Guild Wars 2

Has anyone else noticed this?

When we first get to see Scarlet making a move against us, she’s trying to kidnap queen Jenna, an extremely powerful mesmer. We know she’s trying to kidnap her because Lord Faren falls when he tries to save Queen Jenna(illusion) who should have taken that fall, and he’s still alive despite falling from such a height. So clearly there was some way to catch someone who fell down there. Unrelated note: I think her putting Faren in the pot was her being mad that she didn’t get the queen…and she’s psycho.

Also, while she does take control of the clockwork knights and has a robot/pirate/molten army, I felt like her biggest power was portals. A mesmer skill. In fact she flaunts her portals. Opens one right in the middle of the grand pavilion.

Sound a little shallow? Then how about this?

In the new TA path there’s some new menace that Scarlet has been working on. The big clockwork oakheart right? WRONG. That is just a distraction. A side experiment that she threw together because she’s a nutter butter. The biggest threat present in the new TA path was the holograms. Illusions. Hundreds of them. That even SHATTER.

She is clearly engineering mesmer magics, but to what end? What was she going to use Queen Jenna for?

A lot of people are saying they don’t want Scarlet to be involved with this upcoming patch with the krait, BUT THE TOWER IS HIDDEN BEHIND A GIANT MESMER ILLUSION. The Nightmare Court, people Scarlet has already made some agreement with, are playing some part as well. If Scarlet’s not involved I will eat my hat.

So what do you guys think?

She just jelly of the mesmer confederation we never heard of in even hints until now.

More seriously though…

Her portals are technologically based – closer to asura gates than to the mesmer portals.

But if she was after kidnapping Jennah – rather than killing her like she tried (you wouldn’t shoot a rocket at the person you’re trying to kidnap) – then why not be semi-happy with Faren who is also a mesmer (if memory serves me correctly).

The holograms are similarly not illusions. Their existence is explained at various points in the personal story, including how they became capable of fighting physical forms. The holograms are based off of asura magitech; not sure if the specifics is ever told in detail but if memory serves me correct it was first introduced in Trouble at the Roots and re-introduced in Stealing Light – the holograms seem to me to have been obtained by the Lionguard from the Pact/Whispers’ expansion on Elli’s holographic voice amplifier (before being stolen by the Aetherblades).

And they’re not shattering, but exploding. Explosives are fairly different.

While I can certainly see how they’re “mesmer-like effects” you gotta keep in mind that such things are probably easily doable in varying different forms by other magical professions too. I mean, necromancers can make their minions explode, and are known to make portals to the Mists open (granted, different, but still goes along the same argument as yours really).

I think it’s really that ArenaNet are using too much focus on tech/magitech and mesmerism to do all their plot devices for them (see how many mesmers were involved in the later personal story plot…), so we’re not seeing all the potential of the other professions and just seeing the potential of general magitech and mesmerism.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

But if she was after kidnapping Jennah – rather than killing her like she tried (you wouldn’t shoot a rocket at the person you’re trying to kidnap)

She is trying to kidnap her. Watch the closing ceremony again. Scarlet says,“Oh…and I’ll be taking your Queen with me.”

Assuming Faren is a mesmer (can’t remember myself, no point looking it up), if a mesmer of his caliber would suffice for whatever she has planned then she would be better served just trying to kidnap a player character. Jennah is incredibly powerful. The second book told us as much.

And I didn’t say she was USING mesmer magic, I said she was ENGINEERING mesmer magic. Sure the portals are based on Asuran tech, but she has found a way to use them freely, without a gate like a mesmer. Same thing with the holograms. They may have come up before, but never like that, and NEVER explosive. She’s using her knowledge of magitech to imitate powerful mesmer spells. Clearly she’s getting better at it to because she managed to hide an enormous tower from view completely.

Also, Trouble at the Roots does not have holograms. The images seen during that mission are there because you had to drink the drugged beverage with Waine to get him to drink it. That mission is the Guild Wars 2 story version of a bad trip.

Actuallly, Trouble does have a hologram… because Elli is there with her holographic voice amplifier.

But yeah, it’s getting a bit tiring how much the good guys have been holding the Idiot Ball here. It was one thing for the holograms to be something you run across out in the wild for a harmless gladiatorial contest that onlt has the chance to be potentially fatal because game mechanics, but now it’s been made a story point that they are actually genuinely dangerous. Why isn’t the Pact and Lionguard deploying these things en masse themselves? Why is it that Villain Suelet is able to use this stuff on so much of a greater scale than its inventors?

Fair point on the Queen bit.

But about independent-of-gate portals… there are multiple cases of such in the game prior to Scarlet – all made by asura, without mesmers known to be involved. Synergetics personal storyline (though that was destroyed); there’s Professor Portmatt’s Lab jumping puzzle; Crucible of Eternity explorable experimental teleporter; and iirc, the Inquest gal in Arah explorable teleports out. That’s just off the top of my head. Though Portmatt and CoE have a starter gate, the former and last do not.

Then there’s Snaff’s little device from EoD.

And keep in mind that Scarlet stole blueprints from Rata Sum… could have included the Synergetics teleporter before it was destroyed.

CodeE.4857:

Clearly she’s getting better at it to because she managed to hide an enormous tower from view completely.

Who says that’s an imitation of mesmer magic, and not bonafied mesmer magic?

CodeE.4857:

Also, Trouble at the Roots does not have holograms. The images seen during that mission are there because you had to drink the drugged beverage with Waine to get him to drink it. That mission is the Guild Wars 2 story version of a bad trip.

Drax already pointed it out, but it does have a hologram – which I stated, was for amplifying Ellie’s voice. I was not talking about the hallucinations. You don’t fight the hologram there.

Nonetheless, Ellie’s hologram returns later on in the personal story – where at that point it becomes capable of fighting physical forms. In Troubled at the Roots, it wasn’t capable of fighting physical forms.

Oh yeah. I forgot about Ellie.

I think I found another piece that connects. So we know that Scarlet is an absurd super genius. She learns trades from people all over the continent and even goes to all 3 Asuran colleges. And what’s the Asuran college that was the only place she felt stimulated her super brain enough? Synergetics.

“Synergetics took quite a bit longer, however, as Ceara finally found a field of study that was a boundless as her interest. She immersed herself in Synergetics’ miasmic mix of mystical energy patterns and arcane probabilities; in its focus on chaos theory and mapping unpredictable connections; in the pursuit of hidden knowledge and secret mechanisms derived in equal parts from the contemplation of the ephemeral and the application of the practical.” – From the short story “What Scarlet Saw”

The headmaster of Synergetics and her run an experiment where she is placed into a large device that, basically, gives her visions. The device directly interacts with her brain and the headmaster even says, “The module’s one shortcoming is that it can’t record what your mind experiences. If you don’t come back or can’t articulate what you’ve learned, it will all be for naught.”

During this experiment Scarlet learns things she should not know, and it even seems to give her a new found power. There’s another device in the game that also interacts directly with the brain and makes people learn things they should not know. Remember in the preview of world 3 in the Super Adventure Box? You’re given a task by a strange genie, that Moto apparently didn’t put in there, to go destroy the true enemy’s lab. This is the lab of Moto’s old krewe, a Synergetics krewe, and they are working on a device that apparently forces knowledge into a persons brain. Seemingly unknown knowledge as well. During their test run of the device the Asura mutters some nonsense about waffles and afterwards says something like,“What’s a waffle?”

But there’s a third device. The one made by Moto. An Asura who was in the same krewe working on the same machine that interacts with the brain. His is the Super Adventure Box. A device that makes the illusion of a game world and plants it directly into a persons head.

“In every direction, the room—made of tile and metal—was transformed. Stylized blocky green grass sprung out of the floor while the ceiling was painted a rich blue dotted with smiling white clouds. Along the floor, flowers perked up in the grass, and rows of trees emerged in silent splendor.” – From the short story “Shadowbox”

Now I’m not going to pretend I know where all this is going, but EVERYTHING about Scarlet seems to somehow connect to mesmer or mesmer-like magic.

Posted on reddit as well http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1p0xn8/scarlets_fascination_with_mesmers/

Scarlet is an engineer and weaponcrafter. A lot of those ‘mesmer connections’ are craftable (portals), weaponized (holograms), or other engineered items. They don’t need or imply a mesmer explanation. No further explanation is needed for a known mesmer like Queen Jenna using mesmer magic in her defense either.

Stooperdale.3560:

Scarlet is an engineer and weaponcrafter.

I know. I’m just saying she’s fascinated by mesmer magic. It intrigues her like nothing else does. Portals for her robot army are nice, but why go the extra mile to make it effortless for herself? She even blinks in the first Jubilee story instance it’s so easy for her. Why not just use the impressive portal technology already made by Asura in the story to move her army around? And as Konig and Drax said, Ellie made holograms with a physical form that could fight, but Scarlet did something similar and made them explosive, simulating a mesmer’s shatter. This, along with the fact that she tried to kidnap Queen mesmer, and with the college of synergetic’s experimentation into mind altering tech makes me think she sees mesmer magic as a means to some end.

Some people on reddit have said that scarlet would not need to be involved in the upcoming patch because the krait are well known for having powerful mesmers(did not know this. when i think krait I think harpoon pulls and poison) and would be capable of hiding a tower. But even so she might want to ally with these powerful mesmers in order to use them. She failed at getting the Queen so why not?

She’s just jelly that she’s not part of that guild that Kasmeer is in (“The Great and Gorgeous Mesmer Collective” if I recall correctly).

Because Scarlet thinks that beauty is more than skin deep and her mind is beautiful, in the way that a 3-legged dog not giving up is beautiful.