Guild Wars 2

how did she get a piece(s) of a krait obelisk? I would have thought the Krait would’ve been more enraged that a nonbeliever/lesser race dared to even touch their most sacred of artifacts much less deal with said person. If it is a piece of an obelisk does this mean the obelisk this piece is from was broken and if so what broke it?

Because the plot demanded it.
Scarlet has done nothing but break established lore since she was introduced.

Scarlet’s Aetherblades already stole some of the Pact’s airships. I wouldn’t be all that surprised if they stole a submarine as well. She would then only need to either modify it or use it as a blueprint for her own enhanced deep-sea sub. All she would need afterwards, is some type of magical sensing device, most likely something like the Asura PS’s VOED.

As for how they Krait handled Scarlet having Obelisk pieces, we have no idea as of yet. I’m personally guessing that Scarlet went above the Krait’s head on the matter, and she personally went to their leadership first, the Oratuss. The Oratuss might have been enraged as well, but, as it has been said in the Krait’s lore article, they can be quite power hungry and manipulative. Even going as far to subtly change the words of their holy “texts” to twist their meaning to suit their own cause.

If Scarlet was able to get them to hear her out, most likely by making them hear her out, and she offered a good enough deal; the Oratuss would be able to twist their own religion’s holy text to bring the rest of the Krait in line. The Krait are fanatically devoted to their religion, since they were raised to be fanatically devoted. If the Oratuss, the sole arbiters of their faith, said that their religion supports this, for whatever rhyme/reason/cause, the Krait automatically would believe it.

Who says Scarlet went to them as Scarlet? If she’s got access to illusions like the one that cloaked the tower, she could probably just pretend to be the ancient spirit of a Krait prophet or something. I doubt the Nightmare Court are going to rat on her, since they’ve probably been led to believe that the Krait will be disposed of once their usefulness expires. The Krait’s prophet may have told them roughly the opposite. Just speculating, of course.

The tower’s cloaking was likely done by the krait since they’re known for spellcasting. Though the courtiers do too to a lesser extent. Depends on who’s in on that splinter faction of the Nightmare Court.

Krait aren’t known for spellcasting. Yes spellcasters hold rank in their society, but the only substantial lore resources we’ve had on krait only say they practice magic, not what kinds or how powerful. In-game, we can see with our own eyes that they only magic they utilize these days is a form of necromancy, even those varieties that formerly used other sorts, like the hypnoss and arcanoss. If I had to guess, I’d say that’s their niche, much like centaurs as a race only practice forms of earth magic. The Nightmare Court, on the other hand, has been seen in multiple occasions holding mesmers in high esteem, especially when it comes to spreading nightmare through interactions with other races, and they practice forms of mesmerism beyond the mainstream run-of-the-mill the playable races seem to like, so I’d guess that they created the veil.

I’d say the existence of the Witches shows that they have some further magical powers, although I have yet to see it myself because of the difficulty level around them and the general disinterest in fighting them. Still I remember lots of dialogue about calling Maelstroms and such which, if true, would point to some capabilities with elementalism.

The witches appear to be high ranked individuals. There was a priestess in a personal story who was similarly a spellcaster, as well as the Head Slaver Nymphassa (sp?). Even the Oratuss are spellcasters. All their known high ranking individuals are spellcasters.

Even in GW1, most of them were spellcasters. And the krait are known for their strong shapeshifting magic (see Aquatic Ruins Fractal). And there’s the Nonmoa Lake witch which as Narcemus said, summons a large storm (attempting to turn it into a Maelstrom – while she’s up the area gets cloudy and rains).

And she coooooonstantly repeats that she’s summoning this maelstrom. Almost the most annoying single dialogue in game. Gets on my nerves almost as much as “I can outrun a centaur!” used to.

To be fair, most enemies in GW1 were spellcasters. And like I said, the new krait are sufficiently disconnected to the old krait to make comparisons. And just because they’re led by spellcasters, doesn’t mean those spellcasters are remarkable compared to other races.

The word used in the Aquatic Fractal is “morphological properties” which suggests it is either non-magical or ornate, rather than some sort of spell. Furthermore, that Fractal is already suspected to be a mish-mash of unrelated things, and cannot be considered an accurate representation.

The Nonmoa krait does seem to have some sort of control over the weather (however, I’d argue that she’s less casting and more invoking) however this control does not extend beyond making an overcast drizzle and inspiring the nearby krait. When you actually fight the witches, they’re indistinguishable from champ hypnosses (hypnoi?)- that is, they use standard necromantic spells and summon more krait/barracuda. To paraphrase what you said on a different thread, necromancers != mesmers.

Wasn’t meaning to say that the witches are mesmers.

IIRC, though, the Oratuss fought in the story instance uses mesmer spells. As do the Toxic Hypnoss – I recall a smaller-radii (and deadlier) Chaos Storm effect.

Inb4 Faolain is in the tower working for Scarlet.

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

Inb4 Faolain is in the tower working for Scarlet.

I wondered about that earlier, in a different thread, but with the NC having so many powerful mesmers; its hard to make an accurate guess. With the events of Twilight Assault, Faolain could be a good candidate, depending on what information Scarlet has on Caithe, but it’s still hard to tell at this point.

Though, I would never say Faolain would ever work for Scarlet. Work with her? Maybe.

Erukk.1408:

I’m personally guessing that Scarlet went above the Krait’s head on the matter, and she personally went to their leadership first, the Oratuss. […]

Everything makes sense now, thank you.

The likely reasoning she gave the Oratuss is that she knows how to relocate the obelisks (even if she doesn’t in the scenario where what she saw was a hallucination and not the eternal alchemy, she still thinks she does) – because from what you guys have told me (cough corrected me) the obelisks aren’t exactly something the Krait can just decide to build at any old time.

From my perspective the problem would be that “you can’t physically relocate a whole obelisk,” but if she suggested that they relocate bits of it (the shards) and combine the shards with the magic of another species they might be able to create something just as good. And have a mass sacrifice as a bonus (the people killed by the spore creatures).

Keep in mind that we were told that the Krait are transporting the obelisk shards and they are all located in areas connected to the sea – this means that theories like Scarlet simply using portals to acquire them from the “DSD danger zone” probably won’t be sound – in the same way I am not sure if submarines could pull it off either. Getting creative with airships would probably only be marginally more successful.

Conjecture: one thing she might have done during the previous living stories is acquire some powerful magical artifact (while she had us occupied with what looked like pointless attacks) and could have used it to temporarily lure DSD away from the parts of the sea bed where the obelisks are located. That still doesn’t explain what she’s trying to actually achieve with the tower of nightmares though. Maybe my one theory stating that “the obelisks are tools of ascension” instead of “the tools of calling the ascended” (as the krait believe them to be) and Scarlet is trying to ascend by creating an accessible one so that she can ascend.

Given that the Nightmare Court working with the krait are a splinter faction that don’t use the nobility titles of the main Nightmare Court group, it seems highly unlikely Faolain is involved.

Scarlet is actually the person most likely to have access to obelisk fragments. The dredge could find them when mining underground or underwater. The aetherblades could find clues from the air. The Inquest may also have been exploring underwater or taken one for research. The nightmare court might find clues about the obelisks within nightmare. If her allies have any knowledge they could pass it on to Scarlet.

In fact she has used her “I am a genius so I can do anything” ability so often that she now has an array of allies that can do anything. She has an air force, undersea and underground forces, and 100% loyal mechanical troops. Yet still nobody knows why or how.

Assuming the obelisks are only found in the areas the krait inhabit, and not throughout the lower regions of the world, then it makes no sense at all, as they’d be square within known Bubbles territory. Assuming they aren’t… well, that raises quite a few additional questions.

Toxic Oratuss and Hypnoss both use necro spell effects exclusively. The higher ranked Hypnoss now use poison clouds that function similarly to chaos storms, but it’s the same attack visually as what the Hypnoss have always done- even uses the same name in the combat log.

I have definitely seen Toxic Hypnoss using a chaos storm animation. Without a bloody doubt there.

^agreed with Konig there. Killed a lot of them today.

Interesting… found what you guys are talking about, and my apologies for jumping the gun there. It’s called “Summon Minions” and ends with a hallucination spawning. As the hallucinations are supposed to be due to the toxins, not magic, I’d still argue that it’s just a poison causing the effects of a mesmer mindkitten.

I would say though, based on what we’ve seen of the Hypnoss that the chaos cloud creation and the hallucinations speak more to a mesmer than a necromancer. The poison cloud effect could just be a basic krait “racial” skill, seeing as poison has long been related to them.

I disagree. Their primary attack is still Life Blast, which is straight out of the necromancer’s repertoire, even if the poison cloud was somehow racial instead of necromancer (and note that the hypnoss used it before the big update that gave everything else poison). In addition, the new effect, which I may note is only utilized by vets, elites, and champs, while appearing visually similar to a chaos storm, only inflicts confusion (indicative of mind-muddling rather than true chaos magic) and results in a hallucination, not a mesmer illusion. As hallucinations are outright stated to be a result of the atmospheric toxins that the new alliance is playing with, I’d say that the hypnoss just found a different way to weaponize it- as you noted, they’ve a proclivity for poisons.