Guild Wars 2

Just my impressions from playing this game since release. Sure, I haven’t touched the story since the end of HoT (I’m not going to go into how much I hate the characters and story threads that have been introduced since then), but in terms of the vanilla story…it really feels like the Sylvari are the best race to play through as. Not only are they born when the dragon crisis arises, but Trahearne is immensely important to the vanilla story, the Pale Tree and Caithe have huge roles in HoT onward, and the main theme song of the vanilla story is from the Grove and Pale Tree (the music that plays during the end credits and at other key moments). Sylvari also play a huge role in HoT in general thanks to Mordremoth.

On top of all of that, it seems to me that the best of the three Personal Story options to choose from as a Sylvari to best tie into the rest of the vanilla story is the one involving the Orrian mirror. But that’s my personal opinion after having played all of the Sylvari PSs.

What do the rest of you think? All races are important to the story (vanilla and post HoT), but Sylvari feel as if they have the most relevance to it.

A complaint raised more than once has been the emphasis placed on the Sylvari when it comes to the GW2 story.

Not only story. Worldbuilding as well. Sylvari, as a race, have too big reputation and importance to the world, compared to what they should have based on their history. They’re basically the “humans” of the setting, except turned up to eleven.

Let’s put it this way once and for all: the emphasis on sylvaries is intented as well as logical and directly follow the lore set up of Guild Wars because it ended with the birth of the Sylvari race. Now let’s take a look at the real culprit of all of this: was the story telling of how Sylvaries evolved throughout these 250 years as good as the storytelling of Guild Wars in general ? No, certainly not.

every race is canon, but the sylvari have a lot of involvement in arc 2.
Don’t get fooled though, even though trahearne plays a big role in arc 1, the asura are actually carrying that campaign.
During the asura personal story, you make several important revelations about magic, corruption and dragon minions, and then the asura turn the corruptive ability of magic against zhaitan. Trahearne cleanses the source of Orr, but the asura study zhaitan and make the killing weapon.
So arc 1 is dominated by the Asura in general, with the help of Trahearne,
while arc 2 is dominated by the sylvari.

if arc 3 goes to the crystal desert we might see a dominance of humans in the story

Personal story from Lion’s Arch onwards was essentially a group effort by the sylvari, asura, and charr, with humans and norn essentially being spear-carriers. (Something I consider to have been especially problematic given that, well, it was Orr we were talking about.)

LS1 was basically driven by asura and sylvari, noting that LS1 was essentially villain-driven with the ‘good guys’ basically never taking any proactive actions to speak of. So, essentially, it was driven by Scarlet and the Inquest.

LS2 and HoT… basically sylvari all the way with a little bit of human, with cameos from the others.

LS3 has thus far been balanced between protagonist asura and antagonist human (and Balthazar, who for story purposes counts as being part of human lore). Depending on what happens in the final episode, the norn might finally get a proper spotlight.

From the expansion leaks:
[spoiler]The expansion looks to be going human all the way, given the destination, although geography means the charr might play a significant role too. Given what happened to Orr, though, there’s no guarantees that the location will actually mean that humans will be dominant.[/quote]

draxynnic.3719:

Personal story from Lion’s Arch onwards was essentially a group effort by the sylvari, asura, and charr, with humans and norn essentially being spear-carriers. (Something I consider to have been especially problematic given that, well, it was Orr we were talking about.)

LS1 was basically driven by asura and sylvari, noting that LS1 was essentially villain-driven with the ‘good guys’ basically never taking any proactive actions to speak of. So, essentially, it was driven by Scarlet and the Inquest.

LS2 and HoT… basically sylvari all the way with a little bit of human, with cameos from the others.

LS3 has thus far been balanced between protagonist asura and antagonist human (and Balthazar, who for story purposes counts as being part of human lore). Depending on what happens in the final episode, the norn might finally get a proper spotlight.

From the expansion leaks:
[spoiler]The expansion looks to be going human all the way, given the destination, although geography means the charr might play a significant role too. Given what happened to Orr, though, there’s no guarantees that the location will actually mean that humans will be dominant.

[/quote]

Didn’t we involve Balthazar in the defense of Lion’s Arch, though?

If you go down the Priory path, you use an idol to channel an avatar of Balthazar, but that was set up by Steward Gixx who’s making snide comments through the entire thing, and if you didn’t pay close attention you might come out of it thinking that humans weren’t required to be involved in that at all (the only indication is that all of the scholars who perform the ritual are human). One of the options for one of the story steps near the end involves summoning one of the Reapers of Grenth, but the asura have their hands over that one as well – ArenaNet felt the need to insert a bunch of asura to show the priestess of Grenth how it’s done.

Both humans and norn get the occasional moment of importance in the post-LA personal story, but they’re so overshadowed by the other three that what is in there feels like a token effort. Similar observations can be made for the races that are out of the spotlight in the Living Story – they’re not completely forgotten, but they’re clearly not the ones driving the story either.

You could think of it this way: How much would the story have changed if a particular race had not been included?

For the personal story, removing the humans and norn would have changed a few instances, but would not have changed the overall direction of the plot. Orr was pretty much treated as a generic abandoned ruin – the fact that humans had history there was really not particularly used there. Orr could have been the ruins of the civilisation of some ancient race we’ve never heard of with their own gods, and the story would have worked out the same. Meanwhile, sylvari provided the drive, the asura provided the knowledge, and the charr provided the heavy equipment. (An argument could be made that the charr contribution could have been replaced by more asura tech, but what we see is the majority of the equipment being charr with asura tech performing specialist functions).

A similar analysis could be made for the various Living World seasons. For instance, the charr in Season 3 have had a few brief appearances, but the story would not have significantly changed if they weren’t there.

Ah, I see your point.
But there’s a good redemption point; Cantha has gotten pretty xenophobic, so it’s mostly humans and xeno-slaves, and I think if we go to the crystal desert we’ll see a lot of human history as well. So if we go to either of these places, it wouldn’t make sense for the other races to take the reigns (besides the pacts efforts of course)

Amaimon.7823:

Ah, I see your point.
But there’s a good redemption point; Cantha has gotten pretty xenophobic, so it’s mostly humans and xeno-slaves, and I think if we go to the crystal desert we’ll see a lot of human history as well. So if we go to either of these places, it wouldn’t make sense for the other races to take the reigns (besides the pacts efforts of course)

Remember, that you could have said that as well about Orr, and we know how it ended.

Either Sylvari for HoT,or alternatively Human commoner,which ties nicely with the events in Season3.

Canon race is pretty much what the player chooses.
Although in the Scarlet’s War cutscene it’s a female Norn stomping Scarlet at about 59 seconds in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH2JGRkopyA

Only actually looked up the video because as i was replaying that bit of Living World I thought that was my character in the cutscene, looked it up to see if it’s your own character you get in the cutscene or if everyone sees a female Norn wearing red stag armour stomping Scarlet.
Second time watching it I noticed there are plenty of differences but you can probably see why for the quick time seeig her at first I thought it was the character I was using in the cutscene.

Well if you recall pre-launch, both the artists and the writers seemed to have A LOT of love for the Sylvari race. There was a lot of blog posts and interviews about the design of the race, a lot more than for any other race.

I didn’t think they would go as far as to make them the “hero” race of the game though. It felt like they were trying to “force” us to like the race by putting a Sylvari in the foreground at every corner, and they went as far as putting a Sylvary-exclusive achievement in HoT. I happen to not like the Sylvari very much, so it came out as more annoying than cool to me.

I hope that Sylvaris will take the backseat for the next expansion and let us explore the other races of the game. I don’t mean to completely erase them from the story (Canach is my buddy!) just don’t make the story focused on Sylvaris this time around. Please?

Bearhugger.4326:

I didn’t think they would go as far as to make them the “hero” race of the game though. It felt like they were trying to “force” us to like the race by putting a Sylvari in the foreground at every corner, and they went as far as putting a Sylvary-exclusive achievement in HoT. I happen to not like the Sylvari very much, so it came out as more annoying than cool to me.

Yeah, making it required to have at least one character of a particular race to get the act mastery achievements was a bit rude. Simply having the achievements I think is fine, but they shouldn’t have been required for the act mastery.

More broadly… I think, at this point, the sylvari story has been pretty much told. There are a few loose threads hanging, but this is ArenaNet… there always are, and I wouldn’t hold my breath on any of them getting resolved any time soon. The current direction of the story seems to be pointing to humans being the sylvari of this arc, but… we’ll see. As Astralporing said, I would have expected humans to have had a much more important role in Orr.

Astralporing.1957:

Amaimon.7823:

Ah, I see your point.
But there’s a good redemption point; Cantha has gotten pretty xenophobic, so it’s mostly humans and xeno-slaves, and I think if we go to the crystal desert we’ll see a lot of human history as well. So if we go to either of these places, it wouldn’t make sense for the other races to take the reigns (besides the pacts efforts of course)

Remember, that you could have said that as well about Orr, and we know how it ended.

well, yea, if this was pre-gw1, but we know that during gw1 the nation was already sleeping with the fishes, so there isn’t much point in hoping for human relations in a sunken nation.
We know Cantha is like 95% humans now, (they might have some trouble with the wardens, and kept some naga/tengu as slaves). As for Elona, we know Palawa Joke-o is in charge, but he has no interest in turning everyone into undead. The people who swear fealty and loyalty might hardly even notice more than a different king’s name. So humans might still thrive there.

Orr was still the holy city of the human religion, so while there were certainly no live humans, human knowledge and their connection with the gods should have been much more relevant.

On the knowledge perspective… much of the knowledge of Orr’s history should have come from humans. It should have been a human scholar or priest who established what rites the Lyssan priesthood would have used for interring the dead, for instance, and Priestess Rhie really should have known the rite to invoke the Seventh Reaper without an asura butting in with a technomagical psychometry device to show her how to perform a ritual to her own god. Trahearne could still have been the expert on Orr as it is now, but the expert on Orr as it was should have been a human.

On the religion perspective… all those cathedral events? It should have been the role of humans to deal with those, performing rites at each of the cathedrals to reconsecrate them and deny them to Zhaitan… or even turn their powers against Zhaitan. Instead, we get some asura technomagical device that shuts down the energy flow between the cathedral and the shrines, and in most cases it isn’t even a human who plants it.

This is the sort of thing we’re talking about. What we got was essentially humans being marginalised in the ruins of their own history. It would be like the Rata Novus event chain having Agent Zildi’s reprogramming of the defences replaced by Havroun Weibe running around performing supplications to Raven to make the Pact’s soldiers look like Rata Novan citizens. You can come up with a reason why it would work, but it’s really not how it should have been done.

It’s probably harder to do this in a land that humans actually inhabit, but given the precedent, I wouldn’t say it’s impossible. Cantha, for instance, could be presented as being so xenophobic that foreign humans are treated no different to nonhumans. (Also, as a note, I would be very surprised if we ever do go to Cantha in GW2. Pleasantly surprised, but surprised nonetheless.)

Bearhugger.4326:

Well if you recall pre-launch, both the artists and the writers seemed to have A LOT of love for the Sylvari race. There was a lot of blog posts and interviews about the design of the race, a lot more than for any other race.

I didn’t think they would go as far as to make them the “hero” race of the game though. It felt like they were trying to “force” us to like the race by putting a Sylvari in the foreground at every corner, and they went as far as putting a Sylvary-exclusive achievement in HoT. I happen to not like the Sylvari very much, so it came out as more annoying than cool to me.

I hope that Sylvaris will take the backseat for the next expansion and let us explore the other races of the game. I don’t mean to completely erase them from the story (Canach is my buddy!) just don’t make the story focused on Sylvaris this time around. Please?

Depends, do you like asura? Because in the pecking order, next to sylvari are asura.

Before GW2 came out, Sylvari were definately the “new kid on the block” (anyone get the referance or am I that old?). That and they basically had to flesh out Sylvari the most with all the other races having had some type of appearence in GW1.

Combine that with the first expansion being Sylvari focused and yes, the story has been quite Sylvari heavy thus far. I do think this is about to change with humans (and maybe Charr) taking more of a spotlight coming the next expansion going by the current Living World story.

That being said, personally I enjoyed the sylvari race story and background almost the least from all 5 races. That might have been because during most of the sylvari personal story steps you get to fight undead, only to lead into helping the orders fight undead and ending with fighting zhaitan with his army of undead… It was terrible.

You picked “Act with wisdom”, didn’t you?

I think sylvari lost a lot of what made them interesting when their origins were revealed. This has essentially turned them from being the most mysterious playable race in the game to the least – about the only thing left that isn’t known about them is how the Pale Tree came to be independent of Mordremoth, and whether the Pale Tree is capable of growing seeds for new Pale Trees. Basically everything else is known.

draxynnic.3719:

You picked “Act with wisdom”, didn’t you?

I think sylvari lost a lot of what made them interesting when their origins were revealed. This has essentially turned them from being the most mysterious playable race in the game to the least – about the only thing left that isn’t known about them is how the Pale Tree came to be independent of Mordremoth, and whether the Pale Tree is capable of growing seeds for new Pale Trees. Basically everything else is known.

Yeah, for my current Sylvari toon. We get to go into Orr for that, which is why it felt the most important.

I agree. One thing I dislike a lot about the post vanilla Personal Story content was how the origin of the Sylvari was handled, and so many characters introduced from there on (Taimi is the only new character I don’t despise with a burning passion). I also hate how Caithe was martyred (not even martyred, she was hated for everything she did or didn’t do. kitten ed if she did, kitten ed if she didn’t).

well the Sylvari story ends with HoT so, we can look forward to other races getting the spot light, as humans did in the current living world story.

BrotherBelial.3094:

well the Sylvari story ends with HoT so, we can look forward to other races getting the spot light, as humans did in the current living world story.

there’s still some open hooks;
> New Duchess of the Nightmare
> Malyck
> Unwell (but recovering) Pale Tree
> what happened to the sylvari who fell to mordremoth, are they ghouls now, are they free, are they caught inbetween?
> The Pale Tree is more than a champion of mordremoth, she has more power/ability than she would’ve had if she was just a champion, mainly the dream, which has yet to be explained.

draxynnic.3719:

You picked “Act with wisdom”, didn’t you?

I think sylvari lost a lot of what made them interesting when their origins were revealed. This has essentially turned them from being the most mysterious playable race in the game to the least – about the only thing left that isn’t known about them is how the Pale Tree came to be independent of Mordremoth, and whether the Pale Tree is capable of growing seeds for new Pale Trees. Basically everything else is known.

There’s still Malyk as well. Moreover knowing that Mordremoth has access to the Dream and was able to influence Sylvari’s thoughts through the Dream (even if he couldn’t dominate them, like with Caithe) I wouldn’t be all that surprised if our assumptions about their origin would turn out to be wrong and that their weakness to Mordremoth was inherent to their connection to the Dream rather than due to being Mordremoth’s “offspring” and that attempting to let them believe they were meant to serve him (by messing with Wynne’s Dream) was just a con to attempt to lower their resistance to such.

I don’t remember if the Pale Tree actually confirmed the Mordremoth link (how could she do so reliably anyway, seeing as she wouldn’t exactly know how she was created, for pretty obvious reasons) so all we have to go on are Wynne’s Dream and Mordremoth’s words.
The first could have been manipulated, the second is hardly a reliable source and the susceptibility to Mordremoth’s domination could be explained away through the shared connection to the Dream.

So yeah, I wouldn’t exactly be surprised if the last word about the Sylvari’s origin hasn’t been said yet…

I would laugh so hard if it turned out that the ‘sylvari are dragon minions’ reveal was fake all along – but I don’t expect it. Double-twists like that aren’t ArenaNet’s style, and the analogue with the Blighting Trees is pretty unsubtle. The argument could be made that the Blighting Trees are corrupted Pale Trees rather than the Pale Tree being a Blighting Tree that somehow came to be free of Mordremoth’s control, but the evidence does seem to be pointing toward the latter.

Malyck is a mystery, but apparently one that ArenaNet had intended to resolve in HoT but didn’t have the time to do it. However, ‘is there another cleansed tree out there’ is a pretty minor mystery compared to ‘where did the sylvari come from and what is their purpose?’ – each of the other races now have greater mysteries.

sorry, my English is a bit rusty, but what is “Canon race” ?

azizul.8469:

sorry, my English is a bit rusty, but what is “Canon race” ?

Canon is a term for ‘the writer’s concept’ or ‘the true history’

A good example is diablo.
In diablo 1 you can play as any of a few classes, but canonically, it’s the warrior who did the event and absorbed diablo and became the dark wanderer.

another good example is in gw2, during the dragon stand event chain, you are there, doing the event, but you’re not the pact commander. the pact commander is canonically fighting mordremoth, while the pact, supported by guilds and allies are fighting the maw of mordremoth.

So canonically is a term often used when visual variables can be chosen, but there is still a ‘real’ way that the writers decided really happened. So, non-canon means ‘telling the same story, with a different method’.

A defenition I found on the web (might not be official) is
A telling of the story that does not defy the author’s rules, but allows for artistic freedom, or retelling, without it affecting the final outcome.

To answer your question: there isn’t really a right answer.
The problem is, there are 5 races, and there is only one pact commander who was chosen by Trahearne to motivate the pact. The reasoning in this topic is that the Sylvari play such a big role, since the player sylvari has the wyld hunt “defy the dragons”. But I don’t think the writers have set on a single race who is the canonical pact commander.
If anything, it might actually be a female norn, since thats what they used for the cinematic in LS1 recap

azizul.8469:

sorry, my English is a bit rusty, but what is “Canon race” ?

A race that can fit down a canon, ie Asura?

Anyway, last I checked all races play a part in the story of the GW2 world. Price still goes to Asura though, since the Asuran player character is literally the ruler of the world. Well was. Will be. It’s complicated.

Even Scarlet wouldnt have gained her fame without the help of the player created steam creatures. Which technically means you are responsible for the dragons waking up.

Hrrrmn. It’s obscure whether the Infinity Ball player character is claiming that he or she invented the steam creatures, or whether his or her ‘creations’ were an improvement on Scarlet’s original design. The stuff in the Living Story seasons seems to indicate that Scarlet invented them rather than reverse-engineering some she picked up from Lornar’s Pass.

That said, I think it is canon that all of the story arcs happened, suggesting that there are at least fifteen heroes… however, only one of them is the Dragonslayer. The others either died off before they got there or became lesser Pact officers.

draxynnic.3719:

Hrrrmn. It’s obscure whether the Infinity Ball player character is claiming that he or she invented the steam creatures, or whether his or her ‘creations’ were an improvement on Scarlet’s original design. The stuff in the Living Story seasons seems to indicate that Scarlet invented them rather than reverse-engineering some she picked up from Lornar’s Pass.

That said, I think it is canon that all of the story arcs happened, suggesting that there are at least fifteen heroes… however, only one of them is the Dragonslayer. The others either died off before they got there or became lesser Pact officers.

yea, all (read: ‘most’) the personal stories happened canonically, but also canonically, only one of them became the pact commander, I think the others are just high-ranks, or associates in the pact. But there are also a few contradictory stories, like the Asuran College (first PS). They couldn’t all three have happened since only one person can earn the Savant title. In that prospect I think its the teleporter gun that canonically happened.
It’s also nice to note that in Kudu’s description the weather-ball is mentioned so that one is truly canonical

draxynnic.3719:

Hrrrmn. It’s obscure whether the Infinity Ball player character is claiming that he or she invented the steam creatures, or whether his or her ‘creations’ were an improvement on Scarlet’s original design. The stuff in the Living Story seasons seems to indicate that Scarlet invented them rather than reverse-engineering some she picked up from Lornar’s Pass.

No its not obscure.

“Wait until you get to know my creations. In my reality, they conquered Tyria.”

We know they existed in Lornars Pass long before Scarlet did anything, that she was interested in the infinity ball and that her inventions was based on salvaged materials.
The obscure part is whether that other reality, dimension or future still exist. Because they said all the things, meaning the infinity ball could literally reach out anywhere anytime.

Since the Lornars Pass steam creatures exist even when not picking the infinity ball, we know it affects all reality anyway. Also those steam creatures are noted to come from portals from the future…

draxynnic.3719:

LS1 was basically driven by asura and sylvari, noting that LS1 was essentially villain-driven with the ‘good guys’ basically never taking any proactive actions to speak of. So, essentially, it was driven by Scarlet and the Inquest.

You forgot about Levvi driving The Lost Shores, Canach driving Southsun Part 2, and Dessa… There was Ellen Kiel, who was basically the second main figure (just after Scarlet) as while half of the plot dealt with “Scarlet’s actions” the other half dealt with “Kiel’s actions”, but she largely played second fiddle during her arcs (either to Levvi or to Magnus).

Bearhugger.4326:

Well if you recall pre-launch, both the artists and the writers seemed to have A LOT of love for the Sylvari race. There was a lot of blog posts and interviews about the design of the race, a lot more than for any other race.

This was because sylvari were “the new thing”. Players at the time were almost all GW1 vets, or were getting into GW1 in preparation for GW2, so they all had some degree of introduction to the other races.

There were a lot of blog posts about the humans, asura, norn, and charr too, mind you, but most interviews focused on sylvari because they were “the big unknown” to players that could be talked about.

Mind you, this is the very same excuse ArenaNet writers gave us to “quell” complaints about the PS and S1 being so sylvari focused, with promises that they’d go away from sylvari post-S1 (well, didn’t quite work out with HoT, but after HoT that seems to be the case).

So we may not see sylvari play a major role for some time; partially because ArenaNet had “done their focus” (Mordremoth) but also because Anet tends to have kneejerk reactions to issues.

Amaimon.7823:

BrotherBelial.3094:

well the Sylvari story ends with HoT so, we can look forward to other races getting the spot light, as humans did in the current living world story.

there’s still some open hooks;
> New Duchess of the Nightmare
> Malyck
> Unwell (but recovering) Pale Tree
> what happened to the sylvari who fell to mordremoth, are they ghouls now, are they free, are they caught inbetween?
> The Pale Tree is more than a champion of mordremoth, she has more power/ability than she would’ve had if she was just a champion, mainly the dream, which has yet to be explained.

You forgot that we still do not know what the nature of the Dream or Nightmare are (they did not originate from the Pale Tree and both opposed Mordremoth so they didn’t originate from him either; promotions made it out to sound that Mordremoth was “hijacking” the Dream to turn sylvari, not that he made the Dream and was reclaiming it), or what happened to the cave full of seeds.

draxynnic.3719:

Hrrrmn. It’s obscure whether the Infinity Ball player character is claiming that he or she invented the steam creatures, or whether his or her ‘creations’ were an improvement on Scarlet’s original design. The stuff in the Living Story seasons seems to indicate that Scarlet invented them rather than reverse-engineering some she picked up from Lornar’s Pass.

Oh, no, it’s pretty clear that the Grand High Sovereign claims creation of the steam creatures.

Mysterious Stranger: Wait until you get to know my creations. In my reality, they conquered Tyria.
Mysterious Stranger: You don’t stand a chance. In your world, this technology hasn’t even been invented yet!

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Split_Second

However…

Dawdler.8521:

We know they existed in Lornars Pass long before Scarlet did anything, that she was interested in the infinity ball and that her inventions was based on salvaged materials.

This is also wrong. It’s also outright stated for Scarlet to have invented them, prior to the above dialogue taking place:

Ceara: My black-market dredge contacts continue to prove useful. For a little gold, they sell me their scrap iron so I can build my steam minotaurs.
Ceara: I’ve landed a lab assistant position with Omadd, an intelligent but overly gentle asura. I should be able to wrap him around my little finger.
Ceara: Today I am sixteen cycles old, and to celebrate, I’ve been testing my first steam portal with steam minotaurs. The last batch actually made it in one piece.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Prosperity%27s_Mystery

(Note for dates: Ceara was born in 1304 – so turning 16 is 1320 AE)

So the steam creatures “don’t exist in 1325 AE” because they were not invented yet, but yet Ceara made them in or before 1320 AE and sent them to Lornar’s Pass (and, apparently, Brisban Wildlands) around 1320 AE.

What’s truly off is that despite the proclamation that Scarlet sent them to Brisban Wildlands, the only ones we see there are from the Infinity Ball or Thaumanova explosion fallout (or malfunctioning asura gates). Further, dialogue in Lornar’s implies that the steam creature invasion is relatively recent, yet the Season 2 dialogue implies they were sent there years ago.

It’s a blatant, poorly researched, retcon that turns the future you into a terrible, horrible liar (as well as any NPC proclaiming the Steam creatures are a recent invasion, which is about all NPCs talking about them).

Notice, that Scarlet doesn’t actually say whether she was the one to invent steam creatures, or if she was (or wasn’t) basing the ones she produced on someone else’s work. It’s entirely possible she had a contact with one of the steam portals before and is just trying to copy what she saw.

Amaimon.7823:

yea, all (read: ‘most’) the personal stories happened canonically, but also canonically, only one of them became the pact commander, I think the others are just high-ranks, or associates in the pact. But there are also a few contradictory stories, like the Asuran College (first PS). They couldn’t all three have happened since only one person can earn the Savant title. In that prospect I think its the teleporter gun that canonically happened.
It’s also nice to note that in Kudu’s description the weather-ball is mentioned so that one is truly canonical

The very old energy detector shows up in Orr as well. You’re right in that only one could have won, but I think all three inventions existed.

Dawdler.8521:

No its not obscure.

“Wait until you get to know my creations. In my reality, they conquered Tyria.”

We know they existed in Lornars Pass long before Scarlet did anything, that she was interested in the infinity ball and that her inventions was based on salvaged materials.
The obscure part is whether that other reality, dimension or future still exist. Because they said all the things, meaning the infinity ball could literally reach out anywhere anytime.

Since the Lornars Pass steam creatures exist even when not picking the infinity ball, we know it affects all reality anyway. Also those steam creatures are noted to come from portals from the future…

The term “creations” IS ambiguous about who the initial inventor was. Somebody who builds an airplane today isn’t going to hold back from calling that airplane their ‘creation’ just because the Wright Brothers were the first to build an airplane.

The steam creatures in Lornar’s Pass are Scarlet’s. She mentions sending them to Lornar’s Pass in her holodiary, and it’s a plot point that the reason she was able to take control of the Watchknights was that the Watchknights were made using reverse-engineered steam creature technology… and the human designers failed to notice and remove Scarlet’s control mechanisms from the design.

(Regarding Konig’s point about how recent the invasion was… Scarlet sending them to Lornar’s Pass is the last thing in her diary. So it might well have happened just before the personal story starts.)

Konig Des Todes.2086:

You forgot about Levvi driving The Lost Shores, Canach driving Southsun Part 2, and Dessa… There was Ellen Kiel, who was basically the second main figure (just after Scarlet) as while half of the plot dealt with “Scarlet’s actions” the other half dealt with “Kiel’s actions”, but she largely played second fiddle during her arcs (either to Levvi or to Magnus).

More ‘summarised over’ than ‘forgot’ – however, the general principle stands. Southsun 1 was essentially driven by Levvi (an asura), the Consortium (multiracial but run by asura) and Canach (sylvari), and Southsun 2 was driven by Canach (sylvari) and the Consortium (asura), with Canach essentially playing the role of the villain, and the Consortium being, at least, morally questionable. So… those parts fit the trend of being driven by asura and sylvari, and mostly being villain-driven. (Levvi and Kiel are reacting to events more than driving them.) Granted, they don’t fit in the category of Scarlet and Inquest, but I was generalising the season as a whole rather than trying to account for every release.

Furthermore, I would add that in Kiel’s case, the fact that she’s human is irrelevant to the story – it would work just as well if she were any other race.

Astralporing.1957:

Notice, that Scarlet doesn’t actually say whether she was the one to invent steam creatures, or if she was (or wasn’t) basing the ones she produced on someone else’s work. It’s entirely possible she had a contact with one of the steam portals before and is just trying to copy what she saw.

You apparently missed the point where the “Grand High Sovereign’s creations” do not exist in Tyria, and that Scarlet sent her steam creations to Lornar’s Pass.

In other words, the sole sources of steam creatures are from the Grand High Sovereign in 1325 and Lornar’s Pass, but Scarlet created steam creatures in 1319 AE.

Even the NPCs around Lornar’s Pass are talking about the steam creatures being a recent invasion – a recent invasion in 1325 AE.

In other words, Scarlet had no source to “base the ones she produced on someone else’s work”. There were no steam creatures existing in 1319 AE, at all.

draxynnic.3719:

(Regarding Konig’s point about how recent the invasion was… Scarlet sending them to Lornar’s Pass is the last thing in her diary. So it might well have happened just before the personal story starts.)

I’m not so sure, the town folks act like it’s been a long time since Scarlet had been around – longer than her death for sure. Granted it would be just over two years between the Steam creature invasion and our arrival in Prosperity so maybe.

All the other entries seem to be closer together though, so it’s weird that from halfway to the end is a 4-5 year gap.

Well, two years or so probably would be regarded as a long time by miners who are members of the playable races. The gap is a bit weirder, though.

One possibility is that she sent them to Lornar’s Pass earlier, but to an isolated region where they weren’t bothering anybody, and then they spread from there – becoming a threat that was noticed by the Orders around 1325.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

In other words, Scarlet had no source to “base the ones she produced on someone else’s work”. There were no steam creatures existing in 1319 AE, at all.

We don’t know that. We just know she didn’t base her steam creatures on those from Lornar’s (but we knew that already, because those were retconned to be her creations). And that unlike Grand High Soverein, she only claimed to make the creatures, but didn’t claim to invent them.