GW4 Summary

[Huntress]

Technically, there already is a GW4 summary thread of sorts (you can find it here) but I wanted to revisit Wolf’s GW2 summary system with colors and guild affiliations to better follow each individual storyline (man, we got a lot of those) and throw some pictures in there as well (because it’s what I do and you all know that; really, I was this close to giving this whole thing a mascot.



orrr maybe not.)

Color code goes as follows:

Knights – Mages – Pirates – Ninjas – Spacefleet – Mercs – Brassport

Miss Jensen and the Zombies (voted worst metal band name of the year)

Those People from the Next Kingdom Over

Neutral/Other/Hunty isn’t entirely sure who the heck this person sides with, do contact me o’something.

Background: Guild Wars 4 started with the Game of Skill, which was essentially a pretense for kicking off a zombie apocalypse anyway. Never trust a mysterious circus in town, there’s a trope and everything. Euripides (a god) and his hypercompetent secretary Miss Jensen (a valkyrie) roll into Dunburrow and entice people to participate in four stages of a Game of Skill, the goal of which is to bring back an item from each stage.

Thus we get to the first post in which

Miss Jensen sneaks into a mausoleum in which four legendary heroes who are so legendary that people never speak of them and thus you’ve never heard of them until now are entombed. She raises them as zombies of special class (because Our Zombies Are Different and frankly they’d be more accurately called vampires). The Zombie Generals are:
Hellas – think tall, dark and broody Alexander the Great
Sukhbataar – because we don’t have Genghis Khan in this world
Sergeant Brick – Winston Churchill crossed with your jolly uncle
Sir Alabaster – Winston Churchill crossed with your adorable grandpa.
Miss Jensen then raises a flock of standard zombies to pad the ranks and so as not to look like a doofus taking over the castle with just five to her army, and marches on Dunburrow castle. Welp.

Ninjas watch everything and trade relevant information.

Gelquie has a chat with Ellen en route from the castle to Mage Manor.

Celestial is bogged down by paperwork, avoids it by jumping out a window (always the best course of action in such circumstances, I’ve found) and flies to meet other mages coming back from the castle, smelling something suspicious along the way.



Kristy shows up at Mage Manor, knocks but gets no answer. Well, it should be around midnight by this point and do you really want to wake up people with turning-folks-into-frogs powers?

…Summarizing this one as “Tiger contemplates the ethical ramifications of riding her boss” would be entirely accurate, yet entirely wrong.

Ellen gets on Celestial’s back and gets the feeling that something is very wrong.

Gelquie tells Celestial that something was way off with the Game of Skill. They fly back towards the castle.

Miss Jensen splits her troops up, sending them each their merry way to raise more zombies.

Celestial confronts Hellas and Alabaster (and it’s not even the end of page 1. GW2 crawled up to its first confrontation by page 99 if memory serves. WHOO!)

Alabaster blows Celestial off as diplomatically as possible and the zombieraising continues. (So, call it half a confrontation then?)

Azalea writes a record of the Game of Skill until it gets dark and the timeline is nice and tidy again, then finds Kristy at the manor’s front door.

Kristy hears a loud bang in the direction of the castle and runs off to investigate.

Celestial ain’t having none of Alabaster’s crap and confronts them again with a vengeance. (Warms my heart, it does.)

Hellas tells Celestial to take any and all questions to the boss after filling out form 25Q in triplicate and getting a stamp from the HR, don’t look at him, he just works here.

Page 2

Azzie catches up with Kristy and offers to carry her.

Draco learns about zombies. Other ninjas spread the word to Mage Manor and Brassport. Dragus wakes up in the castle and goes to the throne room.

Kristy learns about zombies too.

Gelquie asks Celestial more about their plans. Always good to get details straight.

Zephyr leaves the Manor for a nighttime walk and finds a figure on the doorstep. In a lot of other stories, this would be the perfect start for a wacky adventure of his very own.

Celestial decides that she’s not having any of it and marches into the throne room, magic fire a-blazin’. All this needs is a guitar riff.

Krisseh is stumbling towards the castle, looking like she just had a really bad weekend.

Azzie follows Kristy.

Tiger follows Celestial, adding her contribution to the metal scene the archmage is creating.

The nameless ninja tells Zephyr about the zombies. Dragus hides in the throne room. Draco keeps running.

Alabaster tells Hellas that he knows his secret, but doesn’t proceed to blackmail him. Color me disappointed. Zombies keep spreading, Miss Jensen faces the mages and gives a pretty straightforward Villain Speech (I will take over, resistance is futile, my metaphorical muscle is bigger than your metaphorical muscle, you know the drill).


(She can't expectorate worth crap, though.)

Krisseh wobbles into the throne room. Musta been a very interesting weekend.

Hunty is bogged down with paperwork on the pirate ship and avoids it by stepping outside to cool her head. Jumping out the window might’ve been more prudent, the way things are going to zombies in a handbasket.

Gelquie asks Miss Jensen the classical “why are you doing this?” question.

Fraze is asleep in his quarters, gets woken up by the zombie message, tells the messenger to wake him up if it gets important and goes back to sleep. Priorities, gotta have them.

Page 3

Kristy gets to the castle and contemplates going in.

Azzie agrees and steps inside.

Dragus weighs his options. Draco heads for the zombies.

Krisseh transforms and attacks Miss Jensen. Good lord, a boss fight on the third page? That’ll never work out.

Zephyr feels slighted at his lack of wacky adventures of his very own. He heads to the library instead.

Celestial weighs their chances and decides that they’re essentially nil (where the heck are the knights and their enormous army for all this? If Dunburrow’s official defenses are in fact a ragtag bunch of misfits, it means that the country is in a power vacuum and we should probably be glad that the first chick who comes along and seizes power is at least willing to be reasonable about it.) In any case, the archmage defies the conqueror, wants to know why she wants Dunburrow in particular (my bets are on the power vacuum) and blocks Krisseh’s attack.

Tiger pitches in to break off Krisseh’s attack.

Ellen is thoroughly terrified and rushes to Krisseh with a healing potion.

Krisseh gets her foot torn off for her troubles. See, that’s why you grind for a coupla hundred hours before attempting the boss.

Zephyr goes to Mage Manor’s library and asks the librarian for information. Always a good plan.

Dragus comes over to the mages and suggests a retreat.

Ellen patches up Krisseh. Can we get her for our guild? All we have for a medic is a meepit who thinks that staple guns would be faster than needle and thread.

Kristy enters the scene and asks for exposition. I’m getting her confused with Krisseh already, this won’t end well.

Zylaa gets back to the ship and reports for duty.

Azzie enters the scene and also asks for exposition. Right now would be excellent timing for a song.


Summary of the summary: zombies are popping up all over the place and mages are hauling backside to get the defenses covered while the knights enjoy their collective all-expenses paid holiday with pina coladas. Things are, in any case, moving fast.

[Huntress]

Page 4

Miss Jensen specifies that she picked Dunburrow for its narrative potential or, more specifically, she’s just genre savvy. I still suspect that the deliciously empty throne had something to do with all this. (Also, where’s the King in all this, who exactly is the King these days anyway and how come nobody’s as much as namedropped him as someone who might possibly be a wee bit upset at all the usurpers?)

Alabaster and Hellas encounter Draco, ask what ho.

Draco says, gimme a good reason why you have all these shambling corpses out here and if it’s a good reason, I won’t fight you.

Hunty yearns for bed, but still asks Zylaa what the chances are that things will go wahoonie-shaped before the night is up. Round these parts, it seems to happen every few days anyway, and at this rate you’ll never sleep.

Tiger examines Krisseh, decides that things are even worse than they seem at first, and offers to carry her.

Amnei gets shaken out of bed by exposition, much like everyone else has been, drops down to Castle Kestrel in ten minutes – the Spacefleet has the most enviable commuter system on the entire planet – catches up on the rest of exposition and has it delivered to Fraze.

Zylaa gets an exposition reading of her own via weasels (it’s an emerging market and you can make a killer if you get into it at just the right time), confirms that the situation ain’t looking good and offers to sit this one out.

Hellas and Alabaster fraternize with the enemy. Miss Jensen catches Amneiger by the metaphorical sleeve and tells him to relay her POV to the Fleet. Diplomatically, she doesn’t waste any time.

Hunty decides that sitting a pending disaster out means sitting out perfectly good potential profits (plus, y’know, we wouldn’t get to be in the roleplay) so she calls up the blarf (resident kraken and pet dog), organizes a trip to the castle and catches some convenient in-story shuteye.

Krisseh admits to being possessed by the Underdeep and falls down the stairs. Does it still count as a curbstomp first boss battle if the boss herself didn’t actually pitch in?

Celestial gathers the mages, asks where Krisseh has been, explains to Kristy and Azzie what up, orders everyone through the portal to Mage Manor, throws some stage-ill-will at Amneiger and then asks him to get help from Spacefleet once they’re both out of Miss Jensen’s sight. I’d say the throne room is pretty pointedly a meeting/war-room now.



The librarian sends Zephyr to the castle library.

Zylaa brings her own batch of weasels, because every pirate is contractually obligated to have their own set of fuzzy animals. If you ever wondered what made the Keith Richards Pirate Code so thick, well, now you know. They get to the castle.

Dragus follows the mages out. Draco un-fraternizes with the enemy and poises for attack.

Tiger takes the portal to Mage Manor and lands in a dungeon cell with Krisseh because of the Underdeep possession. Pers’nally, I’d be wary about going to the bathroom at night in that manor, you never know what it might decide to do.

Krisseh tells Tiger to try and fetch the Librarian, who might be able to help.

Azzie finds herself quite liking Miss Jensen’s political platform (Equal Rights to All Undead! Your Dead Grandpa Could be the Next King!) but nonetheless hurries through the portal and ends up on the grounds outside the mansion.

Page 5

Zephyr decides not to question the librarian, goes to the portal, drops relevant information on Azzie on the go, goes to the castle and is immediately sidetracked by things of more interest than books going on in the throne room. He offers Celestial his backup. Really, why did Miss Jensen leave that portal intact?

Eli Clenman, a janitor from Brassport, is walking the fields when he hears a crash and goes to investigate.

Gelquie isn’t impressed by the political platform and doesn’t particularly like Celestial asking the Fleet for backup either. She decides to stick around and see where things go.

The pirates reach the castle, take the side door and find it with more zombie guards than usual. Hunty sets off to find someone to ask about said zombies (are you quite sure they’re vaccinated, that sort of thing) and ends up where the party’s at, aka in that throne room. Miss Jensen introduces her shtick again – at this rate she’d really benefit from pamphlets – and asks whether the pirates would like to join the undead party.



Ellen, being a non-mage, lands in the same cell as Tiger and Krisseh earlier. Fridge Horror of the day: what would the manor do if more people tried to pass the portal than that particular cell fits?

Tiger prepares to send a message with high-scale magic, asking if Ellen happens to have anything that’d help.

Zylaa bemoans the lack of pie. In retrospect, pie would’ve been a good idea and certain captains should listen to certain first mates more. She asks Miss Jensen what they’d gain from joining her (see? Pamphlets!)

Krisseh squeezes through the bars, finds her way to the library and asks the Librarian for help.

The zombies attack Draco. Miss Jensen offers the pirates money in exchange for keeping the Spacefleet out of her hair.

Ellen turns into a bird, gets through the bars as well, tries to pick the lock and gets zapped, and follows Krisseh instead.

Draco undergoes a personality shift, fights back and bails out with the help of smoke bombs as soon as he can manage. Dragus goes through the portal and ends up outside the manor. Evidently, the manor lets him in no problem, which I’m guessing it’s because of the de jure merge the Mages and Knights underwent at some point or other.

Kristy turns back from the portal, deciding to wait for Celestial instead.

Eli gets to the crater, finds a weird alien-looking machine, it opens up and lets out a couple Saiyan warriors who kill him on spot.
…Okay, no. He picks up the machine and heads back to town. But he honestly had a 50-50 chance of getting shot by aliens back there.

Amnei asks Miss Jensen more about her conquering plans. Health benefits, pension plans, the like. A zombie-centric kingdom should have a pretty impressive pension plan.

Miss Jensen details her platform. It involves eventually making the zombies redundant. Ooh, that’s lining yourself up for a revolution right there.

Page 6

Hunty, in the interests of democracy, asks Zylaa how she feels about joining up with the good cause of zombie rights.

Celestial doesn’t particularly like the idea of the pirates consorting with Miss Jensen (nevermind that these days we’re like 90% furry critters of various size), gives Amnei a magical walkie-talkie and asks the other mages for ideas. The Librarian asks Krisseh why he should help.

Zephyr volunteers the option of the castle library, which would help in some form or other. Presumably. Hopefully. Somehow.

Krisseh explains that Tiger got locked up in the cell. Honest mistake, officer, will never happen again.

Tiger asks if the manor would kindly let her out, seeing how she’s the only person in the cell with actual right to be in the manor. The manor drops a rock on her head. If I was a mage, I’d probably pitch a tent outside to live in.

Amnei asks Miss Jensen for more detail.

Zylaa says that zombies aside, Miss Jensen’s takeover is as good as any, and besides, money.

Gelquie voices her concerns about letting the suspicious high-tech foreign aliens get involved in their battle. Up in Spacefleet, an engineer named Alaric gets kicked out of bed to deal with the impending zombie invasion.

Miss Jensen does some more metaphorical muscle-flexing, at which point Hunty tells her that they’re in. The boss tells her to go take care of her horse, who is patiently waiting outside since the comics on page 1 and turns out to have wings (which is, in fact, a callback to a footnote in Guild Wars 3, but you’ll need to take my word for it because bloody thing was long and I can’t be bothered to find it).

Zylaa stares at the horse and asks if they should go back to the throne room afterwards or just conveniently keep out of the way. (The answer is always the latter.)

Uh… dialogue between a spaceship and its owner as they head towards the Fleet HQ.

Hellas and Alabaster do more generic zombie-raising as time passes, eventually getting to Mage Manor and requesting an audience. Sukhbataar and Brick cavort across rest of the countryside. Fraze takes the Spacefleet into a general alert-and-standby position and contacts Hunty (because again, priorities).

Bloody Mary points out that valkyrie horses are very, very, very, very expensive.

Krisseh transforms into Underdeep Krisseh and goes out of the manor to meet the zombies.

Tiger breaks out, gets lunch and goes out to join Krisseh in the stand against zombies.

ooh, this is a good cliffhangery point to leave things off. As it stands, all guilds but the Mercenaries have made their appearance and I really should’ve given the gold color to someone else to vary the visual rainbow a little. Also, someone should go check on the King, if he’s slept through all this, odds are good someone’s committed a carefully timed regicide and it’s up to the plucky detective to piece together whodunnit while trying to navigate the tricky new political waters with zombies.
(Can we have that as a roleplay? I’d read that roleplay.)

[Huntress]

I did not, in fact, get lazy and/or forget about this. S’just that I’m in a line of work that gets busiest in May and also doing fulltime studies which also gets busiest in May, and my attempts to summon the Great Old Ones to bargain the stretching of the laws of the universe to make a day last longer are as yet unsuccessful. I think I need to use a fresher egg.

Page 7
Draco gets to Mage Manor, thinks about attempting to get in but decides against it. Probably a smart move. Dragus wanders around the Manor a bit, finds his way outside and joins Tiger and Krisseh, Draco joins them in turn, and this is going to wreak holy hell on my color coding.

Celestial blows Gelquie’s concerns off, carts everyone involved (that’ll probably be just Gelquie and Zephyr then?) to the castle library, breaking in from outside, and they go through a whole buncha books. They also find one about the Underdeep.
The Librarian gets out of the manor to keep an eye on the invaders plus Krisseh.

Azzie wakes up in her hammock, realizes that an entire army of zombies has shown up in the meantime and sneaks into the manor as quietly as possible. Y’know, pretty much all mages seem to have some sort of trouble with the manor. Phenomenal cosmic powers, wildly unpredictable living space with the personality of a cranky old man?

Amnei writes up a report, expressing all sorts of dislike for the new political arrangement, and awaits further orders.

Bacon requests entry to Spacefleet, hears from the comm officer that there’s a commotion planetside and goes there instead to meet up with Amnei. Meanwhile, the comm officer will probably be swiftly executed for failure to perform his duties and sending random incoming craft to a politically volatile and delicate situation that may jeopardize the entire careful balance. He had a wife, three kids and a mistress who he’s been trying to break things off with but who’s been leeching money off of him in exchange for keeping her mouth shut, so after the execution, the widow will find that they’re suddenly bankrupt.
Welp.

Eli gets to Brassport and notices a ninja. He tries to flag the ninja down to ask questions about whatever’s currently going on. Joke’s on you, the kid in black climbing the roofs is a chimneysweep’s boy and the real ninja is the pleasant plump lady you nearly ran into when crossing the street.

// Excerpted information about Charles Brick and Sir Alabaster. //

Hunty places the pirate menagerie in the cushiest possible place one can be at in a war, aka the metaphorical supply cart. They get food, decide to make use of the castle library because no time like the present, and after a while find a book on black magic.

Ellen blacks out, comes to a while later and gets outside to join the others to stand against the zombie army. Y’know, in most other stories they’d all be grabbing shotguns and barricading yourselves in the same cell the manor locked them into while the zombies scrabble behind windows. These are some well-fed zombies.

Alabaster tells the mages that they come to take the manor over and just surrender peacefully, etc. Dude, just tell your army to go scrabbling at windows already.
Fraze ships Amnei to the Manor, sends Hunty a verbal facepalm, finds out about Bacon, sends a message to him about catching up with Amnei, and another to Mage Manor at the arriving envoy. Then presumably goes off to inflict bloody murd- uh, disciplinary action against the comm officer and whichever intern doesn’t get out of the way fast enough.

Amnei sneaks into Mage Manor from behind so that zombies won’t see him.

Krisseh throws a spell at the zombie army. Well, that should get them out of diplomacy and into brain-eatery soon enough.

Tiger bemoans their scattered status and lack of proper resources. Then Krisseh attacks and she figures she might as well pitch in, and charges.

Ellen tries to pacify the situation by offering tea. I’m sure Sir Alabaster would be all up for that, it’s the rest of ‘em that’s the problem.


Azzie arrives, asks why the zombies want the Manor in the first place and offers to find a compromise of some sort.

Page 8
The abovementioned comm officer has a chat with the senior comm officer who reprimands him for not detaining Bacon for questioning (but says nothing about sending him off to meddle in a delicate and volatile political situation after he just got back from the ends of the galaxy and has zero idea what’s going on. I’m betting this is why the previous Commander eventually went off the deep end.)
Bacon gets a message from Fraze, telling him to go planetside and investigate. Amnei contacts him moreorless immediately after that and tells him to follow. Oh good, means there’ll be someone who’s got intel. Bacon gets to the Manor, sends his ship off, arms himself to the teeth and meets up with Amnei.

Celestial hides in the castle library when the pirates come in, and her hopes of staying hidden go to hell in a handbasket when she gets a communicator message. Who commissioned those things, why did they not get a mute button/delayed messaging system installed, where did the corner-cut money get siphoned off to, what top secret Fleet projects got financed with the siphoned funds and why am I finding all these exciting little sub-plots that could have been?
The Librarian gets ready for action.

The pirates summon Death in the castle library.

Zephyr goes through the castle library and runs when the mages’ cover gets blown.

The zombies fight back, while Alabaster continues to be his pleasant diplomatic self. I’m betting this is easier now that he’s dead anyway.

Krisseh starts charging up a jelly spell.

Ellen is on the verge of a breakdown, seeing that everyone’s on the brink of disaster and she’s got a plan but can’t communicate it to the other mages without the zombies hearing. Well, this is essentially a parley and whatever the outcome, the parties would leave the site to their respective camps and start laying out plans there based on how the parley went, so unless a fight breaks out mid-negotiations – oh wait.

Celestial sends the other mages on their way while cursing the pirates for meddling with the forces of the universe (you know you love us) and makes her presence known to said meddlers with the forces of the universe.
The Librarian resolves to fight and tells the zombies to kindly bugger off or else.

Tiger attempts to stall for some more time by asking the zombies why they take Miss Jensen’s orders anyway. It’s probably her excellent post-mortem pension plan, who else pays attention to this corner of the market these days?

Amnei tells Bacon to stay alert.

Bacon agrees.

Death looks into the zombie situation (clearly it’s not something he comes across in the course of his everyday work and if not for the summons, probably would’ve read about it in the morning news), finds out that his scythe was used for the spell and gets, shall we say, a wee bit upset.
(the hell is this color code supposed to be? Eh, I’ll keep it in Other).

Hellas and his mage zombie group fights back while Alabaster continues the negotiations. Except the negotiations turned into a battle a while back, I’m not entirely sure when, and I was looking. In any case, now even he resolves to launch a full-blown attack and the mage zombies under his command start chipping away at the Manor’s defences.

Gelquie runs off with the other mages at Celestial’s command, but stops outside the door to listen in.

Dragus and Draco melt into shadows and start taking out undead mages while sticking to the shadows. Considering this technique, I’ll color-code them both as ninjas for the time being. So much of the green streak in this roleplay.

Page 9

Krisseh gets shot with a lightning bolt, which is a simple spell but nearly kills her but for the Underdeep, because she’s essentially made of water. Thaaat doesn’t bode well for all the squishy humans who don’t have an evil-magic lifeline.

Ellen is horrified at the sight of Krisseh getting shot with Zeus-vengeance. She downs a speed potion and bails back towards the Manor.

Celestial asks Death for exposition.
The Librarian reverts into his true Underdeep form and begins to chew its way through the zombie army. What would zombies, hypothetically, fear? Do they retain instinctive fears of what they feared in life or does it become something like “a hopelessly outnumbered plucky teenager with a shotgun”?

Amnei feels the attack to the Manor and asks Fraze for instructions.

Azzie just about loses it when the Librarian launches his attack, tries to keep her head and asks if everyone’s okay.

The zombies fight back.
Fraze gets an update on things and tells Amnei to stay out of things and gather intel.

Ellen can’t keep running with the Librarian’s darkness dome enveloping everything, she tries anyway and falls over a skeleton. She drops her bag and fumbles to gather everything in pitch black. Are we entirely sure that the Librarian is, in fact, on the Mages’ side? Throwing everything in darkness is about the best way to get everyone stabbing everyone else and emerging victorious to run your own sneaky agenda when both sides are dead.
…
*gently cradles her little subplots*



Jina wakes up as a prisoner on a boat after wacky Jack Sparrow antics I’m quite sorry we didn’t get to see. She escapes in a lifeboat and finds a weird machine in it, which she promptly drops overboard. The machine comes to life and moves off.

Krisseh is laying in the dark, helpless.

The ninja in Brassport can’t manage to shake Clemmens. So he opts to slam the door on him instead. Means the guy now knows where the ninja HQ is, but odds are frankly pretty good that he knew that anyway, watching ninjas flit in and out like swallows.
Ninja in question brings information about the zombie invasion to the Brassport Ninja HQ.

Amnei, not knowing what else to do, contacts Celestial to let her know that there’s fighting at Mage Manor and the last time we had a guild headquarter sit around leaderless, zombies set up camp in it and you can never get it out of the upholstery properly.

A kind-of-mostly ninja called Toshiro gets the news about zombies at the Ninja HQ.

Death gives exposition about the zombie spell that essentially sums up as: all tools of the Four Horsemen are anchored down with mundane items in other dimensions and if you gather those items, you can play blocks with the tools themselves, which is what Miss Jensen did under everyone’s noses.

Zylaa asks if the spell is permanent.

Zephyr gets to the Manor, sees Amnei and goes over to find out what he’s doing there and if there’s a plan of any sort.

So we have a nice little battle happening (that was fast, props to everyone involved) and the Pirates are actively working against their new boss to find a way to topple her. This is going to look either really bad or really good on our resume, depending on who gets to read it.