Guild Wars 2

From the Order of Whispers NPC at Thunderidge we know Scarlet has been seen around the “isles” and that she has shown interest in the Mists.

Now, most theories about what isles could be meant pointed to the sunken battle isles and possible the new WvW Map.

However, what if she has been seen around the Fire Isles, also known as Ring of Fire instead? Could she be looking for a way to access the Foundry of Failed Creations?
With that in mind and looking at what she’s gained from all the previous alliances, what could she be up to? Could the bloodstones finally make a comeback to GW2? Could she be trying to make titans of her own there?

Possible points for that theory
- Fire Isles. They connect to the Mists, specifically the Realm of Torment. Fits the description nicely. Also makes a defensible location, perfect for a base.
- We know Scarlet has been to the Unending Ocean before, seeing as she somehow “magically” obtained pieces of a Krait Obelisk. That’s just south of the Ring of Fire.
- “Rock Tyria to its core”. Well, kinda. Not really. Might fit, because Volcano.
- She tries to make the spores more heat-resistant, if I don’t remember it wrong.
- More of another theory, but if we had gotten the Abaddon fractal instead of the Thaumanova one, we could have seen the battle and still yet foreshadowing to the next LS installment since the Realm of Torment was Abaddon’s prison.

Possible points against that theory
- Well, there’s really nothing that comes to mind why Scarlet would be interested in the Realm of Torment of all things. Or how Azurite, the spores she obtained, or anything would tie together.
- No clear link between Thaumanova, the anomaly and dragon energy to this either.
- Only one alliance to fight there would make sense, namely the Aetherblades. (Or at least I’d be shuddering at the thought of the Molten and Toxic Alliance still being used as minions type A and B after what’s happened so far. Unless we fight their hallucinations like we did in the tower I suppose.)
- No clue what the mysterious probes might accomplish either. Forcing the door open? Idk.

I’m feeling like I’m missing a piece. Tho, I do find the possibility of her base being set up in a new zone with that much potential fairly intriguing. :p

If the Realm of Torment is Scarlet’s main target then we might gain 5 new interesting zones(Domain of Pain, Domain of Fear, Domain of Secrets, Domain of Anguish and the Depths of Madness)!

Using spores to invade the Realm of Torment would not be suprising.

The heat resistant spores could set up a Tower of Nightmares on the Fire Isles as a base and when combined with Scarlet’s armies would set things up for an attempt to breach the Realm of Torment(thus allowing Scarlet the means to cross Torment Creatures, Titans and Margonites with other beings).

The mysterious probes could direct the Elder Dragon energies to the second Tower of Nightmares where it will be used to breach the Door of Komalie and gain access to the Realm of Torment and all it’s secrets(the anomaly was made to give us a boss and thus has nothing to do with the story).

Scarlet may have seen Margonites in her vision which may have been enough to give Scarlet the inspiration to creat the Toxic Hybrid!

But the spores aren’t heat resistant… they’re sensitive to heat. The one during the tower finale was only able to be opened because you used a torch and it was even reacting to the heat of your palm. What she did was made a spore that was invulnerable except to heat (unlike all the others in the open world where standard harvesting tools could open them up). This kind of debunks the Ring of Fire islands idea to me.

Side note: it’s not “isles” but “islands” – though this only makes the Ring of Fire Islands (the most common name for them, not Fire Isles) to be more likely.

However, I found it unlikely that she’s after the Realm of Torment. What would she gain, exactly? That place has been taken over by Kormir and furthermore, the sylvari are agnostic when it comes to the Six Gods – they aren’t sure the Six even exist, so why go after the realm of such a being?

There’s also other possibilities for what’s meant by “the islands” – Orr, for example, is called an island throughout the latter personal storyline, and now we finally have these DO NOT TOUCH thumpers in Orr, the first of the Living World story to affect Orr in some way.

And on Scarlet obtaining an Obelisk Shards – since she obtained shards and not an actual obelisk, it’s possible that they washed ashore, otherwise she’d have had to go into the DSD’s territory. So I wouldn’t be so certain that she’s been so far south – though such does lead precedence to “the islands” referring to the Battle Isles, though they’re supposedly sunken now.

Honestly, the Orr concept sounds more likely to me, since she’s shown disdain for the Pale Tree, the Firstborn, and the Dream – reversing Trahearne’s little ritual to cleanse Orr would be a massive slap in the face to them.

Mayyybe you’re right on the spores. Guess I should have explained my train of thoughts there. :p

The way I interpreted it, is that the spore we found was a WIP with heat being the only thing she hadn’t covered yet. Since she was working on making them overall more resistant but it even reacted to your body-warmth, it felt rather unfinished and abandoned. (Also a bit weird that she’d put effort into making them tougher to the point metal-sickles don’t work on them, yet it can be easily destroyed with a torch without unleashing toxin or any other negative side-effects.)
That’s why I assumed she was in the progress of making them heat-resistant as well – exactly because they are pathetically and obviously flammable to the point they may as well not have been made physically tougher at all.
But it’s also totally possible that she just let them vulnerable to heat on purpose or just didn’t care which fits her attitude and would legit debunk the theory.

But while what you’ve said is definitely true for all other Sylvari, Scarlet is pretty much the exception about that isn’t she? With her assuming she saw the Eternal Alchemy and how all things tie together in some grand design, if she thinks she saw something about how the human Gods fit into “everything” she might as well have found something of interest there.

Tho, what exactly she wants there – I have no clue. Not the foggiest one. Not like I have any clue what she would want or could do with the Mists in general.

The Krait Obelisks one is strange to figure out. Heck, for all we know she could have been to the DSD’s territory in an airship and just broken off shards of an Obelisk, seeing as they reach from the ocean-ground to far above the waves. They also might have washed ashore, but where? So, no clue how she got them – just that she got them somewhere around the Unending Ocean.

And hey, seeing the ritual undone and how much it would impact the Sylvari would actually be really interesting. As would be her setting up a base right under the Pact’s nose, similarly how the Molten Alliance had their facility hidden underground or how the Aetherblades had a hideout right outside of Lion’s Arch.

But gotta keep in mind that the Order of Whispers are the one who sighted her and that they’re part of the Pact. If they were aware she was going to set up camp there, they wouldn’t keep it a secret to themselves as it would directly concern the Pact. A lot.

And Orr doesn’t connect much to the Mists either. Except when the Gods first arrived there but that’s pretty loose. Whatever island is referred to must have a direct way to enter (or at least peek into) them.

I’d actually love a LS with primary focus on Orr, but I’m afraid the only reason we’re seeing thumpers in Orr now is because Anet finally wrapped their head around the idea of including it in the LS at all.
(One could also theorize that with this LS/the Scarlet arc a dragon-arc follows and Orr would finally be free for LS-purposes, since the personal story’s end would be pushed forward to elsewhere :p We’re probably getting another LS-arc, but hey one can dream .)

You know Kormir rules over the Realm of Torment now, right?

….. Oh…. My… God….. Scarlet is trying to unleash a bigger evil!

SCARLET IS TRYING TO UNLEASH KORMIR!!!!!

RUN FOR THE HILLS, KORMIR IS BACK! AAAAAAAA

@ElysianEternity: I actually have a different view on the heat-sensitivity. Given the fact that the krait actively increased the heat of the area while building the tower (see the dialogue between Marjory and Kasmeer during the Halloween update before the veil was removed), it seems that the toxic spoors need heat to pollinate – but too much (e.g., a fire) would kill it. This just being a natural (or possibly artificial) effect of the pollen itself.

After all, if she made it so that nothing could effect it… what if the plan backfires and she needs some means to destroy it? Or what if doing so prevents pollination? The unable-to-be-physically-harmed-normally seems like an after-effect from observing folks destroying the various spores (the events that would be undoubtably completed in the first release). She would need to keep that heat sensitivity in order to spread the spores, so she just focuses on making it counter everything but heat – which also provides her an emergency giant red self-destruct button.

ElysianEternity.6215:

Whatever island is referred to must have a direct way to enter (or at least peek into) them.

Islands*

And why couldn’t “the islands” refer to the Mists themselves? They hold several “islands of existences” after all (such as the Fractals, WvW, and sPvP currently).

@Konig Des Todes

The need of heat for the spores to pollinate is a plausible and other interesting theory.
As is the emergency-button one. We know she had a deactivation-phrase for the Watchwork knights after all.

Tho I can’t help but feeling that fire of all things as emergency button would be a little too obvious. Also now that we found out they’re inflammable, they would be pretty useless unless she did work more on them since we found out how to get rid of them easily. Easily and in large quantities. Then again it’d be also nice seeing Scarlet’s carelessness bite her in the butt. :p

Sorry for that typo. Isles, Islands, Island. I always get that mixed up, heh. You’ll have a lot to nitpick here I’m afraid.

Tho I never said they could not refer to the Mists themselves! Just that the islands need to be connected to the Mists. And the islands being in Tyria was of course the first thing that comes to mind because it’d be easier to enter the Mists from Tyria than find an explanation for how she got there and how we can get there if the islands were in the Mists. (And I’m not so sure about the Order of Whispers scouting the Mists either)

It could be islands in Tyria that have a portal to the Mists. Or it could be islands in the Mists that have a portal to Tyria. After all the new wvw map has been brought up as possibility too.

Tho if we assume the islands are the same kind as our fractal-like islands, it’d still lead us to the question /how/ she could have entered the Mists. (On that note, the Mists themselves might fit the ‘core of tyria’ quote in a way too)

We could go a step further and speculate that she /somehow/ pulled a Dessa, since the Son of Svanir’s way doesn’t seem so likely as it required a Havroun.

(And at this point, actually imagine if she did not just pull a Dessa but also ended up stuck in a fractal and we could kill her over and over again as we please in canon. 8D …sorryIjusthadto.)

Kain Francois.4328:

You know Kormir rules over the Realm of Torment now, right?

….. Oh…. My… God….. Scarlet is trying to unleash a bigger evil!

SCARLET IS TRYING TO UNLEASH KORMIR!!!!!

RUN FOR THE HILLS, KORMIR IS BACK! AAAAAAAA

Okay, okay I had to giggle. That one was good, ahaha.

Obligatory Crackpot fan-fic theory a-go-go:
Turns out Scarlet chose the redeemed Realm of Torment in order to replicate the events of Abaddon’s fall! By amassing magic from all of Tyria’s leylines with her mysterious probes, she hopes to recreate something on the level of divine magic
TO BECOME
A
~~GOD~~
but at the end of the chapter, after a final boss battle between the player character and her, in the nick of time, just before the concentrated magic can explode or Scarlet can claim it – a portal appears! And from it emerges the one and only, Trahearne. “Commander, to me.” He speaks as he uses the player character’s face as spring-board to dive into the energy.
And this marks not only the hour of a new deity’s creation, but also the hour of the Flame Legion accepting females, Mai Trin’s text being updated, Quaggans overrunning the Black Lion Trading Company for Plagiarism, Caudecus being appointed Krait-Oratuss and Zhaitan turning around in his open-air grave. Scarlet trips and dies off-screen from head-trauma. Trahearne disappears from Tyria as he high-fives Kormir and a new kind of Pale Tree emerges where this battle occurred. This tree would be known to future generations simply as ‘Trahearne’ in honor of, well, Trahearne and all Sylvari produced by it are Kormir look-alikes who live by his words: “this won’t end well”.
It is the dawn of a new era.

…and with that back to the more srs discussion. lD

I doubt Scarlet will be using Toxic Spores again. At least anytime soon. After all, do we see her using Fused tech (from the MA)? Not herself, no. Only when her minions show up during invasions.

And if she intended to use it in the future, one would expect it to be used in conjunction with her other creations-through-alliances. Which would include two heat-producing magitechs (MA and Aetherblade tech).

Then again, you have to realize that the heat isn’t used to destroy – it’s used to pollinate. We just cracked the shell to get at the pollen inside the spore.

Could it be possible that she is using the “Do not Touch” Pillars to try and track the locations of the bloodstones in order to use them? Just a thought that came to my mind.

I’m not sure how the two would connect. Three bloodstone locations are known anyways – she’d have better luck looking through human records than using randomly-placed thumpers for tracking such down, since humanity spent nearly a thousand years fighting over them.

@Konig des Todes

We’ve never actually seen her do anything in person outside of Clockwork Chaos and the Invasions herself at all. :p Tho there’s her little lab in the tower with the components so while she may have not used them so far herself, we know at least that she is still working towards something with all the tech.

With all the backlash that happened and how Anet is advertising it as a final showdown and how it’s more or less stated in their 2013 review that the question about what she plans with what she’s gained will be answered, my gut-feeling is pretty positive on the spores, the molten fusions and the aetherblade tech making a comeback soon.

And about the conjunction. I’m not sure. The only ‘conjunction’ we’ve seen was what we got out of her forge and blew up the tower. The MA-scrap metal was fresh out of a coolant box tho. No question we’ll see all her tech thrown together into /something/ at the end. But I feel like we’re also likely to see each component individually return before that.

And I was talking strictly about “what if heat/fire because emergency button.” For the pollinating, it does make a lot of sense if it just needs heat to function but it can’t take too much. Said that’s something I can get behind. :p

However, if it’s intended as emergency button it seems kinda wonky and strange. You’d think a “genius” would think about an emergency button that wouldn’t be among the first things someone else would think of, like her pass-phrase for the Twisted Nightmares. On the other hand that’s a direct result of her carelessness and part of her plan backfiring because of her own worst trait is actually… well exactly what she needs as character. Among the 100 other things she needs, like more exposition, etc in general.

@Xulavi

I don’t think so. Whatever she is looking for seems to be something that hasn’t been discovered (or rediscovered) by the other races yet.
Besides she has acquired the Krait Obelisk shards, which we know from their energy readings are ‘comparable’ to the Bloodstones. No clue to which extent, but that’s what we got. So unless she needed huge amounts of untainted magic in specific, I don’t think she would be tracking the Bloodstones at all.

Theoretically speaking here, if one was able to regain all the bloodstones and the center keystone, wouldn’t that person be able to reunite the parts together to make it whole again. If that’s possible, wouldn’t you be able to release the magic the 5 gods resealed into them and allow the world to use magic more freely causing people to plunge into chaos again? Also, would that have an effect on the elder dragons since now there’s more magic around int the world.

Fun idea, this could somehow tie into professions learning new skills because the magics are more freely used

Could also be the Isles of Janthir and something to do with the Mursaat. Lazarus the Dire is still out there and in GW1 he vowed vengence on “countless generations.”

Just saying.

Legend says something about Doric’s blood being needed to re-unite the Bloodstone. I find it highly unlikely that this would be her plan though. It just seems waaaaaaay too big…

She intends to kidnap Trahearne and hold him ransom. But when none of Tyria will pay the ransom, she gets upset and throws him into Abaddon’s Mouth (which is the name of a volcano). But then the volcano erupts and hurls Trahearne all across Tyria, revealing that he had absorbed the essence of the Door of Komalie and the bloodstone in Ring of Fire, allowing himself to clone himself infinitely. And then ALL NPCs in the game gets replaced by Trahearnes, because by absorbing the essence of the Door of Komalie he also took in the essence of the Mists allowing him to replace the genetic makeup of others with his own template. And it shall no longer be sylvari, human, norn, grawl, charr, or dragon. THERE SHALL ONLY BE THE TRAHEARNE RACE!

Forever.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

She intends to kidnap Trahearne and hold him ransom. But when none of Tyria will pay the ransom, she gets upset and throws him into Abaddon’s Mouth (which is the name of a volcano). But then the volcano erupts and hurls Trahearne all across Tyria, revealing that he had absorbed the essence of the Door of Komalie and the bloodstone in Ring of Fire, allowing himself to clone himself infinitely. And then ALL NPCs in the game gets replaced by Trahearnes, because by absorbing the essence of the Door of Komalie he also took in the essence of the Mists allowing him to replace the genetic makeup of others with his own template. And it shall no longer be sylvari, human, norn, grawl, charr, or dragon. THERE SHALL ONLY BE THE TRAHEARNE RACE!

Forever.

This won’t end well…

Konig Des Todes.2086:

-snip-

GW3 confirmed, only playable race: Trahearne, only profession: Necromancer, only weapon: Caladbolg, only available map: Orr, also featuring Destiny’s Trahearne as your mentors and the Elder Trahearnes as Trahearnia’s primary threat

Alas, after today’s droplets of information the Ring of Fire-theory looks rather debunked and the Orr one less likely as well – the summary of the new GW2-ad trailer shows a broken Asura-Gate and an unactivated one, and a red night sky and the moon at the end.

https://register.guildwars2.com/en/welcome/shatterer?cid=28:1::::NA:18::&gclid=CMiioI3P67sCFYlAMgod_SsA7Q"

(Note, this broken Asura-Gate model is completely new and has been added in the recent Edge of the Mists-beta update according to the_shaman on twitter.)

…or is it the moon? Ambiguous zooming that might as well be random, dundundun. Lets hope it’s not actually really a death-star, like the developers jokingly called it in the new interview on GuildMag. :P

Elysian Eternity, I’m not seeing this “broken Asura Gate and an unactivated one” or a “red night sky and the moon at the end” in the line you provide.

Edit: Oh, that’s because you linked the wrong link. You were referring to the end of this video, right? The link you provided didn’t have that one.

Those asura gates aren’t old models, however. There’s typically 3 models for asura gates used: the “normal” seen everywhere outside of main city gate ones; the Mists gates, only seen in WvW/LA/Heart of the Mists, and then those – which are used in LA as the gates leading to other cities and in the Coriolis Plaza, if not elsewhere too.

Speaking of which, the Gate Hub Plaza in LA would give perfect view of the sky at such an angle… And it’s not like a sky changing colors is at all unique (happens every holiday, happened with Tower of Nightmares, and happened during the Searing – also happens within any ED territory like Orr and the Dragonbrand).

All locations I can think of with 2 or more asura gates near each other have the area behind or above them blocked off or utilize a different asura gate model.

These are either in LA while it’s under attack (again), or in a new area/heavily modified old area.

That summary video shows perfectly what an utter nonsense Scarlet and this current Living Story is.

And JHC… I’ve never cringed this hard before, when seeing that ending.

She may be researching the Soul Batteries, right?
They’re located in the Fire Isles, and the Krait Obelisks have similar properties to Bloodstone, so she may be trying to replicate them to adapt them into her tech.

@Konig des Todes

Woops, yeah wrong link. Fail-copy paste. Accidently copied the link of where the ad leads to instead of the link of the video itself. This thread sure isn’t gonna run low on my airheadedness any time soon.

Tho when I said model, I meant new model file. As in 3D model. Not new series of Asura gates if there’s a misunderstanding here. :p

And yep, agreed – with all the foreshadowing about LA being attacked anyway and how devastating this is supposed to be, the gate hub is the first that comes to mind when seeing this shot. If the LA-thing wasn’t pushing it, an unknown Inquest-location might also have fit. But looks like LA’s once more evil’s pinata.

I know LA’s sky has more colors than the Dreamer can shoot. Tho still what bothers me about it (beside that its color is SCARLET. How punny) is the moon. It’s a little too much in focus. It could be for the sake of mystery or showing the gate is completely broken but…idk how to explain. Feels weird.

I’m very curious about and excited for the next release but in a way also afraid.

If the LS taught me one thing so far, it’s that the initial release of an arc never seems to make sense until the next one clears up on it. (And until now some things are still hard to swallow even with loads of benefits of doubts.)