Guild Wars 2

Ever since the reactor fractal was released, a good portion of folks cried out saying that Scarlet was the one responsible for the reactor blowing up. Other accusations also included that Scarlet shouldn’t even be here. While the latter can simply explained with a time line, the former actually perplexes me due to the dialogue for the story mission itself. But first, I want to lay down a foundation of what we knew of the Reactor before this reveal happened.

What we knew at the time was that there was an area in Metrica Province known as the “Thaumanova Reactor”. There are rescue teams on the outskirts of the reactor with multiple wounded. Portals were popping in and out and creatures from around Tryia were appearing seemingly from no where. Talking to some Asura, all they knew was that the reactor blew up suddenly and without much warning. It was, however, destroyed by some Inquest experiment that didn’t work out, and of course, the results were catastrophic.

There are actually two other areas that at least point to the reactor. One is a jumping puzzle in the Iron Matches called “Chaos Crystal Cavern”. There we find an Injured Inquest Researcher who explains that the crystals in this cavern were used for the reactor, and now since the reactor blew, there is a “twinning effect” happening. Which she explains as the following-

“These crystals are creating a sympathetic metamorphic reaction, attracting the chaos rifts from Metrica Province here. Nasty bit of business, that twinning effect. "

Also to note in the cavern are portals that open up with creatures have that same delirious effect. Another small but interesting connection is in Brisband Wildlands way down in the south west porption of the map. There is a small inquest base there known as the Thaumacore Inquiry Center. There isn’t much here except for the name itself must be linked to the reactor. It’s almost like this was the first site for such experiments but on a much smaller scale.

As far as I know, that’s all we knew on the reactor itself and the event before the fractal was released. Of course… I could have missed something.

But now let’s shift gears and look at the fractal itself. You begin by being transformed into Asura standing away from a wall about to be breached. I’m going to assume that you are replaying the role of a small Inquest emergency response team sent in to try to keep the reactor from going critical and just blowing everything up. After all, the reactor was a high investment to the Inquest and was part of their research on the magic of Tryia of all types. As expected, we see dead or wounded inquest everywhere. The reactor is falling apart and stuff is just going… nuts. Desa walks us through what we need to do and we shut off the two colliders. One is in a room like maze with turrets firing a special type of magical bolt. No doubt this was some experiment using the energies being generated by the reactor. Then the other one is shut off by fighting Subject 6. Subject 6 is an interesting nod to how the Inquest continue to experiment on organics using Tyria’s magic. In COE, we see this through Subject Alpha who is enhanced by dragon magic. Who was Subject Alpha before? We are not sure, but before Subject 6 breaks his container, there is a Asura inside. Of course, something goes wrong and we fight him to shutoff the next collider.

Now we go back to the main chamber and see Scarlet Briar. It makes sense that she is here since she did work with the Inquest for some time. She says a few lines of dialogue and then vanishes… I’ll return to her in a moment. To complete the Fractal we are then tasked to take out an entity above the reactor. Once that is done, the reactor blows leaving a thick essence of mists behind.

So, back to Miss Scarlet. We know that the reactor blew recently enough that she would be working with them. In fact, she deals with them again later down the line with the Aetherblades as they wreck havoc in Lion’s Arch. And as detailed in the short story released by Anet, she went to work with them for a brief while. So, Scarlet and the Inquest have a good history of working together. In fact, some dialogue from the story points to the fact that she helped work on the reactor… and yet in some lines it seems it may be the opposite. This is where I have been somewhat confused about in the past few days. In order to represent this the best, I shall present to you her dialogue within the Fractal itself (taken from the wiki)-

Finding Scarlet Briar taking sample
Scarlet Briar: Reactor approaching critical, panicked evacuation, general mayhem and hysteria…Yep, I’d say my work here is done.
Scarlet Briar: Sorry about all the death, and for the portal pandemonium.
Scarlet Briar: I told the Inquest chaos energy was a misnomer. Mind you, dragon energy is tricky, so I can see how they flubbed it.
Scarlet Briar: At least they helped identify the network of magical channels that crisscross the globe. That was a breakthrough.
Scarlet Briar: Now we know how NOT to do this kind of research right on an intersection of those channels. Live and learn, right?
Scarlet Briar: That’s progress. Hooray for progress! Ooh, but it’s getting a bit too deady in here for me. ’Bye now!

So right off the bat, the first two lines seem to make it sound like she was the one responsible to what is happening to the reactor… But then immediately the following lines make it seem the opposite.

Scarlet Briar: I told the Inquest chaos energy was a misnomer. Mind you, dragon energy is tricky, so I can see how they flubbed it.
Scarlet Briar: At least they helped identify the network of magical channels that crisscross the globe. That was a breakthrough.
Scarlet Briar: Now we know how NOT to do this kind of research right on an intersection of those channels. Live and learn, right?

So, this actually explains what the Inquest were really doing with the reactor. They were messing with the magical channels of Tryia… And they seemed to have done it in the worst location possible : an intersection of the channels. But back to my inquiry. She says the Inquest didn’t listen to her and they “flubbed” it. She also says that “Now we know how NOT to do this kind of research right on an intersection of those channels.” If we removed the first two lines of her dialogue, it would 100% point that this was an experimental accident, and the Inquest didn’t know what they were dealing with (as they often do). From these three lines, we also know that Scarlet was involved in making the reactor as she complains that they didn’t listen to her. So really… it sounds 50/50. Initially it sounds like she was responsible, but after that it sounds like an accident. Further more, Ellen Kiel says the following after completing the fractal-

Captain Ellen Kiel: Chaos energy or dragon energy—either way, Scarlet and the Inquest took this facility too far too fast.

So, according to Keil, it sounds like Scarlet and the Inquest were working on this facility. While the Inquest didn’t fully listen to Scarlet, it seemed that both were responsible for pushing the reactor too far. It is interesting to note this in the other LS content that Scarlet is responsible for. Every Alliance and plan she has made thus far has a strong potential, but then fails… never reaching to a full completion.

So, did Scarlet really blow the reactor? Let’s look at the two lines again one at a time.

“Reactor approaching critical, panicked evacuation, general mayhem and hysteria…Yep, I’d say my work here is done. "

Now, if Scarlet was working on the reactor with the Inquest, perhaps what her implication of " Yep, I’d say my work here is done." is more like “Well, this experiment failed. Time to take what I can and leave.” As in, that sentence seems more like she is just taking what she can and leaving the Inquest to deal with the failure. Again, this reflects back to what other LS has been with Scarlet. She’s made something, tried to make it work, but it fails; however, before she leaves, she picks up the pieces to move onto bigger and better things. On the other hand, it could mean simply that she is reveling in the chaos she created if we go with that she did blow the reactor. Then we have the second line

Sorry about all the death, and for the portal pandemonium.

This line is the hardest one to shift through to say that she didn’t blow the reactor. Was she just “apologizing” for the madness that was being created of the failed experiment, or was it a snide remark? It could go either way.

So, that is where my perplexity lies. We have some dialogue suggesting it was just a failed experiment tampering with the magical channels and that Scarlet and the Inquest were working together to make this experiment work out. Yet, we have a select few dialogue from simply Scarlet herself implying that she may have destroyed the reactor. I’m kinda on the fence about it leaning slightly toward that she did not destroy the reactor. I wish that the dialogue was a bit more clear about what exactly was going on with the reactor. Really, as many times as she has worked with the Inquest, it wouldn’t make sense why she would blow up their reactor. It just seems too important as she seems to imply about the magical channels. So, what do you folks think? Did she blow up the reactor or not?

I tend to think she caused the explosion. The reason comes from story “What Scarlet Saw”. Here’s a quote.

“Things ended suddenly and badly, however, when Ceara and her krewmate Teyo broke into the city’s archives and tampered with several of the designs they found there. It was presented to her as a means to give the Inquest a competitive edge in the upcoming Snaff Prize competitions, but Ceara also left her stamp on a few unrelated projects she found.”

I have a feeling that the Thaumanova Reactor is one of the unrelated projects that Ceara left her stamp on.

She was a part of it, likely warned the Inquest that the scope of their experimentation was a bad idea, but stayed on board anyway hoping for the best.

The inquest blew up the reactor.

@ DarcShriek
Yeah, I do realize that small part in the story. I don’t think that is enough to direct that she sabotaged the reactor as it was an Inquest project. Again, she was working with them not against them

@AKGeo
That’s exactly what I was thinking.

Your right, it is rather weak evidence. However, her comments and attitude seem to portray a person that wasn’t surprised by the explosion. It’s almost as if she expected it to happen.

I explained the reason that she wouldn’t be surprised in my earlier post.

I’d also like to clarify what I meant by “the inquest blew up the reactor”.

The inquest’s experiments went unstable. I believe the player characters are disguised as inquest during the fractal, but are actually non-inquest asura infiltrating the reactor in order to disable it, but arrived too late and were simply a catalyst for the already-fueled reaction that resulted in the disaster.

Yes, the Inquest experiments did become unstable, that is what I explained in my post. That is an interesting proposition that the player is a non-inquest Asura; however, I will still stick to my view that it was simply an Inquest team trying to salvage the operation.

@DarcShriek, as AKGeo mentioned, since she was on board with the project, she knew this sort of thing would happen as the Inquest refused to listen to her according to the dialogue she gave.

Why would the inquest allow her access to the reactor? They already knew her from when she was Ceara. She got kicked out because she couldn’t be trusted. It makes no sense for the inquest to let her work with them on the reactor knowing she couldn’t be trusted.

Would you allow her to work on the reactor knowing what the inquest knew about her?

There is no way she was working with the inquest. The project was too valuable to knowingly allow her anywhere near it.

And yet again she says the following lines-

Scarlet Briar: I told the Inquest chaos energy was a misnomer. Mind you, dragon energy is tricky, so I can see how they flubbed it.
Scarlet Briar: At least they helped identify the network of magical channels that crisscross the globe. That was a breakthrough.
Scarlet Briar: Now we know how NOT to do this kind of research right on an intersection of those channels. Live and learn, right?

Then Kiel says:

Captain Ellen Kiel: Chaos energy or dragon energy—either way, Scarlet and the Inquest took this facility too far too fast.

Key words are- Scarlet and the Inquest. So, yes. I still hold to the fact that they were working on this together. She only got “kicked out” by the Council of Rata Sum because she was caught working with the Inquest. Here is a quote from the story:

“Ceara’s time with the Inquest was brief but extremely productive: they taught her things the other colleges wouldn’t even discuss, and allowed field tests without those irritating and unnecessary safety precautions.

Things ended suddenly and badly, however, when Ceara and her krewmate Teyo broke into the city’s archives and tampered with several of the designs they found there. It was presented to her as a means to give the Inquest a competitive edge in the upcoming Snaff Prize competitions, but Ceara also left her stamp on a few unrelated projects she found.

When caught, Teyo teleported herself to safety and left Ceara to face the consequences. The Council stripped Ceara of her academic credentials and the Peacemakers ejected her from Rata Sum. She laughed and left the city without any of her research notes or belongings, whistling as she went."

There is nothing here that points toward the fact she can’t be trusted by the Inquest. In fact, it would be the opposite. She shouldn’t trust them because they bailed on her; however, we know that if Scarlet wants to know something, she’ll do anything to attain it. It was the Council of Rata Sum that kicked her out not the Inquest. Again, she has worked with them a number of times, and that includes after the time of the reactor when she had the Aetherblades team up with the Inquest. Remember, the Inquest will do anything to get to the top which I believe includes letting Scarlet work on the project. And with the particular attitude that the Inquest have, as shown in the first paragraph on the quote, Scarlet really likes how they think, which again, I believe that’s why the Inquest like her.

Her line “Yup, my work here is done,” struck me as sort of self-deprecating humor on her part.

“Yup, I royally screwed this up,” is essentially what she meant. The reactor was an experiment, and it didn’t pan out. So she left to engage her next experiment, giving a flippant apology to her erstwhile allies for the mess.

There might be something that people might be overlooking.

This happened in the past.
The players aren’t there when Scarlet is talking.
What she is talking to is a team of asura, inquest or not, that is trying to save the reactor.

Yet, people seem to refer to it as if she’s talking to the player.
But in this case she is talking to people that she isn’t an enemy with.
People that hasn’t made it to her “list”.

So she has no reason to say “Haha, f you, I destroyed your thing!”.
Rather the other way around.
I think she’s actually apologizing for what’s happening, but in her own Scarlet way that is not that sincere, partially because she thinks the inquest is to blame because they didn’t listen to her. And she’s saying “Yeah, this is f-ed up, I’d better salvage what I can and leave before this thing blows up” as other people have gathered.

That’s my take on it.

Very good responses folks. I agree to both of your answers. This is the stuff I would hope the rest of the community realizes.

have to admit I thought about the way she acted during the story. Its hard to tell where the “get it done” attitude of her starts and ends but I do admit she is acting a little different suddenly. course what’s new about that a politics