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anghraine · 2 years

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I'll put most of this under a cut because GW2 headcanons are irrelevant to most of my followers' fandom experience, but I've been thinking more about headcanons for my two main versions of the GW2 PC.

The storyline does not actually allow for two Pact Commanders to exist simultaneously, so in your character's story, all other people's characters are ... I guess, AU non-Commander versions of themselves you can cooperate with, and I figured the same could go for different PCs of your own. So there is a Xiulan in the Pact Commander Althea verse (pro patria), but an AU version where her backstory doesn't conflict with Althea's.

So stuff about pro patria!verse Xiulan:

Xiulan is tall and rather lean, with brown hair, brown skin, and nearly black eyes.

Although she's descended from both Canthan and Orrian immigrants, and she identifies equally with both peoples, she physically resembles the Canthan side much more and typically presents/describes herself as Canthan (especially when it's assumed she's Ascalonian).

Her last name, Azar, comes from her mother's Orrian family, but the Orrian diaspora is so small, and their culture so unknown to most Krytans, that few can recognize it.

Both sides of her family have managed to quietly scrape by in the Salma District of Divinity's Reach for generations, and Xiulan only knows Cantha and Orr through family accounts passed from her parents.

She's an only child.

Her mother, Judith Azar, came into a little extra money in her youth and promptly gave it to her bff Andrew to help keep his tavern afloat. He never forgot this, and he took Xiulan under his wing when her parents died in an accident when she was fourteen.

His sensible, spirited daughter Petra was Xiulan's best friend as they grew up, and all the more after Xiulan became effectively part of their household.

Xiulan's first kiss was with Petra, though more as a matter of curiosity than romantic feeling. She is 100% lesbian, but she and Petra were too much family at that point to feel altogether comfortable, and they laughed about it afterwards.

Strangers often have the impression that Xiulan is smaller than she really is, both in height and build, and even when they do correctly judge her size, they typically underestimate her strength.

Unusually for someone of her strength, she also has some magical ability with fire—as a child, she would breathe little flames when she got angry, and every weapon she touches becomes encased with flame.

Between these and her flair for strategy, those around her have often said she must be blessed by Balthazar, god of war and fire.

At fifteen, Andrew and Petra convinced an embarrassed Xiulan to ask the local priest of Balthazar if he could tell if it was true. After questioning her and observing her, he assured her that their suspicion was correct, which only deepened the already very devout Xiulan's devotion to the gods, and especially to Balthazar.

dun dun dun

Additionally, the priest offered to recommend her for free training in the military arts, as a way of honoring Balthazar. She eagerly agreed and proved sufficiently gifted to catch the eye of local members of the Vigil.

No members of the Vigil spoke to her yet, but they noted their observations about the local girl in their reports to their higher-ups, and Almorra Soulkeeper herself ordered them to keep a close eye on Xiulan.

Xiulan is privately very fond of "the finer things of life"—fine jewelry, clothes, armor, and weapons, though she doesn't have the resources to actually own much. However, she does own and wear a fine hair piece of Canthan design, which her father had managed to combine with two (very) small heirloom Orrian stones from Judith's family. (It isn't cursed, since her ancestors emigrated before the Cataclysm.)

Xiulan becomes acquainted with Logan Thackeray just after she would in the canonical timeline—that is, not through the battle at Shaemoor (in which Lady Althea Fairchild rushed to his rescue), but in the conflict with local bandits, the rescue of the Queen's Heart orphanage (she has a soft spot for orphans), and their maneuvers against the aristocratic Commander Serentine's plots.

Xiulan has seen Althea before, usually accompanying Faren in the tavern and trying to keep him from getting too drunk. She doesn't know her and has rarely had cause to say much in her presence, but she can recognize her even before Althea's heroics catapult her to local celebrity status.

Xiulan looks vaguely (very vaguely) familiar to Althea, but when their paths cross in a way that involves actual interaction, she can't pin down where she's seen her before.

They meet by chance in Ebonhawke, which Althea is visiting after her induction into the Order of Whispers, while Xiulan has just been successfully recruited into the Vigil and is there to help safeguard the peace talks with the Charr.

The Vigil members stationed at Ebonhawke tend to be disapproving or even bewildered about the Ascalonians' ongoing resentment of the Charr, especially non-human Vigil members. Xiulan, on the other hand, was raised with stories of Orr and the Charr invasion ultimately leading to her people's eternal undead servitude to Zhaitan. She doesn't make a point out of it and she understands their value as fighters and their contributions to The Cause, but she gets the Ascalonians' towering resentment over the 250-year attempt to obliterate them and pride in their own survival.

This becomes relevant when a Vigil member is cluelessly talking to a visibly frustrated Althea about how the people here just don't understand, they're so short-sighted, blahblah, and Xiulan's tolerance finally snaps and she quietly sticks up for Althea and the people of Ebonhawke. It's not flashy, but it's enough for her to be dismissively addressed as "Recruit Xiulan" by the other members.

Althea doesn't forget her name again.

#anghraine babbles #anghraine's headcanons #anghraine's gaming #ascalonian grudgeblog #but as far as xiulan is concerned...#orrian grudgeblog #xiulan azar #althea fairchild #althea x xiulan #fic talk #fic talk: pro patria #long post

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anghraine · 1 year

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In keeping with my Ascalonian rageblogging: a ranking of my major PCs by how troubled they are over the legacy of the Charr invasions.

1- Althea Fairchild and Gwen Velazquez: a tie for first! Both are from proudly Ascalonian families, if on opposite ends of the Divinity's Reach social hierarchy—Althea comes from Kryta's and Ebonhawke's nobility, Gwen from the streets of Divinity's Reach. But they both loathe the entire Charr culture and everything it stands for with their entire beings. (Think me x 10.) They can keep a lid on the nuclear rage, but they definitely feel it.

2- Xiulan Azar: her mother is a descendant of Orrians who immigrated to Kryta shortly before the Charr invasion, and while her specific forebears weren't killed, the horror of what happened—and is still happening—to the Orrian people weighs on her. She's deeply sympathetic to Ascalonians as well as to the tiny surviving Orrian community, who mostly keep their heritage to themselves.

3- Pax Vowkeeper is a Charr, and once had it all: respected parents, esteem from her warband, a triumphant record, even relative uniqueness as her revenant abilities manifested. But unlike many, she found it increasingly difficult to ignore the price of victory as she became more attuned to the ghosts. Eventually, she gave up everything, changed her name to Pax, joined the Durmand Priory, and tried to discover a way to regain her sense of honor while defending Tyria.

4- Isabel Batista is not as furious as Althea, Gwen, and Xiulan. But in her quiet, scholarly way, she does not like Charr culture or trust individual Charr unless she knows them personally. She does not think the Searing, the initial Charr invasion, the various war crimes, the overall conquest, and the war over 200+ years can be accurately treated as separate events. She's particularly troubled by the destruction of Ascalonian artifacts, and the most open to friendship with Pax when she turns over some of them.

5- Victoria Langmar is the adopted daughter of Althea's aunt, and fairly close to Althea. But Victoria's feelings about her adoption into the aristocracy are complex, and she's uncertain she can even be considered Ascalonian without knowing where her birth parents' families came from (Elona by way of Kryta, it turns out) or what happened to them (killed by the White Mantle). She certainly sides with the Langmar-Fairchilds and her/their people in general, and she has long regarded the Charr as a threat to humanity and her home, but it's complicated, and she does welcome the prospect of peace.

6- Alexandra Díaz is the most "Krytan" of my Ascalonian characters. She's spent all her life in Divinity's Reach, mostly in the Salma District without much contact with the Ascalonian community, and the main influences on her are other local commoners like her friend Petra. She and her sister are conscious of their background and proud of their people's grit and resolve, but they're much more preoccupied with the here and now, and strongly support the treaty with the Charr. It's time to move forwards.

7- Magister Siobhán of the Durmand Priory does intellectually understand the various causes of the human-Charr conflict, as a historian. But she's a young sylvari interested in adventure and seizing the moment, and what's needed in the moment is fighting dragons! All this hostility and tension over something that basically ended before Siobhán even came into the world, and specific episodes of which are almost unfathomably distant in time, seems a pointless distraction. Humans and Charr can gain so much more by working together. Hasn't the Priory shown that?

#anghraine babbles #anghraine's gaming #ascalonian grudgeblog #anghraine's headcanons #althea fairchild #gwen velazquez #xiulan azar #pax vowkeeper #isabel batista #victoria langmar #alexandra díaz #magister siobhán #long post

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