Guild Wars 2

Has anyone put together all the scraps of clues in the Silverwastes and worked out what they all mean? There are lots of bits and pieces like the asura gate at Fort Vandal, the orders, the prisoner, armor scraps, ensignias, and so on. I keep getting distracted by fighting sadly and never put them together but I am I right in guessing that bandits held the forts until recently?

I will guess however that the White Mantle had a major base in Mordremoth’s territory somewhere and it was wiped out or isolated a while ago. This was why no orders were sent to Fort Vandal. Could this be why Anise wants Canach as an observer with the Pact? Is she thinking that the Pact will stumble over White Mantle territory, or that the White Mantle might try to sabotage the Pact before they get there?

What was known before Season 2:

• The bandits is a front for the White Mantle to sow discord amongst Kryta against the queen.
  • The White Mantle seem to only be in the leadership of the bandit front, with the grunts joining due to misbelieving, poverty, coming from street gangs, or in for the sport of it; the ‘better’ bandits dislike targetting people and thus are amongst those commonly seen in Brisban Wildlands.
  • The bandits seem disorganized and unrelated, but they hold shared emblems and alliances.
    • Said alliances are the Sinister Triad (alliance with Nightmare Court and Inquest – we haven’t seen the NC yet in Season 2, hinting at the possibility that they’re no longer part of the Triad; Pact individuals hint that the Sinister Triad is actually the name for the bandits, not the alliance) and the alliance with centaurs (seen in Kessex Hills and Harathi Hinterlands).
• Only the Shining Blade know about the White Mantle’s actions.
• It is heavily hinted, but not proven, that many ministers on Caudecus’ faction – including Caudecus himself – are either directly working with bandits, or are part of the White Mantle.

What’s learned in Season 2:

• The White Mantle established a “New Kryta” ‘kingdom’ in the Wastes. This includes Prosperity and the four forts seen in Silverwastes.
  • Prosperity was their copper influx. Interestingly, the existence of charr and asura (and I think norn?) hint at the White Mantle being multiracial now. Though mostly human – their apparent continued alliance with Inquest (both bandits and Inquest had territory in Dry Top already) furthers this.
  • Riot Alice is now in New Kryta (said she would return north in E1). Some of Prosperity’s people fled north when attacked by Mordrem, Riot Alice included.
• The forts are undoubtebly previously held White Mantle, as was Fort Vandal. Too many White Mantle badges and white robes and weapon descriptions matching the Oppressor’s weapons from GW1 to discredit this.
• The White Mantle/bandits went ‘underground’ when the Mordrem attacked. Unknown if this means literally underground, or metaphorically as in ‘go into hiding’.
• There are bandits seen doing excavations in the Silverwastes, as well as Forgotten markings and ruins, indicating that the White Mantle didn’t build all structures there.
• Fort Vandal held something of interest to the Mordrem and was taken away by the White Mantle. Fun fact: Fort Vandal is built over the Henge Gate of GW1, so may be related to what the Mordrem were after (could also be mursaat or bloodstone related).

If you break out of the Silverwastes map you can see a large underground zone that’s probably gonna be a part of a future release. Might be where the White Mantle went “underground” to.

If they went underground they’re going to be in trouble since the Mordrem seem to work underground very well. However, that does raise the question of whether the Mordrem need or use sunlight in any way? It seems like they don’t but the Sylvari don’t either presumably?

Sylvari run on meat and plants and other such standard foods. Dragon minions in general show no signs of needing nutrition.

I wouldn’t say that Prosperity necessarily indicates a multiracial connection in the White Mantle. “New Kryta” may well have regarded Prosperity as being within its sphere of influence, and rightly so, but it seemed to have exercised that control in the manner of organised crime standover tactics rather than exercising any manner of formal sovereignty over it. I’d imagine that most of the citizens of Prosperity were clueless that the bandits were anything more than an organised crime group.

Even if they’d heard the term ‘White Mantle’, they may not know enough history to consider that as anything more than what the organised crime group called itself.

That said, there does seem to be a working relationship with the Inquest. I suspect there is still an alliance with the Nightmare Court, but the Nightmare Court generally has little interest in events far from the Pale Tree and the WM would probably prefer they kept their leisure activities out of their fiefdom, so there’s probably little reason for the NC to be west of Brisban unless they knew about Malyck’s tree. We may later find that they brought in some courtiers as interrogators or something, but I suspect that the NC preferred as a rule to be closer to the action rather than twiddling their thumbs in a region that, until recently, was securely held by their allies.

@Aaron: From memory, we have been told that sylvari photosynthesise a little – however, they can’t live off photosynthesis alone and aren’t at risk of dying without it as long as they get other food. Basically, a sylvari in sunlight is usually a little more energetic than one in shadow, and sylvari that get regular sunlight don’t need to eat as much as one in darkness, but that’s as far as it goes.