Guild Wars 2

Just thinking, could each of Scarlet’s alliances correspond to one pair of opposing dragons/spheres?

The Aetherblades brought airships to the party, merging Sea (ships and pirates) and Air (flight and zappy lasers).

The Toxic alliance brought the miasma, created from the spores of plants (plant/growth, obviously) and bringing rapid, choking death thanks to the Krait’s expertise with poison, expertise shared by the necromancer Marjory (death, though not undeath).

It falls apart somewhat with the Molten Alliance and their mining technology (which ought to merge the spheres of Primordus and Jormag). While the dredge live in the Shiverpeaks, their technology seems to be sonic in nature. However, the arc that introduced the Molten Alliance was called “Flame and Frost”, and the Norn Personal Story suggested that the dredge have learned how to use Icebrood cries to power advanced sonic weaponry, so it’s not a completely ridiculous stretch.

I don’t think krait have been tied to poison before. And relating Aetherblades to sea is rather… thin.

Well, the krait magic we observe in game is pretty much exclusively necromancy, with toxic fields being the most aggravating aspect… but I’m with Konig on the Aetherblades, especially considering they are tied pretty intrinsically to the sky and air magic. Besides, pirates in-game are often just bandits with a propensity for coastlines, and at least a little of that is backed by lore and not just mechanics. As for the dredge, the icebrood weapon was an unqualified disaster for them, one that could only be replicated at an immense cost to manpower. ""I agree that it’s weird how some of the factions map to dragon spheres, but I think you’re contorting the data to try to force a conclusion instead of basing your ideas off what’s indicated.

^ Small correction on the krait magic part from your friendly neighborhood krait researcher rper.

The only necromancer skills they use are their auto attacks. Though that can be attributed to not wanting to give them Mesmer AA underwater since it’d look kinda ridiculous on them… They also use Chaos-storm and an event krait hypnoss in maelstrom casts illusions of herself. Hypnoss is their mesmer class and the only caster, blame game design decisions. There’s an Arcanoss and even a Devouss ingame, but they use the hypnoss model. :p

And now back on topic, yeah before the ToN poisons and such were uniquely attributed to being the Hylek’s speciality. And bringing death can be attributed to… a lot of things. Also dredge tried a lot of strange things, see the Destroyer of Worlds in SE3. They’re closer to destroyer-related problems than icebrood.

So I think relating the factions to the dragon spheres is a bit of a stretch…

Been a while since I checked, but I’m 95% sure GW2 hypnoss use all necromancer skills. The event you’re mentioning is the one with the undead krait, right?

EDIT: Quick check found that on land regular hypnoss use Poison Cloud, Life Blast, and a third field that just poisons.

Don’t wanna derail the topic too much, so I’ll keep it short, hopeyoudontmind :p

Yep the undead one. And ye I forgot the poison cloud skill. It applies poison and confusion which it normally doesnt.
2 much gameplay-lore segregation? Idk. Hypnoss are mesmers, Necross are actually their necromancers. What I wanted to say is they aren’t exclusively about necromancy, we just happen to have only a single caster-class of their many ones ingame and it’s a mesmer one with some necro-skills chunked in. <_>

Not everything is dragons!

@Elysian: To be honest, I think someone at ArenaNet fubared up the krait in the basic game. What we call “Hypnoss” should be Necross: they use necromantic-oriented skills, and there are events where krait hypnoss are mentioned as having affinities with necromantic magic, indicating that this isn’t just a matter of making the graphics work underwater. As well as Life Blast, they have the poison cloud skill as mentioned, and when underwater they use blood idols to call barracuda.

The Toxic Hypnoss, however, seem to be genuine mesmers, their signature ability being a Chaos Storm like effect that generates hallucinations.

@draxynnic
Can you send me a message about these events? I seriously don’t recall any. As for blood idols, if you look closely they’re just bottles with blood and meat. It seems to me more like fancy-named barracuda bait items than necromancy…

Though if you put it that way, it’s both equally possible that either a) Anet screwed up or b) it’s gameplay decisions after all (or c), both?)

It’s in Lychcroft Mere. One line relating to it I was able to find on the wiki:

Warden Captain Kentigearna

In life, krait are masters of watery death. It’s possible that this predisposition lent them some measure of power in undeath.

Hmm… that line can be both interpreted as “measure in power in mastery of undeath” and “measure in power in their undead after-life” (aka being risen) if you ask me.
Tho now I see where you’re coming from.

It’s also worth noting that in the event chain in the area, it’s the risen krait who are animating new Risen.

While ‘watery death’ can simply mean that they’re good at killing things underwater, the implication I come away with is that the krait in question were skilled in necromantic magic in life, which makes them well-suited to being lieutenants of the Risen in death.

Tho they’re also a top-dog race that is magical in nature and pretty much consists of murderers, as opposed to most other races which have a notable amount of peaceful civilians turned Risen, which makes them great candidates to being lieutenants anyway.

Furthermore…

We would if we could, but there is no end to them. The Risen krait seem to draw them here from Orr.

Not sure about the animation, this part of Warden Captain Kentigearna’s dialogue makes it sound more like the other Risen are drawn to them because of their lieutenant (or whatever higher ranking) status. And the presence of Risen or corruption is usually enough to raise other Risen.

I guess we could argue our heads in and not come to a conclusion because the field for interpretations it quite wide here and the conclusions on whether they have affinities for necromancy or not are both logical, heh. Should we call it a draw? ;P