Seatox.4065

You can't assign absolute moralities to a culture, though. Morality is always relative to the culture or individual holding those morals. You, and the society you come from, might consider Pizza On Pineapple to be a grave sin, worthy of punishment by death. The people over the Cola-ocean consider Pineapple to be the most Sacred of Pizza Toppings, and those who oppose Pineappling Pizza to be hideous subhuman monsters, to be shunned and slain with no guilt. The moment you start going forcing your moral viewpoint onto a different culture, you open up a huge wormy can labeled "Moral Philosophy and Ethics", and then your problems REALLY start, because then you're into some seriously dense literature.

And there's vigil who aren't racist. And charr who are likewise not racist. There's one human who goes on about Almorra being "One of the good ones!" which is a classic racist dogwhistle, while the Asura they're talking to is audibly holding their tongue, there's a sylvari who admires Malice Swordshadow, there's an ash legion captain brutally chewing out her subordinate for his bigotry. In the end, they're all sapients. People. Nobody in Tyria has ALIGNMENT: LAWFUL GOOD or ALIGNMENT: CHAOTIC EVIL painted on their character sheet that they must adhere to or the DM will take away their paladin powers. It's a huge mess of people being themselves under stress like all well written sociopolitical thrillers should be.

This is just a very forced historical anachronism, the idea of "inherently evil culture" was just political propaganda used by empires to justify some conquest. Just remember that our "real world" itself was organized around warrior like tribal cultures in 99% of their existence. The way Charr organized their society is completely fine even if they made religious sacrifices, cannibalism or slavery. Also remember that Charr aesthetics and thematics is heavily inspired in Roman Empire, Roman Empire doesnt take things softly and their economy was based on slavery. All civilizations is almost build upon on rivers of blood and pyramids of skulls, the United States itself was at war at 93% of their existence time, this blog counted this on 2017. https://freakonometrics.hypotheses.org/50473 From the Orrian History Scrolls you can find sitting around Shelter Docks in Malchor's Leap -"Balthazar came in fire and wrath, carrying the head of his father and leading his fierce hounds, Temar and Tegon. He swept Orr with a cleansing flame.""It was he who claimed Tyria for humanity; he who said the other races would be easy to defeat. It would not be the only time that the Master of War was wrong." Balthazar, god of colonialist imperialism. I think Ares/Mars probably still has him beaten for mythological warcrimes, but yeah.

That's also a symptom of the humano-centric focus of GW1 - when every mighty hero you can play as is human, the perspective you get is colored. You're running around in post-searing Ascalon, only knowing that the Charr just blew your entire world to the Ream of Torment. You're running alongside Prince Rurik, scrounging for weapons to try and turn things around... you're discovering what happened to Althea, you're finding a broken flute. In Prophecies, the charr were pretty much "dumb violent primitive orcs with fur and a fire theme who came from the north in a forever war", and didn't get much writing beyond that (and anything orc-alike is always dangerous ground to write, there's lots of nasty old-school racism going on there) until the ghosts in the Realm of Torment of Nightfall and EoTN finally giving them a bit of a voice. But even back then, the GW1 lore book had lots of little details in the writing that spelled out how... human the humans of Tyria really are. "Soon, humans had everything we required, and it was then that we began to prey upon the other creatures. We hunted animals for sport, chased the druids from the jungle, and took up residence in the lands that did not belong to us. We became the masters of this world. We took all of the privilege and none of the responsibility." - page 27 of the Guild Wars Manuscripts. Honestly, it might be a bit retconned in places, but the Lore books that came with the various GW1 campaigns are all pretty good reads still. Also, Chief Engineer Timblin and the SCAR team would like to object to your badass-hero-charr erasure. Honestly, one of the better bits of writing in Heart of Thorns was the way both humans and charr, forced into a hellish jungle war rapidly put their differences aside in the name of mutual survival... and being paranoid as hell around those damn sylvari. Well, it's progress of a sort, right? Anyway, there's been little story beats all through GW2's storyline that says that, yeah, Charr Legion society is going to come to a head some time. It can't continue as it is, and it'll have to either tear itself apart, or change. Iron Legion Tribune Fume Brighteye currently exists only as a handful of dialog mentions, but from what little we know, she's ambitious, thinks the Ebonhawk Treaty makes the charr look weak, and is angling to take Smodur's place. Ash Legion's actual motivations are unknown (but if it ever came out that Imperator Swordshadow once ran with the Order of Whispers and still shares their philosophy of shepherding civilization, I would be utterly unsurprised by the revelation.), but from everything they've done, they, not Smodur, are the ones most committed to reforming Legion society. The Olmakhan are all the way off south, but notice how olmakhanish the broken, beaten down flame legion are starting to sound? The Pact (mostly the Commander, and Rytlock'n'logan) ganked their god in the heart of their greatest stronghold, and held up their faith once and for all as truly false, they've fractured off a lot of the worst fanatics (many into the Molten Alliance, and hence into the grave) and so now they're going to be casting around for something to fill in the empty spot. I just hope Anet can maintain the Charr Interesting Times with the setup they've got going, because they're also going to be juggling a lot of long neglected Norn storylines, too.

If we're playing games of "who's species committed the biggest atrocity", may I remind people about the Canthan Ministry of Purity, and What They Did To Their Own People Without Even Needing Doomsday Weapon Magic? In the broad stretch of Tyrian history, no major culture is free of some kind of atrocity done in their name. No, not even the non-nightmare Sylvari (Remember those peaceful Maguuma Centaurs that your sister introduced you to, Caithe?). Screaming "the charr are all evil! no it is the humans alone who are all evil!" misses the storytelling going on: It's all about breaking the various vicious cycles that keep bringing about these apocalypses. Human supremacy nonsense (Have you forgotten the infamous Minister Caudecus's various motivations already?) is as poisonous as charr supremacy nonsense, or skritt supremacy. One Shiny! One Skratch! One Skritt! yes yes?

Dredge and Charr society actually have a lot in common, both good (Strong social cohesion, advanced industry and technology) and bad (Xenophobia, the collective traumas that inspire it, and a bit of a problem with industrial pollution). If they went and nicked a bunch of ideas the Olmakhan have (democratic election of leaders instead of might-makes-right, better child-rearing, environmental respect), the progressive bits of the Four Legions could probably make a decent go at completely showing up the monarchist humans of Kryta when it comes to progressive governance (Given the awful stuff the Krytan Ministers got up to, that honestly wouldn't be hard).

If you've done everything right, your Warband is on permanent guard duty over the dread Lady Wisteria Whiskington to stop her from falling into the wrong hands. Silly Bangar, Aurene is the least of the living weapons the Commander has stashed away.

I think you were probably supposed to. That said, One Charr isn't inherently hostile or charr supremacist. The idea that the Charr legions should work together instead of at cross purposes isn't really that different from the Pact, until you consider how Bangar intends to utilize that unity. In some regards, then, Bangar is positioning himself as an anti-Commander, especially if it is Bangar that Jormag is addressing as "Champion" in the trailer. Perhaps the season will see him assembling an anti-Dragon's Watch as well? I'm unsure how I feel about that. The notion of one charr, one blood, one nation. As well as warband above self, Legion above warband, and Charr above Legion as well as Charr above all seems awfully similar to Volk in concept. Volk isn't strictly bad at a glance, but when you pump up nationalism to the degree where you believe in this singular Charr above all, this abstract concept of Charrdom that you must fight and die for, it gets really scary really fast. But a warband isn't a family, and a legion isn't a tribe. Going from Spartan to fascist isn't really much of a leap, so it's hard to lay it all on the shoulders of Bangar or even to treat it as a new development. If anything, it's the relative openness of the Iron and Ash Legions and Pact Charr that is the new development for their society.Yeah. Like Smodur says in the story - "He's old. So's his thinking. For someone who talks big about the future, he sure clings to the past.". The Charr in GW2 have been in a state of trying to recover from an existance bound up in a forever war - they've gone from a war of feudal unification (The Khan-ur dragging all the disparate warbands together, setting up legions, one per cub) with no peaceful break at all before being thrown into a hellish thousand-year forever-war (Humans colonizing Ascalon, the Khan-Ur getting assassinated, the Wall going up), and then the Searing, Orr, the Titans, two centuries of civil war (Flame vs Everyone Else) AND the human resistance and the ghosts, and then an Elder Dragon or three. Charr society is a huge, nasty militaristic mess - the Olmakhan really do have a good point, and if they weren't so nice they'd probably be pointing at us right now and chanting "WE TOLD YOU SO.". Even progressive, technocratic Smodur's got a bit of the old thinking rattling around in his skull given how he insisted on the return of the Claw of the Khan-ur before he'd negotiate the Ebonhawk Treaty - well, unless he's secretly decided to smash the Claw of the Khan-ur instead of claiming it so he can set up elections and form a Charr Republic.

I think you were probably supposed to. That said, One Charr isn't inherently hostile or charr supremacist. The idea that the Charr legions should work together instead of at cross purposes isn't really that different from the Pact, until you consider how Bangar intends to utilize that unity. In some regards, then, Bangar is positioning himself as an anti-Commander, especially if it is Bangar that Jormag is addressing as "Champion" in the trailer. Perhaps the season will see him assembling an anti-Dragon's Watch as well? I'm unsure how I feel about that. The notion of one charr, one blood, one nation. As well as warband above self, Legion above warband, and Charr above Legion as well as Charr above all seems awfully similar to Volk in concept. Volk isn't strictly bad at a glance, but when you pump up nationalism to the degree where you believe in this singular Charr above all, this abstract concept of Charrdom that you must fight and die for, it gets really scary really fast. Yeah, Bangar is fashing it up hard - Someone at Anet has definitely read a bit of Umberto Eco's stuff about Ur-fascism, Bangar's rhetoric hits so many of those check-boxes.