it didnt occur to me until a convo i had last night that many people haven't seen the asura personal story, so i want to say PSA: omg. please play it. and the dungeon stories relating to it (SE, CoE, also arah p2). it contextualizes a lot of the insanity you see in VoE soooo goooooood, a lot of it is built off pre-existing asura lore tidbits and doesn't come out of nowhere
asura base game story (PS and dungeon together) has got: political espionage, bodybags, murder fakeouts, secret police, arson, human (and charr. norn. etc) experimentation, a lot of war crimes, kudu trying to kill everybody, communist revolutions?, kudu trying to kill everyone again, women permanently soul-melding with golems and slowly losing their sapience in horrifying fashion, mirror dimensions and evil commanders, Surprise! The Council Has Been Bad The Whole Time!, underground illegal golem fighting rings, mordrem before they were mordrem, experimental dragon magic slop fusions, kudu tries to kill us a third time, dragon corruption (sexy), The Terminator, completely wrong interpretations of snaff's research, moral quandaries for your commander (you get to kill questionably innocent people with a button press if you so desire!), mind controlled risen snipers, experimental mursaat dimensional phase shifting, nuclear disasters, gw1 characters who are already dead trying to kill you... ETC.