Guild Wars 2

“Burden of Choice” is an achievement line/“permanent” quest unlocked by coming in physical contact with one of the Sad Anomalies that appear during play. It explains the anomalies and gives us a reason for all those Bloodstone Slivers we’ve been finding.

EDIT: I just realized this is brand new content, so spoilers below!

Burden of Choice

It follows the Pact Commander as we consult the Durmand Priory to figure out why we are seeing these anomalies and screaming in agony at random times during play. We recreate a “Shadowstone,” a piece of ancient Seer technology which, in theory, should stop these visions and contain the excess magic we have taken on lately. Then the game presents us with a choice.

You can either use the Shadowstone on yourself or hand it in to a Consortium merchant who claims he can not only make better use of it, but offer you some Krait Oil that will temporarily suppress your symptoms for a nominal fee.

The whole time you play through this quest, the achievements remind you that you are taking “permanent steps” in completing it, and at the very end, a confirmation screen ominously tells you that your choice is permanent.

The Anomalies

Now we also have Magic Rifts opening around Tyria, and we’re finding that by using a device found buried in a pond, we can be teleported all around Tyria. We’re also finding that under certain conditions, we can turn ourselves into anomalies.

Now all we can do is play the waiting game! These are my questions:

1. What reasons could there be for not putting this in the main LS storyline?
2. What do you speculate could be the results of this choice?
3. What does this mean with the anomalies? Who are they if they aren’t just manifestations of unbound magic? Were souls released from the bloodstone?

I take a wild guess, it is some kind of “hidden” voting.
The vote beeing: Using the Stone vs Giving it to the Consortium.
The result of the vote will influence future events.

That’s what I think too. I wonder what role the Consortium is going to play in future updates. This kind of reminds me of the live content like Flame and Frost from Season 1, and it makes me think we could be getting live content along with the replayable story content.

We also know now that becoming an anomaly means making yourself vulnerable to attacks from players, and that you have a flashing tether to your body, which gets left behind wherever you turned into the anomaly.

1. They likely are using the Current Events as a ‘side story’. They probably thought this didn’t merit enough of a focus on the main plot to put into the main releases. I see the Current Events as akin to the Kiel stuff during Season 1 – the main plot was Scarlet, but Kiel, the Consortium, and Evon had this side plot that affected the main plot quite a bit.
2. Honestly, no clue. I do hope that if there’s some split in plot, that ArenaNet tells us a short “alternate path” – what would have happened if it went the other way, like when they told us that LA would have had more defenses and thus not so destroyed but still inevitably destroyed had Evon won.
3. We know what souls look like so I’m heavily doubting that. Plus they appeared before the bloodstone exploded. If they aren’t djinn being born, then the theory that they are surviving mursaat that remained “phased out” is a good probability.

Hagenfels.8730:

I take a wild guess, it is some kind of “hidden” voting.
The vote beeing: Using the Stone vs Giving it to the Consortium.
The result of the vote will influence future events.

I kind of thought they were doing this back when they added the first Priory v Consortium stuff with the drops from the black lion chest and the ley line defenses.

It’s possible those were not effective in gauging, so they did this.

Well, the ley line defenses at least were not mutually exclusive, so that’s not surprising.

What if all anomalies that we have seen are actually us? Future/past line broken. We teleporting all over the places. Our visions were actually about future. Will we die? and envoy will ressurect us or maybe sb we know. I would like too see us in next episode us that huge anomaly that run across whole map and struggle to survive.

I wonder if the cats are involved >:o
(Schrodinger’s cats! http://i0.wp.com/www.whatsageek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/vlcsnap-2015-07-27-21h42m35s254.png_

Mhm.

They could also pull a Mass Effect on us.
Where we get two “different” Commanders.

Sure it is a account bound thing, where we possible not get both “rewards”, but it sure could be interesting for the future.

However I beleive in the end we just end up with fluff and nothing too special.

I would like those cats to gather resources from nodes like they are able to bring dead birds to us, can offer some charrnip.

Mem no Fushia.7604:

What if all anomalies that we have seen are actually us? Future/past line broken. We teleporting all over the places. Our visions were actually about future. Will we die? and envoy will ressurect us or maybe sb we know. I would like too see us in next episode us that huge anomaly that run across whole map and struggle to survive.

Interesting concept, but there’s a fatal flaw:

All anomalies, except the new appearance for when we become one, are humanoid. And even humanoids that become anomalies have a new appearance.

This achievement is unsatisfying in every way. While I refuse to give out some ancient artifact to the literal Monsanto of Tyria aka Consortium, I have no idea how can the PC allow a priory agent to conduct an experiment with the shadowstone in spite of all the red herrings, and now I have no idea what actually happened to my char. Which was the point of the quest to begin with, so yeah, at least I don’t smell like Krait.

@maxwelgm.4315 I’m not sure Tranton stayed a priory agent until the end. Maezz said that the Consortium has an extensive knowledge network (probably more like spies). Did you notice how Tranton turned into a white (Krytan? Not sure the the exact race of the white human characters) ginger man as opposed to a blacked haired Canthan man? What if the real Tranton was killed/kidnapped and replaced with a Consortium spy?

There are some interestings things going on with this “quest”:

• The changing appearance of the priory member
• The notion that the Consortium wants to take the place of the Priory as a research group, thought still with their corporate angle.
• That the Priory is struggling (and maybe the other orders as well), with the losses of the Pact.
• The Consortium claims to have a better information network

However there is another things we might want to remember as well:
the Orders have spies in them. I am not talking Consortium, but White Mantle.

Now there are several stories that can come from it:

• The Consortium wants to take the place of the Priory, thus our choice is an indirect vote for them. Interestingly with the side effects it could end in an event where Anomaly Priory Members fight against Consortium Drug Addicted Members.

• The Priory has problems, thus the researcher we are consulting is in need to rush his research. As we provide him with our rare material he is finaly able to get results, with us as the guinnipig. He might not have to use us, but who knows what is driving him.

• There is a white mantle spy in the Priory and using that magical device, will be a reason for us, to join them for a cure.

Now there is also another interesting angle. The Ascension towards Godhood. We know that being able to gather and govern lots of magic allows for godlike abilities.
If we consume magic uncontrolled, we end up as Anomalies. However the Shadowstone could be an ancient device, that is allowing us to regulate the magic flow, thus getting us closer to being gods.

It might not be in our interest, but maybe the interest of the “researcher”.

I can go even further, with him being a White Mantle. Lazarus did indeed absorb large amounts of magical energy, but isn’t able to control it. Now he needs something like the Shadowstone to vent his body from this energy.
Maybe Lazarus is now a ticking magical atom bomb, ready to blow up for his revenge.

This is probably a trap.

Ti’s most defiantly a trap!

However, there is no clear outcome to the choice we make here and I supported the Priory in the past so I chose them for this event.

Personally, I believe there is a spy (or some mischief) within the Priory. The strong evidence and accounts suggesting there is such a spy; weather he is working for the Consortium, White Mantle or (dare I suspect) the Order of Whispers, means that our choice boils down to…

Priory: See whats down the rabbit hole?

Consortium: Turn a blind eye and swallow the “Snake Oil” salesman’s Krait Oil?

It’s been established that the Order of Whispers has had spies in the Priory for some time, and the Priory has known this since the forming of the Pact (although after the forming of the Pact, they’re probably not too worried about it).

We have, however, now had a second indication that the Priory has been infiltrated by someone from outside the Pact. Could be the same infiltrator willing to supply information to multiple sides, could be multiple spies.

Incidentally, regarding the historian, he seems to change each time you enter the Priory HQ. First time I went in, he was Canthan, but the door to Gixx’s office was bugged and I couldn’t talk to Ogden. When I went in again, he had the more Ascalonian(1) look. When I came back with the Shadestone, he was Canthan again.

(1) Using ‘Ascalonian’ because we know that Ascalonians have European appearances. I suspect at least some Orrians and original Krytans(2) do as well, but can’t be so certain about that one.

(2) Keeping in mind that Kryta was first colonised from Orr, and was then colonised again from Elona around 300AE, likely explaining why a lot of Krytans had Elonian-like colouration in GW1.

I took the priory choice, since I’m interested in what will happen to me now that I’ve used the ancient artefact. It’d be stupid to give it to shady people and not to priory.

Shadiness was one of my considerations as well. First, because strained resources or not, I’d definitely trust the Priory over the Consortium on general principles

Second, depending on your character, you’re either a member of the Priory or an allied order – if anything goes wrong, they have an incentive to help you. For the Consortium… even if they are genuine about the Highly Concentrated Krait Oil being a genuine cure rather than, well, snake oil, the odds that they’ll care if there are side effects or it proves not to be as permanent as they thought are minimal unless they’re paid handsomely to care… and like the conspiracy theories regarding Big Pharma, they may be more interested to keep you buying expensive treatments rather than actually fixing the problem.

We’ve seen the Consortium catting people over before with the refugees – there’s every reason to believe they’re happy to get what they want out of the PC and then leave them twisting in the wind too.

There’s also the consideration that the Shadestone itself might be important for future research. If it’s a kind of precursor to the Bloodstone, understanding how it works might be something that will be useful against the dragons, or to making something to absorb the power from a dying Elder Dragon.

I take by now those that have chose 1 or the other are now vision free? On all characters (which I think is just a game mechanic unfortunately rather than any freak circumstance) as well. One think I was wondering if this was brought on by magic absorption (which I still try and make my character scream even now and again) who else would it have affected?

I only recently saw the massive anomaly run about, and shortly thereafter had a total of 2 visions before I unlocked Burden of Choice. I tried to switch characters to see if I could talk to Ogden on my Priory character instead of who I did encounter, but no dice; Gixx’s office was locked to all except the one who encountered the anomaly. So I have no idea if I will be anomaly free or not, but I suppose time will tell.