#c: gwen thackeray did nothing wrong

[ascalonianlightbringer]

There's a really interesting line in Eye of the North about how ten-year-old Gwen is enslaved by the Charr, rather than killed, because that's their standard practice with human children.

I've wondered for awhile if part of the reason that the Charr were collectively so ready to commit various atrocities and war crimes against Ascalonian civilians, including children, was because they don't really have a concept of civilians in their culture. All adult Charr are dangerous enemy soldiers unless they're so estranged from mainstream Charr culture that they're not soldiers, or unless they're not enemies. All but very young Charr have been trained in war, in fact.

...except that's in GW2, not GW1. IIRC female Charr were highly disenfranchised in Charr social terms back in GW1 and not supposed to be fighters, so they at least had the concept of a non-fighting class, while presumably understanding the threat posed by adult human women.

But even more than that, the institutionalized practice of killing Ascalonian adults but enslaving the children until they grew old enough to throw into death matches suggests that they did understand the difference between the threats posed by human adults and children. The Charr seem to have seen little immediate risk in sparing children from death.

So their practice arising out of an understanding that human children were not particularly dangerous to them may be intended to show their capacity for mercy, however twisted. But, uh. It does not make things better, really. It actually makes them worse in a way, because they knew these kids weren't dangerous when they enslaved them.

It's—interesting, as well, because they harp on victory all the time, but their cultural practices are fundamentally self-defeating. They didn't get Kryta. They didn't get Orr. Sure, their total war approach allowed them to take most of Ascalon, but it also basically ensured that they'll never get all of it, which was the goal. Because if they're going to kill all the Ascalonian adults and enslave their children whether they surrender or not, what do Ascalonians gain by surrender? Why wouldn't they fight it out for 250 more years? Of course they're going to get support from other humans who know they'll be next if Ebonhawke falls. Why wouldn't they?

And it's all the more glaring because in human lands, a harmless human child can easily become a harmless human adult. Gwen Thackeray would have been Random Useless Villager #6 if the Charr had not so thoroughly traumatized her. Instead, they turned her into someone who could frighten them, which is an incredible concept.

That's not even getting into the ways that their culture creates its own internal problems and disasters, though obviously that's a major plot. I just think there's a kind of tremendous irony to what we find out from EOTN and how it plays into their struggles in GW2.

[ascalonianlightbringer]

A tangent I originally cut out of the post, btw:

Even apart from religious practices, a lot of the most central human figures in the main story are aligned with magic/mysticism in some way. Gwen Thackeray, Lady Althea Barradin, Queen Jennah, Countess Anise, and Kasmeer Meade were/are all mesmers (chaos mages/illusionists). The maddened King Adelbern is remembered as "the Sorcerer-King" for cursing his people into eternal undeath; Vizier Khilbron of Orr used evil magic to obliterate Orr and return as a lich; the (spectacularly stylish) villainness Varesh Ossa had holy magic.

Originally the closest thing to a protagonist figure in GW1 was probably the monk Mhenlo—a cleric in all but name, with an annoying but powerful elementalist girlfriend and a friendship with the Canthan ritualist Master Togo that provided the transition between the first two GW1 games. The most important NPC in the third GW1 game, Kormir, absorbed the immense magical power of a god and became the sixth god of humanity centuries before GW2. Logan Thackeray is the main human figure in core GW2 and a Guardian (a paladin type with a mixture of heavy armor, martial skill, and fire, radiant, and defensive holy magic), while the main human NPC role later mainly shifts to Marjory Delaqua, a noir PI necromancer.

Humans are not innately magical as a species—some of them don't have any link to magic or particular connection with the gods, and the devs have said something to the effect that humans only developed magic after being brought to Tyria by their gods. Their link to the mystical is cultural and historical in-story, not racial, but also reinforced by the narrative choices to link the human story to the mystical, magical, and divine.

Speaking of GW1 and GW2 ... I've had plenty of complaints over the years about how GW2 has chosen to handle and retcon human-centric GW1 lore, the framing of the human gods, etc. That said, I've recently been appreciating that GW2 has retained a particular element of GW1's treatment of humanity and their gods that I've always really liked.

Humans in the GW universe are not really generic everymen, as humans so often are in fantasy settings. Nor are they so wildly varying and unpredictable that there's no sense of humanity having its own distinct flavor like the other playable species do. In many ways, they occupy a vaguely "elvish" position in the world—they've been on this world for a very long time and used to be a major power, or rather, made up many major powers with various warring factions that sometimes found common cause.

But in more recent eras, many of the ancient human civilizations have dwindled and/or suffered various atrocities and/or lost their minds. And culturally, humans tend to have a strong affinity for the mystical and even more for the divinely mystical, which their political power in previous eras was directly tied to. The vast majority of humans in this world are faithful worshippers of a human pantheon of six gods (formerly five).

Not all humans are magical or religious, to be sure, but a lot of them are, to the point that this seems their most distinctive cultural quality. Minor NPCs tend to have background dialogue invoking the gods ("By the Six!"), or referencing one of the gods (often but not only the goddess Dwayna, leader of the Six). The main human NPC of the core game, Logan Thackeray, continually references the gods, as do most of his military fellows.

Most interestingly, though, if you choose to play a human, you will automatically be a devout adherent of the faith of the Six regardless of any other choices you make. In addition, human PCs are blessed by one specific god among the Six whom you choose at character creation.

This mostly has minor flavor effects in practice. A priest of the god you chose permanently hangs out in your home district, and sometimes other priests of your god can perceive some mark of their deity's favor when they look at you.

Howeverrrrr, when I say "their deity," I don't mean that they exclusively worship the god they've dedicated their lives to, or that "your god"—the god whose favor you enjoy as a human PC—is your god in any remotely monotheistic way. Humans faithful to the Six are faithful to all the Six until one of the gods falls to evil. And when that god becomes the villain of the second GW2 expansion, various human NPCs are shown going through a crisis of the soul regardless of whether he was their particular patron or not. Having a more specific personal tie to one of the gods, or being particularly blessed by one of them, or being specifically devoted to a life of service to one of them, does not in any way prevent humans from devotion to the rest of the pantheon.

Mechanically, this means that no matter which deity you choose as your particular patron, your human PC starts the game with the ability to pray to Dwayna, goddess of life and air and healing. When you pray to her, a blue image of Dwayna materializes, heals you, and vanishes. As you level up, your human-based skills will extend to prayers to the other gods.

Praying to Lyssa, goddess of illusion/chaos magic and water and beauty, confounds foes by inflicting random conditions on them and random blessings on you. Praying to Kormir, goddess of spirit, order, and truth, will free you from negative effects like immobilization. The final prayer you can use, iirc, and the most powerful, is the prayer to Balthazar, the god of fire and war who ends up going super evil. If you're playing a fragile class like an elementalist or mesmer, praying to him is actually great, because he blesses you with two fierce hounds made of flame who fight alongside you and soak up damage. (Praying to Balthazar does feel a lot weirder in retrospect, I'll admit.)

In any case, the point is that you can pray to ANY human god and receive a brief visitation from that god, because the entire human pantheon are your gods even if you're only special to one of them. A similar dynamic is at work for NPCs as well. A recurring NPC in the core GW2 story, for instance, is Rhie, a priestess of Grenth, god of cold, darkness, judgment, and death (he's not evil, just goth). Even by priest of Grenth standards, Rhie is greatly favored by him, and as a result is able to perform powerful rituals dealing with the boundaries between life and death. But there's no expectation that this means she should abjure the other gods in any way, and she certainly does not (in fact, she provides a Human Religion 101 rundown about the gods in general in her first appearance in the human storyline).

And it's so common in fantasy, I feel, that polytheistic cultures are conceptualized as giving adherents a wider choice of gods to be the one they actually worship for real, often with the implication that worshipping one god in the pantheon naturally translates into hostility or apathy towards other gods in the same pantheon. And so I do enjoy playing a religiously devout character who has a special patron deity blessing her and who is emphatically polytheistic throughout her entire original storyline.

[ascalonianlightbringer]

I followed up the culmination of Gwen's Orders of Tyria arc (Order of Whispers, baby!) with the next phase of the story, the beginning of the best Order of Whispers arc.

So this was all about Gwen meeting Destiny's Edge, Logan's old guild who failed against an Elder Dragon when, iirc, Logan left at a particularly pivotal moment to save Queen Jennah. While this is a kind of boring motivation, given how Extra every other member of Destiny's Edge is, I may be alone in sympathizing with him? Also, if I'm remembering the backstory right, the domino effect of Jennah's survival at that moment was a pretty big deal.

But onto the story. Gwen began by—HEY, OLD LION'S ARCH!!!

Okay, I know it's now accessible outside of old story instances, but I haven't gotten the achievement for that, and I always forget that we get a great view of it in this scene.

<3333

Okay, back to the story for real. Gwen went over to talk to Logan, who was suspicious and telling her to stay close. Gwen responded that she doubted Caithe was plotting an ambush (fair enough; I wouldn't put it beyond Caithe after playing the level 10 sylvari story, but it didn't suit her goals in this case). I do find it pretty funny to imagine Logan keeping Gwen (who is maybe 5'5") close as like ... an emotional support spy?

It turned out that Caithe had sent her message to all the former members of Destiny's Edge, and Logan was pissed about the inclusion of one member in particular: Rytlock, the Charr member.

In one sense, this isn't surprising. But I don't actually remember why Logan is mad at Rytlock specifically. I know they were good friends and that factors into Rytlock's anger at Logan, I get why everyone feels Logan abandoned them and got a friend killed, I get why Logan feels none of them understand what went into his choice or fully grasps the consequences. But he does seem very specifically angry at Rytlock. He tells Caithe he wouldn't have come if he'd known "this Charr" was going to be there, which has always made me wonder if at some level, part of his anger is cultural as well as personal. More on that in a bit.

Rytlock was angry as well, but in a more controlled and contemptuous way—Logan definitely seemed the more hotheaded of the two. Still, Rytlock definitely upped the ante by saying he should just gut Logan (...). It's hard not to think of the Charr NPC who goes on about how all Charr cubs are taught to skin every human they meet. That's horrifying, but in a Charr context, Rytlock talking about gutting Logan while not actually harming him would probably seem pretty cool and collected.

Logan's response was not only furious but one of his more iconic moments, if you ask me:

[Logan: Gut me? With what? That human-made sword you looted from Ascalon? I've had enough! We're done here.]

I can't screencap how Logan's VA says this, but I think the delivery definitely stresses "looted from Ascalon" and sounds genuinely outraged about it.

I do think Logan is defensive here, but it's intriguing that it's his kneejerk response under pressure, and presumably how he really feels about Rytlock taking Sohothin. To Logan, it's an act of looting and conquest in the land where Logan's ancestors lived for hundreds of years. #valid

And I mean, he's a direct descendant of the girl who defied the subjugation the Charr tried to inflict on her and refused to be driven out of Ascalon as so many were, instead turning herself into a woman the Charr themselves feared. Not even Pyre Fierceshot, her eventual friend, really seemed to care about how many thousands of innocent people got killed in a single day or who they were, but Gwen Thackeray made sure the Charr remembered her name.

That is part of Logan's legacy, and given this response, I've always wondered if he feels it in some way. He and Rytlock were close once, but maybe even at their best, there was a strain of resentment that Logan probably couldn't have expressed even to himself, but which comes out here.

The fact that saving Jennah also saved Ebonhawke if I'm recalling correctly, the last stronghold of the Ascalonians in Ascalon, besieged for over 200 years after being established by Gwen, is weirdly understated in all this. In fact, I'm not sure anyone at any point brings up Logan's contribution to the survival of Ebonhawke and, consequently, the survival of his people in Ascalon proper. Maybe the game doesn't want us to think about GW1 too hard wrt this particular conflict, or really wants Logan's motives to be All About Jennah, but as a GW1 veteran, it's kind of impossible not to think about it with Logan's emphasis on "this Charr" and "Ascalon."

Anyway, that's my headcanon and I'm sticking to it.

As for the other members, my Gwen also saw Zojja the Asura, who blamed the leadership(?) of Eir the Norn more than Logan, which is also interesting. Zojja, too, was done with the whole thing and left. Caithe and Eir seemed by far the most reasonable, pleasant, and down-to-earth of the group (kind of funny considering the hardcore and clearly troubled Caithe of the sylvari story) and briefly talked through their discouragement at the failure to reunite. Eir had some plan to bring Logan and Rytlock together, which iirc ends in disaster in the Ascalonian Catacombs dungeon.

I imagine that my Gwen's response to all this was 1000% Team Logan, especially with the specter of Ascalon hanging over his conflict with Rytlock. She might even be uncomfortably so for Logan, perhaps? You know how sometimes someone is so fervently on your side that you almost second-guess yourself, even though you normally trust them? I imagine that's how Logan would feel. And Gwen has her own Ebonhawke hang-ups because her parents died for it, so Logan's actions contributing to its survival would ensure she is very intensely on his side.

I imagine she was pretty neutral on Zojja and Eir, while she understood Caithe's slightly underhanded way of bringing everyone together—Gwen can be pretty underhanded herself—but didn't much appreciate it in the circumstances.

So at this point, she kind of uncritically resents Rytlock and supports Logan, she has reservations about Caithe, while she's meh about Eir and Zojja. Clearly a recipe for group unity!

Gwen and Logan had a brief chat afterward—Logan was still principally angry at Rytlock, though also frustrated and a bit self-pitying with regard to everyone. But when Gwen told him they just needed time, Logan quite rightly responded, "Time is one thing we don't have, my friend," but admitted he needed to cool off. I think that would seem very reasonable to Gwen and only encourage her to jump into the Order of Whispers wholeheartedly while he's figuring out what to do next.

And what should show up in my mailbox but a letter about apples :D

[ascalonianlightbringer]

And Gwen is 80!

To my very great amusement, her previous Character Adventure Guide goals only got her to 79, and the last remaining one for the tier was to kill a bunch of Flame Legion. So my ferocious Ascalonian from the streets of Divinity's Reach ended up getting to 80 by going to Ascalon and slaughtering a bunch of Charr.

Truly, her namesake smiles on her from the Mists. ;)

[ascalonianlightbringer]

I posted about this on my main, but I really do appreciate that GW2 lets me cosplay my GW1 blorbo:

Gwen, my beloved <3

[ascalonianlightbringer]

Crossposting!

Here's the GW1/Gwen Thackeray rambling post I promised @venndaai a ... while ago. It is extremely rambling, and also, I feel like I should probably warn for something. GW1 keeps the true brutality of the Charr invasion offscreen, but it doesn't really conceal what's happening.

Um—okay, CW for, hm, military conquest, mentions of large-scale killing and enslavement, including sometimes specific references to the means of death. Also spoilers for a lot of GW1.

As I've mentioned before, Gwen is my favorite character in the entire series, despite the GW1 writing being more uneven than GW2's (I think GW1's writing tends to be conceptually/structurally "better" but the execution on the sentence level is very unreliable). I can't remember everything I've said about it before, so here are ALL of my Gwen/Ascalon Blorbo Emotions.

GW1, especially the original game (re-titled Prophecies), tends to be very railroad-y in story terms, even by comparison to GW2. As a Prophecies character, you're an Ascalonian living in your home before the Searing, and a new member of the elite Ascalon Vanguard led by King Adelbern's son and heir, Prince Rurik.

As the game starts, you're finishing up your training in Ascalon City. You receive the command to go just outside the city to meet the trainer for your profession (usually mesmer in my case). The moment that you walk out the front gates, you see a shrine on your left, attended by a female monk, and a dark-haired little girl skipping around. Both the monk and the girl have quests for you.

The girl, of course, is the young Gwen (she had no other name back then). We're not told her age at the time, though if I recall correctly, the lore says she's ten. In my opinion, she looks and acts considerably younger.

In any case, she has lost her flute just across a nearby river. She's too afraid of the local skale to fetch it herself, and asks you to do it for her. However, when you kill the skale and go across the river, you discover the flute is broken, much to her dismay.

You do your various early adventures, and when you go back to the city to sell to the merchant, you have the option to buy things like a flute, a fairly expensive red cape, and the like. These are things you can give to Gwen. If you buy her the flute, she always has it afterwards (well, until the Searing...), and if you talk to her again after buying her a new flute, she'll follow you around and periodically heal you by playing the instrument.

You can also give her red iris flowers, to her delight. They're her favorite flower and spawn throughout the pre-Searing zones (if you talk to the right person, you'll discover that she uses them to make flower wreaths for a friendly dolyak). If you do this enough, she bonds with you, and will eventually give you something she considers valuable: a red shred of a tapestry (its purpose would not be revealed until the third expansion—it's part of a hall of achievements).

As she follows you around, she also chatters quite a lot about various things, including what little we know of her early history. Unlike a lot of NPC major characters, she has no ties to royalty or aristocracy or anything like that. She's the daughter of a random adventurer and of a village woman near Ashford Abbey. She sort of wants to be a warrior, but she really likes the mesmers' superior sense of fashion, and it's a struggle (#relatable; also, she does ultimately become a mesmer).

She mentions one specific mesmer, incidentally: Lady Althea, the daughter of Duke Barradin. Althea runs a theatre outside of the city, teaches students in illusion magic, and true to mesmer form, wears one of my favorite outfits in the game.

—but which tragically has yet to be ported to GW2. Anyway.

As the pre-Searing game progresses, we learn that after the last king died, the next person in the line of succession would have been Duke Barradin, Althea's father. He stepped aside for Adelbern, a war hero, and thus far, a competent and largely popular king who is loyally supported by Barradin, among others. The only opposition to his rule at this point comes from obnoxious snobs.

Anyway, Althea is engaged to Prince Rurik, Adelbern's son, and little Gwen wants to go to the royal wedding. She's never actually seen the prince and wonders if she ever will (she doesn't, in the event).

*deep breath* Then the Searing happens.

The Searing is devastating for both the land and the Ascalonians. The earth is turned into a cracked desolation marked with burning crystals. Rivers turn to sludge. Thousands of people are killed in the Searing alone and thousands more flee from the Charr invaders. Althea Barradin is taken captive and burned alive, down to ashes. Other people are captured and enslaved. Even GW2 says the Ascalonian aqueducts ran red with blood after the Searing.

As for the PC, you belatedly discover the details of this upon returning from a two-year Vanguard mission away from the heart of Ascalon. The full Charr invasion force is still being held back by what remains of Ascalon's armies, but Charr forces break through at points, and it's obvious the Ascalonians are now losing.

Meanwhile, the Ascalonian people are deeply traumatized. Enough of them went insane after the Searing that Ashford Abbey has been converted into a mental sanitarium. NPCs are trying to put together a census to figure out who is even alive at this point. In the battered but still standing Ascalon City, the random guards are like:

By and large, GW1 does not pull its punches.

As for Gwen, you have no idea what happened to her at this stage, though you find her flute—broken again—out in the desolation beyond Ascalon City. In fact, Prophecies never reveals what happened to her, and the two stand-alone expansions are in totally different locations with different, Charr-unrelated, plots (they're set in Cantha and Elona respectively, and for the full stories, you would make new Canthan and Elonian characters to play them).

Meanwhile, Prince Rurik (who adored his fiancée Althea) and the PC gradually realize the Ascalonians can't win this war. They need to accept the help offered by their traditional enemies in Kryta and take refuge there for the sake of their people. King Adelbern is ... not the same after the Searing and increasingly irrational. He refuses and disowns his son when Rurik argues with him.

Rurik is like ... fuck it, and he leads anyone who will go with him into the Shiverpeaks to get to Kryta, including the PC. Some friendly dwarves help out (there were lots of dwarves back then), while the malevolent Stone Summit (who I think oppressed the dredge??) try to kill the refugees and end up just murdering Rurik for no particular reason. This series of events is why the Ascalonian sector of Divinity's Reach is "Rurikton," though he himself never made it to Kryta.

BTW, Rurik's sword would be found and seized by Rytlock many generations later. This is what Logan is referring to in GW2 when he snaps at Rytlock, "Gut me? With what? That human-made sword you looted from Ascalon?" And 200+ years after the fact, Adelbern is still grief-stricken by how terribly wrong things went with Rurik. His mental state seems to have declined even faster after Rurik's death, which Rytlock mocks him over in the Ascalonian Catacombs dungeon. This is a tangent, but, well.

After Rurik's death, you lead the refugees the rest of the way to Kryta. There, the also-theocratic but ostensibly benevolent White Mantle leadership of the country has offered you a settlement for the Ascalonian refugees. (The settlement is continually besieged but still standing in GW2, though the Ascalonians there are treated fairly dismissively.) You help the settlement and White Mantle for awhile before discovering the latter are super evil. You end up switching allegiances, and helping to overthrow them and place the daughter of the former king of Kryta (who fled during the Charr's triple invasion of Kryta, Orr, and Ascalon) on the throne.

(This post doesn't get into the invasions of Kryta and Orr, which don't have even the tenuous justification of the invasion of Ascalon. But they also happened around the same time, and the Orrians were terrified of experiencing what the Ascalonians did.)

The plot continues but is mostly unrelated to this arc. So you deal with Canthan stuff in Factions and then Elona stuff in Nightfall. And then, some eight or nine years after the Searing, you end up traveling wayyyyy north into Norn lands (this is the first time we encounter Norn) and discover a sanctuary there, the Eye of the North, which is actually home to a bunch of Ascalonians.

I can't remember if it's a GW2 retcon or not, but the Norn were actually pretty pro-Charr as far as the invasion went, apparently because they thought it was super badass, so they let the Charr pass through their lands. But they also let Ascalonian strike teams have a base up north, presumably also because they found it badass (I don't actually remember the rationale for the Ascalonian base otherwise).

Anyway. These Ascalonians are the early Ebon Vanguard, who at the time, are an elite force answering to King Adelbern and operating deep behind Charr enemy lines. Their numbers have grown, however, through the rescue and recruitment of human former slaves, prisoners, and refugees of the Charr. This matters because you're greeted by one of them when you arrive—a Vanguard member named Gwen.

Yup, it's her, at last.

So we find out what happened to her. She has some quests, and becomes both a hero (an NPC companion with a lot of player control options) and actually playable in a sort of mini-episode where you try to finagle her escape from the Charr and find out what her life was like before then.

Real bad, it turns out.

Back in/after the Searing, her mother was killed, and tiny Gwen wandered desperately around the devastated landscape, looking for help. This is kindly illustrated!

Instead, the Charr found her and enslaved her, which was apparently their standard practice for children. According to Gwen's official story, she "toiled under the constant lash" of Charr masters for seven years. Many other human slaves around her either broke and/or were killed. Gwen herself was afraid of the Charr but also developed a seething hatred of them.

At seventeen, she tried to escape and was quickly recaptured and judged useless by the Charr, except as a final entertainment. See, they had this fun practice of setting up gladiatorial matches inside their camps "for the glory of the legions." They'd set unarmed human slaves against wild animals and get a kick out of the humans being disemboweled (this is 100% canon!). So here's 17-y-o Gwen right before her planned disembowelment:

However! Gwen was smart and tricky enough to outwit the beast supposed to kill her, and she managed to kill it (iirc) and escaped into the labyrinthine tunnels below. These turned out to be the Charr's grisly depository for the bodies of those killed in the death matches over the years. Gwen was hardened enough by then to make her way through the dead, determined to escape for good. On the way, she discovered a book of mesmer spells and was able to learn them as she continued on.

She knew she'd be killed in an even more painful way if she were ever captured again, and the only thing to do was to keep going. She emerged from the tunnels and fled her pursuers, striking out for the mountains. On the way, she was discovered again—this time, by members of the Ebon Vanguard operating in Charr territory. She escaped with them, joined the Vanguard, and served them loyally.

That's not the end, though. By the time the PC meets Gwen, she is still very psychologically damaged, and part of her ruthlessness and rage comes from lingering fear. In the course of the plot, you end up freeing some Charr dissenters—not dissenters from the conquest or the Searing (this is explicit), but from being subject to theocratic rule based on gods who have turned out to be false (this is why Charr in GW2 are so hung up on trusting weaponry and "not false gods"). One of these dissenters is Pyre Fierceshot, a Charr hero by GW2 (and also a playable companion-hero in GW1). Gwen is immediately and intensely hostile towards him, as might be expected, while he proves to actually be trustworthy.

He calls her "mouse" (as Charr call all humans) and vaguely trolls her, but is ultimately fairly understanding of why she's so angry and scared. He turns out to be kind of trying to help her overcome her terror, and when the PC asks if he blames her for her rage and fear, he responds, "No. She was a prisoner of the Charr." But in his view, her fear is still crippling her and he's trying to get her to overcome it (because she's not useful!).

Gwen and Pyre end up cooperating in order to accomplish assorted things, but mainly working to spark a Charr revolution against the shaman caste whom Gwen and Pyre both have reasons to want gone (as does the PC, especially if you're a Prophecies character—and therefore an Ascalonian survivor of the Searing). Gwen does ultimately end up processing (some of) her trauma and overcoming her fear, and faces Pyre again. He asks if she's come to apologize, and this is what she says:

I want you to know: I do not like you. I do not forgive you. But most of all, I do not fear you. I hate you. There’s a difference.

me: 😍

I was concerned that her arc would culminate in her being shown to be wholly unreasonable and forgiving the Charr dissenters even though they're deeply complicit in what she, the PC, and their people have suffered. But no! She never forgives the Charr (at least in life), and she is never anything but a relentless opponent of them who seeks revenge and gets a lot of it, because she kills so many Charr that they remember her with fear and hatred as Gwen the Goremonger.

What an icon <3

Sometimes people will be like, well, the conflict depends on your POV, the Charr did bad things, but so did Gwen to become the Goremonger #bothsides. And I'm just like, "how dare you besmirch the honor of my blorbo, Gwen did nothing wrong in her entire life, THANKS."

But then we get to my least favorite part of her arc, though she remains incredible overall. It's the obligatory het stuff that I was complaining about awhile ago.

I don't know when they decided she was going to be the ancestor of the human mentor in GW2—maybe it was planned the whole time for Eye of the North (third expansion), maybe not. They had a sort of proto-Living World thing with new releases after the core Eye of the North story while working on GW2, which were meant to culminate in the founding of Ebonhawke. The arc got cut short because of a push from higher-ups to get GW2 out (RIP, Ebonhawke arc that I would have been incredibly into).

Some of what we did get, though, involved Gwen's romance with Keiran Thackeray, another member of the Vanguard. He made "advances" that she coolly rebuffed, but this turned out to be more a product of her trauma and difficulty connecting with people or trusting them than anything else. When she thought he and his unit had died, she was deeply upset that she'd never get the chance to make things right blah blah blah. It's got shades of Han/Leia in ESB, which would normally be a compliment (my favorite movie!), but isn't from me (I dislike the Han/Leia dynamic in 80% of ESB, actually!).

Anyway, he's not actually dead, and she's super relieved, and they end up getting married, and I suspect this whole "she needs to get over being cold and hard and he's just the guy to do it" dynamic exists mostly for the sake of Logan's existence in GW2. There's also a subplot involving her dead mother being on Team Keiran that I won't go into, but it all just feels kind of forced "of course our strong female character needs a man" to me.

It might annoy me a bit less if Logan, the result and likely partial cause of Gwen getting slated for romance, were not as bland as the romance itself. But while I generally like him, he is very milquetoast. I used to call him the beige heartthrob and even so, only realized how bland he is when I played a sylvari, and discovered the mentors are not all like that.

On the bright side, the obligatory het romance does not prevent Gwen from a life of righteous bloody vengeance. If anything, her husband likely helped out, which makes him slightly less annoying. They served together in the north until Adelbern sent the Ebon Vanguard and a suspicious number of civilians south to establish/fortify/defend Ebonhawke. Gwen's superior had died earlier and Gwen was in charge by then, and to go by the account in GW2, she made for an inspiring and hardcore leader on the way to Ebonhawke and in its defense over the rest of her life. She's a beloved hero and icon to the Ascalonians of over 200 years later, and her grave is still imbued with the magical power of being that cool.

[anghraine]

pro patria, 71-77

“These are no innocents, Advocate,” said Ihan. “They’re pirates, and a cutthroat bunch at that—bear that in mind.” Right, pirates. Thieves and murderers and gods knew what else; it still wasn’t the plan I’d have chosen, had another presented itself, but … well, they’d done worse themselves. I’d done worse, arguably, with all the bandits I’d killed—I regretted nothing, but risking murderers’ lives could be no worse than killing them myself, surely.

title: pro patria (71-77/?) stuff that happens: One minute, Althea's realizing that her life as an aristocrat does not represent a universal Ascalonian experience; the next, she's manufacturing pirate slang.

verse: Ascalonian grudgefic characters/relationships: Althea Fairchild, Ailoda Langmar, Agent Ihan; Captain Barnicus, First Mate Gaets, others; Althea & Ailoda, Althea & Ihan chapters: 1-7, 8-14, 15-21, 22-28, 29-35, 36-42, 43-49, 50-56, 57-63, 64-70

-

SEVENTY-ONE 1 According to our stories and records, all the Fairchilds alive today were descendants of Lady Irene Fairchild. Irene, a cousin of Duke Barradin and member of the first Vanguard, claimed that she’d left Ascalon on a mission before the Searing, and returned afterwards upon being summoned by Prince Rurik himself. She’d defied King Adelbern to help Rurik lead desperate survivors of the Searing to Kryta, and taken over the expedition upon Rurik’s death. She and some companions joined Kryta’s White Mantle government, only to turn on it when they discovered its corruption, at which point they became allies of the Shining Blade instead, and aided Queen Salma's ascension to the throne. Irene even left notes of something to do with a lich and Rurik, though she was vague on the details. The family story went that she became an agent of the Ebon Vanguard, first under Captain Langmar and then Gwen Thackeray, and helped establish Ebonhawke. It sounded like the stories were true—all of them. 2 It made for a pleasant diversion, but after that, I seemed to encounter something disturbing about my people everywhere I went. One man near the gates complained about his offspring creating a guild to attack Ascalonian children. The woman he was speaking to shrugged and replied, “Someone’s got to teach them a lesson.” And people wondered why we stuck to Rurikton and Salma. In the upper city, I overheard a man asking another man and a woman why we didn’t have more Ascalonian ministers, something I’d certainly wondered about enough times. The other man said grimly, “The usual. No land, no vote.” 3 That was what my mother thought; she only knew three or four other ones. Of course, nothing prevented people from voting for someone who just happened to be Ascalonian—but they almost never did. In the meanwhile, I heard various gossip about Queen Jennah, ranging from whispers about Caudecus taking over—over my dead body—to anxious curiosity about when she would marry, to staunch declarations of support. Something must have happened; Logan, evidently, had gotten in a fight with some of Caudecus’s people, though I wasn’t exactly sure when or why it had happened. I could think of any number of reasons, really. Exhaustion crept up on me, perhaps from the exceptionally long morning I’d had, but more than that, too. I had never wished for another heritage, another life, but sometimes I wished I could just get away from everything that came with it. 4 I didn’t want to be poor, of course. But I’d like to pass through my city without hearing about the war or the Charr, or any of the things that Krytans thought were wrong with us. Not bothering to hide my scowl, I made my way back towards Seraph Headquarters and the palace, where the city was particularly beautiful and the people particularly inoffensive. I walked around under the dangling moons and stars of the mossy courtyard until my mood and my headache improved—and even then, I couldn’t help but think of how few Ascalonians could simply show up for a stroll in the royal courtyard when the world became overwhelming. And here I was, the Lady Althea, daughter of a Langmar minister and a Fairchild heir, hero of Shaemoor, Advocate of the Crown, doing absolutely nothing for my people. Helping others in general, sure—but not Ascalonians, who needed it more than anyone else. Someday I would. 5 I promised myself that. Zhaitan or no Zhaitan, I would go to Ebonhawke, where my people had lived and fought for so long, where my own family had, where I’d come into the world. I would offer my services to the Vanguard, in whichever way they saw fit, whether sword and sceptre or political strings pulled or whatever else. I would earn a right to the Ascalonian banners that hung throughout every manor I’d lived in. I’d earn the right to say I am an Ascalonian. I would go home, at last. To Ascalon. 6 I returned to the Salma manor to rest, glad to see the familiar lines and curves of the place I’d known for so many years—a place where I knew myself to be safe from all the rest of the world. Another advantage that most Ascalonians wouldn’t share with me. I’d never thought of that before. This time, I did manage to sleep, my intended nap turning into the hours until dinner. Despite all the irregularities of my schedule, I scrambled to appear on time. My mother, entering the dining room from the opposite side, looked startled. “Althea?” 7 “You’re here!” she said happily. “I can’t stay long,” I replied, seating myself at her right hand, “but I did want to see you.” She smiled. “I would have come home earlier, had I known you were here—what have you been up to?” I weighed what I could tell her, and what I wanted to tell her. “Oh, I had a meeting with Logan and some other people,” I said, “and ran a few errands, and then”—I swallowed—“then I took a long walk about the city.” She gazed steadily at me, and said, “Was any word of that true?”

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

1) she was vague on the details: the GW1 PC doesn’t cover themself with glory in their dealings with the lich; they’re constantly fooled through the first half of the game.

2) The family story went that she became an agent of the Ebon Vanguard: in the GW1 expansion Guild Wars: Eye of the North, the PC has the option to become an agent of the Ebon Vanguard, gaining ascending '[x] Agent' titles. The game isn't clear about what happens after that, but I imagine them (or at least Irene) sticking with the Vanguard.

3) a guild to attack Ascalonian children: an actual ambient conversation.  

---------------------------------------------------------------- SEVENTY-TWO 1 “Every word was true,” I assured her. “Vague, I grant you—but true, and no vaguer than they have to be.” She nodded, accepting this, or appearing to. “Can you tell me where you’re headed now?” Only then did I feel the weight of my next destination, a place I’d so often read of, heard of, seen on maps. I took a deep breath. “Lion’s Arch.” 2 “Lion’s Arch!” my mother exclaimed. “What in the names of the Six are—oh, you probably can’t tell me.” “I’m afraid not,” I replied. I didn’t quite regret it; I could only imagine how worried she’d be if she knew I was fighting dragon minions and chasing a deranged Seraph in the company of a spy. “Be careful,” said Mother, already looking worried. “The city’s not what it used to be. It’s full of unsavoury types who think they’re too good for the queen, and it’s crawling with Charr.” 3 Charr! I hadn’t thought of that. I should have. I’d heard that Lion’s Arch paid no respects to the lines between human and Charr, sylvari and Asura, any of them and Norn—paid no respects to anything at all, except money. To me, nothing but perhaps the architecture sounded appealing. Nevertheless, to Lion’s Arch I was to go, if only on my way to somewhere else. And I couldn’t deny a certain curiosity about the place. 4 “I’ll take care,” I promised. “You don’t need to worry—I can look after myself, I promise.” “Sometimes,” said my mother, “that’s what I’m afraid of.” I laughed. “Well, I won’t pick fights with anyone, either. Even the Charr.” But I’d given my word, so I added, “Not in Lion’s Arch.” 5 Mother sighed, but said, “I don’t suppose I can ask for more than that. You’ve grown up so much, Althea.” I picked up my fork, poking at our cook’s best attempts to make something of rationed food. Sometimes I didn’t feel very grown-up. More often, I wished I didn’t. But Tervelan’s plot had yanked me out of childhood forever, and Shaemoor and its consequences had done the rest of the work. “One minute I’m little Althea Fairchild,” I said lightly, “and the next I’m Advocate of the Crown.” 6 “You’re what?” I hadn’t meant it as a distraction, but I seized the opportunity when it presented itself. That was, I supposed, my way. “Queen Jennah appointed me this morning,” I told her. Only this morning? Holy Kormir, what a day. “It’s a sort of diplomatic thing.” 7 I half-expected her to press further, or at least express some disappointment or dismay at the secrecy, but instead, she lit up. “Oh, Althea.” She searched my face, then pressed my free hand, a trembling smile on her lips. “A government position? Darling, I’m so proud; I never dreamed that you’d follow me!” I couldn’t help but return her smile, even though I wouldn’t exactly call fighting undead following my mother’s path in the Ministry—but she’d started with battles against the Charr, hadn’t she? “It’s all very complicated,” I said. SEVENTY-THREE 1 Contrary to my own expectations, I slept as easily as a cat in the daytime. Unlike one, however, I woke at dawn—I had a substantial journey from Lion’s Arch to Lionbridge Expanse to complete this morning. According to a decidedly sketchy map in my collection, I’d go north out of Lion’s Arch into Gendarran Fields, head west out of Cornucopian Fields through Broadhollow Bluffs, and then run into the Expanse. The route would take me right past the Ascalon Settlement, the town that the first Ascalonian refugees in Kryta had established; with Ebonhawke and Rurikton, it was one of the main centers of Ascalonian culture. I’d always wanted to see it, but hadn’t dared the journey. Now, I couldn’t afford any detours—this time. But maybe I’d be able to go once this was all over. 2 I dressed quickly, gathered the supplies for the journey I’d packed last night, left a note for my mother, and headed out to the royal courtyard. I could go through Queensdale instead of Lion’s Arch, and felt strongly tempted to do so, but that would be pure self-indulgence; the Asura gate to Lion’s Arch gleamed right here in the courtyard. Once, I’d been composed of little but self-indulgence. Now, some things had to come first—and efficiency ranked high among them. Despite my best intentions, I hesitated at the gate. I wasn’t a healer, able to identify bone and organs at will, so I couldn’t say exactly what shivered in my chest as I stood before the gate. Did it matter? 3 Footsteps sounded behind me, and someone said, “Are you going through?” I turned, saw a man in merchant’s clothes, saw him step back. “My lady,” he added hastily. “Pardon,” I said, embarrassed at my own weakness. Determined to cast it aside, I summoned up all the resolve I possessed, and continued, “Yes, I’m going.” With that, I paid the Asura by the gate, and stepped through. 4 I only dimly remembered the last time I’d taken an Asura gate, when my family left Ebonhawke. One moment, I was crying as Aunt Elwin kissed me goodbye; the next, with a flash of purple light, I was staring around at Rurikton’s narrow walls and tall buildings. This gate seemed both like and unlike that memory, and like and unlike the waypoints I used so often. As my vision filled with purple, my body felt oddly compressed and heavy, while my heart raced and my stomach clenched down on nothing. But then everything cleared and my feet landed on solid ground, without any lurching disorientation. I took a few steady steps down a wooden ramp, and looked around with interest. So this was Lion’s Arch. 5 I stood on a sort of mossy circle, which centered on small levels rather like a fountain leading up to a flowery crystal. On one side of the circle, a stone ramp ran up to the main city, which from here looked like a very dramatic collection of shipwrecks; on the other side, a wooden bridge headed off into some trees. All around me, Asura gates cast light from their rocky pedestals just beyond the edges of the circle, each accessible by another ramp, and guarded by soldiers of various species. Including Charr. I steadied my nerves; they weren’t even looking at me, but talking in their low growls to a sylvari gesturing at the gate. Something, something Black Citadel. Sweet Lyssa, who would want to go there? 6 I’d heard little of it, of course, and had no interest in finding out more. But I knew that it was the Charr capital, deliberately built on the bones of slaughtered Ascalonians. This must be a gate to Ascalon. I eyed the Charr guards, unable to repress a curl of my lip. I’d never go this way. But they didn’t matter, I told myself; what they stood for mattered, but these were just two monsters among thousands, perhaps millions. I turned away. 7 My gate was likewise guarded, by two professional-looking Seraph who appeared remarkably sanguine about the Charr so near to them. I greeted them by rank, which seemed to gratify one of them, and then said, “I need to go to Gendarran Fields.” “We’re not tour guides,” said one of the Seraph, but the other hushed him. “You go all the way north, past Trader’s Forum,” she told me, and when I thanked them and headed off, she hissed at her companion, “Don’t you know who she is?” “Why should I care?” he said. “She’s Captain Thackeray’s right hand!” He scoffed, saying, “No, that’s Lieutenant … wait, you mean that was the hero of Shaemoor?” SEVENTY-FOUR 1 I nearly got lost about a half-dozen times on my way to the Trader’s Forum, as I navigated assorted buildings pieced together out of assorted ships—many of them looked very much the same, even with strings of glowing lights and the occasional waypoint lighting the way. And the crowds were like nothing I’d ever seen before, even in Divinity’s Reach on its busiest days. Everyone was shouting and shoving and jostling on the ways to the bank and the Black Lion market, which lay right in my path. Once, a Charr actually touched me as she pushed on by. My stomach turned and I jerked away. Eventually, however, I found myself in the much more sparsely populated stretch of crafting stations along the northern edge of the city, very little different from those in the Commons back home. I repressed the urge to stop and look at jewelry and clothes, and more relieved than not, strode through the portal. 2 I emerged into a landscape of green fields and hills, and took off running to the west. At first it looked nearly idyllic—an impression that lasted the three minutes that passed before I encountered giant spiders spitting poison. I killed them without very much difficulty, though I felt decidedly queasy, and raced onwards until I nearly collided into a green and purple sylvari. “Hello!” she said. “I am called Brigid. And you?” “Althea,” I said, certain that neither lady nor Fairchild would carry any meaning for her. 3 “It’s beautiful out here, isn’t it?” she continued happily. “So green and fertile.” I nodded, and she chattered on, talking about the apparently hard-working farmers of Applenook, along with the dangers of pirates. While I certainly disapproved of piracy as both a fellow citizen and a loyal subject to the queen, it came as quasi-welcome news in this case. Evidently, I’d arrived at the right place. “Thank you,” I said, and we parted ways, Brigid peering around herself as I took off for the west. Onwards. 4 Despite the occasional fight along the way, I made good time, and ran through grass and clumps of cheerful yellow flowers to arrive at Lionbridge Expanse early. Ihan was, of course, already at the bridge. Well, under it. At first, when I didn’t see him, I shrugged and clambered down the slope to the stream flowing beneath the bridge. A large skale attacked me, so I thought I’d pass the time in fighting it. “Advocate, over here,” whispered Ihan. I flung aether towards the skale and whirled about. 5 My long skirt whirled with me, and settled neatly back down again, rather to my relief; Faren would have approved, though I couldn’t imagine Ihan cared one way or the other. I could only make out a vague figure in any case. Then Ihan stepped forward, himself once more, and murmured, “Keep your voice low.” I hadn’t said anything, but I nodded. “The pirates are still spooked from Kellach’s attack,” he said. “They won’t be quick to trust newcomers.” I didn’t mean to be impatient, but— 6 “We need them to tell us what they know,” I said firmly. “How do we get them to talk?” Ihan gave one of his thin smiles. “Don’t worry, Advocate. The Order’s been thinking ahead—it’s what we do. The Order of Whispers is the oldest organization in Tyria; we’ve managed to survive this long because we always have a plan.” I’d hoped to hear that.

7

“I’m listening,” I told him. “What do you suggest we do?” “I’ve hidden special torches on the outskirts of the pirate camp—they’re enchanted with pure life force by a priest of Melandru,” he said. “The power of these torches will draw in the undead, but nobody else will notice the difference.” “Draw in the undead?” I hissed. “That’s dangerous!” That was what he’d been doing while I slept?

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1) jewelry and clothes: you can develop crafting abilities in the game, including as a jeweler and a tailor, though Althea would probably just buy things.

----------------------------------------------------------- SEVENTY-FIVE 1 “People could get hurt,” I added. “These are no innocents, Advocate,” said Ihan. “They’re pirates, and a cutthroat bunch at that—bear that in mind.” Right, pirates. Thieves and murderers and gods knew what else; it still wasn’t the plan I’d have chosen, had another presented itself, but … well, they’d done worse themselves. I’d done worse, arguably, with all the bandits I’d killed—I regretted nothing, but risking murderers’ lives could be no worse than killing them myself, surely. I nodded, not quite trusting myself with words. 2 “Disguise yourself,” said Ihan, “and attempt to join the crew. When the undead attack, prove yourself defending the camp. They’ll trust you after that.” Well, now it made sense. It was much easier to do something like this with a clear objective in mind, and clearer plan for achieving it. “I’ll maintain the torches,” Ihan continued, “and watch for undead. I’ll be nearby in case the situation escalates out of control.” 3 That sounded promising. Ihan set a pack down on the bank of the stream, opened it up, and started rummaging inside. He emerged with some things that someone more generous than me might have called clothes. There were leather trousers, which I could have expected. There was a feathered hat—all right. There were assorted belts and straps and scarves, and unexpectedly, a half-corset, something I’d never imagined pirates wearing. There was not a shirt. 4 “Here, put on this disguise,” he told me, his mouth quirking as he glanced from the fashionably slashed caps of my sleeves to my long skirt. “No one’s going to believe you’re a pirate in your current get-up.” “Uh,” I said. “What am I supposed to wear here?” I gestured vaguely at my chest. Ihan, thankfully, didn’t look. “This.” 5 He tossed the half-corset at me. “Fine,” I said, “but what am I wearing over it?” “Nothing,” said Ihan, a trace of impatience touching his even voice as he handed over the rest of the quasi-clothes. “You’re a pirate, Advocate. If you’re going to continue in the Order of Whispers, you have to learn to set Lady Althea aside, and become whatever is needed.” I had never said anything about continuing in the Order of Whispers! I preferred them to the others—maybe—but— 6 “Now you’re Yardarm, Rock Dog of the Eastern Sea,” he added. “Right,” I said faintly. “Now, hurry up.” “Well, turn around,” I said, though with that corset, it hardly made any difference; he’d see everything anyway. Everyone would. I shuddered, but remembered the undead, and once he turned his head aside, swiftly disentangled myself from my coat and skirt and did my best to figure out the pirate gear. With deep reluctance, I said, “Done.” 7 Ihan turned back to me and glanced at the outfit; to my relief, it was only a glance before his eyes returned to my face. “Good. Are you ready?” “Is there anything else I need to know about being a pirate?” This horrible outfit couldn’t be enough. “Work on your swagger, your swearing, and your slang,” he said, and smiled again, more warmly. “You’ll be fine.”

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1) At this point in the story, Althea’s standard outfit is this; the pirate costume is this.

--------------------------------------------------------------- SEVENTY-SIX 1 Swagger I could handle. As for swearing and slang, I didn’t know what about me gave the impression that I might be conversant in either. I didn’t even know people who were; Logan didn’t bother, Faren found them inelegant, Deborah … well, all right, she swore like a sailor when she got angry. I strained to remember some of her more vivid insults. “All right,” I told him. “Thanks, Ihan. Here I go.” 2 Despite all my apprehensions and discomfort, the plan went off like a dream. I made my way to the camp, ignored the low, drunken singing of a small group of pirates, and was promptly directed to the captain by a surly underling. The first mate stopped me on the way there. “Get out of here before I use your parts for chum, you swine-hugging lowlife,” she snarled. I eyed her coolly. “Big talk from someone who smells like an unwashed dolyak.” “That's the best you got?” 3 She gave a hoarse laugh, adding, “Your wits are 'bout as quick as a pregnant cow.” My wits were just fine, and I didn’t care one way or another what some pirate thought of them. My first inclination was to shrug and continue on my way, but I remembered Ihan’s advice, and tried to imagine what Deborah would say. “Hey, don't go bringing your mother into this,” I said, and smiled cheerfully, making sure it showed my teeth. “Someone might get hurt. You, in fact.” 4 She didn’t look intimidated, but her eyes narrowed, which I counted as a success of sorts. “What’s that?” she growled. “I'd murder you right now if I didn't mind getting the blood of a Charr-loving rat-catcher on my blade.” A Charr-loving— Me? Me? My vision tightened, narrowing in on where she stood before me, a sneer on her face, and—I didn’t normally condone them, but I had half a mind to to challenge her to a duel on the spot. 5 In other circumstances. Not now, when I needed information, when undead were loose in Kryta. I forced my fury to a reasonable simmer, steadied my hands and breaths. “Oh, please,” I told her. “You even think about murdering me, you better stop yourself and apologize, skritt-licker.” To my astonishment, she chuckled. “Good one!” 6 “I like you,” she added, grinning down at me. “You can live for now.” “Thanks,” I said, “but I don't need any favors from you, flotsam-face.” I tipped my hat; it seemed a pirate-ish thing to do. “See you around.” I very much hoped I wouldn’t. For her sake. 7 She marched ahead of me as I walked towards the captain, my heart thudding, and Ihan’s torches shining clear and bright around the camp. “Splendid view, isn’t it?” the captain told her. “Only thing missing is our bloody ship! We never should have let that Seraph dog board the Ravenous again.” My nerves all seemed to spring to life at the same time, but I tried not to look too obviously interested. She saluted and said, “Ravenous died a noble death, Cap’n: on fire and full of holes.” Apparently that was their idea of nobility. SEVENTY-SEVEN 1 The first mate sniffed. “She went down fighting, like the grand dame she was.” “Aye, that she did, that she did,” Captain Barnicus said gravely. He glanced my way, and his eyes narrowed. “Here, who’s this new lubber come to stare at us?” I saluted him, aiming for a mix of deference and assurance—like a rough-around-the-edges Logan, maybe, though I could just imagine his face at the comparison. Especially considering the corset. 2 “Reporting for duty, captain,” I said, dropping my voice. “They call me Yardarm, Rock Dog of the Eastern Sea. I hear you’re looking for a new crew?” The captain’s scowl deepened. “You heard wrong. We’re looking for brothers and sisters of fortune. Sailors that’ll stand by us when the blood starts flowin’.” 3 “Now sling your hook before I—” A sylvari pirate (not two words I would have ever expected to use together) swivelled about towards us. He shouted, “Captain! The undead are back! We’re under attack!” The menace on Barnicus’s face turned into surprised fury, his hand already brandishing his sword. “Damn them!” 4 He pointed at me with his other hand. “You there, Yardarm! If you want to earn a berth on my ship, draw your weapon and risk your neck with the rest of us!” Ihan’s plan, such as it was, had gone off perfectly. I seized my own sword and leapt into the battle, dodging the rotting limbs, decaying weapons, and inexorable tread of the Risen. The aether lashing through my sceptre and my illusions destroyed undead as well as anything else. Not easily, though: they just kept coming and coming, and I spent as much time protecting and bracing up pirates as I did fighting—victory wouldn’t go very far if Barnicus lost his crew with it. 5 After three waves of attacks, this group of undead lay, well, dead. We burned the corpses and scattered the bones; you couldn’t really be too careful. Then, astonishingly, the pirates returned to drinking, singing, working, and/or mourning the ship, as if nothing had happened. I’d worried about them figuring out the cause of the attack, but they didn’t even try to guess. Barnicus gave me a slightly painful clap on the arm. “You did well, Yardarm, but if you’re lookin’ to join my crew, fightin’ ain’t enough. You need sharp wit, too.” 6 “My wit?” I said, not prepared for this, but not willing to abandon the plan. “What does that have to do with anything?” He shook his head, hand still on my bare arm. I refused to flinch, though every particle of my body urged me to cringe away. “Listen ’ere, matey. My crew has to settle scores with words, or we’d kill each other off! Speak with Gaets, she’ll set you to rights.” 7 It sounded positively deranged to me, but I agreed; I hardly had another choice—and it gave me some distance, at any rate. When Gaets turned out to be the first mate I’d exchanged words with before, however, I nearly balked. If she called me a Charr-lover again, I’d … well, in all honesty, I’d probably just endure it again, but I wouldn’t forget. Luckily, Gaets seemed to pride herself on a certain level of originality; each insult she threw at me was unique—lily-livered bilge-rat, lice-infested hammock hanger, and the like. Even more luckily, I had enough inventiveness (and enough memories) to return each insult in kind. She took a deep, satisfied breath. “That was amazing.”

[ascalonianlightbringer]

Oh, interesting! While I generally tend to be agnostic about material from outside main canons for their canons (films, games, books, etc), I really like that concept and I wish more of it had made it into the game! Anise says he has a tragic past in the noble storyline, but not much more, and it's easy to assume that's just about Destiny's Edge.

And he has such a straightforward and squeaky-clean royal champion persona in a lot of ways, despite his annoyance with it, that it's a surprising backstory. Even his screw-up with DE is such a courtly romance way to screw up, and probably saved a good chunk of Ascalon in the long run. But it also makes him really compelling if part of his rashness and frustration with the trappings of his life come from trying so hard to live the life of someone else, someone he loved and disappointed, and then that life entails a lot of political bullshit and suppressing his basic personality until the proto-Commander comes along.

(Also, it makes that basic temperament more like that of his extremely hardcore ancestress Gwen than I thought, which makes me happy since she's my favorite GW character!)

And yeah, his bond with Rytlock makes a lot of sense with that, too.

In the street storyline, as well, the implication that the PC used to be part of the bandit gang before turning hero to make the world a better place fits incredibly well with that backstory and could explain why the street PC seems to have the strongest rapport with him. The noble and commoner PCs admire him, but it's filtered through the glamour of his prestige and heroics; IMO it's awhile before they seem friends as well as respectful protégées.

And then there's the potential combination with the "Missing Sister" backstory, which I took, where the PC's older sister was a Seraph who was assumed dead after a brutal ambush and whose body has never been recovered. I figured that the street PC would have been on pretty difficult terms with a Seraph sister while caught up in banditry, until that sister seems to have died—in my PC's case, I imagined that's why my Gwen left the bandit crowd and tried to lead a life more like her sister's heroic one. So it makes a ton of sense that Logan and this PC would find each other relatable.

curuniel replied to this post:

Fun fact Logan used to be a mercenary, of a somewhat rough kind. Much less of a fancy boy before he got his current job. So I'm not surprised that extrajudicial murder wasn't fully off the cards.

Huh! On the one hand, I wouldn't have ever imagined that background from the personal story. On the other, he does often seem frustrated by the constraints of Krytan society and his position, so it makes a certain kind of sense.

Like, in the noble storyline, the bandit situation does get resolved through formal channels and traditions, but Logan is super gung-ho about backing up the PC in trial by combat, and he does mutter about taking things into his own hands if they don't work out this way. And in the commoner story, he's the one who rushes into a fight with a ton of Ministry guards while Anise urges caution. So "no, you can't just try and murder him, we've got to lure him out so we can actually kill him" isn't necessarily out of character for him even given the other storylines. And it also makes sense that he'd bother less with the fancy captain persona when the hero who rescued him is an ex-bandit from the streets.

[ascalonianlightbringer]

#also learning more about how much charr culture has and hasn’t changed is good context for everything going down in icebrood saga (via @venndaai)

Oh, I'm glad you enjoyed it! It sat in my drafts for a month because I kept trying to cut it down and then would be like "but I can't leave that out, it's important!" about everything. It is indeed a very hardcore backstory :D

And I'm glad the context is useful for the part of GW2 you're in, too!

Here's the GW1/Gwen Thackeray rambling post I promised @venndaai a ... while ago. It is extremely rambling, and also, I feel like I should probably warn for something. GW1 keeps the true brutality of the Charr invasion offscreen, but it doesn't really conceal what's happening.

Um—okay, CW for, hm, military conquest, mentions of large-scale killing and enslavement, including sometimes specific references to the means of death. Also spoilers for a lot of GW1.

As I've mentioned before, Gwen is my favorite character in the entire series, despite the GW1 writing being more uneven than GW2's (I think GW1's writing tends to be conceptually/structurally "better" but the execution on the sentence level is very unreliable). I can't remember everything I've said about it before, so here are ALL of my Gwen/Ascalon Blorbo Emotions.

GW1, especially the original game (re-titled Prophecies), tends to be very railroad-y in story terms, even by comparison to GW2. As a Prophecies character, you're an Ascalonian living in your home before the Searing, and a new member of the elite Ascalon Vanguard led by King Adelbern's son and heir, Prince Rurik.

As the game starts, you're finishing up your training in Ascalon City. You receive the command to go just outside the city to meet the trainer for your profession (usually mesmer in my case). The moment that you walk out the front gates, you see a shrine on your left, attended by a female monk, and a dark-haired little girl skipping around. Both the monk and the girl have quests for you.

The girl, of course, is the young Gwen (she had no other name back then). We're not told her age at the time, though if I recall correctly, the lore says she's ten. In my opinion, she looks and acts considerably younger.

In any case, she has lost her flute just across a nearby river. She's too afraid of the local skale to fetch it herself, and asks you to do it for her. However, when you kill the skale and go across the river, you discover the flute is broken, much to her dismay.

You do your various early adventures, and when you go back to the city to sell to the merchant, you have the option to buy things like a flute, a fairly expensive red cape, and the like. These are things you can give to Gwen. If you buy her the flute, she always has it afterwards (well, until the Searing...), and if you talk to her again after buying her a new flute, she'll follow you around and periodically heal you by playing the instrument.

You can also give her red iris flowers, to her delight. They're her favorite flower and spawn throughout the pre-Searing zones (if you talk to the right person, you'll discover that she uses them to make flower wreaths for a friendly dolyak). If you do this enough, she bonds with you, and will eventually give you something she considers valuable: a red shred of a tapestry (its purpose would not be revealed until the third expansion—it's part of a hall of achievements).

As she follows you around, she also chatters quite a lot about various things, including what little we know of her early history. Unlike a lot of NPC major characters, she has no ties to royalty or aristocracy or anything like that. She's the daughter of a random adventurer and of a village woman near Ashford Abbey. She sort of wants to be a warrior, but she really likes the mesmers' superior sense of fashion, and it's a struggle (#relatable; also, she does ultimately become a mesmer).

She mentions one specific mesmer, incidentally: Lady Althea, the daughter of Duke Barradin. Althea runs a theatre outside of the city, teaches students in illusion magic, and true to mesmer form, wears one of my favorite outfits in the game.

—but which tragically has yet to be ported to GW2. Anyway.

As the pre-Searing game progresses, we learn that after the last king died, the next person in the line of succession would have been Duke Barradin, Althea's father. He stepped aside for Adelbern, a war hero, and thus far, a competent and largely popular king who is loyally supported by Barradin, among others. The only opposition to his rule at this point comes from obnoxious snobs.

Anyway, Althea is engaged to Prince Rurik, Adelbern's son, and little Gwen wants to go to the royal wedding. She's never actually seen the prince and wonders if she ever will (she doesn't, in the event).

*deep breath* Then the Searing happens.

The Searing is devastating for both the land and the Ascalonians. The earth is turned into a cracked desolation marked with burning crystals. Rivers turn to sludge. Thousands of people are killed in the Searing alone and thousands more flee from the Charr invaders. Althea Barradin is taken captive and burned alive, down to ashes. Other people are captured and enslaved. Even GW2 says the Ascalonian aqueducts ran red with blood after the Searing.

As for the PC, you belatedly discover the details of this upon returning from a two-year Vanguard mission away from the heart of Ascalon. The full Charr invasion force is still being held back by what remains of Ascalon's armies, but Charr forces break through at points, and it's obvious the Ascalonians are now losing.

Meanwhile, the Ascalonian people are deeply traumatized. Enough of them went insane after the Searing that Ashford Abbey has been converted into a mental sanitarium. NPCs are trying to put together a census to figure out who is even alive at this point. In the battered but still standing Ascalon City, the random guards are like:

By and large, GW1 does not pull its punches.

As for Gwen, you have no idea what happened to her at this stage, though you find her flute—broken again—out in the desolation beyond Ascalon City. In fact, Prophecies never reveals what happened to her, and the two stand-alone expansions are in totally different locations with different, Charr-unrelated, plots (they're set in Cantha and Elona respectively, and for the full stories, you would make new Canthan and Elonian characters to play them).

Meanwhile, Prince Rurik (who adored his fiancée Althea) and the PC gradually realize the Ascalonians can't win this war. They need to accept the help offered by their traditional enemies in Kryta and take refuge there for the sake of their people. King Adelbern is ... not the same after the Searing and increasingly irrational. He refuses and disowns his son when Rurik argues with him.

Rurik is like ... fuck it, and he leads anyone who will go with him into the Shiverpeaks to get to Kryta, including the PC. Some friendly dwarves help out (there were lots of dwarves back then), while the malevolent Stone Summit (who I think oppressed the dredge??) try to kill the refugees and end up just murdering Rurik for no particular reason. This series of events is why the Ascalonian sector of Divinity's Reach is "Rurikton," though he himself never made it to Kryta.

BTW, Rurik's sword would be found and seized by Rytlock many generations later. This is what Logan is referring to in GW2 when he snaps at Rytlock, "Gut me? With what? That human-made sword you looted from Ascalon?" And 200+ years after the fact, Adelbern is still grief-stricken by how terribly wrong things went with Rurik. His mental state seems to have declined even faster after Rurik's death, which Rytlock mocks him over in the Ascalonian Catacombs dungeon. This is a tangent, but, well.

After Rurik's death, you lead the refugees the rest of the way to Kryta. There, the also-theocratic but ostensibly benevolent White Mantle leadership of the country has offered you a settlement for the Ascalonian refugees. (The settlement is continually besieged but still standing in GW2, though the Ascalonians there are treated fairly dismissively.) You help the settlement and White Mantle for awhile before discovering the latter are super evil. You end up switching allegiances, and helping to overthrow them and place the daughter of the former king of Kryta (who fled during the Charr's triple invasion of Kryta, Orr, and Ascalon) on the throne.

(This post doesn't get into the invasions of Kryta and Orr, which don't have even the tenuous justification of the invasion of Ascalon. But they also happened around the same time, and the Orrians were terrified of experiencing what the Ascalonians did.)

The plot continues but is mostly unrelated to this arc. So you deal with Canthan stuff in Factions and then Elona stuff in Nightfall. And then, some eight or nine years after the Searing, you end up traveling wayyyyy north into Norn lands (this is the first time we encounter Norn) and discover a sanctuary there, the Eye of the North, which is actually home to a bunch of Ascalonians.

I can't remember if it's a GW2 retcon or not, but the Norn were actually pretty pro-Charr as far as the invasion went, apparently because they thought it was super badass, so they let the Charr pass through their lands. But they also let Ascalonian strike teams have a base up north, presumably also because they found it badass (I don't actually remember the rationale for the Ascalonian base otherwise).

Anyway. These Ascalonians are the early Ebon Vanguard, who at the time, are an elite force answering to King Adelbern and operating deep behind Charr enemy lines. Their numbers have grown, however, through the rescue and recruitment of human former slaves, prisoners, and refugees of the Charr. This matters because you're greeted by one of them when you arrive—a Vanguard member named Gwen.

Yup, it's her, at last.

So we find out what happened to her. She has some quests, and becomes both a hero (an NPC companion with a lot of player control options) and actually playable in a sort of mini-episode where you try to finagle her escape from the Charr and find out what her life was like before then.

Real bad, it turns out.

Back in/after the Searing, her mother was killed, and tiny Gwen wandered desperately around the devastated landscape, looking for help. This is kindly illustrated!

Instead, the Charr found her and enslaved her, which was apparently their standard practice for children. According to Gwen's official story, she "toiled under the constant lash" of Charr masters for seven years. Many other human slaves around her either broke and/or were killed. Gwen herself was afraid of the Charr but also developed a seething hatred of them.

At seventeen, she tried to escape and was quickly recaptured and judged useless by the Charr, except as a final entertainment. See, they had this fun practice of setting up gladiatorial matches inside their camps "for the glory of the legions." They'd set unarmed human slaves against wild animals and get a kick out of the humans being disemboweled (this is 100% canon!). So here's 17-y-o Gwen right before her planned disembowelment:

However! Gwen was smart and tricky enough to outwit the beast supposed to kill her, and she managed to kill it (iirc) and escaped into the labyrinthine tunnels below. These turned out to be the Charr's grisly depository for the bodies of those killed in the death matches over the years. Gwen was hardened enough by then to make her way through the dead, determined to escape for good. On the way, she discovered a book of mesmer spells and was able to learn them as she continued on.

She knew she'd be killed in an even more painful way if she were ever captured again, and the only thing to do was to keep going. She emerged from the tunnels and fled her pursuers, striking out for the mountains. On the way, she was discovered again—this time, by members of the Ebon Vanguard operating in Charr territory. She escaped with them, joined the Vanguard, and served them loyally.

That's not the end, though. By the time the PC meets Gwen, she is still very psychologically damaged, and part of her ruthlessness and rage comes from lingering fear. In the course of the plot, you end up freeing some Charr dissenters—not dissenters from the conquest or the Searing (this is explicit), but from being subject to theocratic rule based on gods who have turned out to be false (this is why Charr in GW2 are so hung up on trusting weaponry and "not false gods"). One of these dissenters is Pyre Fierceshot, a Charr hero by GW2 (and also a playable companion-hero in GW1). Gwen is immediately and intensely hostile towards him, as might be expected, while he proves to actually be trustworthy.

He calls her "mouse" (as Charr call all humans) and vaguely trolls her, but is ultimately fairly understanding of why she's so angry and scared. He turns out to be kind of trying to help her overcome her terror, and when the PC asks if he blames her for her rage and fear, he responds, "No. She was a prisoner of the Charr." But in his view, her fear is still crippling her and he's trying to get her to overcome it (because she's not useful!).

Gwen and Pyre end up cooperating in order to accomplish assorted things, but mainly working to spark a Charr revolution against the shaman caste whom Gwen and Pyre both have reasons to want gone (as does the PC, especially if you're a Prophecies character—and therefore an Ascalonian survivor of the Searing). Gwen does ultimately end up processing (some of) her trauma and overcoming her fear, and faces Pyre again. He asks if she's come to apologize, and this is what she says:

I want you to know: I do not like you. I do not forgive you. But most of all, I do not fear you. I hate you. There’s a difference.

me: 😍

I was concerned that her arc would culminate in her being shown to be wholly unreasonable and forgiving the Charr dissenters even though they're deeply complicit in what she, the PC, and their people have suffered. But no! She never forgives the Charr (at least in life), and she is never anything but a relentless opponent of them who seeks revenge and gets a lot of it, because she kills so many Charr that they remember her with fear and hatred as Gwen the Goremonger.

What an icon <3

Sometimes people will be like, well, the conflict depends on your POV, the Charr did bad things, but so did Gwen to become the Goremonger #bothsides. And I'm just like, "how dare you besmirch the honor of my blorbo, Gwen did nothing wrong in her entire life, THANKS."

But then we get to my least favorite part of her arc, though she remains incredible overall. It's the obligatory het stuff that I was complaining about awhile ago.

I don't know when they decided she was going to be the ancestor of the human mentor in GW2—maybe it was planned the whole time for Eye of the North (third expansion), maybe not. They had a sort of proto-Living World thing with new releases after the core Eye of the North story while working on GW2, which were meant to culminate in the founding of Ebonhawke. The arc got cut short because of a push from higher-ups to get GW2 out (RIP, Ebonhawke arc that I would have been incredibly into).

Some of what we did get, though, involved Gwen's romance with Keiran Thackeray, another member of the Vanguard. He made "advances" that she coolly rebuffed, but this turned out to be more a product of her trauma and difficulty connecting with people or trusting them than anything else. When she thought he and his unit had died, she was deeply upset that she'd never get the chance to make things right blah blah blah. It's got shades of Han/Leia in ESB, which would normally be a compliment (my favorite movie!), but isn't from me (I dislike the Han/Leia dynamic in 80% of ESB, actually!).

Anyway, he's not actually dead, and she's super relieved, and they end up getting married, and I suspect this whole "she needs to get over being cold and hard and he's just the guy to do it" dynamic exists mostly for the sake of Logan's existence in GW2. There's also a subplot involving her dead mother being on Team Keiran that I won't go into, but it all just feels kind of forced "of course our strong female character needs a man" to me.

It might annoy me a bit less if Logan, the result and likely partial cause of Gwen getting slated for romance, were not as bland as the romance itself. But while I generally like him, he is very milquetoast. I used to call him the beige heartthrob and even so, only realized how bland he is when I played a sylvari, and discovered the mentors are not all like that.

On the bright side, the obligatory het romance does not prevent Gwen from a life of righteous bloody vengeance. If anything, her husband likely helped out, which makes him slightly less annoying. They served together in the north until Adelbern sent the Ebon Vanguard and a suspicious number of civilians south to establish/fortify/defend Ebonhawke. Gwen's superior had died earlier and Gwen was in charge by then, and to go by the account in GW2, she made for an inspiring and hardcore leader on the way to Ebonhawke and in its defense over the rest of her life. She's a beloved hero and icon to the Ascalonians of over 200 years later, and her grave is still imbued with the magical power of being that cool.