Guild Wars 2

One thing we’re ignoring is the way the Raving Asura and Dessa act. When I did the fractal for the first time I was under the impression that the Raving Asura went in there on behest of Dessa, and he went mad while in there. Their interaction could be taken many ways, but this is my personal favorite possibility.

Try to put yourself in the role of our characters.

For some reason we volunteer to be sent into ‘unstable’ pocket dimensions in the Mists to explore and gather data. We do this under the watching eye of Dessa, the leader of this project, who gives us ample information on the Fractal and provides us with direction to the extraction point. So far so good.

Then we end up in the Uncategorized Fractal and all of a sudden Dessa ‘freaks out’: “You’ve landed… I… need to go. I’m sorry.” and abandons us to our fate with no sense of direction or goal. We start climbing the place because we conveniently have goal markers as a game mechanic, but in character we just decide up would be the most logical thing to do.

We often say she panics, but what she does is effectively leaving us to die and she apologizes to us for it too. Sure she comes back after a while, directs us to the end and finally urges us to go asap. But her little line of text could imply more than just ‘panic’.

Then there’s the Raving Asura who could possibly know he’s in a Fractal (You can’t be here, you’re not real) and talks about being abandoned. Dessa obviously knows the place too.

When landing Dessa hesitates but decides she needs to go and leave us to fend for ourselves. I would assume the place holds secrets we’re not allowed to know, for one reason or another. Abandoning us there would be the easy way to accomplish this, as we’d be stuck forever, if not dead by local hazards. She does however have a change of heart, and guides us out as swiftly as possible. Mystery? Yes, lots of it!

Just one crazy though aboud uncategorized fractal after reading this topic.

Someone mentioned here that that was an asuran construct – ciy or not whatever.
in other topic somebody told that thaumanova Reactor was under asuran CITY.
So what IF uncategorized fractal symbols that city which was floating above reactor and when the reactor explodes some instruments that was used to keep them straight was heavilly damaged and thats caused all the rest thing mentioned?

just a thought – also with this theory about knowledge permitted to us and abandoning of dessa could match – maybe she personally was engaged into something with thaumanova (in her reality) and there are things about that she is considering as “that should not be known for the rest of the world… yet”

If you consider her current research, the nature of the research that was going on beneath the reactor and Dessa’s ‘connection’ to the Consortium, she could very well be a (former) Inquest member.

It makes me question her cooperation on a Fractal that would reveal her past though.

Evans.6347:

If you consider her current research, the nature of the research that was going on beneath the reactor and Dessa’s ‘connection’ to the Consortium, she could very well be a (former) Inquest member.

It makes me question her cooperation on a Fractal that would reveal her past though.

Keep in mind that the Fractals are randomly selected. Even Dessa does not know where she’s sending you, before you land there. It could very well be that Dessa was simply stunned to run into a Fractal with which she has a dark history.

If the city is the city of Thumanova that would explain the flame legion, bandit, ettin, and harpies. And it would explain why it is off balance.

Lord Trejgon.2809:

Someone mentioned here that that was an asuran construct – ciy or not whatever.
in other topic somebody told that thaumanova Reactor was under asuran CITY.
So what IF uncategorized fractal symbols that city which was floating above reactor and when the reactor explodes some instruments that was used to keep them straight was heavilly damaged and thats caused all the rest thing mentioned?

The Thaumanova city wasn’t floating, and in fact the structure we go through in Metrica is that city. The reactor that blew was underground, in the hole that is sealed off unless you have that charged Matrix Key.

Furthermore, I doubt that ArenaNet would make two fractals based on the Thaumanova Reactor explosion.

I always assumed Dessa was FROM the ‘Uncategorized Fractal’.

The idea being that she discovered/developed her fractal-travel tech in the process of escaping from the Uncategorized Fractal… and she had left behind at least one Asura who knew her in the process.

Maybe she freaks out because from her perspective the entire point of fractal-hoping was a rescue mission and when you finally do connect to the one singular fractal she’s been looking for all along, its completely desolate. She failed to get back in time to save her people.

When we do learn the official version, I expect it to be a very dark ride.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Lord Trejgon.2809:

Someone mentioned here that that was an asuran construct – ciy or not whatever.
in other topic somebody told that thaumanova Reactor was under asuran CITY.
So what IF uncategorized fractal symbols that city which was floating above reactor and when the reactor explodes some instruments that was used to keep them straight was heavilly damaged and thats caused all the rest thing mentioned?

The Thaumanova city wasn’t floating, and in fact the structure we go through in Metrica is that city. The reactor that blew was underground, in the hole that is sealed off unless you have that charged Matrix Key.

Furthermore, I doubt that ArenaNet would make two fractals based on the Thaumanova Reactor explosion.

actually When You jump into that hole You will land…..
on the platform that is HIGH ABOVE metrica province
and if You look up there You WILL see many floating structures above reactor

Lord Trejgon.2809:

actually When You jump into that hole You will land…..
on the platform that is HIGH ABOVE metrica province
and if You look up there You WILL see many floating structures above reactor

One floating platform. The rest aren’t floating – no more than a small tower or block t hat’s floating at least. But that’s atypical asuran design mixed in with chaos magic saturation.

But the fact you’re teleported up doesn’t mean anything in relation to where the reactor is. Nonetheless, Thaumanova was in the ground. The reactor, underground. If it crash landed or something, it’d be noticeable. And the city itself is the structure we go to clean up, not something lost from up above.

Dondarrion.2748:

My take on the Uncategorized Fractal is that, knowing the Asura as “geniuses” with a lot of experimental projects going on, the UF is just a failed attempt at creating Rata Sum. How many Asura projects have you seen gone the way they’re supposed to on the first atttempt?? To me it then seems likely the Uncategorized Fractal was an early attempt to establish the new capital

The Rata Project was a dream given form. A self contained city floating high over the wilds of Maguuma. A place of commerce, diplomacy, and science for a quarter million of the races of Tyria. A shining beacon in the sky… all alone in the night. This is the story of the last of the Rata stations. The year is 1326. The name of the place: Rata Sum.

Hahahaha. +1 to you sir for your excellent reference.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Lord Trejgon.2809:

actually When You jump into that hole You will land…..
on the platform that is HIGH ABOVE metrica province
and if You look up there You WILL see many floating structures above reactor

One floating platform. The rest aren’t floating – no more than a small tower or block t hat’s floating at least. But that’s atypical asuran design mixed in with chaos magic saturation.

But the fact you’re teleported up doesn’t mean anything in relation to where the reactor is. Nonetheless, Thaumanova was in the ground. The reactor, underground. If it crash landed or something, it’d be noticeable. And the city itself is the structure we go to clean up, not something lost from up above.

yes of course You land on the single platform and from there You cannot see any other floating structures.

but when I was wandering near that buildings where Fire Elemental takes place looking up could reveal more floating structures up there….
When I’ll be there next time I’ll give You a screenie but unfortunatelly that can be on Monday as earliest possibility

and remember that was just a thought – not something I am myself sure – I just compilated some things i’ve read and voila something that could be a resonable theory cames up

This is a long shot but a thought occured to me.

Are we entirely sure that the only place that the Asura escaped to the surface at was Magumma? Considering how big their underground empire was could another group of Asura escaped to the surface in a different place in the world and rebuilt there? Of course they could have reconnected with the rest of their race with Asura gate but generally that would require knowing where they were connected to and I get the feeling almost all if not all of the old gates were closed.

Also, an interesting tidbit I found in Rata Sum. If your a Vigil player, a guard in Rata Sum shares with you some details of Rata Sum’s defenses. According to him, there is little in the floating portion of the city. On the ground level however there is stronger defenses because of the threat of Destroyers. Do we know exactly what keeps that city floating? Does it hover itself or is there something on the ground holding it in the air?

About your first question – in Eye of the North, there were asura in what is now Woodland Cascades. So it’s possible that there are other locations with them.

Don’t know why I hadn’t considered the Uncategorized Fractal being a city built there…

But TBH, it sounds like all of the asura more or less remained in the Tarnished Coast, as those who were in the Verdant Cascades and Umbral’s Grotto were few and mainly explorers.

I was more thinking along the lines of a completely seperate group of Asura. The ones in the Woodland Cascades seemed to be connected to Rata Sum.

My thought was more along the lines that if there were several (seven?) Asuran cities when the Destroyers struck and they started at the Central Transfer Chamber then refugees from another one of those cities may have fled upwards somewhere else in the world. As far as Im aware we really dont know where on Tyria these cities were located.

With the Asura network comprimised I could see refugees heading straight to the surface rather than risking traveling round to try and meet up with the other Asura, particularly if they had lost contact and the Destoyers were coming from the gates.

As I said its a long shot but if such a disaster hit a ‘lost’ group of Asura, it could have happened in the last few hundred years and such a group could quite possibly build something similar to Rata Sum considering they had the same technical knowledge and achitecture.

Six underground cities, one utterly wiped out at least. But by all accounts, it doesn’t seem that they started at the Central Transfer Chamber. We know where the Great Destroyer was during our actions of Eye of the North, but the destroyer threat had already destroyed many civilizations by that time and the CTC fell right when we joined in the conflict – this implies that the Great Destroyer awoke somewhere else and went to Primordus.

Raving Asura: “All of us! Abandoned! You aren’t real. You can’t be here.”

That line haunts me. The way the fractal is designed…that line…The way the Asura doesn’t seem too concerned about fighting us…I always imagined what we were doing was not “real” just an echo of a real event. But this Asura seems to know he’s in a fractal…or at least know we’re out of place. Something is very, very wrong here.

I’m telling ya, he/they were abandoned …by Dessa…

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Johnny Boi.4980:

I found it interesting while reading the GW wiki page, on Mursaat, how so many things had referred back to the Jade fractal such as the (at-the-time) new condition, Agony (so much like the Mursaat’s ultimate skill, Spectral Agony), ascended items, basically referring to the Mursaat – Infusing, like in GW1 to be used against spectral agony – And lastly, the Jade contructs they built. All within one update..

There is no connection.
The Jade Constructs were Purple/Red like all other Mursaat constructs. They didn’t have anything to do with the Jade Sea, which was a product of the Jade Wind, other than both using the word ‘Jade’.
Agony is a mechanic and the condition is inflicted by all bosses in high level Fractals – other than it’s name and function there is nothing to suggest that lore-wise it is the same as the Mursaat’s Spectral Agony ability. Agony is extreme physical (or mental) suffering, Spectral Agony is sort of implied to be something worse. (In GW1 there was a Ritualist skill called Agony which of course also had nothing to do with the Mursaat, it’s just an noun :P
Ascended gear also doesn’t refer to the Mursaat at all. Ascension in GW1 was to do with attaining the blessing of the Gods, in GW2 it is just a word used to communicate an increased defensive property of the gear. Infusion was also specific to Spectral Agony, there is nothing to indicate that Agony Resistance in GW2 would protect us from Spectral Agony (of course there is also nothing to indicate that it wouldn’t either, but that isn’t the point).

Sorry I just can’t believe that the connection between infusing against agony(gw1) and infusing against agony(gw2) simply doesn’t exist.

Gnat.9405:

Sorry I just can’t believe that the connection between infusing against agony(gw1) and infusing against agony(gw2) simply doesn’t exist.

They kept the same naming conventions, but there isn’t any lore to directly link these two things. It’s simply a mechanic.

Gnat.9405:

Sorry I just can’t believe that the connection between infusing against agony(gw1) and infusing against agony(gw2) simply doesn’t exist.

In Guild Wars 1, we used the ethereal essence of Eidolons, infusing that into one’s armor in order to protect against Spectral Agony – a skill used by the mursaat even in ancient days.

In Guild Wars 2, we use the essence of… the Mists? Not very clear, infusing into trinkets, in order to protect against… something painful generated by the Mists? Again, not very clear.

The only similarity is the function and names. The origin of the infusions and the “agony” is entirely different. At least, as far as we can definitively tell.

But then again, why would they name it the same if there were no connection?

They could be related in one way or another I suppose. At the present I believe the name and functionality is just a wink to the Gw1 veterans.

However, if they ever add the Mursaat back into the game, and you need infusion like in Fractals to deal with them, then it would be the ideal moment to expand on the Mursaat. It wouldn’t be so hard to explain that the Mursaat learned their Spectral Agony from the ‘dimension’ they can ‘shift into’. Sounds pretty Fractal-ish to begin with anyway…

My theory is the raving asura is actually a member of a previous exploration party sent in to the fractals by Deesa, who was ABANDONED, and went mad after being left alone. (I assume the harpies took the rest of the crew or they FELL, which is also implied by the raving mad Asura. They weren’t able to make the jumps like he was.) Which would explain why Deesa is upset when you first enter the fractal.

Okhu.7948:

My theory is the raving asura is actually a member of a previous exploration party sent in to the fractals by Deesa, who was ABANDONED, and went mad after being left alone. (I assume the harpies took the rest of the crew or they FELL, which is also implied by the raving mad Asura. They weren’t able to make the jumps like he was.) Which would explain why Deesa is upset when you first enter the fractal.

That is an interesting hypothesis. But if that were the case, that means Dessa didn’t teleport the rest of the explorers back to the hub, like she does with us. Which leaves the question, why would she do that?

Perhaps the technology they used was still in an experimental stage at the time, and she tried to teleport them back, but failed. She’s tormented by the knowledge of her failure, which is why she can’t stick around to watch (although likely her krewe was still manning the equipment and observing our progress).

“All of us! Abandoned! You aren’t real. You can’t be here.” – Dessa Abandoned Them.

“Breach! – This is the only one i’m not too sure about, potentially breaching the Mists? (to get to the fractal)
Broken! – the teleportation was still experimental and broke.
Falling! – the rest the previous exploration krewe couldn’t make the jumps and fell.
Screaming! – the sounds they made on their way down.
Dying!” – self-explanatory.

That is how I came to the conclusions I did. And why Dessa was acting the way she was.

The way the asura says breach and broken, makes it sound more like their defenses were breached and what kept the structure floating was broken – resulting in the structure falling, people screaming and dying from that fall.

Thought I’d bring this one up from another thread regarding the subject. Seems the Raving Asura has another line which doesn’t trigger often due to a bug. It is as follows:

http://i.imgur.com/j6Bc2MR.jpg

“I couldn’t save them. I heard them all. Pleading. All gone. All on my watch!”

Doesn’t contribute much to figuring out what this fractal is all about, but still interesting because gives us a little bit more of insight.

Personally, that line leads me to believe the Raving Asura was a tutor or guardian in charge of the progeny, also because the golems seem to be child-customized. Or he might have been some important key figure in this Rata Sumwhereelse dealing with the overall security of the populace.

Or more likely, he was simply in charge of a team of other Asura. There may have been a security breach, and as the structure started falling apart, he was unable to save them. Even though he was supposed to ensure their safety.

Hmmm, what if the floating hub of Fractals used to be a part of the Uncategorized Fractal? Dessa is displaced in some sort of subspace, and the rest of the facility is abandoned. But for what ever reason, whenever Dessa is conducting her Fractal research, the old lab sometimes comes up. As if the Mists remember what happened.

Remillard.8691:

Dondarrion.2748:

My take on the Uncategorized Fractal is that, knowing the Asura as “geniuses” with a lot of experimental projects going on, the UF is just a failed attempt at creating Rata Sum. How many Asura projects have you seen gone the way they’re supposed to on the first atttempt?? To me it then seems likely the Uncategorized Fractal was an early attempt to establish the new capital

The Rata Project was a dream given form. A self contained city floating high over the wilds of Maguuma. A place of commerce, diplomacy, and science for a quarter million of the races of Tyria. A shining beacon in the sky… all alone in the night. This is the story of the last of the Rata stations. The year is 1326. The name of the place: Rata Sum.

Haha, as a fan of B5 when it ran, I tip my hat to you for the reference

Or as the laboratory by itself proves that some of the pockets in the Mists are in fact habitable, when stable, the whole Fractal could have been a colonisation project.

It would be a fairly safe place to be when you stabilise the Fractal after all, much like how the Mursaat fazed out of Tyria.

Which brings me to believe the whole project, funded by the Consortium (tie with Dessa) was completed to a certain degree (and thus the city itself is not originally part of the Fractal) before something happened at the laboratory and/or fractal which caused mass death and probably scambled the coordinates of the place making them unable to be extracted. Dessa may or may not have been project leader at this point. Probably she lost her boyfriend in said process.

It would explain her shock, but not why she is secretive about it. However, if you include Council and Arcane Eye orders, which by themselves are pretty threatening, she might just not be allowed to even mention the whole failure.

“What happens in the Mists, stays in the Mists”

Actually, does Dessa at any point explain the actual purpose of the facility? Exploring the Mists is all fine and dandy, but to what end did someone fund this project?
The fact that she mentions in her dialogue that the Fractals must be pacified/stabilised or they might collapse implies this has happened before. However we have no idea what that would do to something/someone that is not part of the original Fractal.

(PLEASE READ)
Though I have no hard evidence to back this all up… I believe that Uncategorized Fractal did NOT take place in the Rata Sum we know today… But in Crucible of Eternity, If u look at RS today… the map, there is no evidence of there ever in history being any large scaled damage done to it. But going to CoE… that place is frigging mess. there are parts of it, cubes floating/toppled over for no reason. Not to mention it looks like CoE fell on top of a town XD there are random pillars just sticking out on the south entrance to the ONLY entrance… and the entrance to coe itself isn’t grand or… clear in any way. the architect of the pillars outside of CoE is different from CoE it self (I could go on with more reasons). So I concluded that CoE fell on a town XD In the first post Brom Malochson.9306 explained what the asura said, breach, broken, falling, screaming, dying. Mount Maelstrom is still part of Maguuma Jungle, so Mordremoth could have still attacked. Dying- Splat, u don’t splat if u restabilized in the air… meaning the CoE must have crashed. “All of us! Abandoned!” The Asuran council abandoned their people? If this were so… the future of Rata Sum… Would not be how it looks today in gw2, atleast how I would think of it… it would look a lot more of communism, such as the inquest. Also I don’t ever recall seeing harpies near rata sum ever, like any map near RS. Where as there are harpies in shiverpeak mountains that could come south. Anyways thanks for reading!

If you read this thread, you’d have seen the developer post in which it got confirmed that Uncategorized Fractal is not Rata Sum.

It isn’t Crucible of Eternity either, because that place’s shape – the exterior complex actually called the Infinite Coil Reactor – is different than Uncategorized Fractal. The Crucible of Eternity itself was a subterranean complex. I don’t know what “cubes toppled over” you refer to. The place, like many asuran structures, was built in cubic shapes with a corner pointed up, and another into the ground. They may look “toppled over” but they aren’t. The place isn’t a mess either. I don’t see why the pillars at the entrance look odd either – maybe they weren’t needed elsewhere?

Either way, the Infinite Coil Reactor, which is a recent and partially incomplete structure, was never floating. Nor does it match in any way shape or form Uncategorized – even the materials are completely different.

Also: Mount Maelstrom is NOT part of Maguuma Jungle. It is for the explorer achievement only. But it isn’t in lore. That’s a mechanics versus lore situation.

There are asuran ruins at the Infinity Coil- easiest to see outside the reactor itself, but I also got the impression it was built over an older site. That it fell out of the sky, though? A bit far-fetched.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

If you read this thread, you’d have seen the developer post in which it got confirmed that Uncategorized Fractal is not Rata Sum.

What if it wasn’t a Fractal based on the original Rata Sum, but a Fractal based on the fall of a Rata Sum Fractal? Like, hypothetically, the Inquest wanted to use Fractal research to create a pirated copy of Rata Sum, but when Thaumanova blew, the Tyria-side tech keeping Mistlock stable failed, and both the original Mistlock and the original Rata Sum Fractal were lost, along with all the personnel there.

That seems unlikely. There’s no reason to believe the Inquest hold any influence over Mistlock, for starters. Plus a fractal being created to copy a fractal is just… odd. The Mists makes the fractals, so it would be a case of the Mists copying itself which is unprecedented.

Possible, but seems far-fetched to me.

Well, technically Tyria is a part of the Mists, as the Mists is and creates all things, thus it is already “copying itself”.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Plus a fractal being created to copy a fractal is just… odd. The Mists makes the fractals, so it would be a case of the Mists copying itself which is unprecedented.

It’s definitely odd, but when I hear the word “fractal”, I first think of concepts like “self-similar” and “recursion”.

For some reason, thinking about Dessa made me think of this: “Theorising that one could time travel within the Mists, Dessa stepped into the Fractal generator and vanished… She woke to find herself trapped in the Mists, facing mirror images that were not her own, and driven by an unknown force to change illusory recreations of history for the better. Her only companions on this journey are a bunch of random people from Lion’s Arch, to whom she appears in the form of a hologram that only they can see and hear. And so Dessa sends her mercenaries leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that the next extraction will be her extraction home”

Anyhow, what are the odds that the Uncategorized or Thaumanova fractals represent Dessa’s future? I mean, word of god says they are all in the player’s past, but we know that Dessa is a little out of date, and if she is a fractal copy of a Dessa from 30 years ago or so…

Curious though that the cat golems are there. There is another cat golem I know of.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/TOM-9

He is located in the Proxemics lab. It gets interesting because this lab used to run experiments on Skritt. Now long abandoned, the Skritt live there.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Proxemics_Lab_

Now this could be a coincidence but the two could be linked. Tom-9…Old Tom…The four cat Golems with the Raving Asura. I could see it being sort of a humorous little add in to the game to have Cat-Golems guarding rat creatures.

We know the lab is long abandoned so the time frame is already established. We know it happened in the past which could tie it to this fractal.

Is it likely? Nah haha…but maybe a small nod could be cool.

My two cents on fractals as a medium for story: They should be short stories. Nothing connecting. Nothing wide and sweeping. Little stories that can be semi solved with lore hunting but no grand tales there. It makes it more interesting to have these doomed sections of history where you will never quite know EVERYTHING. But a small measure of closure is nice.

I saw this theory from a guy on reddit:
“I like to think that the raving asura was apart of Dessa’s krewe and got trapped inside the Uncategorized Fractal. He and other krewe members were sent in before Dessa knew the dangers of the fractals and they ended up getting stuck.

“All of us! Abandoned! You aren’t real! You can’t be here!”

Time inside the fractal might move faster and he may of been trapped for years and slowly went crazy. For the first time in a long time he has seen other beings besides the harpies and golems. He doesn’t know who we are so he has his golems attack."

kikojak.7051:

I saw this theory from a guy on reddit:
“I like to think that the raving asura was apart of Dessa’s krewe and got trapped inside the Uncategorized Fractal. He and other krewe members were sent in before Dessa knew the dangers of the fractals and they ended up getting stuck.

“All of us! Abandoned! You aren’t real! You can’t be here!”

Time inside the fractal might move faster and he may of been trapped for years and slowly went crazy. For the first time in a long time he has seen other beings besides the harpies and golems. He doesn’t know who we are so he has his golems attack."

Ooooooh, that makes quite a bit of sense. But how come Dessa doesn’t remember that someone in her Krewe is missing? Sure, she loses fragments of her memory if she steps outside, but this Fractal was added to the game long before Fractured, and it’s implied that this was first time she tried to leave (willingly or no). She should remember him… unless the situation is more convoluted than I thought.

I go with Thaumanova city which is probably also named Rata Sum.

We have Dessa who know a) the fractal and b) her krewe in Thaumanova fractal.

We have a giant gate above Thaumanova and the statement that it was a city.

Close to Thaumanova there is a metaevent “power overwhelming” in which a giant energy grid is built to establish the next Rata Sum (the NPCs are calling it this way).

But … it didn’t happen in the reactor incident. After such a “short” time there should be at least some NPC around telling about the city.

There is another incident which isn’t enlightend further. The great gate accident which happened at 1312 and wouldn’t be called great accident if just one Asura was lost during this happening.

I am necroing this with a question. It is safe to assume that rata novus is the uncategorized fractal?

rata novus is underground and looks nothing like the city in the fractal

There are some theorists that the giant cube to the east of Rata Novus isn’t part of Rata Novus (I’m pretty sure it is though), and that said cube was the city Rata Novans evacuated to, with the east side of the cube being the shattered part of the Uncategorized Fractal, with the Raving Asura being the person in the various objects in Rata Novus (both open world and instance) being the person who was in control of evacuation.

But I disagree, as one of the objectives in The Dreamer 1 collection is to get a letter from said Raving Asura and give it to Dessa (the letter being titled “Letter to Dessa” the objective in collection being called “Dessa’s Sadness”) which would mean whatever Uncategorized Fractal is, Dessa knows it – and she couldn’t know of Rata Novus since it fell 150-some years ago, and Dessa is a modern enough asura to know people who died in Thaumanova’s explosion (which would have happened in 1324-1325 by all indication).

A little late to the topic, but I’ve always assumed that this was the precursor to Rata Sum.

That Dessa seems to know of it, and maybe even know of the Asura in there, it should be relatively recent.
My guess is that when the Asura first set about making a new city, they decided, what better way to show off their intellect and power, by having a gigantic floating city.
However the reactor, the power that would be needed to keep the city afloat, would have to be insanely powerful. And perhaps something happened causing the containment for that reactor to malfunction, thus, “Breach!”
This would fall in line with the other fractals as well, where a large gathering of magic energy occurred, thus locking it in time.
And for abandonment, I’d imagine the Asura not on there, for the sake of their own safety, decided to shut down any gates going to the Rata.

Also, the golems are of recent design, not sure if that’s intentional, but we do know the golem designs changed radically between GW1 and GW2.

Don’t know if I missed something or not, but Rata Sum was built in GW1. It absolutely didn’t look like it does now because the Asura had just came out to the surface, but I really don’t think that the Uncategorized Fractal shows something older than Rata Sum.