Guild Wars 2

While trying to join the wurm event in Bloodtide Coast I ended up in a nearly empty overflow where the event had failed and I came upon Rytlock Brimstone and a team of charr engineers investigating the probes. They were traveling from probe to probe (using waypoints which I have never seen an NPC use before) and at each of the three probes there was some dialogue between Rytlock and the chief engineer. They give some insights about the purpose of these probes.

I took some screens of the dialogue which can be seen in the chat window. It is clearly stated that Scarlet is not looking for something physical, but something magical and huge. I still have no idea but this seems to imply that she is not looking for a dragon as many have proposed.

Nice catch Glestad, I think you might be onto something. The screens show some convo missing. Do you know when Rytlock and his search party spawn? Also I’m curious how did you figure out which waypoints there were using or heading to?

I first encountered them just next to the Jelako waypoint, and since they visited all three of the sites after that i assume that is where they started, but I am not sure. I have been doing the wurm event a lot so I knew which waypoints were closest to each probe, I had to guess but luckily I got it right both times. The order in which they went was Jelako- cobalt wurm spawn -back to Jelako – Whisperwill (from there to crimson wurm spawn and back to whisperwill) – the waypoint just north of amber wurm spawn. At this point Rytlock ordered them to move out and I lost them. According to his assistant in the Black Citadel he is currently in LA, where he can be found in the story instance. There is some convo missing, I have more screens but they repeat themselves a lot, here are the screens from the crimson wurm probes.

Also, I am unsure what actually triggers this “event”, it seems the wurm event had failed during escort on this overflow only minutes before this started, but if this happens so soon after the event I am surprised it hasn’t already been brought up.

Not something physical. So she’s not searching for an Elder Dragon…

Or perhaps she is. Edge of Destiny novel has Glint describing Kralkatorrik as “more magical than physical” after all.

Or she’s searching for ley lines – them crisscrossing the globe would make them “huge”. And they wouldn’t be physical.

Good catch. I kind of wish ArenaNet made these things more obvious.

I wonder if Logan’s seen doing anything new, given that he was also in the LA instance like Rytlock and the biconics.

Logan can be found after a successful marionette event. He runs into Taimi and chooses to escort her to Lion’s Arch.

http://imgur.com/a/eKE4L

They really need to make it more obvious that these things are in game. It’s wayy to easy to miss this stuff -_-

Welp, that’s why I’ve never seen Logan. I have yet to join a successful Marionette run (yay kittenty laptop only allowing me in low zerg places without burning up).

I can totally understand how hidden conversations like this can have its cons, but I like the way they handle it. The most exciting thing for me to do is to find things like this.

I love and hate things like this in the game.

Love it because it makes the world feel more alive and gives little bits of info.

Hate it because its so darn cryptic and easy to miss. And this is by far the worst example so far, random NPCs walking and waypointing around the map, how is the vast majority of the playerbase ever supposed to stumble across that?

What Anet should do:

Provide a list of “look for something new in these areas at these rough timeframes” on like, the third to last day of the update.

So wait, dragons aren’t huge and magical? They don’t say it’s not physical, just that it’s huge and magical. Doesn’t “huge” imply physical anyway? She’s searching for something that’s physically large and also magical.

Far as I’m concerned this is another nail in the coffin. She’s looking for a dragon.

Plagiarised.2865:

Logan can be found after a successful marionette event. He runs into Taimi and chooses to escort her to Lion’s Arch.

http://imgur.com/a/eKE4L

Wow, nice find! I was always too busy congratulating everybody else in the server at the chest to notice this.

could you talk to rytlock?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Not something physical. So she’s not searching for an Elder Dragon…

The dialogue only sais, that the probes are not made to find something physical, they detect magic. If she’d be looking for caves or minerals, she needed to use probes that detect density like the devices we use in RL but thats not the case. So she can still be looking for a dragon since their most noticeable trait is how much magic they radiate.

But well, if you’re right, she’s looking for something big, magical yet non-physical and clearly spottable – like some peripheral underground sphere that infuses the earth and tries to control scarlet.. wat..

This is a really nice catch. I’ll try to find it myself…and about Logan? Where is he during this conversation with the asura kid?

And not to Anet, make such things more obvious in game :P Shame that we have to dig through forum to find those things..

Glestad.1670:

It is clearly stated that Scarlet is not looking for something physical, but something magical and huge.

The Bloodstones maybe?

Kalarchis.8635:

So wait, dragons aren’t huge and magical? They don’t say it’s not physical, just that it’s huge and magical. Doesn’t “huge” imply physical anyway? She’s searching for something that’s physically large and also magical.

Far as I’m concerned this is another nail in the coffin. She’s looking for a dragon.

In the dialogue in the first screen i posted the engineer clearly specifies that these probes “weren’t designed to find something physical”. I did interpret “not physical” as something without mass. Although the emphasis during the entire encounter is clearly that she is looking for something magical and big/huge.

It is also indicated that she is looking for a specific location, since she is triangulating a position. If she is searching for something related to the ley lines it would be likely to assume that she is looking for a specific location with relations to ley lines, not mapping the entire network.

Rytlock can be talked to at each probe, he has a few dialogue options, but sadly I do not remember them all. You can ask him several questions about the chief engineer Junia Twistgear. He indicates that she is knowledgeable about Scarlet’s technology. During dialogue that i don’t have screens from Junia also expresses some admiration for Scarlet and her technology, but not in a creepy way like Taimi. I got the impression that Junia is a character that will be relevant at a later occasion.

Well that rules out looking for underground passages. But the Bloodstones seems unlikely. All she’d need to do is open a history book to find out where those are. You don’t need to triangulate all over Tyria to find the location of a Bloodstone. It’s still possible that she’s zeroing in on Primordus and his movements.

It’s also possible that she’s triangulating something tied to the Asura portals. The reason I bring this up, is because originally (almost all of)the Asura gateways were all tied to Primordus, and the central transfer chamber. They used Primordus as a huge battery to power almost all of their portals. As far as I know, we don’t know how they power their portals today.

Karizee.8076:

Glestad.1670:

It is clearly stated that Scarlet is not looking for something physical, but something magical and huge.

The Bloodstones maybe?

This crossed my mind, but they are physical and made of something that resembles stone. It is indeed possible that the thing she is looking for is physical and that the probes are searching for magic because that is the main trait in whatever she is searching for. If she is looking for a bloodstone it would be practical to use search parameters that look for magic, but the wording “not physical” seems to indicate something that has no mass at all.
A wild guess is that she is looking for a portal to the mists since we know that she is going there, and as far as I know the only way in is trough the portal in LA. And we know that there were several entrances to the mists in older times. I am far from convinced that this is the answer though.

Karizee.8076:

Glestad.1670:

It is clearly stated that Scarlet is not looking for something physical, but something magical and huge.

The Bloodstones maybe?

Scarlet: “Oh Bloodstones, Ive sacrificed many lives on my journey to reach all six of you (Mad giggle) and put you back together and confront you. What do you have to say?!”

Denial: “nothing, lets all go back home”

Preservation: “oh, cmon, lets hang out for a while, how have you all been?”

Aggression: “It was horrible”

Keystone: “I felt kind of useless this whole time”

Growth: “I hope people notice me when Im older”

Destruction “Supriiise FLAME BURRSST!!!”

And then we see her UFO blow up and we will never find out what happened… the end.

If we know where the Bloodstones roughly are (and we do), then you can be sure that the Priory has books on it as well. And she has a secret lair right underneath the Priory. So wouldn’t it be easier to just steal some of their books?

If Scarlet was after the Bloodstones, she would not need to triangulate all over Tyria to find them. Just place a couple in the Maguuma Jungle, and a few in the Shiverpeaks, and a few at the Ring of Fire. Done. You do not need a probe in Lion’s Arch for that.

Well it was stated by Twistgear that the new probes are there bec. she may have found something important in that area. Any ideas?

Kalarchis.8635:

So wait, dragons aren’t huge and magical? They don’t say it’s not physical, just that it’s huge and magical. Doesn’t “huge” imply physical anyway? She’s searching for something that’s physically large and also magical.

Far as I’m concerned this is another nail in the coffin. She’s looking for a dragon.

Hmm, yeah, I misread it saying “it’s not designed to look for something physical” as “it’s designed to look for something not physical”. My bad.

But it isn’t a nail in the coffin. There’s a LOT of huge magical things out there, even more when we think of physical magical things. Pale Tree, ley lines, nature spirits, magical hotspots, Bloodstones.

The issue with looking for an Elder Dragon is that Elder Dragons move about. She’s triangulating via three new probes over an extended period of time, implying a stationary target. Most likely this means:

• Hibernating Elder Dragon
• Intersection of Ley Lines
• Bloodstone

Glestad.1670:

Rytlock can be talked to at each probe, he has a few dialogue options, but sadly I do not remember them all. You can ask him several questions about the chief engineer Junia Twistgear. He indicates that she is knowledgeable about Scarlet’s technology. During dialogue that i don’t have screens from Junia also expresses some admiration for Scarlet and her technology, but not in a creepy way like Taimi. I got the impression that Junia is a character that will be relevant at a later occasion.

PLEASE try to screenshot and post them all! I would LOVE to see them. Sadly, he may disappear in a few hours!

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

But the Bloodstones seems unlikely. All she’d need to do is open a history book to find out where those are. You don’t need to triangulate all over Tyria to find the location of a Bloodstone. It’s still possible that she’s zeroing in on Primordus and his movements.

The three probes that are near the wurm are new, so she’s managed to lower the area to around LA (as there’s also a new one in LA) – are there any other new ones, say, north and east of LA in Gendarrans and Lornar’s? Or maybe that’s the purpose of the X’s and arrows – not targetting the Orders HQs and LA but noting pre-existing probes to be realligned to help properly triangulate whatever she’s looking for.

And I disagree. In GW1, we only knew of three Bloodstones – and as far as we know, unless the Shining Blade was public with their information, knowledge of such could have been sealed and at the best only the Bloodstone Fen one was known at large.

I disagree with Primordus – he’s been moving about. Whatever she’s looking for seems to be stationary since she’s able to triangulate its location after a long period of time.

Miroe.2054:

Scarlet: “Oh Bloodstones, Ive sacrificed many lives on my journey to reach all six of you (Mad giggle) and put you back together and confront you. What do you have to say?!”

[…]
Growth

Uh… there is no Growth bloodstone. There’s only FIVE bloodstones.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

If we know where the Bloodstones roughly are (and we do), then you can be sure that the Priory has books on it as well.

Not necessarily. Again, we have no clue how the Shining Blade treated knowledge of the things that they (and by extension, us players) knew but the population at large did not.

White Mantle would know. Shining Blade would know. But they may have kept the knowledge from everyone else. And there’s still two unknown Bloodstone locations.

So much story slipping right past us. ANet really needs to make us more aware of these sort of things.

Bare in mind that it is unlikely that the Bloodstones have suddenly changed location. If she was triangulating, wouldn’t she slowly be homing in on one of the known locations of the nearest Bloodstone? The one in the Bloodstone Caves isn’t far off. Yet we see her homing in on Lion’s Arch. A bloodstone underneath Lion’s Arch?

I’m not saying its impossible, just unlikely. Especially given the way Bloodstones have been kind of redconned out of the lore lately, and the writers seem to have been moving away from established lore. It just doesn’t seem logical to expect the involvement of the Bloodstones at this point.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Miroe.2054:

Scarlet: “Oh Bloodstones, Ive sacrificed many lives on my journey to reach all six of you (Mad giggle) and put you back together and confront you. What do you have to say?!”

[…]
Growth

Uh… there is no Growth bloodstone. There’s only FIVE bloodstones.

No, theres none. But the bloodstone seal has six sides as well. There is one form of magic missing and if we take the keystone as “order”, theres only the Melandru-magic left out which would tie to the forgotten magic the druids have used. Just kitten ing and improvising some theories because such an in game event needed a huge reveal.. (wow, I didn’t know that would end up in the forums word filter 0.0)

Plagiarised.2865:

Logan can be found after a successful marionette event. He runs into Taimi and chooses to escort her to Lion’s Arch.

http://imgur.com/a/eKE4L

i’m cracking up in my chair laughing at this. i have a feeling i found “are you paying the waypoint fees” more funny than i should have

as for the topic itself.

if she’s triangulating, i think that discards leylines, or at least makes it much less likely. she’s looking for a single point, not a continuous line, so unless all the probes are on an effective area, or all of them are triangulating (IIRC every map with them has 3 of them, soooo), chances are whatever she’s looking for will be on a single spot in the world.

as for what it is, this new info doesn’t really help us with much.

She could also be looking for an intersection of leylines of course.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I disagree with Primordus – he’s been moving about. Whatever she’s looking for seems to be stationary since she’s able to triangulate its location after a long period of time.

Mhm… we do not know if she is really triangulating something. Maybe she is just looking for movements.
The arrows on her map do show that something is moving in the direction of lions arch.
While it could be her armys attack plan, i rather think that it could just show how something is coming from all directions.

We do not know how long Scarlet is probing in the writers mind. It could be just for a short amount of time, since the story parts are supposed to be played after one another.
That we see them for so long is just so we can break our heads.
i would not bring time into this (other then to rage against the stupid people of Tyria haha).

We know now that she is looking for something magical. We know that primordus is moving.
We do not know the nature of the dragon magic, other then what we know from the few sources like CoE.
We know that dragon minions have the same dragon energy then their master.

Going back to the map and the arrows indicating something moving towards LA, we can also presume that even the minions of Primordus underground could give off a great deal of magical energy.

While she is able to triangulate a location, it does not have to be stationary, but be the direction something is moving. She can read the flow and create a plan acordingly.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

She could also be looking for an intersection of leylines of course.

hadn’t thought of that, posted before actually reading the discussion :P but yes, that’s possible, though it’s odd that something like that would qualify as “massive”, and she sounded like she would not want to repeat thaumanova during the fractal, and thus would stop messing with the intersections. “now we know how to not do this”

The arrows to me hint that she’s narrowed down her search, given this new information. Whatever she’s looking for is in the vicinity of northern Bloodtide, Lion’s Arch, and/or eastern Gendarran Fields.

The probes have been there since the Fractured! update, and ArenaNet seems bent on having the LW and our timeline go on at the same rates. So that means she’s been probing for roughly 2 months now.

Ok I missed that line about not designed to find something physical. Though all that says to me is that the thumpers detect magical energy. The thing she’s looking for could still be physical, she’s just using its magical energy to pinpoint it.

The thing about Primordus is that we don’t know if he’s still moving around or not. He might have cleared some tunnels and then set up a lair somewhere (under Lion’s maybe,) where he’s chilling while his Destroyers do all the earth-moving.

She could be looking for leylines or a bloodstone. But remember that her tormentor is some being that was looking back at her in the mists, and she has a giant combat robot that comes out of the drill. If she wanted a leyline or a bloodstone, what does she need a battle robot attached to the drill for? It makes the most sense to me that the drill is for reaching an elder dragon, at which point Mari comes out to fight it.

Guess we’ll find out.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The arrows to me hint that she’s narrowed down her search, given this new information. Whatever she’s looking for is in the vicinity of northern Bloodtide, Lion’s Arch, and/or eastern Gendarran Fields.

The probes have been there since the Fractured! update, and ArenaNet seems bent on having the LW and our timeline go on at the same rates. So that means she’s been probing for roughly 2 months now.

you really should get over the calendar change :P just think of it as a correction as tyrian astronomy evolved. it’s not like earth is much different. took us forever to settle on a proper calendar, and even then the kitten thing requires fixing every 4 years.

plus, i think it’s more of a rough estimate. it would be kind of silly if precisely every other tyrian week, something horrible happened :P like, on a macro scale the calendars are synced, but on a micro scale they’re not. certain LS events would take longer in tyrian days, some wouldn’t.

Those probes may be searching for something magical, but it doesn’t discard the idea that something physical can have high magic influence.
Scarlet may be using a “magic detector” because elder dragons are so big and massive that could be mistaken by a rock or mountain or something like that, but a big magical source is less likely to be mistaken.

Kalarchis.8635:

Ok I missed that line about not designed to find something physical. Though all that says to me is that the thumpers detect magical energy. The thing she’s looking for could still be physical, she’s just using its magical energy to pinpoint it.

The thing about Primordus is that we don’t know if he’s still moving around or not. He might have cleared some tunnels and then set up a lair somewhere (under Lion’s maybe,) where he’s chilling while his Destroyers do all the earth-moving.

She could be looking for leylines or a bloodstone. But remember that her tormentor is some being that was looking back at her in the mists, and she has a giant combat robot that comes out of the drill. If she wanted a leyline or a bloodstone, what does she need a battle robot attached to the drill for? It makes the most sense to me that the drill is for reaching an elder dragon, at which point Mari comes out to fight it.

Guess we’ll find out.

i think the marionette was only protecting the real weapon, the laser. the whole event is about the clockwork things powering up the laser, and we’re told before the event starts that we’re here to prevent her from testing a weapon that could wipe the whole area (which is exactly what happens when the event fails). the marionette is like a bodyguard to the laser.

It says the coast is clear of jungle wurm attacks. Isn’t that the successful condition, not the failed one? I’ve failed a good number of jungle wurm attempts in my time and have never seen the coast clear =D

SirMoogie.9263:

It says the coast is clear of jungle wurm attacks. Isn’t that the successful condition, not the failed one? I’ve failed a good number of jungle wurm attempts in my time and have never seen the coast clear =D

I think so as well, have never seen that event status before. I was in overflow so I have no idea what happened prior to my arrival. It seems like this overflow was on a different “timeline” than other servers since the event should just have started when i got there.

I stayed in bloodtide coast for 2 full hours after a failed attempt today and there was no sign of Rytlock. I had hoped to capture screens of the conversation with Rytlock, but it seems there is a slim chance of meeting him. Especially now that the patch is live:(

SirMoogie.9263:

It says the coast is clear of jungle wurm attacks. Isn’t that the successful condition, not the failed one? I’ve failed a good number of jungle wurm attempts in my time and have never seen the coast clear =D

that’s the successful state, yes. but since the event had a bug that would get it stuck, ANet was resetting maps every now and then to that state (which is the default state of a map when it’s reset, which means all overflows start like that)

Other speculative energy sources underground could be
- abandoned asura city
- ancient dwarf city
- steam creature city
- a naturally occurring energy well – perhaps a source of the ley lines

We could also think about the marionette as something that could be lowered on chains to fight down a deep hole. It’s crazy yes, since the marionette is so big and can’t move beyond the hole, but it is possible that the marionette will fight what the probes are looking for.

Kalarchis.8635:

But remember that her tormentor is some being that was looking back at her in the mists, and she has a giant combat robot that comes out of the drill. If she wanted a leyline or a bloodstone, what does she need a battle robot attached to the drill for? It makes the most sense to me that the drill is for reaching an elder dragon, at which point Mari comes out to fight it.

1) Unless it’s mentioned in this patch, the location of her “tormentor” is unknown.
2) The Marionette doesn’t seem to me to be part of the final product. She blew the thing up every time the event failed – that is what killed everyone, not some mega aethercannon, though you’d only realize if you talked to the NPCs after the event. She sent a brand new marionette each and every attack. So even if it is, she’s just be sending it out to blow up it seems.

BrunoBRS.5178:

you really should get over the calendar change :P just think of it as a correction as tyrian astronomy evolved. it’s not like earth is much different. took us forever to settle on a proper calendar, and even then the kitten thing requires fixing every 4 years.

plus, i think it’s more of a rough estimate. it would be kind of silly if precisely every other tyrian week, something horrible happened :P like, on a macro scale the calendars are synced, but on a micro scale they’re not. certain LS events would take longer in tyrian days, some wouldn’t.

You realize in the past 250 years, the calendar would have shifted amongst the seasons five times? There would have been snow during summer five times in just the past 250 years with a 5 day difference.

And that wasn’t the point of my post. My point was that Angel McCoy explicitly stated that the two worlds are now synced up in progression. So yes, as stupid as it sounds, kitten hits the fan every 2 weeks in Tyria.

like i said, it might be synced on a macro scale, but not on a micro scale. it’s not like the characters sit on one spot for two weeks discussing the same thing over and over.

and hey, 5 days. we can assume tyrians would keep adding leap years until they got a proper calendar. the sumerians had to add an entire month on leap years to get their calendar synced properly :P

and then there are the romans, which lived with a calendar two months short for quite some time…

It makes me very happy to see that the big players in Tyria are involved in the story. It’s just not believable that everything revolves around the five lane NPCs. I wish this stuff was easier to see, I’ve sent a considerable amount of time in Bloodtide foraging between wurm runs and I’ve completed the Marionette several times and I haven’t seen either of these.

Shiren.9532:

It makes me very happy to see that the big players in Tyria are involved in the story. It’s just not believable that everything revolves around the five lane NPCs. I wish this stuff was easier to see, I’ve sent a considerable amount of time in Bloodtide foraging between wurm runs and I’ve completed the Marionette several times and I haven’t seen either of these.

personally, i like that things happen whether you’re around or not. the story junkies will find out about these sooner or later, and they’re just extra fluff, not story critical things.

leylines being the purpose of the probes are all but confirmed, as far as taimi is concerned.

thought i’d let you all know.

unfortunately, i didn’t get to listen to all the dialogue, the game crashed halfway through >.>

BrunoBRS.5178:

Shiren.9532:

It makes me very happy to see that the big players in Tyria are involved in the story. It’s just not believable that everything revolves around the five lane NPCs. I wish this stuff was easier to see, I’ve sent a considerable amount of time in Bloodtide foraging between wurm runs and I’ve completed the Marionette several times and I haven’t seen either of these.

personally, i like that things happen whether you’re around or not. the story junkies will find out about these sooner or later, and they’re just extra fluff, not story critical things.

The problem with this encounter though is that it seems the event has to be completed to trigger it. As far as I know the wurm has been completed 4 times in 2 weeks. It was pure coincidence that i stumbled upon it.

OMG! It’s Tuesday! Run for the hills, troubles coming! Can you imagine what it would be like to live in a world where something major happens every other Tuesday?

Glestad.1670:

BrunoBRS.5178:

Shiren.9532:

It makes me very happy to see that the big players in Tyria are involved in the story. It’s just not believable that everything revolves around the five lane NPCs. I wish this stuff was easier to see, I’ve sent a considerable amount of time in Bloodtide foraging between wurm runs and I’ve completed the Marionette several times and I haven’t seen either of these.

personally, i like that things happen whether you’re around or not. the story junkies will find out about these sooner or later, and they’re just extra fluff, not story critical things.

The problem with this encounter though is that it seems the event has to be completed to trigger it. As far as I know the wurm has been completed 4 times in 2 weeks. It was pure coincidence that i stumbled upon it.

well it seems that this bit of fluff is staying for another couple weeks.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

2) The Marionette doesn’t seem to me to be part of the final product. She blew the thing up every time the event failed – that is what killed everyone, not some mega aethercannon, though you’d only realize if you talked to the NPCs after the event. She sent a brand new marionette each and every attack. So even if it is, she’s just be sending it out to blow up it seems.

Wait, that’s a detonation? It always looked to me like a laser that Mari was shooting out of her mouth. You don’t really see what happens to Mari after the weapon fires, so I always just assumed it went back into the drill.

Doesn’t change my theory though. The self-destruct feature could be the coup de grace, or at the least a trump card in case the other attacks from Mari fail. If all she wanted was a big bomb, wouldn’t she just make a big bomb?