What do we know about Althea?

[Zola.6197]

Hello lore enthusiasts. I’ve been turning over an idea in my mind to write a short story about Althea in the form of “discovered” journal entries. If any knowledgeable folks are open to helping me research a little, I would appreciate it.

Who do we know Althea interacted with? Prince Rurik, Duke Barradin, Adelaide Barradin revealed during the Someone In Need collection — but who else? What were those relationships like, if known? Are there any named charr characters she’s known to have interacted with when she was captured/burned? Or any major charr who were stationed in the general region she was sacrificed within?

Do we have much on her personality? Her abilities/power level? 

Thought this thread could make for an interesting discussion while also getting me off my butt and finally drafting/writing.

Most of what I remember is very generic and the wiki doesn’t have a whole lot of specifics I can find on her, but I figure that’s because she was fairly minor in the grand scheme of things.

[Gorgaan Peaudesang.8324]

What we do know is that she didn't like receiving gifts from third parties :

"What's this? Does Rurik think I care one whit what gift he gives me? What matters is that a gift comes from the heart. That he choose it himself is all I ask. You can put an end to this nonsense at once. I'll have a talk with Osric and Rurik myself!"

And she ABHORRED Old Mac's bull.

Edited March 4, 2023 by Gorgaan Peaudesang.8324

[Zola.6197]

@Gorgaan Peaudesang.8324Yes, absolutely wanted to slip those details in there somewhere!

—

I’ve been reading the wiki on and off, and there’s not a lot of details. I may have to boot up GW1 and try to do a little more digging, but from what I can gather…

Althea was kidnapped sometime after the searing, presumably near the start of the post-searing campaign. She was taken from the ruins of Ascalon (?) city by the charr, though I can’t find any specific names/details so far.

However, we know she was taken to Flame Temple Corridor and burned as a sacrifice. Do we know how long she was held captive for? Hours? Days? Weeks? Did the charr know who she was? And was she sacrificed for a specific purpose (favor of the Titans, etc)?

Since Flame Temple Corridor is in Diessa Lowlands, I see several named charr enemy NPCs there - one being an ele named Smoke Kindlefist. He’s also the potential boss of a quest called Special Ops: Flame Temple Corridor. For my own purposes, is it safe to assume he could have been leading charr forces in this area?

Also would there have been any female charr at the temple, or in the areas around it? Or were they kept far away from battle zones with no exceptions? I know they were heavily oppressed, but perhaps as servants or bed-warmers? Maybe captured females trying to flee?

 

[Danikat.8537]

We didn't have a lot of details about charr society in Prophecies, even the information about female charr being oppressed and not allowed to fight was only added in Eye of the North. Technically it was implied in that all the charr models were male, but we didn't actually know that at the time, I suspect it only came about because when they decided to make them playable Anet wanted to add noticeable differences between male and female charr and therefore had to justify the female models not appearing anywhere before then. (Otherwise they could have just been like the hylek, grawl and some other races where males and females use the same models.)

So if you want to go strictly by what's seen in Prophecies there were only small numbers of male charr soldiers around the Flame Temple Corridor. But realistically or in lore it was likely a small semi-permanent (or permanent) settlement which would have included female charr with domestic roles who weren't prisoners and weren't trying to escape (this was quite a while before their rebellion began).

It's the same with your other questions, we don't know but we can probably extrapolate from available information. For example we know that Gwen was kept as a slave for years, so it's reasonable to assume Althea wasn't sacrificed as soon as she reached the Temple. We don't know what specifically the temple was for, but we know the charr worshipped the Titans and there's a quest which partially takes place there which involves taking down some titans and the charr lords who follow them, so it seems reasonable to assume that's what the temple was for and the sacrifices were intended for the titans.

I think you're pretty free to invent charr characters and decide how much time and interaction Althea had with them, based on what fits your story.

[Gibson.4036]

One wonders how very large her body had to be to provide so many ashes to so many adventurers.

[The Greyhawk.9107]

On 3/17/2023 at 9:56 AM, Danikat.8537 said:

We didn't have a lot of details about charr society in Prophecies, even the information about female charr being oppressed and not allowed to fight was only added in Eye of the North. Technically it was implied in that all the charr models were male, but we didn't actually know that at the time, I suspect it only came about because when they decided to make them playable Anet wanted to add noticeable differences between male and female charr and therefore had to justify the female models not appearing anywhere before then. (Otherwise they could have just been like the hylek, grawl and some other races where males and females use the same models.)

So if you want to go strictly by what's seen in Prophecies there were only small numbers of male charr soldiers around the Flame Temple Corridor. But realistically or in lore it was likely a small semi-permanent (or permanent) settlement which would have included female charr with domestic roles who weren't prisoners and weren't trying to escape (this was quite a while before their rebellion began).

It's the same with your other questions, we don't know but we can probably extrapolate from available information. For example we know that Gwen was kept as a slave for years, so it's reasonable to assume Althea wasn't sacrificed as soon as she reached the Temple. We don't know what specifically the temple was for, but we know the charr worshipped the Titans and there's a quest which partially takes place there which involves taking down some titans and the charr lords who follow them, so it seems reasonable to assume that's what the temple was for and the sacrifices were intended for the titans.

I think you're pretty free to invent charr characters and decide how much time and interaction Althea had with them, based on what fits your story.

I'm pretty sure any information or reference to female charr not being allowed to fight came after Eye of the North. I've played the Charr portion of EotN more times than I can count and I can't remember any time that any of the characters bring it up. I'm quite certain that Arenanet first mentioned this information out of game in a Lore document, maybe the Movement of the World or the Ecology of the Charr, or something similar.

[Danikat.8537]

8 minutes ago, The Greyhawk.9107 said:

I'm pretty sure any information or reference to female charr not being allowed to fight came after Eye of the North. I've played the Charr portion of EotN more times than I can count and I can't remember any time that any of the characters bring it up. I'm quite certain that Arenanet first mentioned this information out of game in a Lore document, maybe the Movement of the World or the Ecology of the Charr, or something similar.

It's entirely possible I'm mixing up in-game info with out-of-game info that came out around the same time I was playing EOTN.

But the important point is just that there won't be any info on how many female charr (if any) were in camps in Prophecies maps, or what they were doing because the entire concept didn't exist at the time. In spite of being the main enemies of the first part of the story charr in Prophecies didn't have much more characterisation or lore than the grawl - we could tell they weren't just animals but had no info on their society other than they were very aggressive to humans and worshipped titans.

[The Greyhawk.9107]

13 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

It's entirely possible I'm mixing up in-game info with out-of-game info that came out around the same time I was playing EOTN.

But the important point is just that there won't be any info on how many female charr (if any) were in camps in Prophecies maps, or what they were doing because the entire concept didn't exist at the time. In spite of being the main enemies of the first part of the story charr in Prophecies didn't have much more characterisation or lore than the grawl - we could tell they weren't just animals but had no info on their society other than they were very aggressive to humans and worshipped titans.

True enough.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

18 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

It's entirely possible I'm mixing up in-game info with out-of-game info that came out around the same time I was playing EOTN.

But the important point is just that there won't be any info on how many female charr (if any) were in camps in Prophecies maps, or what they were doing because the entire concept didn't exist at the time. In spite of being the main enemies of the first part of the story charr in Prophecies didn't have much more characterisation or lore than the grawl - we could tell they weren't just animals but had no info on their society other than they were very aggressive to humans and worshipped titans.

There was a bit more than that. There were mentions of warbands, crude forging, pension for sacrificing PoWs (Althea, incidentally enough), and their religion of revering the Titans, being depicted as burning gods.
Nothing remotely in the degree that we see with Nightfall (which featured the first speaking charr), EotN, and Ecology of the Charr, pretty much on par to centaurs and mursaat, while grawl and tengu had much less in Prophecies.

Btw, Ecology of the Charr is the first explanation of female charr not being on the battlefield - before then, players technically had no way of telling the gw1 models didn't include females, since there was no guarantee there was notable sexual dimorphism among the charr - same with the mursaat, and we see feminine names among the mursaat bosses like Willa, who even has a masculine counterpart boss, Willem.

[Justine.6351]

odette, reginald and harner

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Annihilator_2:_Searing_Day#Side_dialogue