#who is Varza

[axe-trio-commanders]

Ok yeah I've got to infodump (and im. late because I wanted to draw enkkioh in her new outfit but have been too tired so;;; have old art and more recent screenshots for now)-

I don't really have a main at this point, I really do have 3 (as referenced in the blog title :3c They all did at least wield axes at some point) that sorta rotate in and out depending on who I'm thinking about the most at the time, for whatever reason?

But right now it's Enkkioh and I've talked about her probably the least anyways out of the three (Zori (charr soulbeast survivor's guilt incarnate baby) and Seremnis (smol uwu sylvari necromancer with simultaneous god complex and significant self-worth issues that i may or may not be sending on a multiverse adventure to see new york) being the other two)

Enkkioh is the third commander- Zori was the first, the actual 'Pact Commander', Seremnis was the second because Zori went AWOL during PoF (which is. its own post tbh)- and those two sorta co-commanded before a while, but a little after the Icebrood saga, Seremnis sorta officially got the title.

And immediately gave it to Enkkioh, because heck if she's dealing with that.

So, by EoD, Enkkioh is the official, by-title Commander- though Zori and Seremnis are still working closely with her pretty much up and until a few weeks pre-SotO, where Zori is just kinda... vibing, and Seremnis is off on Multiverse Adventures(tm).

But! As for Enkkioh's whole. Story, and whatnot, she had a relatively normal childhood in Rata Sum, decent parents, found a very lost charr cub who didn't have claws for some reason and decided that they were sisters now, learned everything through two years of Synergetics college with that charr before backlash over the cool new claws Enkkioh designed for her drove that charr out of the city (and then personal story based grievances and a rifleshot through a certain counselor's ear got Enkkioh banned from Rata Sum about a year-ish later).

And then, she joined the Vigil, got another dad, nearly lost him (but didn't- I decided he gets to live, actually. Zori and Seremnis get a grumpy war grandpa by proxy.) Most of her contributions there, beyond General Vigil Things, is she's the one who actually does the story dungeons to get Destiny's Edge back together (which. Man did that suddenly become extremely relevant very soon after she became commander, huh).

The next two expansions mostly consist of her aiding and learning from the pale reavers and sunspears, respectively, so she's sort of off the radar where the main story is concerned- the main two plot points there that lead to Seremnis and Zori actually knowing about her, let alone trusting her with the title (besides various Destiny's Edge members going 'oh, yeah, that one. I like that one.') are... well, this whole situation, and also the Icebrood Saga, where she gets a bit more directly involved by demanding Bangar's head on a pike.

(She also did a... fair bit of proving in EoD itself; both Seremnis and Zori were trying to take a backseat for the whole thing, but they aren't... very good at it- and Enkkioh isn't Aurene's champion, but... she was the one to finish the fight against Ankka while Seremnis was. Incapacitated (planning to write out some scenes about that later), and Zori was too busy taking care of her (read; panicking) to help; she was pretty directly involved in most things after that.) In general, though? Enkkioh is Synergetics smart, will learn from pretty much anyone who lets her (She's a warrior specc'd into first spellbreaker, then bladesworn), got into jewelery because she discovered putting certain magics into stones could make her punch harder- really most of her scientific knowledge goes into, essentially, 'punching harder'. She's not really fond of knowledge for knowledge's sake, and is less likely to give you a ten-page thesis on why you're incorrect than she is to punch you in the jaw (or the shoulder, if you're a friend) and call you an idiot. She also bites.

...And yet, somehow, out of the three, she's still by far the healthiest mentally- she already was when she got the position, and after learning more about... everything, with the other two commanders, it's something she's at least vaguely keeping an eye on in the interest of not being hypocritical- though she's ignoring her own tendancy towards violence. Some people need to be punched. Or bitten. She could use her words, yeah, she knows plenty, but they aren't listening and also this is funnier.

(She will use every opportunity possible to terrorize Phlunt with this information. Yes Phlunt, she is a Snaff prize winner and one of the most accomplished inventors in the Vigil, and yes, she just threw a pen at you and told you to eat her mist-forged socks. Suffer.)

Tell me about your Main!

I don't know if the folks who used to follow me when I first started playing back in like 2017 are still around, but long time real ones will remember Commander Day! I did it for about 2 years(?), and it was a day I invited people to reblog a post n infodump/share pictures of their gw2 main!

I'd like to do that again, so please tell me about your main!

I'll start:

Titania Oberonn! She just turned 6 ingame! :)

My mesmer Commander, Titania is actually the reincarnation of my Prophecies hero from gw1, Tiana! Froggish, blue, bisexual, iconic.

[mariacallous]

French president Emmanuel Macron has spent years dreaming aloud of a homegrown artificial intelligence giant. The AI disruption is coming, he told WIRED in 2018, and “I want to be part of it.” After that interview, he campaigned hard to turn France into a startup nation, home to the kind of companies that could rival American and Chinese behemoths. Then in April 2023 an answer to Macron’s ambition appeared in the form of bushy-eyebrowed entrepreneur Arthur Mensch and the launch of his company Mistral AI.

Mistral’s ChatGPT equivalent, Le Chat, was met with feverishly high expectations when it launched in February 2024, and it did not take long for comparisons to be made between Mensch and his San Francisco rival Sam Altman. Both CEOs are in their thirties. Both companies received backing from Microsoft. Like Altman, Mensch was able to command vast amounts of capital: Mistral’s $6 billion valuation fell far short of OpenAI’s $80 billion price tag, but still—this was validation. To Macron, Mistral was a sign of French genius, and the president started talking about the country as an AI champion in waiting.

This optimism was contagious. French generative AI companies have raked in $2.3 billion in funding over the past decade—more than all their European competitors, according to a June report by VC firm Accel. Amid the Paris startup scene, there was a sense that the country’s AI industry was unstoppable.

Yet when Macron called a shock snap election earlier this month, the AI industry quickly began to fear that the progress of the past seven years could be lost thanks to campaign pledges that could have a knock-on effect on their talent pipeline, and turbocharge taxes.

On Sunday, French voters will cast their ballots in the first-round voting, which polls suggest pits an anti-immigration far right against a coalition including an anti-capitalist hard left, as Macron’s centrist alliance struggles to regain ground in third place.

“With the two options that are leading in the polls, we could take a real step back, which is quite scary and quite disheartening,” says Roxanne Varza, director of the Parisian startup campus Station F, launched by the billionaire and Macron ally Xavier Niel. “We are trying to pretend it's not happening, but we're all talking about it, and the discussion is always, unfortunately, which is the lesser of two evils?”

Now French AI and its prominent homegrown companies and nonprofits such as Mistral, Kyutai, Hugging Face, and H are facing an uncertain future. The status quo that was such a boost to the industry is being rejected by wide swathes of voters who, according to the polls, are instead drawn to parties promising to reintroduce wealth taxes (both far right and left), tax “super-profits” (the left), and restrict immigration (the right). In response, a gloominess has fallen across the industry, and the country which once spoke of ambitions to become AI’s European capital is now busy discussing how to survive a real setback.

Varza considers Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally a real threat to the immigration that the industry needs to compete internationally. Among the 1,000 startups based at the vast Station F tech campus, there are 65 nationalities, many of whom came to Paris on Macron’s French Tech Visa program, which allows non-European startup founders, investors, and employees to move to France with their families. The government even has its own office within the Station F campus to smooth the application process for founders.

“Then on the other extreme, [the left-wing New Popular Front] have been so vocal about all the taxation measures they want to bring back that it looks like we're just going back to pre-Macron period,” Varza says. She points to France’s 2012 “les pigeons” (or “suckers”) movement, a campaign by angry internet entrepreneurs that opposed Socialist president François Hollande’s plan to dramatically raise taxes for founders.

Maya Noël, CEO of France Digitale, an industry group for startups, is worried not only about France’s ability to attract overseas talent, but also about how appealing the next government will be to foreign investors. In February, Google said it would open a new AI hub in Paris, where 300 researchers and engineers would be based. Three months later, Microsoft also announced a record $4 billion investment in its French AI infrastructure. Meta has had an AI research lab in Paris since 2015. Today France is attractive to foreign investors, she says. “And we need them.” Neither Google nor Meta replied to WIRED’s request for comment. Microsoft declined to comment.

The vote will not unseat Macron himself—the presidential election is not scheduled until 2027—but the election outcome could dramatically reshape the lower house of the French Parliament, the National Assembly, and install a prime minister from either the far-right or left-wing coalition. This would plunge the government into uncertainty, raising the risk of gridlock. In the past 60 years, there have been only three occasions when a president has been forced to govern with a prime minister from the opposition party, an arrangement known in France as “cohabitation.”

No AI startup has benefited more from the Macron era than Mistral, which counts Cédric O, former digital minister within Macron’s government, among its cofounders. Mistral has not commented publicly on the choice France faces at the polls. The closest the company has come to sharing its views is Cédric O’s decision to repost an X post by entrepreneur Gilles Babinet last week that said: “I hate the far-right but the left’s economic program is surreal.” When WIRED asked Mistral about the retweet, the company said O was not a spokesperson, and declined to comment.

Babinet, a member of the government’s artificial intelligence committee, says he has already heard colleagues considering leaving France. “A few of the coders I know from Senegal, from Morocco, are already planning their next move,” he says, claiming people have also approached him for help renewing their visas early in case this becomes more difficult under a far-right government.

While other industries have been quietly rushing to support the far-right as a preferable alternative to the left-wing alliance, according to reports, Babinet plays down the threat from the New Popular Front. “It's clear they come with very old-fashioned economical rules, and therefore they don't understand at all the new economy,” he says. But after speaking to New Popular Front members, he says the hard-left are a minority in the alliance. “Most of these people are Social Democrats, and therefore they know from experience that when François Hollande came into power, he tried to increase the taxes on the technology, and it failed miserably.”

Already there is a sense of damage control, as the industry tries to reassure outsiders everything will be fine. Babinet points to other moments of political chaos that industries survived. “At the end of the day, Brexit was not so much of a nightmare for the tech scene in the UK,” he says. The UK is still the preferred place to launch a generative AI startup, according to the Accel report.

Stanislas Polu, an OpenAI alumnus who launched French AI startup Dust last year, agrees the industry has enough momentum to survive any headwinds coming its way. “Some of the outcomes might be a bit gloomy,” he says, adding he expects personal finances to be hit. “It’s always a little bit more complicated to navigate a higher volatility environment. I guess we’re hoping that the more moderate people will govern that country. I think that’s all we can hope for.”

[ailelie]

I have to cut this snippet entirely because I've realized that I've got the dynamic wrong. Nora has time-traveled. In the future, she and Ambrose were no longer friends. Now she's back in the past. Ambrose still considers her his best friend, but Nora can't reconcile the Ambrose who turned his back on her and the one who hasn't done that yet (and may never do it if she manages to change the future). Anyway, sharing so that the words aren't lost entirely.

Nora enjoyed dancing with Ambrose. Unlike most men, he did not place his full hand against her. Instead he pressed the inside line of his index finger and thumb to her hip, his palm facing downward. The style was that of Varza, one of the two countries along Astelan’s southern border, but Ambrose never seemed to mind.

“Happy birthday,” Ambrose murmured once the music began. As with her father, Nora rested her hand on his upper arm unable to reach higher without straining.

Nora tilted her head back to meet his gaze. “Thank you.”

“Did your family set a minimum number of dances again this year?” he asked, a smile tucked into the corner of his cheek.

“No. I suppose they believe I’ve grown up since last year.”

“And have you?”

Nora smiled and darted her gaze away. “Perhaps.”

Ambrose chuckled. “What do you have planned this year?”

“Just music,” she said, looking back up at him. “I didn’t even arrange it.”

“But you took full advantage,” he said, spinning her. He tugged her back a bit too quickly and Nora stumbled toward him, her palm hitting his chest. Her cheeks burned. Thankfully the other dancers had joined so fewer should have noticed. “Careful,” Ambrose said.

She tore her gaze from the contrast of her pale skin against the deep blue of his suit. “You did that on purpose,” she said, her eyes narrowing. She moved her hand back to his arm.

[axe-trio-commanders]

oh oh oh yes good I get to tell this story again

So Zori is a ranger. She was also very over-emotional as a cub and got easily attached to any number of things (i say like that ever changed), including the ruins she grew up around, any other cub that would talk to her, and the local animals.

She's eventually basically adopted, pretty late (relatively) into cubhood, into a band of other charr that hadn't really been able to find a 'band- and they get along great, and Zori's so happy to not have to worry about this anymore, but they can't figure out a good warband name.

Zori, off the top of her head, comes up with the idea for the 'Sun' warband, and everyone loves it. Bright, distracting, powerful, hotter flames than even the flame legion (who they're going to beat up)! It's perfect!

.......and Zori simply never tells them that she got her warband named after the grouchy old mousing cat she'd been slowly befriending.

...As for my other charr... Olirus Quickshot was from the Quick warband- I don't think anything dramatic ever happened to the warband, Olirus just decided to go off to the vigil and the 'band agreed she got to keep the name, since they got along well. Quick shot specifically bc one of her (earlier) feats was being able to quickly and accurately fire with dual pistols.

...Now that she's lost a good amount of function in one arm and has resorted to long-range rifle fire as her main attack, she doesn't mention her surname much. Doesn't feel like she deserves it anymore.

Lovi and Varza, siblings of all time, have the surnames Leyspark and Snapspark, respectively. They aren't actually in the same warband- Varza's technically in the Spark warband in flame, even though he's rarely ever in contact with his own warband (by choice. he hates it there. vehemently. he does not like his warband.) And even though Lovi joined the iron legion briefly after leaving rata sum, she... didn't join a ley warband or a spark warband. She just... didn't actually know how legion surnames worked, and didn't respect them enough to try and learn- that, and one of her specializations is working with leyline magic and 'leylime', that funky holey rock you see around leylines in like. maguuma and such.

...Snapspark is also rather accurate for varza.

(...it does feel right, though. In memories long repressed, they both decided as small, small cubs that they'd run away and start their own warband, their own legion...)

Heres a fun question for legion Charr Oc havers! (Feel free to respond either in comments or Rbs!)

Why did your Charr choose the surname they have? What was the reason? Was it given to them by their warband instead?

Leo was part of the Echo Warband and was given the word "Watcher" due to always being seen observing the Ascalonian ghosts, and his tendency to patiently stratageize rather than rush ahead.