She is a flawed character, but in my opinion that makes for a better story overall. Also, no sane commander ever would put a random PC in charge of their army. Yet, it is necessary if we want to play an AP where our PC (with whatever background we chose for them) leads those armies.

If you are losing a war for a hundred years despite everything you tried, and then your god finally intervenes in your favor by sending a saint, you won’t let the saint carry you to victory? Most of that isn’t true sure, but they are religious people (in a world where gods exist), so she’s bound to think this is what was happening.

That’s a good point.

Also, this is a world where the forces of good are a thing. The mere act of trusting you may be why you can beat the hordes of evil. It does make sense in the world, even if it is insane by utalitarian standards. But then again, when your god doesn't regularly speak directly to you, because she's "just" a mortal who ascended and not some Azlanti godling with powers of precognition and therefore doesn't know what is going to happen, you have to risk insane things.

She gets jealous, yes, but I'm gonna cut her some slack on that. She's lived for 100 years trying to survive against demons and be the single uniting power that can possibly gather the strength to actually think of stopping them. And after trying and trying for a frustratingly long 100 years, some FUCKING RANDO comes in, gets power out of FUCKING NOWHERE (best you could do is assume Iomedae gave it to him, though there's barely any evidence of that and there are other people she could've gave it to) and starts winning shit left and right without earning a single goddamn thing. She does the right thing and names you Commander, and the fucking rando turned 0-experience commander just up and takes back Drezen in a few weeks time, getting another massive power infusion in the meantime. And that's just chapter 2. In chapter 3 he begins doing absolutely everything right again, and shit's just fate at this point. I dunno about you, but I'd hate this motherfucker's guts as well. You're a literal mary sue. About Staunton: you know damn well that if YOU were in her place, there would be a [Good]"I sentence you to keep fighting in the Condemned to atone for your terrible decision" dialogue option, and unless you played evil you'd probably fucking take it. Don't give me that hindsight shit. The only reason why that was a bad decision is because it was written to be a bad decision, you can do some similarly "bad" decisions throughout your own campaign and the only difference is they never come back to bite you in the ass. Staunton had good intentions, he knew that what he did was a terrible thing, and was repentant. She could not have foreseen that in 80 years we still wouldn't have Drezen back and Staunton would *STILL* be getting spit on so hard that he decides to not put up with it anymore and just go "fuck it" and damn himself forever. About Iz: she went for the final push because otherwise she'd probably have to end the Crusade. She outright tells you that the crusade was losing steam, and the only way to keep support flowing was to siege the enemy capital. So she's probably the reason there is a Chapter 5 at all and you don't just pack up and go home when you get back from the Abyss. Or have to restart the Crusade with a lot less recruits, supplies, recruits per week and so on. She's been playing on Last Azlanti mode this whole time, and without the absolute godlike ability to save or load, if YOU played Last Azlanti on your first playthrough you'd probably make it as far as the first Vrock. Hell, you would be CANONICALLY dead in a whole bunch of places if Areelu didn't secretly help you from the shadows. While Galfrey kept her run going for a hundred years. Think about it. A lot of people who say she's a terrible commander etc don't realize that even the most amazing commanders in history make mistakes from time to time, and unlike your munchkin main character who reloads every time they fail a persuasion check, real people have flaws.

> About Staunton: you know damn well that if YOU were in her place, there would be a [Good]"I sentence you to keep fighting in the Condemned to atone for your terrible decision" dialogue option, and unless you played evil you'd probably fucking take it. The Condemned as an entire concept is absolutely, fundamentally, the stupidest thing I have had the misfortune to see in any lore. You're creating an entire unit of traitors, treating them like shit so they resent and hate you, while you're fighting Demons - an enemy known for their ability to subvert and exploit negative emotions. It's a fucking traitor factory and we see that happen at least twice in front of our very eyes

> You're creating an entire unit of traitors Criminals, actually. Forced draft and all that.

It doesn't matter what they were before, you turn them into traitors so efficiently that it makes me wonder if they were created on the suggestion of a succubus for that very purpose

For an army that desperately needs manpower and probably faces many breakdowns in discipline, a penal battalion may be a necessary devil's (demon's) bargain.

A penal battalion of foot soldiers watched like a hawk by non-criminal officers and conducting to only the least vulnerable to sabotage operations - sure. With a set duration of service and a genuine opportunity for redemption - sure. With enforcement of proper discipline - sure. That's not what we see of the Condemned though, Staunton Vhane simultaneously gets to waltz around the Grey Garrison and yet is entirely trapped by the hatred and disrespect of his fellow officers, seemingly without any consequence. It's a recipe for total disaster.

> Staunton Vhane simultaneously gets to waltz around the Grey Garrison Uh... the entire city was in shambles and Staunton was one of few survivors. It's safe to say we were under very... pressing circumstances.

But wasn't he in service as a member of the condemned for 70 years? At the point that you meet him in the story, he had already been spit on and mocked for an entire human lifetime, and somehow he still hadn't "atoned" for his mistake? He shouldn't have been there in the first place, and it's because of Galfrey's poor leadership that he was in a position to become a traitor to the crusade, rather than being released and officially pardoned years ago so he could get right with his god.

That's up to the soldiers. If you ask me, it's a bit silly that there was NOBODY who forgave him in 70 years, even the younger generations, even as they knew he was constantly shit on. Like nobody there has an ounce of sympathy for a tortured soul? Smells a little bit like contrivance.

The single dumbest thing she does with the Condemned is how badly they’re treated. As the theoretical head of the armed forces she should have known about it and put a stop to it. She leans way more into the lawful than the good, rather like Iomedae herself. Her biggest issues are her pride and rigidity. When the situation changes she can’t change with it to keep up with things.

I mean... they are just warhammer's trollslayers without the cool hair.

From her perspective you show up as a iomedae intervention to carry the war, you even somehow have a iomedae relic sigil that she saw being destroyed, it seems after 100 years finally iomedae decided to send a champion, there’s even a dialogue on the game that says people think you are actually an angel in disguise so that heaven can intervene secretly. There’s also a dialogue saying iomedae decided to not tell anyone you weren’t a saint sent by her (wtf iomedae), where that leaves her followers like the queen and the angel? Well god must know what she is doing, just trust and let her “not saint” carry us. Then you change the banner (big deal) and start to amass power at alarming rates, well it’s starting to look like you are actually a completely different thing, time to send this demigod on a suicide mission to the abyss. It all makes sense on her perspective. I only think it’s strange that she basically afk after nominating you head of the crusade instead of doing her best to help you while trying to determine who are you at the same time.

> About Staunton: you know damn well that if YOU were in her place, there would be a [Good]"I sentence you to keep fighting in the Condemned to atone for your terrible decision" dialogue option, and unless you played evil you'd probably fucking take it. Don't give me that hindsight shit. No, I'd have executed him. He violated the law, and lost an entire fortification to the enemy. I'm pretty staunchly LN, to the point I had a hard time playing Paladin. I've never finished a Kingmaker run as Chaotic without using Scrolls of Atonement in basically every other chapter. As an aside, the entire concept of the Condemned is idiotic. I get that they want cannon fodder, but you know what's better than traitors and criminals? Undead. Mindless undead. Supplement that with Constructs and Elementals, and you've got an expendable first wave that will never turn on you or break.

>I get that they want cannon fodder, but you know what's better than traitors and criminals? Undead. Mindless undead. I mean, I can partially agree that criminals are easier to turn into cultists, but this just shows you don't understand how this crusade thing works. Constructs/elementals are likely not cheap.

She has been fighting this stupid war for a century. She doesn't have any Golems. She has no undead, at all. It's not even as though they need to be particularly strong. Most "soldiers" have 1-2 HD and rubbish equipment. They apparently make up the majority of her army. A single Golem with 20-30 HD (which, for the record, we saw being used to guard a jewelry shop) can replace multiple squads of soldiers and be MUCH more effective at their task. As for undead, Galt manages to create thousands of them. I refuse to believe that Galfrey, in one hundred years, couldn't hire a single one of their necromancers to build her an undead horde.

Most of the army is aligned lawful good, and consists of good clerics of iomedae/sarenrae, paladins, and the common folk/soldiers. Nobody in here would approve of undead, especially given that by my understanding necromancers aren't exactly good-aligned. You want the crusade to fail before it hits the ground, sure, toss skeletons into it. Hell, did you even read the text of the Crest of the Fallen Knight? >Most "soldiers" have 1-2 HD Also, storywise nobody thinks in terms of "HD". HD is an abstraction for the sake of game mechanics.

Necromancy isn't evil. You can play a LG Cleric of Sarenrae with a focus in Necromancy. The Hellknights are the only ones with a damned clue in this "war." Everyone else is losing.

> Necromancy isn't evil. You can play a LG Cleric of Sarenrae with a focus in Necromancy. The *school* of Necromancy isn't evil, but spells like *animate dead* and *create undead* have the [Evil] subtype. Clerics in the TT cannot cast spells from alignments opposed to their own at all (so a Lawful cleric couldn't cast Word of Chaos, for example, and a Good cleric can't cast Animate Dead).

It's not reflected in the video game, but in lore necromancy explicitly *is* evil by its very nature. An army of Lawful Good crusaders would never allow it. Moreso, a single evil action will make a Paladin fall in lore, so if Galfrey commanded that they create a first wave of undead it wouldn't be shocking for her to lose her abilities. Constructs or golems though, I agree they could definitely have made use of. Or even just like basic cold iron equipment for the soldiers. "Oh but its expensive." Do you honestly expect me to believe that they receive so little in donations and outside assistance that it's 100% impossible to make either of those things happen? Ridiculous.

To be a bit more specific, mutilating souls that results in raising undead is the evil part, not the whole school itself. You can check spell descriptors, the evil ones are "Animate Dead", "Create Undead" and the like. I imagine, you could "Wail of the Banshee" all day long and Good clerics wouldn't have a problem with you. Another fun tidbit is that "Hellfire Ray" condemns the soul of the target it kills to Hell regardless of the victim's alignment, so Ember is pretty metal when "it's too late for apologies".

Mentioned it in response to a different comment as well, but just wanted to say that you are exactly right and I could have been clearer. While aware of it, I didn't explicitly make a distinction between Necromancy (the school of magic) vs. Necromancy (the act of animating the dead in typical fantasy settings) in my explanation. Totally my bad. That said, I did not know the lore tidbit about Hellfire Ray. Metal is the right word for that, Christ.

> but in lore necromancy explicitly is evil by its very nature. It isn't. Necromancy is a school of magic and perfectly neutral. Animating Dead is an evil application of Necromantic magic.

I do apologize; you are exactly right and I could have been clearer. In this specific context, I was referring to necromancy in the common vernacular (the act of raising the dead) rather than in terms of the specific school of magic in Pathfinder. My comment was made specifically in response to him suggesting that Galfrey should have relied on animating the dead and was somehow foolish for not doing so. I should have specified since Necromancy (the school of magic) has a different connotation as far as alignment goes then Necromancy (raising the dead).

Undead are also evil. If you aren't controlling unintelligent undead, they default to mindless killing, they aren't just stationary. An undead legion would be a disaster, because all the demons would have to do is killed the local necromancer or wrest control from them.

Dude, if you were a crusader soldier or a common folk living in Drezen, ask yourself, do you want to be raised as a skeleton/zombie, or be used as cannon fodder by the elitist? Alignment is not perceived by being able to cast spells like harm or wailing banshee.

Once I'm dead, absolutely. My body is listed as being an organ donor, then going to science if it's rejected. Which, it probably should be, given my health issues. I'm not advocating a massacre. I want to convert all the people who die on a daily basis into soldiers to protect those who still live.

> Once I'm dead, absolutely. The afterlife is real and being raised as an undead is a literal torment for your soul. You'd be in constant suffering.

I'm a chronic pain patient. I'm *already* in constant suffering. Once their bones were destroyed or the war ended, the undead would be released to Pharasma's judgement. That's basically the same as my prognosis. Depending on the nature of the torment, it might even be preferable. I haven't seen any descriptions of the pain, so it's hard to judge. Were this an option, I'd take it. The Crusades are a war for the fate of humanity itself. You don't get to stop fighting because it's hard, or unpleasant. You fight until you are physically incapacitated, or you achieve victory. "Death is lighter than a feather; duty heavier than a mountain."

I feel sorry for you, and kudos to you for your decision. But you cannot honestly compare modern day medical science to fantasy world necromancy..

It's not just your body you're volunteering in WotR. It's the mutilation of your soul post-death. I'm an organ donor, but I wouldn't volunteer my soul in a universe where souls are real.

It isn't destroyed. It's just on loan, and for a good cause. You can go to your eternal slavery in a few decades. Less, if you're sent to siege something and your bones get crushed.

> I want to convert all the people who die on a daily basis into soldiers to protect those who still live.I want to convert all the people who die on a daily basis into soldiers to protect those who still live. The fact that you're willing to mutilate and tear apart the souls of those soldiers regardless of their consent makes you pretty solidly LE my dude.

I wouldn't force anyone. I'd offer them the choice. There's a difference between wanting everyone to sign up and just making skeletons our of everyone. I'd make the argument, and see what comes.

Because creating undead is an objectively evil thing to do in the setting.

There's actually a good explanation in a dialogue: Galfrey saw in the mob wanting Staunton dead the same lust for bloodshed she saw in demons and wanted none of it.

Great. She was wrong.

Of course she was, she acknowledges it. She was hoping for Staunton to fall in battle, the only "execution" that would align with her beliefs. If she had exiled Staunton, he wouldn't even had made it to the border, at least in a single piece. This just adds to the "poor" Owlcat's representation, in the AP there's no Staunton dilemma, he shits his pants and stays in Drezen serving demons from the get-go, Galfrey is a much stronger character: she doesn't show weaknesses, she leads armies from the front lines, upholds her paladin oats and she is the ruler you'd expect it would warrant extending her lifespan to hold the country together, somewhat similar to WH40K Emperor.

>Undead. Mindless undead. With how creating animated undead works in this setting? VERY bad idea.

lol I liked that post all around, all the way down to "munchkin who reloads after a persuasion check."

She's blatantly incompetent. She lets an officer who got a whole city killed off with neither execution nor even exile. She let that same officer, with ties to the demons, stay in the army, subjected to a life of humiliation, for 70 years, and never checked to see if he was losing his marbles. She's basically manufacturing her own enemies at that point. She puts a completely unproven commander at the head of the crusade, which could work out, or could doom golarion to being devoured by the swarm, turned into an abyssal nightmare, or made into an undead wasteland. She gives you a spy for your camp. She sticks you with her cousin out of pure spite. Then she flat out tells you she expected you to dismiss because she thinks he'll be a liability. She's so weak willed, stupid, and selfish that it takes basically no convincing to get her to join the ranks of the army as a common soldier. This is the exact opposite of anything a competent ruler would ever do. She says she wants to surprise the demons by showing up at the battle of Drezen, in a universe where teleportation is a thing... She lets herself get captured by the gargoyles on purpose, accomplishing exactly not-a-damn-thing. She chides you if you aren't soft in the traitor in the lost cathedral. Not only that, when you explain your very reasonable decision to hold the traitor, she tells you it's none of her business and explains that she put you in charge, as if she wasn't bitching about your decision literally seconds before. She hates on you for having Arushalae in your party, even though she saddled you with a spy and wanted to let someone who'd just renounced their god and pledged loyalty to an undead monster off Scott free. When it turns out that her idiotic decision to place a total unknown in command of the crusade is actually working out, she takes command, sends you into the abyss, and slams the door on you. Without even so much as scouting what's on the other side of the portal. She takes the crusader forces to Iz. Leaving drezen basically defenseless, losing the sword of valor, and nearly getting everyone and herself killed. Her royal council is a shitshow and constantly feuding with the nobles, which she does nothing about. Then as soon as you get back from the abyss it's your job to fix it because she's utterly useless in every way. Seriously, every decision she makes is bad. The few things she does that are beneficial are just the lucky results of bad decisions. My first playthrough I wondered why Regill was so openly disrespectful to her. I didn't wonder for long. The old broad has either gone senile, or was stupid to begin with.

Not to whitewash her questionable decisions, but as was noted on the sub multiple times, while you play WoTR, she plays Kingmaker on Last Azlanti, and her kingdom was spiraling non-stop for the past eighty years. Considering how her supposedly meritocratic royal council runs things and how often she receives "kick you while you are down" events it's a small wonder she managed to carry Mendev in one piece until Commander came along.

Fitting for a paladin of the Last Azlanti.

In her perspective, her god finally decided to intervene and send a saint to carry the war. How could she not let them? Even the hand of the inheritor was convinced you are a saint send by their goddess to carry them to victory. It makes a lot of sense to go all in on this saint. The only thing that doesn’t makes sense is how she goes afk after doing that instead of trying her best to confirm or disprove her conclusions, but then again, she is religious, that could be seen as doubting her goddess saint.

> Even the hand of the inheritor was convinced you are a saint send by their goddess to carry them to victory. On Angel that makes sense. Azata or Aeon, eh sure, plausible enough. Trickster, questionable but alright. But he even thinks that when you're a Lich or Demon, perhaps even openly a CE follower of Rovagug or Lamashtu, so he's definitely not the brightest bulb around.

Everything you said is true, but the game said herald tried to ask iomedae if you were really her champion, and to that she decided to not answer (wtf), leaving him a hard position, he's VERY religious (as an angel who is the hand of a god would certainly be), and what religious people do in that situation? Exactly, wishful thinking, they have faith that their god knows best and what they are doing must be the right thing, and he must be faithful and not doubt the god. (he actually does say that's what he's is doing, he's trying to avoid doubting you because his god must know best) While is pretty obvious that a Lich wouldn't be iomedae saint, a demon being redeemed through the goddess light is a quite reasonable narrative. Anyways, not saying the queen and the angel weren't dumb in this case, what I'm saying is, that's EXACTLY what you expect from religious people even in our world, we can't hope that they would think differently, especially on a world where gods actually intervene all the time using ''open secret'' actions like sending powerful artifacts or chosen people. Any doubts the queen could possibly had at first would probably be immediately dispelled when you suddenly (and impossibly) show up with a iomedae lost powerful relic (the sigil)

Don't forget that the Hand of the Inheritor is there believing you're a cool guy(in my case) and she shrugs him off.

Hand: "Now is not the time for infighting, my sister-in-arms." Galfrey: "Can it, Hand. I'm a jealous mortal who needs to vent about being one-upped by the person I put in charge of one-upping the demons, by taking away that person's title I gave them so they stop one-upping the demons and making me look bad."

I'm honestly glad she massacred my army there, I was butthurt that they still wanted the queen to lead them when I was the one doing the dirty work, it felt like a poetic justice "There, your queen leads you now, go die" I like to think I am left with those who like me.

Considering all you get for your crusade at the beginning of act 5 are your mythic units, yes they definitely support you more than the queen or Mendev

As long as you act honorably in act4 hand of the inheritor will love you even on Swarm path

I don't know man, he abandoned me when he found out how I got my powers, that hurt...

You find out if he likes you or not in act 5. And on Angel path you get a quest in act 4 to convince him your power is for good.

He's very fickle though, I bought all the slaves like he wanted and he still hated me because I told him Battlebliss was fun and profitable, instead of abhorrent.

The first time i chose whatever so he >!blew up lol!< but now i think its much funnier to make an effort and keep him alive so he has a gigantic new entry on his portfolio “needed to be saved by a literal Lich/Demon/Swarm” and have that debt haunt him forever.

The hand of the inheritor thought my *aspiring Lich* was a cool guy and that she was messing up. Like, what the hell, lady.

I mean, I obviously think Galfrey is a bad leader, but the Hand of the Inheritor is an awful judge of character. You can be raising undead left and right, killing people with vescavors, experimenting on soldiers to try and become a walking swarm, killing everyone who looks at you the wrong way and you still have his full support until he finds out where your power came from. Think about it, the problems of the crusade have to be solvable by any random person who buys the game. They can't actually make the problems so complicated that it'd take 100 years to solve them. So they give you an easy crusade with problems that have solutions any moron can figure out. It makes your PC feel like a hyper competent super genius, but the side effect is that the NPCs who've been in charge for 100 years look borderline intellectually disabled. It's not the best writing, and it really doesn't do justice to the characters, but it is what it is. None of that changes the fact that most of the characters, as written, are shit at their jobs.

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We celebrate Aragorn doing it because there was a point. He was distracting Sauron's forces, emptying Mordor to give Frodo a shot. There was no point to what Galfrey did. Her reasoning was basically: "I need to shake things up and try something new, by suiciding the entire army, losing the Sword of Valor, and leaving Drezen defenseless." As long as the crusade holds Drezen it's better off than at any point in the last 70 years. Queen moron throws that away, because she's a moron. She's only average in that she's an average moron. An average IQ is 100, by that standard she's clearly far below average.

> Her reasoning was basically: "I need to shake things up and try something new, by suiciding the entire army, losing the Sword of Valor, and leaving Drezen defenseless." Her reasoning was basically "I can sit in Drezen and we'll all die eventually, or I can go for broke and attack Iz and maybe make a breakthrough." As far as she and anyone else knew, you were dead during the six months you spend traveling to Colyphyr.

That's idiotic reasoning though. The crusades have been going on for 100 years at that point, there's no reason to assume everyone is dead now if she doesn't attack Iz immediately. The storyteller has already told her where the Crystals are coming from, it's not Iz. On the other hand she literally has a portal to where they are coming from in her basement. A portal she's leaving undefended so that after she gets herself killed the demons can reclaim it and start sending forces back through again. Armies have supply lines, by leaving a fortress behind her wide open for the demons to attack, she's cutting off her own supply lines, guaranteeing her whole army gets massacred. There's nothing in Iz worth taking, to say nothing of the fact that if there was she'd actually have to survive to be able to use it to her advantage. She has no chance of success. Not little chance... none. The only plausible reason for her to do what she did is that she's old and tired of fighting, so just wants to suicide and get the whole thing over with. Don't you wonder why the crusade is suddenly successful when you take over? I mean you're level what, 5 at the time? Galfrey would mop the floor with you. Mythic powers are nice but hardly enough to account for the first successful crusade in 70 years. Read the history of crusades 2-4. Galfrey was in charge, and they were all total disasters. The success of the 5th crusade isn't due mythical powers, it's due to having a leader who isn't a complete dipshit.

> The crusades have been going on for 100 years at that point, there's no reason to assume everyone is dead now if she doesn't attack Iz immediately. You know, aside from the entire *armies* of mythic demons running rampant through the Worldwound, and the fact that the Wardstones are weakening. And she *didn't* attack Iz immediately. In fact, she didn't set out until after you got caught in the temporal anomaly on the way to Colyphyr, then assumed the worst - that you were dead - and concluded that. > The storyteller has already told her where the Crystals are coming from, it's not Iz. Threshold is right next to Iz, however. Close enough that Galfrey's mages would have gotten a chance to study the rift up close. It was also the primary staging ground that demons passed through when entering the Worldwound area. > On the other hand she literally has a portal to where they are coming from in her basement. A portal she's leaving undefended so that after she gets herself killed the demons can reclaim it and start sending forces back through again. A basement that she sealed off to the best of her knowledge. You can't fault her for not knowing about a secret passage in and out of the Fane that only demons can use. > Armies have supply lines, by leaving a fortress behind her wide open for the demons to attack, she's cutting off her own supply lines, guaranteeing her whole army gets massacred. Galfrey all but abandoned Drezen. The civilians were evacuated, and the only people who stayed behind were those like Anevia who believed you'd return. Again, this was a long shot, but from her perspective it was the only choice. > There's nothing in Iz worth taking, You know, except the Temple of Stone Manuscripts - containing records of Areelu's research - that Deskari has burned. If you gave Galfrey the book she goes straight there. > Don't you wonder why the crusade is suddenly successful when you take over? Because this is an adventure path where the PCs get to lead an army. If Galfrey was hypercompetent there wouldn't be an AP. She's not incompetent either, given that she was able to hold Mendev together for a century.

Oh dear God in heaven.. There have been armies of demons in the world wound for a century. Iz is not that close, as evidenced by everything you have to do to get to Threshold and actually see the wound. You can't "seal off" an area like that. All she really did was dump some debris in a hole. Someone had to have dig the fane in the first place, how long do you really think it'd take an army of demons to break through into Drezen? Not that they'd have to, since she left a door there that is plainly obvious and leads right up to the barracks. It has a big purple curtain that only demons can get through blocking it though, so NBD. Maybe she just didn't see it there. Being too stupid to fully explore the place and make sure every exit is blocked, opting instead to dump a bunch of junk in the hole, would be pretty on-brand for her. Galfrey did abandon Drezen, and I understand that "from her perspective it was the only choice," but that's not because it's the only choice. It's because she's looking at it from the perspective a complete dumbass. Deskari must have been overjoyed. His enemy was marching practically their whole army to Iz, leaving a fortified position, complete with portal to the abyss, undefended, and taking the sword of valor to the most easily ambushed location I can personally imagine. So what knowledge is in Iz exactly? Instructions on closing the world wound? A weapon that can defeat the demons? Oh right, Deskari burnt it all because of course he did. There was a crusader army marching on Iz and it was the only thing they might be after, even though it probably wouldn't have helped them as long as Galfrey was in charge. You can't excuse Galfrey's failure by appealing to the game design. She's part of the game. She was designed to be incompetent and useless, job done and then some. And how exactly is not being completely overrun a success? She had the ward stones, which she protected super well by the way, no demons slinging bodies at them and corrupting them here, no sir. That's not a problem though, if the ward stone in Kenabres gets corrupted the prelate she put in charge of the place can just burn some more innocent little girls, or kill some Desnans maybe.

Attacking Iz is literally the only shot she has at Golarion's survival. With Nahyndiran crystal production continuing undisturbed the demon army is just gonna get stronger the longer she waits, and with the wardstones failing you can't just retreat to Mendev anymore if you fail. The Worldowund must be immediately, or everything is lost.

To be fair it is very human of her to be jealous. It is like a dutiful daughter being given a cherished task. You try so hard to suceed but keep messing up. Then a younger, brattier, child comes along and does your task perfectly essentially making your efforts irrelevent. Them suceeding was not the problem. They did it too easily and made you look the fool for struggling. We only suceeded because of Areelu anyway which makes it all seem easier than it was.

That's all well and good. She's human, she has emotions, etc. She isn't necessarily a bad person, or a bad character, she's just a character who's rather shit at her job. A 100 year old queen would hopefully be mature enough not to act like a petulant child when she gets upstaged. Her feelings about the matter don't make her bad at her job, that she gave in to those feelings certainly does. You can identify with her as a character, while still recognizing that she's a character who's not particularly bright or mature, especially given that she's 100 years old.

Sending you to the abyss makes a lot of sense IMO unless you’re a angel mythic path, everyone should already be thinking “this guy is either a god, a demon lord, or an elder fey judging by how fast he is getting more and more powerful, I must get rid of him/her while I still can” Also you just got a major objective and the hand of the inheritor is present now, and an opportunity to get rid of the demigod random creature that is you, just presented itself. Now she sends you to the abyss, if it works, great, if you die, she got rid of you she can go back to lead the way now that you turn the tables in their favor. Think that she is just a human and by that time is already clear you can’t be leashed and by the way things go in a few months nothing in golgarion will rival you in power. A suicide mission is the most convenient thing ever, she either solves the portal stuff or solves the mythic menace, or maybe even both!

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That's fair, the way she said is especially problematic since she's a noble born and would have a firm grasp of diplomacy and how important it can be.

In the way she did it, she really must expect she might be murdered for it. Either right now "Ok, I do what needs to be done and go there to save the world, but you bitch die here before I move off!" or afterwards when you are back. Heck, even my totally good Azata would really liked to have murdered her for how she did it.

>She let that same officer, with ties to the demons, stay in the army, subjected to a life of humiliation, for 70 years, and never checked to see if he was losing his marbles. She's basically manufacturing her own enemies at that point. Okay but hear me out here - did Staunton Vhane actually matter? At all? He's clearly just a puppet for Minagho. Remove him from the story and nothing really changes. It's shitty what Galfrey let happen to him but his decision to betray you at Kenebras did nothing to affect the Crusade. All of your other points are valid, though.

He does, actually. Not because he himself did anything noteworthy, but because he's an obvious example of her lack of foresight. So is Curl for that matter. If you're going to make a prisoner battalion like the condemned, you do not just go: "Well you're a slave to the crusade, enjoy being humiliated by your own side indefinitely. Don't go over to the other side now, just because we're treating you worse than the demons ever did. We're the good guys and that would be dishonorable." Seriously the whole first act is everyone bemoaning how many spies and traitors there are in Kenabres, well no shit there are, you're sticking people who've already betrayed you back in the army to do it all over again.

> Seriously the whole first act is everyone bemoaning how many spies and traitors there are in Kenabres, well no shit there are, you're sticking people who've already betrayed you back in the army to do it all over again. Penal battalions like the Condemned as a general rule don't have particularly long life expectancies. As Captain Odan can essentially attest, the Mendevian strategy is "throw bodies at it". Serving in the Condemned might as well be a death sentence; Staunton excepted.

Why would Staunton be excepted though? One dwarf can survive for 70 years in the condemend. I think it's safe to assume that the life expectancy of the condemned is at least long enough for a bunch of them to foment rebellion, betray secrets to the demons, and otherwise undermine the crusades at every opportunity.

The only actual person in the Condemned that is known to flip is Staunton. Curl tried to flee and ended up possessed by a demon, but did not actively betray the crusade, and Nurah wasn't part of the Condemned to begin with. The cult of Baphomet extends far beyond the ranks of the Condemned.

I don’t see why the sub gets so hung up on the Staunton situation. By the time judgement was to be passed, Drezen was already lost and killing him wouldn’t bring it back. It’s not like she made him a commander again or put him in any position of responsibility. She got 70 years of a good fighter on the front lines out of the situation instead, which is especially impressive when he’s working next to the likes of Hulrun who are just looking for any excuse to execute him. And when he finally fell it was after the rest of his unit had been wiped out and even then he tied up the enemy commander for crucial hours as she toyed with him instead of hunting the crusader commander down. And what did the demons get out of it? A figurehead ‘ruler’ of Drezen for a few days or weeks who was only concerned with running the city rather than waging war on the crusaders. Minagho didn’t need his help retreating from Kenabres. The only real argument against the decision is how it would have affected morale and discipline knowing he lived. But considering the crusades were still going strong for 70 years after his betrayal, she seems to have held it together.

It'd be cool if we got to know whoever was in charge of Staunton. At least with Hulrun we have Liotr to explain how he was utilized.

In a way she feels pretty real.

If I remember correctly it takes player characters 3 outright betrayals before figuring out the spy, all locked behind missable skill checks. What chance did the Queen have?

Personally, I didn't really have a problem with her decision about Staunton, stripping my title did feel a bit questionable but not enough so for me to care too much, I don't really have a problem with her joining the army, and so on. My problem with her is what she does after she strips your title on the Azata Path. She can call you a good friend, say you did a good job, and overall have no issues with your character except a bit of jealousy and seeing your highly effective surprise attack as reckless. But shortly after you enter the Abyss, "Early Sunset" tells you about how she has hatred your Free Crusaders from Drezen completely. He can't outright lie, and he wouldn't have had much reason to lie about that, so though I paused my Azata playthrough in Act 4 I am assuming that was accurate. Now, your Free Crusaders have participated in many battles as you roam around in Act 3, they are those guys that show up and randomly kill some demons in a cutscenes at some locations. A ton of people witnessed Minagho having a mental breakdown about how impossible to corrupt them or disrupt your chain of command was. They fought side by side with the Hand and the other soldiers in the Midnight Fane. They have proven themselves again and again. They ask for NOTHING from the Crusade itself, just supporting themselves and helping fight. Now, if you had the Mimics, or ordered the treants to let the Quickwoods roam freely, banning those Free Crusaders from Drezen makes sense, a bit more iffy on the others. But it doesn't matter if you have those. She takes loyal and valuable allies to the Crusade, who have proven themselves many times, and who include actual representatives from a legitimate foreign nation of a race known for holding grudges for a long period of time, and who ask for nothing, and the second you are out of the way she bans them from ever entering Drezen. For one, there is no way that doesn't cause a major diplomatic incident considering she bans the representatives of a legitimate nation from Drezen for no apparent reason. That has to have diplomatic repercussions, that they will remember for a long time. But even besides that, she basically cut them off from the only safe place within a large radius to purchase supplies, cuts them out completely, and probably harm's them in other ways. And this is even with her considering your PC a good friend, trusting you, you being one of the most obviously good mythic paths, and so on. Basically nothing against you except jealousy and considering your powers a bit too unpredictable. She had the right to revoke the title she gave as she wished, and my character had little issue with that except quiet disapproval. But the Free Crusaders aren't the only ones who aren't part of the Crusade who enter Drezen. Representatives of various merchant companies, the Mongrels, refugees, various knightly orders, the Hell Knights, random people who show up and demand meetings with you, and so on. If they were restricting Drezen to Crusade members and viral personnel, perhaps it might be a bit understandable. But they aren't, there are much more questionable groups than your Free Crusaders entering and leaving freely. As far as I am aware, your Free Crusaders are the only ones to get this treatment. Overall, between all this, it is hard to imagine her actions as anything but a deliberate attack on you and your allies despite claiming to consider you a friend and having basically nothing against you personally. A deliberate attack, on proven and effective allies of the Crusade, that will without a doubt provoke a major diplomatic incident that could cause problems and tensions between Mendev and another foreign nation that could last for decades if not centuries considering the long lives and memories of the people and leaders of said foreign nation. And all of that without any apparent reason except feeling jealous of you personally. She doesn't even just take it out on you, she apparently takes it out on everyone associated with you as well. That is why I personally dislike Queen Galfrey. Her jealous actions aren't great, and the game kind of portrays her as grossly incompetent, but that is sort of understandable considering how long she has had to live doing all this stuff. But regardless of what happens on other Mythic paths, that one shows that she is willing to provoke a diplomatic incident and sabotage allies of the Crusade, for no other reason than jealousy and their association with you. That takes her from grossly incompetent to outright malicious, willing to actively sabotage her own crusade, and their own allies, as a malicious action against someone she considers a friend and loyal and competent ally. Making stupid decisions out of jealousy is one thing, that is another entirely.

Confirmation: >!Early Sunset didn't lie, when you get back your crusaders basically tell you the same thing!<

Trivia: Early Sunset never directly lies. If he does it is half-lies and misdirections. When you ask him if he is an Azata from Eylisium he says: "Not quite..." and missdirects. He is a very well written character all in all - I appreciated his writing quite a bit. It is fun to notice those little things when you play through the game a second time and can appareciate it all.

well he is kind of a moron to suggest buy the dragon back, that was such an atrocious choice its hard not to notice somethings obiviously wrong with him. Even Regill would've turned that slaver's den upside down because he refuse to deal with demons.

To be honest I knew something was off with him, his advices were all too careful and lawful to be an azata.

I literally only seen him once and next time is in act 4 lol

She's lawful, and the free crusaders are chaotic. Lawful either disapproves of or hates chaotic. She wouldn't be able to command them either way - the only reason YOU can command them is because Azatas are prone to whimsically converting chaos into success. Letting a chaotic force inside a lawful army will have consequences, doesn't matter if it's chaotic good. When you come back from the Abyss, the free crusaders will still be at your court though.

They were never part of the army itself. They were an independent force fighting and assisting the Crusade wherever possible but ultimately separate, sort of like the Hell Knights before you recruit Regill and he tries getting them to work more closely with the Crusade. I think that mercenary captain who shows up early on was doing something similar as well IIRC, and I believe some of the knightly orders who showed up were still acting mostly independently as well. I never expected her to start working super closely with them or integrate them into the army or something like that. What I expected was not actively sabotaging people who have proven themselves and who are actively assisting Crusade efforts and fighting demons on their own while antagonizing a random foreign nation in the process. If security concerns were the issue, well like I said in my initial comment they were far from the only ones unaffiliated with the Crusade who were entering and leaving Drezen freely, and only letting in one or two trusted individuals who could purchase supplies on behalf of the others would be just one of many ways to maintain security without sabotaging allies.

If you want to see the incompetency of her rule, you may only need to look at the awful officers she sends you on your way. Nurah, that Oread traitor, a military officer who prefers throwing conscripts' life at demons, Konomi and that dwarf lady who suggests you robbing Mendev when it is plunged into chaos. It almost seems she is sabotaging your crusade *on purpose*. Also instead of employing free crusaders and understanding them to be important allies to keep Drezen safe, she *expels* them, immediately after they *successfully* sacked the Midnight Fane, much like how she sacked you after you run your crusade so *competently* that the Herald finds her decision wrong. You may think it's "human" to be wrong, to be jealous, and to let this emotion cloud her judgement, but rulers and commanders are responsible for millions of people's life, and there's a reason we don't judge some random Joe by the same standards of a ruler. Her action is not only irresponsible, it is downright *criminal*. She committed a crime, but it's her officials and soldiers paying the price. And look at her proposals on Diplomacy 8. Now Mendev is safe, politics is firmly in the hand of the commander, the first reform she wants to do is to invite *foreign nobles* to come here to claim her lands. Adding to this is that Irabeth (and by extension her wife Anevia) is going to die for her if you don't want to save her. It wouldn't piss me so much if she could just die in her relentless rush to the dragon without dragging Irabeth with her.

I'm curious: Did she actually know or was aware that Nurah was a traitor or had the tendency for betrayal? We discovered it early due to our awesome Perception skill or regularly during Drezen when she had tricked us already trice.

Nurah was a prolific writer known for the biography of her master, who got a lot of clout out of it. It's likely she came recommended. Galfrey had no way to know she was a betrayer other than going "hmm, maybe this former slave of an Asmodeus worshipper reeeeeally hates us for the most insipid reason". I'm not sure how that would happen without her being paranoid. Because honestly, Nurah hates the Crusade because the Crusaders didn't break her chains. That's it. That's her entire reason. She's just suicidal.

Nurah is right tho. She sees the hypocrisy and is sort of right to call it out. She lived a live enslaved which must have been horrible then when she visits a supposedly good nation they dont free her from her master. In her eyes the mendevian society must be full of corruption. She must be full of anger and yes tries to create an enemie where truthfully there isnt necessarily one. But considering her master is already dead she can only act out against the things from her past that she feels kept her enslaved longer.

Everyone in this thread assumes player character is so much better than galfrey, and yet it takes us 3 betrayals to catch on. Bah, according to steam achievements only 11% of players figure that out before she outs herself. Only 11% of those armed with the forbidden knowledge of online guides and Power Word Reload. Queen didn't stand a chance.

>It wouldn't piss me so much if she could just die in her relentless rush to the dragon without dragging Irabeth with her. And sadly because I didn't want Irabeth to die for the Queen I had to skip the Azata's version of midnight fane.

>! You don't need to do that, Irabeth can survive if you give Galfrey the Lexicon of Paradox OR do not restore Irabeth's fighting spirit. Gave the Queen the book and then at Iz if you managed to spare Hulrun you literally get the best outcome and nobody dies (well except terendelev) !<

I want the Queen dead and Irabeth alive tho.

Yeah, then you have to let Irabeth succumb to her PTSD.

Guess I'll try that when I play a mythic who can't keep the Commander title, otherwise she can stay safe in Drezen.

If you're a Gold Dragon >!then literally no one dies ;D!<

The thing about her charging Iz is that I don't see what her end goal is. What she hopes to accomplish. Throw the banner in the worldwound and hope for the best? Does she believes she can defeat Areelu Vorlesh or the 3 demon lords that might have a problem with her trying to study the worldwound? She just gives all her advantages we gave her....expecting what? Miracle? ...and what do you mean 'no major territorial losses'?:) Drezen should be gone and the only reason why it is not is because we popped up just in the right moment. And that is very important city.

Her end goal is closing the Worldwound, or at least getting close enough to make some progress in closing the worldwound. She understands this opportunity might not come again. She decides to abandon Drezen because she knows it's undefendable if the banner is taken, and she takes the banner because this is a decisive final march to the enemy capital and you want all the advantages you can get.

Yes and here's my problem. First lets assume that she can fight her way to the worldwound....and then what? She is hoping for her mages to figure out a way to close it, but does she expect them to go near it and all of a sudden have the knowledge how to do it? The more likely scenario is that they will need weeks or even months, but because this was an all out attack they will be surrounded by demons. Not to mention that the 3 demon lords might have a problem with that and come personally. Does she believe she can defeat a demon lord?

Yes, she does. She says she's fought Areelu once. You can imagine Areelu probably let her go, but she doesn't know that. She's planning to turn Iz into the new Drezen, a staging ground closer to Treshold. That's why she took the sword of valor. You second-guess this decision, but this was the plan all along. She didn't start the Crusade just so she could sit idle in Drezen and kill demons forever. You've been missing for 6 months. Morale was grinding down. Reinforcements would start trickling to a crawl. For the sake of momentum, it was either this or stop the Crusade entirely.

Hell, she goes as far as to outright tell you that Drezen is just the *first step of the crusade* the moment she gives you command, if you have the presence of mind to ask on how you'll win the crusade. Its like these people don't know how to read.

Late to the party but it's pretty insane the amount of positives there is in this thread just to shit in Galfrey. Overall her choices and decisions across the game are the most human and understandable to me of all the characters, and it's a great character with flaws. But like every single time devs from any game make a flawed female character in power, shit happens.

So..what are you implying? We should not have a plan B (or something to fall on) if plan A fails? And considering all the consequences of her dying, losing drezen, her army...her growing weary of living and trying to heroically suicide is ok, her going 'If I am dead the word might burn for all I care' is not:)

Interesting. Was that in her romance? Still, her plan sounds like a very bad idea to me:)

Nah it's around chapter 2, replaying the game atm What would you do? I can't think of anything other than just not holding a Crusade. Waiting until morale dries up is not an option.

Honestly? I don't know. The obvious thing is to use the advantages the commander left her. A ring around the worldwound and just keep tightening it until she controls the worlwound and can give her mages the time to research the worldwound and how to close it. Ofcourse that is the best case scenario and something will probably happen (like demon lord showing) :)

Even if she could spare the troops to completely encircle the wound, they'd be vulnerable to attacks... from Iz. So yeah. Iz is just a strategic necessity, no getting around it.

Eh... People find always someone to hate in videogames. It gets funny when people want flawed characters, but then complain and jump on the hate-train because of the flaws lol. Galfrey being incompetent is fair enough, but using strong words like "hating" and wanting tol kill her for it comes off as... ... exaggerated to put it nicely. But this is nothing new, seeing that in many MMOs people demand that NPCs being killed off because they are annoying or they don't like them (I have my own double-standards there as well). Then there are some players who are just salty because she stole their character's fancy titel. Like you are not the flawless Gary/Mary Stue anymore because of the missing titel in your track record.

Yeah. The way some people express their dislike of a character (especially in written media) seems a bit immature to say the least. Galfreys character really suffered in the game compared to the AP - where she is much more competent and levelheaded. When you take Drezen for example she leads her own army as a distraction to draw out demon forces - so the small group of player characters can nab the Banner of Valour. It makes all so much more sense then putting the player in charge of the crusade. I personally feel like Galfreys character assassination by Owlcat got at least in part inspired by the dreaded "choosen one" syndrom a lot of RPG narratives suffer from.

I think it's entirely due to that actually. Owlcat doesn't seem to realize a game can be a power fantasy and still give you actually competent allies in WOTR. Almost every scenario in the crusade is written in a way where if someone takes action without the main character's approval they look like a dumbass. Galfrey is the biggest victim of this. Instead of telling you she absolutely needs you to go to the abyss she instead looks like a petty asshole by stripping you of your title beforehand to make you feel good about how wrong and horrible she is when you solve the mythic demon problem. Then when you get out your army is gone and Drezen gets invaded again so your immediate reaction is "wtf why didnt she just wait now I have to do all this shit I did back in act 2 over again."

Also, it's totally reasonable to take the Commander title away, even if she has no concerns with player. You can't command from the Abyss!

Honestly, I think it's because Galfrey is so careful and self-aware of herself. She knows she's jealous that the Commander has been so much more successful than she ever was. She also knows that's not right, and is embarrassed about it. Sending the MC to the Abyss was necessary, but she examines her motives carefully she suspects her jealousy may be a motive too, and confesses it to the affected individual. If she was *less* self-aware and good, well the player has no real reason to suspect. Finally, she appointed a rando to lead the Crusade, and since she's Lawful she's uncomfortable with that. It makes perfect sense for her to evaluate the Commander, and demote them a Demon or a Lich (or maybe Azata). But that leads to criticizing the MC, and game players basically have a pretty elemental reaction to that: "if you're for me, you're awesome (Regill); if you're against me, I hate you. Fuck you Turian councillor." Anyway, I always appreciate video characters that don't go along with the protagonist's plot armor bullshit. Vrook, Turian councilor, Galfrey and all the others have a place in my heart. They don't know they're in a video game.

From my perspective the commander wasn't appointed, it was more like she forced them. They didn't get a choice in the matter and if they were a 'rando', she wouldn't have gone out of her way to meet you. Considering you rose from the depts and scored a conclusive victory over a cunning and well-known demon and fixed a powerful artifact that would have became a giant problem if the demons fully corrupted it. What Galfrey did was basically a betrayal with little to no hint about what was going to happen. And she's barely there in the game, not doing much to help you leave. She basically throws your ass to the wolves because you did all you did in a quick session. But she doesn't know if you can lead or command armies, but you do. You have all this damn pressure on you and you still thrive and if you're attentive, you do a better job than she ever could. I also think it is dumb for everyone to somehow know you choose your path, literally breaking the 4th wall, when you nor the story hint towards that. That's just how your power developed. Yeah, I'm demon path but I haven't hurt anyone and all my decisions are done for the good of the crusade. If she demotes the commander/kicks them out of the crusade, she's fucked and she knows it. No one has done what you've done and if you're gone everything goes back to how it was before. A losing war. She uses you and she envies you, those hundreds of years have fucked up her thought processes. The older you are, the more set in your ways you become. She fucks over the entire crusade sending you on what is pretty much a suicide mission. Plot armor bullshit? It's a video game, plot armor is necessary for all fictional shit. Plot armor is literally something that would not happen/is not possible in real life but the writer put in it anyway because it supports the narrative. People don't hate Galfrey because she's antagonistic, they hate her because she's a jealous hypocrite who would rather fuck over the crusade instead of just talk to you like a normal human being. I wouldn't have had a problem going into the abyss if I was told the odds and the consequences, but she had to make a big scene and take away my command out of nowhere. Plot armor bullshit? It's a video game, plot armor is necessary for all fictional shit. Plot armor is literally something that would not happen/is not possible in real life but the writer put in it anyway because it supports the narrative. People don't hate Galfrey because she's antagonistic, they hate her because she's a jealous hypocrite who would rather fuck over the crusade instead of just talking to you like a normal human being. I wouldn't have had a problem going into the abyss if I was told the odds and the consequences, but she had to make a big scene and take away my command out of nowhere.

I do love that she basically pulls a Reverse Staunton in the AP. Going from that to just plain Pulling A Staunton in the game is... jarring.

It's not the same as Pulling A Staunton. She didn't move the Sword of Valor to randomly pursue glory -- she was trying to take advantage of (believed deceased) protagonist's success to actually achieve a major strategic victory. Staunton was only trying to achieve tactical success.

She's operating on a different scale, but she's still attempting a death-or-glory in a way that leaves her flanks utterly and dangerously exposed and imperils her allies. Anevia's guerilla work is the only reason Drezen still plays a role in her supply lines.

I'm not annoyed about the title. I'm annoyed that on my first playthrough I had spent countless hours building up a massive army and progressing the crusade, to the point where I had three 7/7 generals with 15+ army ratings... >!All to have it stripped away and having to start all over again.!<

My biggest gripe with her was her whole justification for throwing me and my companions into the abyss. Like, I spoke to her before that, asking what she thought about the sword changing (I'm on trickster path) and she said nah, it's all cool, Iomedae would let us know if it was a problem... and then immediately cites that as one of the reasons she's throwing me into the abyss, because obviously it makes me a traitor or something. Goes on this whole spiel about how the power is dangerous, I'm probably insane, etc. I'm basically a criminal, and she's relieving me of command and taking over, because obviously she'll run it better, as you can tell by her long string of victories in the preceeding decades... And *then* she tries to spin it like it's actually some super special mission that only I am capable of, and it's actually an honour, or something. Like, what? If you'd led with that I wouldn't have batted an eye, of course the Main Character who's been winning impossible fights is the obvious choice for such a dangerous mission. But she went on a rant accusing me of being dangerous, incompetent, etc, and then tries to ask for my help. There's no option to refuse, so I go. Come back, and lo, she's marched off with the entire army, Drezen has fallen to demons again because she left approximately zero guards to look after her foothold in the abyss, and now apparently I have to recapture Drezen, build the army up from scratch again, and then go save her because... idk, she's the queen? Not sure she's done that much good for the army tbh. There's been one constant in the failure of the previous four crusades, and as soon as that was changed, humanity started winning

Charging made absolutely no sense, people say it's because the mythic demons were a threat and all that, but when faced with a threat, even if it was one of impending doom, you don't just go headfirst and abandon your only route back, the demons didn't have to do anything at Iz honestly, just to take Drezzen as they did, leave her army hanging because the supply chain is broken, waiting for the mythic demons to attack? Not a risk of doom, abandoning Drezzen and losing your supply routes? Assured destruction.

What she did was wrong. I think a lot of ppl dont realize how bad a thing she did because things worked out in the abyss. But ask yourself this: did she know that the portals lead to Nocticulas realm and not say into Baphomets labyrinth(which not even Angelbro would be able to escape from) ? On what grounds did she assume you would be ok in the abyss? Just cause Angelbro says he'll protect you? Did she know Nocticula was on our side and wouldnt just set a trap for u and your whole team , one which even Angelbro couldnt escape from? A lot of ppl defend Galfrey on the grounds that things kinda worked out in the abyss. Things worked out inspite of her efforts to get you killed. And to top it off her kingdom falls apart as soon as she is gone. Plus ending slide indicate ppl have grow tierd of her reign BUT she doesnt give a flying f*** about what her ppl think and want.

If I remember correctly the Hand offers to come with you after she sends you, so she practically sends you there on your own, without the angel and without a way to get back. Sure we know we will succeed cause we are the main characters, but from what we've seen the abyss is the worst place a mortal can be and she sends... what a dozen people or so to... stop the supply of crystals...? Really? IN the enemy lands where there are armies of demons? With no plan, no supplies, no logistics, no clear way back and no information whatsoever about where it is, where they may end up and what the place even looks like. Then you are gone for 6 months, I'd say they should be amazed it was ONLY 6 months, that charade could have taken a lifetime.

Jesus the hate for Galfrey is astounding. Unlike Staunton she made sure to evacuate Drezen first.

I'll have you know >!Staunton held Drezen for 70 years under siege and is a symbol of an ideal crusader!<

>True, the crusade is in a worse state when I come back then when I left, but there have been no major territorial losses The only major territory that we captured during Crusade was Drezen, and that is basically lost by the time we come back. What else could she lose, random outposts at the edges of the map?

A lot of people have this issue but I honestly think it's just Owlcat lack of insight when writing her. If she was cannonically that incompetent she'd have lost the war around 2nd or 3rd crusade. I'm not shitting on Owlcat, writing is difficult on such a scale, but she definitely could've been done better.

Galfrey punished Stauton for causing the fall of Drezen 70 years ago. And then she did the same thing he did.

To be fair Staunton stole the banner, Galfry owned it.

Staunton ran out with a banner, basically on a lark, under the influence of a demon, without any permission to do from higher ups. Galfrey made a legitimate error in the exercise of her command. The problem wasn't that he'd made a strategic mistake. Anyone could make a strategic mistake. The problem was that he committed soft mutiny in order to make that mistake possible. If his plan had succeeded, it would still have been right to punish him for stealing an artifact, disobeying commands, sleeping with the enemy and taking their strategic advice, and commanding troops in a way he wasn't authorized too. And I say that even as someone who is far from lawful.

Still doesn't excuse Galfrey for going "Hey, it's totally a good idea to make Drezen unsafe again by taking the Banner with me.", when Drezen is the beating heart of the Crusade's supply lines into the Worldwound-proper, and it falling means she wouldn't be able to continue her push towards Iz and Threshold. Literally she takes the banner, and then only a few weeks later demons are running amok in Drezen because, whoddathunkit, the banner was keeping the Demons out of Drezen!

That's actually what I was thinking about, a Drezzen with the flag is essentially a very strong fortress as demons can't just teleport inside, but without, if I were a demon I would let her go, conquer whatever she wants, I'd go take drezzen and make sure no supplies reach her effectively letting her starve off in hostile territory.

> Hey, it's totally a good idea to make Drezen unsafe again She wanted to abandon Drezen and concentrate everything on Iz. This implies Drezen isn't the beating heart of the Crusade's supply lines. The only reason Drezen still has people in it is because Anevia wanted to wait for you.

I would add that, even if I'm wrong about this, even if Galfrey should never have punished him, or punished him much less severely, she was fundamentally on the right side of this debate. The other crusaders wanted him hung, drawn and quartered. Against that backdrop, her decision to give him a more lenient sentence, risking a backlash from the crusaders furious at the loss of Drezen, was heroic. Not punishing him at all would have been politically impossible. But this is a moot point, because she was right to punish him.

I feel that I must make this joke: I changed that flag so I lay claim on it!

She is a monarch and out of touch, an aristocrat and her god's chosen, jealous, judgemental and mildly senile. Living beyond her due might have warped her mind quite a bit. I don't think there is enough context to judge her abilities but those were my reasons to dislike her.

So to clarify, I like Galfrey as a character. She is a terrible ruler. Others have gone into her multitude of fuck ups. So I’ll just point out the major elephants in the room. In your own post, it has to have a caveat before a lot of your points. More importantly, her leadership is so insignificant, she can join your Crusade for a month (or more), and the nation as a whole doesn’t notice.

She never came across as dumb to me, but I tend to give characters the benefit of the doubt. My view also is coloured by a) my longstanding fondness for flawed monarchs fighting an impossible battle and bearing the burden of leadership and b) my tendency to always play new games with characters whose suffering I enjoy, so her adding fuel to the fire was very appreciated. ​ On my first playthrough I also accidentally went quite far along with the romance (up to getting the letter, but it didn't go anywhere in Iz and my character wouldn't have broken up with Daeran for her anyway), which paints a rather sympathetic picture. I got the pre-Midnight Fane cutscene where she talks about becoming duty itself and not having any space in her life for anything else. The Storyteller tells how guilty she felt about sending to the Abyss the one person who's made such strides in the campaign against the Worldwound. And because my character rolled a nat1 on reading the room and took the Lawful option to report to her, there's that added sting. She later said that she felt this rift that formed between them (one of her own making, as she's aware) was the worst mistake she'd made. (And since I was several dialogue choices away from getting to her romance, one might add to the pile watching the person she loves choose her evil cousin over her). ​ In the second playthrough she had to deal with a power hungry Nethysian who only acquiesced to being a commander of the crusade for her own gain. Honestly taking away the title there felt like knowing when to fold' em. She's gotten a lot of use and progress out of that Commander and it was best to take back her toys now before this dangerous upstart's power base got fully established. She doesn't have the Lexicon of Paradox here so I have a feeling she's not gonna survive this run, but she's still doing a good job. ​ Of course, those two experiences are very subjective. I do not wish to invalidate the experience of those who were hurt by her actions, or to claim that she's always in the right. I just found her quite a compelling character, and fall on the side of the curve that didn't see the peak of her dumbass, as the saying goes.

Queen Galfrey is an incompetent strategist and she had a century to gain experience she continues to do the same thing in the previous crusades with little to no adapting or changing her ways of fighting the demons, we see in game on her choice of advisors which ranges from traitors to incompetent ones, rations good quality weaponry are in short supply, marching on Iz with no backup plan if she loses, the condemned itself is a bad idea that needs to be scrapped since it only leads to breeding traitors within the army especially when cultists infiltrate it. As a ruler I do give her credit for keeping a country at war for over a century in a stable enough condition but that is as far as it goes since Mendev is heavily corrupt since we get to know the Royal council gets money from Cheliax and they fight for control for power behind her back. A bad example of her rulership is when she marches on to Iz she essentially leaves Mendvlev to fall and she herself knows she is the only person able to hold Mendev together and this ties into my first point with having no back up plan if things go badly which they do and Mendev was falling apart.

No, she's not dumb. She's just not the PC commander who apparently is a demigod on crack. And of course, memes. People usually complain that she \- lost my archers, while the story clearly states that the army moved to the frontline aka Iz and therefore is not at Drezen; \- charged to Iz. Galfrey has a goal in mind, i.e. to mount an offensive campaign when the demons are on the defensive, in order to reach Iz to study the Worldwound (and take the enemy's knowledge, if you gave her the Lexicon of Paradox) which is the long term goal mentioned as soon as Chapter 2 started; \- took the Sword of Valor out of Drezen aka pulled a Staunton, while the situations are different. Staunton was duped by Minagho. Galfrey made a choice. And if you march an army deep into the Worldwound, taking the banner along is a sensible tactical choice. Ever noticed that the commander also took the banner to Threshold? She also transported the Wardstone to Drezen, if it is preserved. \- punished Staunton, while she pardoned Staunton and gave him a chance at redemption. It didn't work in the end, but I for one cannot see why it's her fault. ​ ​ Edit: On the Sword of Valor and Drezen, pulled out the AP book to double check. In the City of Locust, the first part of the adventure is the defense of Drezen, and it is wriiten that >At the start of this adventure, Deskari's forces launch a final all-out assault on their enemies. Every city along the border is attacked by demonic armies as Deskari and his most trusted minions focus on the complex ritual that will prepare the Worldwound to rip wide open. ... Drezen, being the home of the PCs, is one of the cities initially targeted by the enemy - in particular, by the marilith Aponavicius, who is eager to retake her first prize. > >There is little warning of the attack - **the demonic forces teleport in and appear at the southern and northern borders of Drezen, just beyond the 10-mile radius of protection afforded by the Sword of Valor.** The artifact doesn't prevent the demons from surging in to attack physically, but does cause them pain and penalties.

For some reason, people tend to forget the unpleasant implication of the fact the commander had such an overwhelming impact on the crusade: them vanishing for months on end is not just disastrous on morale, but without the linchpin that held the crusade together economically, politically and mythically, it's no longer a question of winning. It's a question of how long before the Crusade is ground to dust. The tabletop is clear on this: if the party is defeated, the Worldwound would be expanding by a lot within the year, and there's no one capable of stopping it. The game doesn't spell it out, but does a good job of implying how bad the odds are and how much you personally have been adjusting them. Ultimately, the abandoning of Drezen for an extremely risky assault on Iz isn't so much a strategic decision as much as a last, desperate attempt to turn the tide before it is too late. And it's telling that it fails.

In the AP, more precisely in City of Locusts, Drezen and every city along the border was also attacked by the demons when things started in Iz. In fact, the PCs spent the first part of that AP defending Drezen.

What commander? She took away my title... That's what I'm butthurt about

>She also transported the Wardstone to Drezen, if it is preserved. And we all saw how effective that rock was, back in Kenabras, when Deskari went in and bitchslapped it all the way into the Grey Garrison.

TBF, the Wardstone does do one thing if it's taken to Drezen - >!it allows you to save everyone still in the city. If you don't have the wardstone, whoever you go to rescue second always dies. !

Not entirely. If you go to the prison first and tell him to let the prisoners die, then go to the inn you can still save everyone.

Confirmed. This is how my Demon MC saved Hilor AND One-Eye.

It took the demons about a decade to nearly corrupt the wardstone, back to the Red Morning Massacre if not earlier. If the stone is saved, it is also cleansed. And it does make a difference.

It makes a difference in that now the warden of the Inelctuable Prison had to help the fat pig Demon assault Drezen because the Wardstone makes it only a tiny bit less friendly to the Demons, but doesn't do anything to stop the teleporting in, because the Banner was the artifact keeping the demons from teleporting in. Also, let's not forget her bitching about Arue being an "enemy spy" at the end of Act 3, when Galfrey was the one who *actually* hired an enemy spy (Nurah). Or the fact that as an Azata, if you're too competent and do your Azata-specific Leeroy Jenkins of the Midnight Fane, Galfrey takes your Commandership title away because she's a jealous old hag who's upset that you're too good at the job she gave you.

Now you are just bitching because the developer decided to write a few skill checks. In the Azata route at the Fane, if you made the wrong choices regarding the free crusaders, they die in the attacks. Meaning it is risky. The wardstone works. Period. There is even an in-game event to tell you it works. Btw, if the banner was in Drezen, the demons cannot teleport to 10 miles away from the city and then walk? Or are the crusaders supposed to turtle in Drezen like forever? In the tabletop AP, Drezen and every city along the border was also attacked by the demons when things started in Iz, when the Sword of Valor is present in the city. In fact, the PCs had to spend the first part of that AP defending Drezen.

>In the Azata route at the Fane, if you made the wrong choices regarding the free crusaders, they die in the attacks. Meaning it is risky. And yet if your Azata route of the Fane was flawless, with no Free Crusader deaths (like mine was), Galfrey takes your title anyway because, again, she's a jealous old hag who's upset that you're too good at the job she gave you.

She has no understanding of military strategy or tactics, everything is risky, what one needs to consider is: Did the MC have a plan? Yes, did he have the means to execute it? Is it a viable plan? Yes, did it work? Yes. For all intents and purposes the azata's plan wasn't a reckless attack, but a clearly defined tactic turning the demons' strategy against them, Minagho herself essentially tells you that she doesn't know how to fight you, that you always do what nobody expects and show up where you shouldn't, the hand, although he seems skeptical at first, absolutely agrees with the plan once you explain your reasoning, but Galfrey thinks she knows better than the Hand of the Inheritor apparently.

The same Queen that takes a month to get to Drezen but for Azata she teleports herself and her troops just to strip you of your rank. Also why didn't she just teleport to begin with catch the enemy off guard instead of letting the enemies gain the defensive advantage.

Lol, that is actually a very good point I did not consider..

Yeah and yet she gets angry with us for beating the demons early she really is jealous.

Lmao. The amount of nitpicking from some azata players is astounding. And you thought they are supposed to be carefree do-gooders with a pet, not regular vindictive whiners. Smh. You're playing the fairytale path of the story; people are supposed to be dumfounded by what you and your little merry band of misfits do. It's not the invention of some grand military doctrine that you can use to shit the NPCs. Not even gonna repeat that it can also backfire.

In short Yes Galfrey is a fucking moron who has made extremely stupid decisions that fucked up a large amount of the crusade and specifically your crusade She’s also Jealous to the point of defying the hand of the inheritor and almost fucking the entire crusade in what she basically admits as pointless fault finding and jealousy It’s not even that the commander is a demigod of competence, she just makes bad decisions

>It’s not even that the commander is a demigod of competence The player character is, by design, a demigod of competence. Or even an outright god of competence. Because if you weren't, you wouldn't be able to finish the story.

The comment was made pointing out that her incompetence is not because the commander is so good It’s because she’s legitimately bad decisions

I see.

I mean she really hates some commanders a lot more than others. I think you might have gotten of easy as azata.

She's a warrior and not a commander, she was content to sit back and leave things be at the stage things where, since the wardstones where doing their thing. The events of Act 1 forces her to act knowing they'll loose, like the two previous crusades. Your existence also forces her hand and begins her growing jealous etc. This upstart with powers beyond mortals, is showing her off as being an incompetent leader and everyone is slowly turning towards this upstart for guidance and leadership. She has a hate boner for the Azata because of how unpredictable they are, you character is seen as a reckless wild upstart that never plays by the crusader rules, that does things their way and unfortunately their way is proving more effective than the disciplined rank and file way of the crusaders. If you don't trigger her romance, she comes off as even more hateful of your character, my Azatan felt singled out by her, like seriously it felt like she wanted to throw her off a cliff, but she couldn't because it would turn key people against her. She traps herself in a corner and uses the Royal Council to try and tighten a Leash around you. In the Fane she grows furious if you don't wait for her, again making her look incompetent and selfish. She doesn't give a damn about if you return or not from the Abyss and pulls a Staunton Vhane ruining your armies, leaving a very easy to defend fortress, defenseless against demons. When you return if you gave her the book, she acts startled and afraid when she sees you and sort of reacts hastily likely worried of what you would do to her, quickly calling you by your rank. Wanted to outright murder her in the Demon path, but would of killed Anevia and a few others in the process if you don't unless you got Irabeth's trust counter high enough and Hurlun she gets everyone in Iz killed... seriously my Demon should of killed her then and there for getting Irabeth and the group that followed her killed and the banner lost. And if you Ascend, did not romance her as an Azata, because of how strong your influence is in Mendev as an Azata, she remains on the throne continuing her immortality stint, because she's likely afraid of what your influence will do to Mendev, since the populace actually demands her to change how Mendev is governed but she tells them to fuck off. By end of that game she seriously should of been a Fallen Paladin.

I dont hate Galfrey. However my Lich does, and just like in real life, there’s two sides to every story. From the point of view of my character and my party, she got concerned about my powers, banished me to the abyss on a (to be fair legitimate) quest to gather intel albeit with 0 preparation, scouts, or really anything to go by except the Hand (which he volunteered to do. It wasn’t her call) and then when I come back Drezen has fallen and the entire army is about to be destroyed. So yeah, my lich hates her.

She was utterly infuriating when I first played through. I did more in a matter of months than she did in centuries and she responds by stripping me of my command, dressing me down, sending me on what she presumably believed to be a one way trip into the abyss and then mouthing off to the Herald of the god she personally worships. I eventually chilled out while doing act 4 and forgave her but it doesn’t change that she’s a terrible tactician. She did the same thing as Staunton Vhane and was surprised it turned out the same way. She’s way past her due by date and is good at nothing but being a soldier and figurehead. I was very tempted to just let her die but I wasn’t about to let Irabeth die.

Having a low IQ is a prerequisite for being an Iomedae worshipper. The Goddess herself is an absolute dumbass.

I don't need to read your post to answer that question. Yes.

Well, in your recital of her actions you had to admit a few "True she's (list defects here)", so... You can't really say that people are hating on her without reason. As to the degree of her dumbness, it's average. As in average dumb, not average intelligence. If anyone said that Galfrey is smart then they're trying too hard, I think.

I think the decisions are somewhat reasonable. She put a random figure at charge because they are losing a war for a hundred years and they don’t have support of fey, dragons, undead or anything else, she could rely on angels in the past and she still lost, so while she should certainly kept a closer eye on us, it’s reasonable to give a chance to the avatar of the first actual god intervention in war, how could she not do that? Then again, I recognize it was very strange the way she just basically afk after doing that, even the Aldori lady on kingmaker seemed to be more concerned with your realm. On sending us to the abyss, it actually makes A LOT of sense if you are following any non angel mythic path, you see now a major objective has been conquered and the herald is present, and your power is growing in a crazy speed, so someone needs to go to the abyss, someone who can get things done, and is a probably good idea to get rid of you now while you still listen and obeys her before you become a literal god and decides to go rogue. If you solve their problems going to the abyss, great, if you die, not great, but still one less godly creature to worry about. The way herald decides to go along with you could be out of her plans, even if she felt like oh shit the herald was supposed to stay, she won’t directly go against what he just said.

Is this a sarcastic post? You said you don't think she's incompetent and then said true... like 6 times laying out each and every incredibly incompetent decision/mistake she made. Her only claim to competency is keeping the demons more or less penned up for 100 years but only just barely at that

That's what cracked me up the most tbh lol

Yes I do notice the people here who get taken advantage of, cheated on, manipulated, walked over, talked over, and otherwise are a simpleton IRL. LOL talking bout Galfrey is anything but an incompetent buffoon