Little Thom

Ok....in pre searing little Thom is in barradins estate...then in post he is supposedly dead in the red cloaked deserter quest in piken square...and then he is a hench for pretty much the rest of the game after that...are these all the same little thom...

Hmm that is kinda interesting, Im assuming theyr different but you never know.

haha.. a lot of people have gotten confused on this.

here's the dialog for the end of the quest:
The guy you found dead wasn't Little Thom
And I believe the one in presearing is supposed to be the same as the hench.

Yeah, Little Thom is a deserter.
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Little_Thom

He sucks anyway. First one in to aggro everything and tell him to buy a friggin bow.

does this means he became a henchie as punishment for deserting?

In the Deserter quest, if you take a good look at the corpse it's clearly not Little Thom. My curiousity is, why would he bother faking his death only to show up at Yak's Bend as a hench thereafter?

Nah, becoming a hench wasn't punishment. I think he simply became a mercenary after deserting. And a good one at that, thanks to Wild Blow.

I wished he came over for Factions so he could help out against Naga Archers.

Thom always does everything together with Stefan...they make a great team.

I don't see henchification as a punishment. When you think about it, pretty much all pre-searing trainers were transformed into little npcs with little or no quests to offer.

That fellow you find dead outside Fort Ranik is clearly not Little Thom...Ascalon Guards are way too ugly to be one of my favorite henchies.

I think he either became a mercenary, or followed us simply because he was on Rurik's side (and wanted to get away from Farah Cappo and the other pyschos at Piken Square).

This is why you should read everything in quests and missions, so you know what's going on. Also, now that the cut scenes don't effect minnions or mission time, those should be watched as well. Most of the cut scenes are fun anyway, my favorite being where Rurik tells off his father and then his father disowns him. But anyway.......read and watch, you'd be surprised at what you learn about the story.

Little thorn doesn't die, that's someone in his uniform. The little thorn from presearing and the henchie are one in the same though.

What happened to Gate Guard Torin is even worse.. he became a sexy bandit for 2 years before getting slowly and agonisingly killed by level 4 people with terrible damage output!

The Bandits in pre-searing are replaced by ugly renegade eles who look a lot like Mozart with a vengeance.

Know who else I feel sorry for? That guy who let Rurik through to Rin. "The king swore death if the gate was opened", and Rurik didn't tell Adelbern.

Although there's a fair chance that Adelbern was so pissed at that point in the story, he either ignored the door altogether or took it out on Rurik. Perhaps he made a deal with Dagnar to kill Rurik, since if Adelbern killed him personally, every Ascalonian would hate him. </insanity>

Actually that's a possibility ><

It's pretty obvious that the king isn't in command of his armed forces. You have Rurik buggering off over the mountains, Duke Barradin charges out on a fools errand with the elite of the Ascalon army and gets encircled in Piken Square, soldiers deserting left and right, while the king desperately tries to rally everyone into defence of the wall.

The Ascalon army is clearly in complete disarray. It's not on the brink of collapse, it HAS collapsed, and what remains are isolated pockets of resistance.

The king is no position to make deals with anyone about anything, nor is there any need to: the Stone Summit can hardly miss that a train of refugees are trying to pass through a heavily guarded pass.

Gotta love this
First people don't read the quest dialogs
Then they skip the mission cutscenes
Then they complain about how the story makes no sense and how Anet sucks at making a story and they should hire pro's to do it for them ffs.
Well, at least Picclo got that this quest was about little thom

My impression was that the split isn't quite as drastic as all that. One of the problems with the way Guild Wars is set up is that the timeline gets a little disjointed, but here's my impression:

When you arrive in post-Searing, the Vanguard (members of which formed Barradin's force, and which the PCs are members of at that time) are Rurik's personal army, seperate from the regular army. At this point, Rurik is looking to go on the offensive against the Charr, so he's in favour of Barradin's expedition. However, he also has doubts about the ability of Ascalon to drive out the Charr on its own, so he supports an alliance with Kryta to do so. Meanwhile, Adelburn is firmly against working with the former enemy, and is more inclined to bunker down and hold what he still has.

After the fall of Rin, Rurik decides that without allies, Ascalon is doomed to fall short of a miracle (and a more significant one than the use of Stormcaller, at that). Since Adelburn would rather exile his son than form an alliance, Rurik decides to take as many people of Ascalon as will go with him to rest in Kryta against the day they can achieve the strength, either on their own or with Krytan aid, to return. From Adelburn's viewpoint, this is actually a political victory, if one that leaves him heirless - he's disposed of those elements of his population that have grown tired of fighting and thus may be deadweight in his view, as well as Rurik's more diehard followers in the military, while what is left of the Vanguard that doesn't go with Rurik (presumably including Barradin's force, as he doesn't show up later) is reabsorbed into the main army. Chances are, Adelburn wasn't expecting the exile to lead to Rurik's death, instead hoping that Rurik would come crawling back begging for forgiveness after a few years.

The situation with the Ascalon Army is still bad, but not quite the doom-and-gloom that you suggest. I see it as a balance between two spent forces - the Ascalon army ravaged during the Searing and the Charr forces ravaged by being pushed out of Kryta and the Cataclysm of Orr - with the Charr having enough of an advantage to be the side with the initiative until the destruction of their forces in Rin. After that, my impression is that even with the exodus, the Ascalonian forces are at least a match for the Charr - at least until the Titans show up.

The only plothole I see is Grendich Courthouse. The only way I can reconcile that is that it's not actually supposed to be back in Ascalonian hands until after Mission 4, and the fact that it is beforehand is a continuity issue just like what happens when any mission is bypassed. The other alternatives are that it's held out since the Searing, or it's a scouting camp that tries to avoid revealing that it is occupied to the Charr.

If henching is a punishment, why don't we have Gwen as a henchie? Or better still - armor 10 target dummy.

You should be able to give Little Thom some dwarven ale. I'm sure his dialogue would be a lot funnier after pounding down some brew.

id love to see little thom drunk talking. maybe hes say things about why he deserted. or maybe just down right random stuff

I think he just comes with you because of some "unpaid debts" (he says something about that in his outpost dialogue).