[GW2] Asura Week: Littllest, but not Least

As I type this I know a number of my Guild Wars buddies are eagerly sitting by their blog feed waiting for ANet to drop the first article of the much anticipated asura week. The asura have claimed a lot of attention since they were released during Gamescom - mainly due to their freaking adorable animations and fantastic character modelling - but they have a long history at their back, and that's what I'm here to cover today.

The asura are short. There's no way around it, they are titchy. They are primarily a subterranean race and so have evolved large eyes to compensate for the low light of their underground lairs, and large ears to further enhance their senses. With short legs and short tempers they make unlikely heroes, but what they lack in stature they more than make up for in arrogance and self-belief. They are renowned for their faith in their own intellect; and this faith is, by and large, well placed.

The asura construct great cities of swirling rocks and boulders held up by arcane energies. They mackle together monstrous golems of metal and magic to do their bidding. Their great intellect does have a downside, however, as they view almost all other races as intellectual inferiors and often dismiss them as dullards and dunces out of hand. However, they are fierce fighters, determined and stoic in their eagerness to prevail (and such, prove their superiority over their opponents and friends) - as such they make terrible adversaries and even better allies.

 The asuran belief system is almost Gaiac in origin. They believe in the "Eternal Alchemy" - in that each facet of the world is interconnected and part of a greater structure. As such, working out the great formula for life should be an asura's greatest concern. 

In the years between the end of the Guild Wars story and the start of the Guild Wars 2 one, the asuran race - much like a lot of the races of Tyria - has suffered somewhat of a displacement. The increasing ferocity of the Destroyers (having recovered from the loss of their General - the Great Destroyer) has forced the asura from their underground cities and into the daylight. Even the transformation of the dwarven race into rootin-tootin stoneclad fighting machines hasn't been enough to prevent the need for the mass exodus. The asuran race has had to adapt to their life on the surface. The great city of Rata Sum has flourished and has evolved in kind from their main outpost on the surface to their fully fledged capitol city.

The asura have kinda won the hearts of the Guild Wars population over the past few weeks and ANet must be giddy with excitement to see how we react to all the juicy info they will be releasing over the next 5 days. I'm personally excited because I know that what comes out of the ANet blog from now until Friday will shape my final decision on my main race and so will probably shape how I play the game in the (hopefully) years to come.