Guild Wars 2

Hello,

So with cutthroat politics being previewed, I’m trying to figure out why this reactor is interesting at all. I went through the area, looking for any sort of lore clues or anything to make it interesting. It all seems like a generic asuran mad scientist working with inquest messed up and a bad thing happened. I honestly though the developers just made it as sort of a reference to Chernobyl and never thought anything special about it. The main reason I’m voting for Evon is because of the Fall of Abbadon and I feel like that has some awesome lore behind it.

So why is the Thaumanova Reactor interesting. What lore/theories do you have that may get me interested in it?

The most interesting parts of the reactor explosion, as far as I can see, are twofold:
First, the reactor explosion is warping the very fabric of the universe, even time. As evidenced by the steam creatures that occasionally get ported into the reactor, anything could happen, from any place or any time. Possibilities abound.
Secondly, the reactor might have something to do with the sixth Elder Dragon. Considering its proximity to Maguuma and the Inquest connection, we might learn some very interesting things by studying the reactor.
Think of the plot of Half Life, The events surrounding Black Mesa are very similar to what could potentially have happened at Thaumanova.

The lore of Thaumanova Reactor is spread throughout the continent – literally. A basic background:

Konig Des Todes

The Thaumanova Reactor is both huge and yet small. Basically everything about the Inquest can tie to the Thaumanova Reactor explosion.

Basically from what I recall it is this:

The Thaumanova Reactor was a small asuran city that had an Inquest base underground running currently unknown experiments – or rather, the full scope is unknown. We do know that some of their researched dealt with Chaos Magic. Something, also unknown, that the Inquest did caused the reactor to explode into what we see now. The Inquest base were also using crystals from the “Chaos Crystal Caverns” in Iron Marches, which with the explosion caused a “feedback” into the cavern – hence why it is now called Chaos Crystal Caverns.

At some point, the Inquest moved their Thaumanova Reactor research to the Thaumavore Inquiry Center, causing the chaos magic to spread north.

After the explosion (or maybe during?) the Infinite Coil Reactor that houses the Crucible of Eternity was built – the Thaumanova Reactor base was the Crucible’s “precursor” facility. Just south of the ICR, you can find chaos magic effects again. Given this, and some things found at Thaumanova – the four elemental tied areas (fire, nature, ice, water) which happen to all be tied to an ED (Primordus, jungle dragon, Jormag, deep sea dragon), as well as the purple crystal inside a cave nearby (same model as branded crystal), hints at the Thaumanova Reactor also being used to study the Elder Dragon magic. What’s also interesting is that the Infinite Coil Reactor also blew up, perhaps for similar reasons.

In short, for the Fractals, it boils down to this:

Would you rather watch an event we know a decent amount about – the fall of a god who gave magic to the world – in which the only real thing we’d gain is the appearance of the gods, which isn’t even definitive.

Or would you learn of why the reactor studying chaos magic exploded, see the reaction to chaos magic mixing with the Mists, and perhaps learn lore on magic itself and/or the Elder Dragons?

While I’d love to see the fall of Abaddon, lore wise, the Thaumanova Reactor’s more interesting to me. There’s not going to be much new lore to the fall of Abaddon beyond what we see. It’ll only be seeing what the Crystal Sea could have looked like and what Abaddon and perhaps the other gods could have looked like at the time.

Saitam.9340:

First, the reactor explosion is warping the very fabric of the universe, even time. As evidenced by the steam creatures that occasionally get ported into the reactor, anything could happen, from any place or any time. Possibilities abound.

I’ve always taken those steam creatures to be getting pulled from the Shiverpeaks. Just teleportation effects.

Saitam.9340:

Secondly, the reactor might have something to do with the sixth Elder Dragon. Considering its proximity to Maguuma and the Inquest connection, we might learn some very interesting things by studying the reactor.
Think of the plot of Half Life, The events surrounding Black Mesa are very similar to what could potentially have happened at Thaumanova.

Not just the Sixth Elder Dragon, but Jormag, Kralkatorrik, the DSD, and Primordus as well! Only Zhaitan doesn’t have a hinted elemental tie to the Thaumanova Reactor – the elements of the others are all there, even though Kralkatorrik’s is just one crystal (which is needed to charge the matrix key!).

So I looked around the places you talked about. While it seems like it is creating portals for teleportation through space, but not time. There is no evidence that is concrete enough to suggest they’re teleporting through time (steam creatures are in lornars pass). My best guess is that if they do a reactor fractal, it will involve enemies and npcs teleporting from different parts of time for the mist energy would probably combine with the chaos to form portals through space and time. Possible seeing some canthan enemies (maybe infected from factions), interacting with previous NPCs.

Other than that I can see no way of this being insanely interesting. If they do make the reactor fractal and don’t bother to really answer anything or expand on the lore and just confirm the theory that some random inquest scientist messed up, Ill be disappointed.

As steam creatures are only invented and manufactured in an alternate future, there is still reason to suspect space/time transference is involved somehow.

Reason to suspect…

except for the utter lack of reason to suspect it. Steam creatures may have been invented in a possible future, they exist in the present too.

I can only point out some suspicious variables.

1. The Infinity Ball personal quest introduces the steam creatures, and claims that they are future asuran technology.
2. Steam Fabricators in Lornar’s Pass are building Steam Portals to transport more Steam Creatures from their place of origin.
3. The first Steam Creatures to appear in the present initially arrived somehow from their point of origin.
4. The Steam Creature breach in Lornar’s pass is intersecting the halfway point of a line drawn between Thaumanova and Chaos Crystal Cavern (where the Thaumanova’s experiment crystals were excavated from).
5. The Thaumanova Reactor has a secret button that specifically displaces a steam creature from somewhere. The button warns not to push it, so it is likely its results were observed and noted as dangerous before the Reactor’s destruction.

So Thaumanova experiments resulting in space/time displacement is still a possibility. I personally doubt it was the initial intention though. I have a theory about what they were trying to do there.

Thaumanova Reactor – time and space experiment.
Fractal of the Mists – time and space experiment.
What would have happened if you combine this things? If time and space “error” will occur in unstable time and space dimension?
This is much more promising and interesting than Abaddon

Unless the fall off abbadon takes place pre gw1. So the original fall to darkness instead of his defeat 0_0

It would be his imprisonment, rather than his “fall to darkness” (him going batkitten crazy). But it’s been confirmed to be pre-GW1.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

While I’d love to see the fall of Abaddon, lore wise, the Thaumanova Reactor’s more interesting to me. There’s not going to be much new lore to the fall of Abaddon beyond what we see. It’ll only be seeing what the Crystal Sea could have looked like and what Abaddon and perhaps the other gods could have looked like at the time.

Maybe I’m understanding it wrong, but that point doesn’t make sense to me. How can you know we will get less lore from the Abaddon fractal simply because we know that stuff happened? We know barely any details about that event, more than the Thaumanova thing yes, but not to the point, were the only thing missing is how everything looked like.
We now for example nothing about the relation between the gods at that point in time. Were they upset they had to turn against Abaddon? Were they full of rage? Sorrow? Pity? All of that?

To make an analogy (yes I like doing that, sue me), that’s like having the ability to use a time machine once in your life, but you have only two options:
1: The Tunguska event, a fairly recent event (~100 years), that’s not fully explained yet, so you going there could maybe solve the mystery. Was it a comet or something else?
2: Julius Caesar on the 15th of March getting assinated. Yes you know what happened, but seeing it with your own eyes, noticing the emotions of all participants is something entirely different and not less interesting.

In the end it comes down to personal preference, not how much lore one or the other gives, they just give different kinds of lore.

Finding out a mystery to me is much more important than seeing a few emotions of an event where all participants are dead(or gone in gods case)

It’s still new information, whether you care about it or not.

BuddhaKeks.4857:

Maybe I’m understanding it wrong, but that point doesn’t make sense to me. How can you know we will get less lore from the Abaddon fractal simply because we know that stuff happened? We know barely any details about that event, more than the Thaumanova thing yes, but not to the point, were the only thing missing is how everything looked like.

Let me rephrase:

We’ll get fewer new lore.

From the Asian-only pre-NF-release lore documents, we get quite a bit about Abaddon and what he wanted to do, and why things happened the way they did (fun fact: after the Margonites defaced the Temple of the Six, the forgotten basically got their knickers in a bunch and waged war on the Margonites, which in turned kitten ed Abaddon off, cue the Scriptures of Abaddon event, then the other Five stepped in because he was “going out of line” or some such, which only made Abaddon more annoyed). Though said documents are a bit obscure to the playerbase (I’ve been working on getting them from someone who knows where they are on Asian community forums, but he’s very busy with life so it’s taking a while).

BuddhaKeks.4857:

We now for example nothing about the relation between the gods at that point in time. Were they upset they had to turn against Abaddon? Were they full of rage? Sorrow? Pity? All of that?

Hmmm, we kind of do get a glimpse at this though…

[…] Hate and anger had overcame Abaddon completely, and with a vengeful declaration, war, once again, was declared upon the Gods.

Abaddon was the mightiest of the gods, and for a while, the war went in his favor. In the end, however, he was no match for the combined strength of all the Five. At what is now known as the Mouth of Torment, the Five broke an entrance to that which is now known as the Mouth of Torment. Unwilling (note: this can be translated to both unable or unwilling, but I’m taking context into consideration) to destroy their brethren, Abaddon was imprisoned. At the same time, the Margonites were delivered a catastrophic stroke, and only a small fraction of them ended up becoming trapped alongside their masters._

A powerful force of Forgotten was sent to safeguard Abaddon’s prison. Perhaps the Five had hoped that given time, Abaddon would come to his senses. […]

Fan translation of one of two known Asian lore docs.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Fan translation of one of two known Asian lore docs.

How much of that is pure fan fiction and how much of that was directly released by ArenaNet?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

A powerful force of Forgotten was sent to safeguard Abaddon’s prison. Perhaps the Five had hoped that given time, Abaddon would come to his senses. […]

Fan translation of one of two known Asian lore docs.

I know the text (there is even a post I made in the thread), but we don’t know if that is canon or not. And besides, reading it is still not being there. It gives a good general idea, but witnissing it could probably give us a match better idea about the personality of all gods.
But yeah fewer new lore is true and makes more sense. So I call this cleared up.

I think the reactor is interesting because it might be crazy fun. Explosions. Chaos creatures. Mad Scientists. Failed experiments. Usual sort of fun with or without much lore behind it. I’m guessing that’s how it will get votes.

About getting dragon lore from possible Thaumanova fractal, I’d still prefer the Abaddon one.

This is the game dealing with elder dragons, so we are getting dragon lore sooner or later. It would be a waste to lose a fractal spot to know more about something we could know other ways.

I want the fall of Abaddon BECAUSE WE KNOW what happens (with most fractals being so cryptic or just random places, that would be fresh air), and WE KNOW it was an event of epic proportions. Epic enough to turn a sea into the most famous dessert, so that has to be worth of experiencing.

The reactor has potential, but as for dragon lore, we could get it anywhere else, and the event itself is “Inquest blew things up” again. The combination of time, realities and chaos magic has potential, but I want to see the fall of Abaddon (and see how they design the gods too).

I like the concept of the reactor that I actually formed the background of my Asura partly around it when my friends and I were just starting the game and were planning to make an RP guild.

Although the guild never came about, I did do a bit of RP with the character and still hold onto his concept as being experimented on at a young age by Inquests concerning the reactor and Chaos Magics. Basic concept is, my Asura is infused with Chaos Magic which has caused him abnormalities as he grew up, among them being his inability to use magic, limiting his possible combat professions to Engineer or Warrior. He also absorbs and gives off small amounts of Chaos Magic that gives him disproportionate strength that rivals a Norn but can only maintain it if he doesn’t lie.

My Asura Warrior was a fun time RPing and the reactor has other history behind it that one can dig up.

Lokheit.7943:

About getting dragon lore from possible Thaumanova fractal, I’d still prefer the Abaddon one.

This is the game dealing with elder dragons, so we are getting dragon lore sooner or later. It would be a waste to lose a fractal spot to know more about something we could know other ways.

I want the fall of Abaddon BECAUSE WE KNOW what happens (with most fractals being so cryptic or just random places, that would be fresh air), and WE KNOW it was an event of epic proportions. Epic enough to turn a sea into the most famous dessert, so that has to be worth of experiencing.

The reactor has potential, but as for dragon lore, we could get it anywhere else, and the event itself is “Inquest blew things up” again. The combination of time, realities and chaos magic has potential, but I want to see the fall of Abaddon (and see how they design the gods too).

TL;DR: Both relate in their own way to Elder Dragons potentially, but more likely, may provide insight into magic of the past or magic of the present. Thaumanova may provide insight into how to bypass the Bloodstone limitations, if it proves the Elder Dragons are doing so through their absorption mechanism, and that that was what was under research there. Fall of Abaddon may provide a lesson as to why that may be a bad idea, as indicated by the the entire Forgotten Divine War thing that caused his plan to be scrapped and may further incentivize fixing the races’ domestic problems and uniting even more together.

In my opinion, the Fall of Abaddon guarantees that we’ll get the lore we expect. With the reactor, we have no clue what to expect. It could be some great new information, or it could just be another vague Fractal. I guess that is why I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Fall of Abaddon. Nostalgia, and guaranteed lore. Predictable, yes, but I like to know what I’m getting.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

In my opinion, the Fall of Abaddon guarantees that we’ll get the lore we expect. With the reactor, we have no clue what to expect. It could be some great new information, or it could just be another vague Fractal. I guess that is why I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Fall of Abaddon. Nostalgia, and guaranteed lore. Predictable, yes, but I like to know what I’m getting.

I’ve not explored the Fractals very much, or dungeons for that matter, but I wouldn’t even say it’s a guarantee for lore from my experience. Not to be a pessimist, it’s just what my minimal experience with dungeons has led me to believe (as well as the overall design of much of the game). I’ll be cool with either, myself.

Well, most/all of the Fractals take place in the past. They are all historical event of some sort. But most of the Fractals give very limited information to begin with. The only exception being the Urban Battlegrounds Fractal, which is clearly portraying the Charr attack on Ascalon. That doesn’t mean there isn’t any lore in there, but the ones we’ve seen so far require a lot of speculation, and mostly just feel as fun ideas that the devs happen to have. It makes it hard to determine which events the Fractals are exactly showing us.

With the Fall of Abaddon, you pretty much get what’s advertised. It’s crystal clear which historical event is being shown. And that makes it a lot easier for us lore wise. We know where and when it happened, and who the ones involved are. With a large possibility to learn more about the Gods. It’s very rare that the lore community gets handed something quite so clear.

During GW1’s war on Kryta, there were people wondering if they’d actually show us the Foefire. Of course that didn’t happen, because the players couldn’t possibly survive that. The Fractals allow the devs to still show us these otherwise impossible-to-show events that are of a lot of value to the lore community.

For those expecting to see how Abaddon fell and all that; especially about your argument Malafide…

Keep in mind that the Fractals are not exact replicas of the past. These aren’t how the events actually happened. The Mists doesn’t create exact copies. It’ll just create “close to enough” replicas. So the Fall of Abaddon won’t be showing how Abaddon fell. It’ll just show Abaddon falling.

It’ll likely be more accurate than Urban Battlegrounds being a depiction of the Searing, though at the same time, it could also be less accurate.

And keep in mind that what is outright different will be our own actions in it – our characters didn’t exist then, but they do in the Fractal. The Fall of Abaddon fractal may be “the war of the gods, except without the other five gods” or it could be “the war of the gods, aided by five powerful mortals who weren’t there before” or any other combination, like “the war of the gods, with Abaddon being ten times tougher and wtf pwning all five other gods.”

While we’ll see the fall of Abaddon, nothing says that it’ll be even close to accurate to how Abaddon actually was defeated.

But the same goes for the Thaumanova Reactor. However, from the dev post, the importance of that reactor isn’t “what happened?” but rather “how can the reactor’s research and explosion act when put in xyz situation?”

I mean, hell, for all we can tell, we may be fighting Abaddon in both Fractals. One being an intended depiction of his fall, the other where he got “teleported” through time and space (or rather, copied and pasted through time and space).

5 gods. 5 players. I’m thinking we each take the form of one of the 5 and pummel Abaddon. Each of us have additional roles, like 4 players need to hold off Margonites while Grenth player summons minion/spirit reinforcements, Lyssa invokes an arcane spell, etc. I want god powers. Specifically I do want to see the 5 in some capacity.

^— If they do transform us into the Gods it is likely to be a cosmetic only change like with the Urban Battlegorund (that’s a Charr one right?) fractal. I can’t even begin to imagine the giant kittenstorm that would erupt if they forced a role and different skills on everyone.

Because the abbaddon thing will be an underwater fractal

How would it be an underwater fractal O_o

Abaddon is the god of water, according to some official asian GW1 website (I think it was taiwanese, but I’m not sure).

I still doubt it will be an underwater fractal since Abaddon fell into the Crystal Sea, according to what we know, so the fight must have been above the sea, not in it.

Not just that Taiwanese NCsoft site for GW1 that got taken down years ago, but other pre-release lore, as well as other lore on him too. And one can see in Temple of the Forgotten God via Devotee of the Deeps, as well as it being the reason why the Margonites revered him so much.

I find myself leaning towards favoring the Thaumanova Reactor of the two fractals. As nostalgic and epic as the Fall of Abaddon might be, the idea behind the disaster at the reactor holds the chance for alot of interesting lore.

Also I cant get the idea of some kind of Black Mesa/HalfLife like fractal with you running through the reactor as reality bends and warps around you.

Also, we are pretty much 100% sure thaumanove WILL NOT be underwater, but abaddon could be. Abbaddons temple is underwater in orr aswell, but idk.. Im not much into lore.

An with the thaumanove reactor we might get some story behind the fire elemental which i meet on a daily basis

Homonavn.6348:

Also, we are pretty much 100% sure thaumanove WILL NOT be underwater, but abaddon could be. Abbaddons temple is underwater in orr aswell, but idk.. Im not much into lore.

Abaddon was defeated at the Mouth of Torment, which is not underwater. So it seems highly unlikely that his Fractal would be underwater. Abaddon’s temple is in an area that has partially been raised from the depths after having been sunk beneath the waves. The temple itself of course was originally build above water. Otherwise, how would you visit the temple? Swim there every time, and then try to light some candles?

Abaddon’s defeat also turned the Crystal Sea into the Crystal Desert. So we’d probably be fighting him in another dimension. If we’re fighting him at all.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Homonavn.6348:

Also, we are pretty much 100% sure thaumanove WILL NOT be underwater, but abaddon could be. Abbaddons temple is underwater in orr aswell, but idk.. Im not much into lore.

Abaddon was defeated at the Mouth of Torment, which is not underwater. So it seems highly unlikely that his Fractal would be underwater. Abaddon’s temple is in an area that has partially been raised from the depths after having been sunk beneath the waves. The temple itself of course was originally build above water. Otherwise, how would you visit the temple? Swim there every time, and then try to light some candles?

Abaddon’s defeat also turned the Crystal Sea into the Crystal Desert. So we’d probably be fighting him in another dimension. If we’re fighting him at all.

Actually, it WAS underwater/near water. The entire crystal sea just dried up when Abaddon was struck down.

The Desolation was the Crystal Sea’s coast.

So he wasn’t defeated underwater, but on a coast.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

It would be his imprisonment, rather than his “fall to darkness” (him going batkitten crazy). But it’s been confirmed to be pre-GW1.

Which means we’ll be visting the Crystal Sea.

I do have to point out, Konig, how do we know that what we have of Abaddon’s fall is correct? I mean with so much other human lore put under scrutiny, such as the creation of the bloodstone, bringing Glint and the Forgotten from the Mists, creating the world, and so on, how can we know for certain that what we “know” now about the Fall of Abaddon is true. I understand that what you are saying about the possible inaccuracy of an event like this found in the fractals, but at the same time, should it come to exist, it could be just as close to truth as what we now think we know about the event through human history and religion.

The thing to note about “so much other human lore put under scrutiny” is that ArenaNet has actually been very smart about their retconning of human historical lore!

That is to say: The only human historical records that’s wrong is the stuff introduced to us by Thaddeus LaMounte via the History of Tyria Volume 1. Other than that, it was what Glint told us herself.

The only exception to this statement is a line from An Empire Divided – one that outright states is speculation from an in-universe viewpoint and was known to be wrong upon introduction (that the naval relics in the Crystal Desert (former Crystal Sea area) were suspected by scholars to be Luxon – they were Margonite, and the reason for this is explained further in NF, where a scholar claims Margonites are mere myths). There is one other possible exception, being where humanity arrived on the world first/when humanity first arrived on continental Tyria. Though that bit isn’t outright contradicted yet, in that technically it very well may be that humanity wasn’t on continental Tyria when Cantha reigned prior to 205 BE, and they could have re-arrived on continental Tyria in 205 BE via boats.

So the lore we have on Abaddon’s fall, which comes from pre-NF releases, Nightfall, and Guild Wars 2 is not likely to be wrong given empirical evidence. It very well may be – especially the pre-NF releases since that’s lore written in beta stages or sooner (and is as subject to change as The Movement of the World was, or any manual lore from GW1) – but we have no reason to believe it is when the “false history” is in fact Abaddon’s pure existence.

Edit: Oh, and I think I just found full-proof evidence that what we know of Abaddon’s fall is still accurate:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

It matters, but we all pretty much know exactly what happened at the Mouth of Torment.

Nobody knows what happened at Thaumanova…yet.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/cutthroat/That-Abaddon-guy-and-why-his-fall-matters/first#post2430786

What I am saying is, information and sources from that time are limited at best. Any new information that could be brought up from that moment, such as the possible connection between Abaddon, Lyss and Ilya, could be added without there being much, if any, retcon involved.

I favor the Thaumanova Reactor for one simple reason – Even though Abaddon’s Fall would be far more interesting, a 20 to 30 minute fractal won’t come anywhere near doing it justice. I want to see how it starts, how it progresses and how it ends in as much theatrical flare as possible. I want it to be a full campaign and I’m more than willing to pay for it.

The Thaumanova Reactor, on the other hand, can be done in the usual time frame. My thought is we enter just as it reaches critical mass and have to escape before it goes boom. Throw in some new, exciting gimmicks, slap a bow on it and call it done.

btw. I just thouhgt about some interesting…
If You talk to Dessa (main fractal NPC) You can ask for the gate to lions arch:
" ‘How did you get connected to that gate in Lion’s Arch?’
Dessa: ’Lion’s Arch? No, there must be a misunderstanding. We’d never launch this lab from that pirate haven.’ "

and by now we have TWO Lions Arch representative (Lions Guard that is attending to the Captains Council and leader of the Black Lion trading Company who is also attending to the Captains Council) who wants support researches into some specific Fractal….

am I only person here who seem it strange?

Lord, considering she has never heard of a Sylvari, nor seen one, we can assume she’s been in that laboratory for over 10-15 years (Malomedies was the first to contact another race, the Asura, somewhere after the second generation was born). The gate was most likely relocated in that time.

What’s more interesting still is who funds the research to begin with. I’m not sure it’s explicitly stated in the game. Connections to the Consortium could imply it’s them.

We actually know she’s been in that laboratory for a while. In an interview with TowerTalk, Scott McGough told us that Dessa is effectively trapped in her lab – though it’s more of a psychological trapped sense, as she can leave but fears that if she does, she’d never be able to return to that lab because of how hard and random it was to show up there.

IIRC, Scott also said that Dessa doesn’t even realize – or refuses to acknowledge – that the asura gate leading to her lab is even active.

Though how long she’s been there is unknown. And keep in mind that the Mists connect all times, so she could have entered there at about 1230 or so for all we know, when Rata Sum had still embargoed Lion’s Arch for stealing money meant for King Baede’s asura gate in Divinity’s Reach.

Dessa isn’t funded by the Consortium either. Her “connections” run only so far as her ex-boyfriend and she’s outright stating that she refuses to work with Consortium due to her now-over relationship. To think she’s funded by Consortium even now would be like claiming a person who dated someone in the mafia, broke up, and is now running a legit bicycle store has the store funded by the mafia.

This is incredibly interesting. I’d go for the Thaumanova Reactor for this one since it has a more “scientific” approach. Also, I like Kiell!

yeah but still with her opinion about Lions Arch as all I don’t think that she would not take funds for their research from neither Ellen nor Evon…