The weirdest thing

[Astri]

The weirdest thing keeps happening!

As a Kelari and proud Defiant, I am loyal to my faction. Yet lately, when I enlist for a battle against those ignorant Guardians, I find myself in their staging area, as if I am one of them. What vile magic is this? Surely it must be Regulos, trying to weaken the resolve of the Defiants! Or perhaps the madness of the Abyssals has made a comeback.

I desperately want to start slicing them to ribbons with my trusty daggers, but I realize I am badly outnumbered. Sometimes, though, the anger at the Guardians overtakes me, and I realize that as an Ascended, I'll be back anyway, so I unsheath my dagger and plunge it into the back of the nearest Guardian!

Only... it does not work.

I don't know how, but some vile magic prevents me. Then I notice that there are other Defiant around me, and they're not smashing the Guardians either.

The Guardian leader roars that it is time to fight, and the Guardians all rush in to engage my brethren. I still try to kill them, but I can't. The other Defiants run off with the Guardians, seemingly oblivious that their enemies are all around them.

The Guardian leader stops in his tracks, turns and looks at me and says, "Come on, mercenary, we're not paying you to stand there and watch us fight."

Now I am even more confused. I have not received any payment, and I truly do not know what he's talking about. He seems to be suggesting that I have contracted with the ignorami to fight on their behalf.

I would never do such a thing, except maybe as a ruse to gain their trust so that I may assassinate them. (It's what I do.)

Fighting my fellow Defiants is something I will never do for any price, and I am bound by vile magic preventing me from slaughtering the Guardians, so I do the next best thing... I go AWOL. It is not hard for me to "slip away" from the battle.

Strange, that was, but the really annoying part is when I report what has happened to the Defiant recruiter, and he looks upon me as if I did something wrong. "You are a disgrace, ascended! You deserted your team before the battle was finished." I try to explain to him that some weird thing happened, that I was actually being loyal to the Defiants by refusing to go along, but he didn't listen. "Disloyalty is not looked upon kindly by the Defiants!" he roars.

I roll my eyes at the irony, and I decide to lay low for a while until he forgets about the incident.

It gets worse. The Defiant I saw in the start of that battle now approaches the recruiter, who thanks him for his service and gives him combat pay! For fighting AGAINST the faction for which he was trying to recruit!

Madness. Again, my mind went to the Abyssals. I had thought Akylios was defeated, but what I don't know about cults and dragons could fill a library. Maybe he was back?

I went to go see Deeps, in case he had some insight. Unfortunately, all he wanted to talk about was his love of baby turtles, which I must admit ARE cute.

The really really bad part is that this KEEPS happening, over and over again.

I leave it to others to slay the dragons... important work for sure, since they are the direct existential threat to us, but fighting them is not what I do. I volunteer to fight the Guardians, since keeping them from thwarting our efforts to save Telara is as important as defeating the dragons. I've seen the future when Guardians have the only Ascended... it was not pretty, let me tell you. I got out of there mere moments before Regulos destroyed... everything.

So we have to stop the Guardians who inadvertently help the dragons by destroying the most potent weapons against them (our Magitech). We could devote a lot more attention to developing the tech to destroy the dragons and save Telara if the Guardians weren't trying to thwart us at every turn.

So why on Telara would I ever help the Guardians in their war effort against us???

[BMEgal]

Perhaps you should pay closer attention to your orders, soldier. New commands were recently issued related to this...I myself know not what the commanders plan with this ruse, but I will do my duty and follow the orders given to me by my superior officers in the Command Center.


OOC:
What you are seeing is the new Mercenary mechanic in PvP. There is a section in the latest patch notes that mention it.

The TLDR version:
* In order to reduce queue times to as near-zero as possible, players may be added the opposing faction's Warfront team as a "Mercenary".
* Queue for Warfronts as normal and you may be assigned as a Mercenary when the Warfront map loads. You'll receive a Mercenary buff and on-screen callout and will be placed as part of the opposite faction's team.

[Demise42]

Clearly the gods are on the side of the Guardians, as they have successfully swayed you to their cause even against your will. Where is your technology now, blasphemer?

[Astri]

So what you are saying is if there is foul magic afoot, the gods are surely behind it?

It seems to affect your people as well. I have seen Guardians fighting alongside Defiants on our team as well. I don't trust them.

I will talk to Sylver about this and see if he can engineer a fix for it. We've been able to match the best miracle of the Vigil, the creation of the Ascended, so surely this will be no sweat for us.

OOC to BMEgal: I know, just having a little fun with it

[Edgor]

Look past the trees and see the forest, Ascended. Ascended being the key word here as you do not die. Nor do your comrades in the battlefield. Nor, you may have noticed, do your enemies.

When you clash with your enemy, should you lose, you learn. Should you win, you teach. You are doing little more when victorious than teaching your enemy to be a better fighter for the next time. Would you not prefer to give that lesson to your comrades?

The lines that divide us seem to be drawn by a power beyond the dragons. There's little reason for us to fight each other when there are greater enemies, but we do so anyway. And, ironically, we make our enemies smarter and better because of it.

Perhaps these battles are little more than training for the fight that matters. The fight against the power beyond the dragons. I've never seen them, but I can feel them. There is too much order in the chaos after the Rifts came for it to be otherwise.

So clash with relish. Teach your comrades by showing them they can be beaten and beat them again and again until they teach you. Get all of Telara ready for the battle to come.

[Nam19771]

The weirdest thing keeps happening!

As a Kelari and proud Defiant, I am loyal to my faction.

As a kelari, you should look for a nice dwarf spouse and help start the Dwelari empire.