Living story and personal story spoilers ahead
Hi folks,
Given the recent hints of dragons being involved in the living story, as well as the DO NOT TOUCH thumpers, among other things, I wanted to put together a theory that would at least entertain the notion that Primordus is involved. (I made this video before all of these neat hints today).
More than that, I argue there that Primordus is planning a campaign against Tyria and has actually recruited Scarlet as his champion/lieutenant/general. Through this framework, Scarlet’s actions make a lot more sense and seem to have an overarching motive: produce a new, powerful minion army for Primordus.
Why?
In the personal story (The Hatchery), we see that Primordus is actually experimenting with alternative forms of corruption; that is, corruption from birth and through incubation (hatching eggs). This is a revelation that we may not have paid much attention to (with our focus on Zhaitan) but all of the Orders agents agree that this is a uniquely new form of corruption. However, this technique proves to be insufficient as the minions that are hatched are too weak to do anything of value and we vanquish them fairly easily. So, Primordus has the corruption-from-birth angle right, but he needs a way to birth minions that are actually powerful.
Enter Scarlet (or Ceara) – in her experiment with Omadd, Ceara attempted to plunge into the eternal alchemy. However, if we think about the Thaumanova Reactor – mixing chaos magic (portals, gateways, synergetics in general) with dragon magic, we produce volatile and dangerous results. Given Rata Sum’s history (and present day problems) with Primordus and Destroyers, it’s very possible that the area in general sits atop a draconic leyline (as the Thaumanova Reactor did). And in this case, Primordus’ leyline. So when Omadd fires up the machine, mixing the chaos magic powering the machine with the dragon magic in the area, Ceara doesn’t completely plunge into the eternal alchemy; instead she becomes saturated in Primordus’ magic. But why didn’t she access the eternal alchemy? Honestly, I think it was a power supply issue.
We actually experience something like this ourselves in the Asura Infinity Ball personal story. When we supercharge our infinity ball, it produces steam creatures – creatures from an alternative world. THIS is the power that Omadd and Ceara were trying to harness; the power to traverse space and time. But what happens when the infinity ball is NOT supercharged? Well, when we activate it, a bunch of Destroyers come out! Dragon minions, and Primordus’ minions, no less. It may be the case that, when mixing chaos and dragon magic, there is a spectrum of energy input that either taps you into the draconic magic in the area, but if you are able to provide enough energy to the device, that can take you into the eternal alchemy (I know, that sounds awkward). This graph kind of captures how I conceptualize this : (http://i.imgur.com/uHyLz6d.png)
In this volatile mixture of chaos and dragon magic, Scarlet is disconnected from the dream and becomes uniquely vulnerable to Primordus’ influence and possible corruption (I provide more details in the video for those that are wary of this explanation).
After being recruited by Primordus, Scarlet must build the infrastructure for such a monumental task of engineering a powerful dragon minion army. This is the purpose for the alliances (among other things). Each alliance contributes their own… contributions. We see a lot of the reasoning for each alliance in the Nightmare Tower abandoned lab puzzle.
Ultimately these alliances are a means to an end: the Toxic Hybrid, the first (or one of the first) iteration of this new Primordus minion. One that is produced through incubation and is born extremely powerful. The only thing missing is Primordus’ corruption. I think this will be part of the next update, and we’ll probably see some form of Destroyer Hybrid or something like that. And Scarlet will now be mass producing these creatures in her factory somewhere (the ‘islands’?) and finally unleashing them on Tyria.
She is amassing a new, super army – a combination of the alliances, the new corrupted minions she’s created, and also by drumming up all of the destroyers still underground (via the Mysterious Probes).
And that’s just the summary!
You can hear all of the details in the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLD5F1mAhIA
I’ve also included my detailed notes (basically the script for the video) in case some of you want to read through those: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9Urj9xEO1lOVDlCc1JoTVZkWm8/edit?usp=sharing
I welcome any comments, concerns, or critiques. I’d love to discuss it further.