Can someone explain the factions to me - The ward and striders guys

I’m basically at the point where I have to choose between Strider and Ward. I understand that Strider wants to destroy the monolith because he believes it’s evil, but Ward also plans to destroy it after experimenting on it. Still, I don’t trust Ward especially after experiencing that illusion of them attacking me once they realized how valuable my artifact was but I want to know more about each factions before deciding