he/she

💙 gann - a courtier in name only; you probably could not name the last time he actually did anything useful for nightmare. mostly entrenched in the court just as a criminal career choice. an expert at slacking off. he/him, but it’s not like he cares

💛 naoise - completely empty-headed pit fighter. a gladitorial prodigy who can barely count; they are so dumb that they don’t even realize that they’re a revenant, because the legends they’re channeling can’t even get enough foothold in their raisin-sized brain to speak to them. their gorgeous face and hollow skull have bewitched gann body and soul, and the two of them travel aimlessly around tyria, making shitloads of money and contributing nothing useful to anyone else ever. bliss. they/them

💙 cadair - a valiant of the wild hunt, whose dream is entwined with maelduin’s. woke two years later than maelduin did, meaning their dream has given them much more information about their fated partner, while maelduin knows almost nothing about them. enormous, gentle-hearted, but self-conscious about the fact that the dream has equipped them with everything they need to be a knight/hero but very little else. revenant. any pronouns, leans he/they

💛 maelduin - a valiant of the wild hunt, whose dream is entwined with cadair’s. woke two years before cadair, knowing only that they would one day need to protect him. while they waited for him, they became a mentor, while also becoming deeply preoccupied with death and medicine. specter. any pronouns, leans they/them

💛 benji daywaste - formerly an iron legion engineer, but hazed so badly over her infamous sire that she was transferred to ash legion. hangs out with the goths now. grumpy about all of it, even though he’s enthusiastic about his work. gender=lesbian, she/he/they

💙 roddar wastesteel - ash legion thief who lacks the temperament to match his position. easygoing, keeping his chin up despite the loss of his warband -- benji is the first addition in rebuilding. (’wastesteel’ was a joke name suggested by benji due to how often he fucks up the equipment she makes for him, but it stuck, and now they’re the waste warband.) gender=lesbian, he/him

SHIPS:

glynach (glyndwr/canach)

merrilei

alanglyn

callisk

alan/clooney

bowyn/rhys

gann/naoise

problemcule

cadair/maelduin

benji/roddar

(i do not generally follow the “top/bottom” ship tagging convention; to keep things consistent/easy to remember i mostly just tag in alphabetical order. sometimes i might forget or tag things inconsistenly and stray posts will get lost out of these tags lol)

[pyreo]

GW1 (2005) // GW2 (2012)

Iron Marches (Part 1)

Known as The Northlands before the Searing, simply to encompass all the surrendered land north of Ascalon City, this is where The Searing was cast. The cauldron that began it can be found before it ends virtually all life in Ascalon, but defeating the warband guarding it has no effect on the eventual cataclysm. The Searing cauldron stands in the same place after 250 years, watched over by a charr Quaestor and a human from the Durmand Priory. The charr (ironically) wants to remove the cauldron for the safety of his nearby village. The human (ironically) wants it to remain in place until the Priory can study it and ensure lessons are learned from the disaster. 

Nearby is Piken Square, formerly a little market hub but abandoned in charr territory. It held a small graveyard at the top of a hill. It seems that the entire market square was repurposed into a burial ground by the last humans to survive in the area. 

“Are you kidding me? This is an excellent place to start a city. There's water, fish, lumber, and tons of other resources.” “That's funny, I bet my ancestors felt the same way too.”

[thegildedgun]

Tell us more about Myscha!

...Shit. Aight. Where to start...

Myscha was created from my love of my old Charr in GW2, a character who had a tendency to say absolutely nothing in most situations or exclusively use hand-signals to direct those he worked with. Myscha says very little, and Myscha means what he says. He is blunt and can seem cold or robotic with little outwardly expressed emotion aside from a general sense of disappointment. Autonomy is very important to him, not specifically due to a need for freedom like Llew, but because he rarely trusts anyone to do a job correctly. He is self-sufficient in nearly all that he does, and when he needs assistance, he’s keen at assessing his underlings for competency.

What does he do, exactly? Well, formerly he worked in the development of magitechnology used in war machina. Specifically, he was tasked with the creation of several targetting systems for unmanned machines that would, years later, be deployed into Eorzea in various attempted conquests. Myscha laid the groundwork for many systems currently in use, but he himself never personally saw his work come to fruition. He left Garlemald’s service entirely during the War of Succession upon finding an opening and has been considered something of a person of interest ever since. Specifically, Garlemald probably wouldn’t want him spreading around their military secrets. For his part, he has no interest in serving any country, political, or military power. But that doesn’t explain what he does really, does it? Primarily, Myscha works as a consultant in two very different areas of knowledge and expertise: magitechnology and an as-of-yet ‘mythological’ brand of magic: necromancy. The latter of which Myscha admits is more theory than practice: he’s a technician, not a mage. Or so he says. 

But then, everyone needs a hobby, right? So why not the oft-misunderstood branch of spellweaving that tethers Ashkin to the will of another?

Myscha is designed as a pseudo-villain. Not really directly antagonistic enough to be a problem unless your goals cause him issues. Garleans tasked with hunting down traitors in other lands, zealous patriots of Eorzea, and those who have had their lives irreversibly altered by the Empire could easily see him as an enemy. The moral dilemma of a character who contributed to suffering without being directly responsible is something interesting to be explored. 

Particularly when that character has no interest in ‘repenting’. Do you lay the blame on such a person? Or do you lay it upon those who utilized his tools and his creations to cause suffering?

Fun things to play around with I think, if I ever played this one for real.

[anghraine]

I made another GW2 human, in part because you can get a black lion chest key for playing the level 10 storyline once a week, and the human commoner storyline is particularly fast—and in part because of a different angle on my inexhaustible resentment wrt the Charr / human PCs' inability to lean into in-world human cultural quirks by contrast to ... everyone else, pretty much.

What if I don’t want to be reasonable, ArenaNet?

See, one of my many gripes with the Charr is that they didn't only fail at their goal of the total conquest of a) Ascalon (nope, Ebonhawke held out and Charr-controlled formerly-human Ascalon is haunted by both Ascalonian terrorists and literal ghosts), b) Kryta (nope), and c) Orr (nope, their grand vizier obliterated his people in a massive counter-attack that drove out the Charr rather than endure Charr atrocities). BUT ALSO, there are other human nations who didn't really have anything to do with these events in the first place.

So it's deeply annoying that the Charr keep going on about how supremely victorious they are and how they triumphed over your character's ancestors and complain about all the evils of "your" king whether you choose to be Ascalonian or not. And it makes sense that all human cultures are kind of interchangeable to them (they're imperialist conquerors, it's extremely on-brand actually!). But it makes less sense that human characters don't get to be pissed off about it and especially that there's no equivalent of a "fuck you, I'm Canthan" option.

Of course, there's always headcanon. So I was thinking about it and thought ... hell, why don't I just make a character that I can headcanon as the "fuck you, I'm Canthan" character. And now that there are so many Canthan-themed options with EoD, she can actually be Canthan (though even my liberties with GW2 canon don't extend to her being from Cantha itself; she's still a Krytan citizen and her family would have lived in Kryta for a long time).

However, I also have always really wanted to make an Orrian character. Not secretly undead or whatever, but I've thought for awhile that an Orrian diaspora would make sense. After all, not every Orrian would have been on Orr when it was destroyed, and between one thing and another, "Orrian" has such bad associations for most people by the GW2 era that living Orrians might stay quiet about it. And you actually do encounter a handful of members of the Orrian diaspora in the personal story, so it's definitely a thing, even though the game doesn't let you select it for your family background.

And then I thought, well, this version of the PC is a random commoner from the Salma District (i.e. one of few not divided by its inhabitants' cultural/ethnic origins). There's no reason she couldn't have Canthan and Orrian ancestry and cultural ties, and although she primarily presents as Canthan, she does have messy, intense feelings about Orr and the necessity of fighting the Risen, and the Charr—whose imperialism precipitated all of this—going on about their triumphs over "her" people when she isn't even slightly Ascalonian is enraging in a very specific way.

And on the flipside, the cleansing of Orr could be a huge deal for her and the natural resolution to her complicated relationship with being Orrian as well as the more publicly acceptable Canthan.

(Althea can relate to the Orrians and is touched by the experience, but doesn't have much more of a personal stake in it than anyone else would, but for Xiulan? A very different experience.)

Anyway, it was really fun to create her and I'm having a blast imagining her arc :)

[pyreo]

GW1 (2005) // GW2 (2012)

Diessa Plateau (Part 2)

Grendich appears to have been an Ascalonian village before the Searing, after which, only the courthouse remained. It stayed as a port of call for those let alive and eventually became swarmed with Foefire ghosts that have managed to set up ghost artillery. If one braves the ghosts, several dedications can be read on graves belonging to former villagers. 

Butcher’s Block is the nearest new settlement, a farming and hunting village where charr of all ages enjoy barbeque and pickled eggs at Meatoberfest, a celebration of meats. 

What was formerly a lake of tar and exposed carcasses looks much better now as a fully natural lake, but in other areas the Flame Legion has taken hold. What used to be a large human temple has had Flame iconography layered on top, with the Font of Rhand crypt underneath still accessible as a trap-filled minidungeon. The Flame Legion also took notice of this smoldering caldera in a tar lake and turned it into a fully active, lava erupting ritual site. 

"When I was just a young hooligan, I found myself before a judge on a regular basis. I stood here, inside this very building, as my punishments were read by the Magister. Back then, I can remember wishing this building would be hit by lightning or destroyed in a great fire. Never did I think it would come to be."