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Posted by: circuitnerd.5863

circuitnerd.5863

I swear the story is getting more convoluted as more chapters are released. I was thinking back to how the dragons absorb magic of other dragons when they die. And we are trying to pit Primordus and Jormag against each other right? Since those 2 dragons can harm each other with their magic, wouldn’t just killing one of them cause the other to die cause it would absorb the magic that does harm to it?… Then it raises the question why are we trying to figure out how to pit them against each other if simply killing one will cause the other to die.

Certified Gameaholic

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Posted by: Blockhead Magee.3092

Blockhead Magee.3092

Don’t try to apply logic to the story line of GW2. It’ll fall apart again and again. As for your suggestion, I’m sure that Taimi will have some convoluted answer for that too.

SBI

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Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

It’s going to seem complicated at the moment because it’s that point in the story. If Season 3 is anything like Season 2 it’s basically an extended introduction to the story of the next expansion. Which means we’re not going to see everything suddenly resolved in Episode 6 and certainly shouldn’t expect it in Episode 5.

Think of it like a TV show – this is the build up to the final episode – it’s meant to make you wonder what’s going on so you’ll keep watching. And the final episode is going to include teasers for the next series (in this case the expansion), again to keep you interested.

As far as the specifics go you’re right that dragons can absorb each other’s magic, but we don’t know how far it goes. We’ve seen destroyers that absorbed death magic and plant magic, and one icebrood which absorbed plant magic. But it might be that specific types of magic are incompatible. We haven’t seen any new branded, which might be because Kralkatorrik is too far away, or it might be because it can’t use death and/or plant magic.

It might also be that the dragons are well aware of that and if we killed one of those two the other would simply let that magic go…or wait for other things in Tyria to change it into a different form.

But I think the main reason we were trying to pit the two dragons against each other is that we lost most of the Pact fighting Mordremoth so people are reluctant to go through that again and a method which only risks killing dragon minions is a lot more appealing.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

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Posted by: zealex.9410

zealex.9410

just let deus ex taimi handle it like shes been doing with every problem we have faced so far :/

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Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086

Konig Des Todes.2086

The main thing you’re confused about, OP, is twofold:

Firstly, you think that we’ve been trying to get the two dragons to directly attack each other. This is false – Taimi’s device, as shown in this episode, was to siphon the energies from the Elder Dragons and exchange them, paralyzing and killing the two Elder Dragons.

Secondly, the killing would be simultaneous. If any Elder Dragon were to absorb their magic, it’d be Kralkatorrik and the DSD. Which by Taimi’s theory are opposites so she was just going to use the machine on those two next.

But this wouldn’t work for reasons Taimi brings up in this episode.


Basically, after the machine is stolen by Not Lazarus, she runs a simulation of what would happen if the machine is used since she couldn’t run a small-scale test a second time, and it turns out that Tyria will go bye bye if even one more Elder Dragon is killed.

So we have to stop Not Lazarus from using the machine, and that’s the plot of episode 5!.

Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.

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Posted by: Walhalla.5473

Walhalla.5473

T


Basically, after the machine is stolen by Not Lazarus, she runs a simulation of what would happen if the machine is used since she couldn’t run a small-scale test a second time, and it turns out that Tyria will go bye bye if even one more Elder Dragon is killed.

So we have to stop Not Lazarus from using the machine, and that’s the plot of episode 5!.


Also looks like we have to stop Braham from trying to kill Jormag in the next Episode. For his own safety and for the unlikely case that rolls a D20 three times, for shooting at Jormag, and getting a 20 every time and then killing Jormag due to that. Could be…. interesting and alienating him even further

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Posted by: Stitch.1794

Stitch.1794

The main thing you’re confused about, OP, is twofold:

Firstly, you think that we’ve been trying to get the two dragons to directly attack each other. This is false – Taimi’s device, as shown in this episode, was to siphon the energies from the Elder Dragons and exchange them, paralyzing and killing the two Elder Dragons.

Secondly, the killing would be simultaneous. If any Elder Dragon were to absorb their magic, it’d be Kralkatorrik and the DSD. Which by Taimi’s theory are opposites so she was just going to use the machine on those two next.

But this wouldn’t work for reasons Taimi brings up in this episode.


Basically, after the machine is stolen by Not Lazarus, she runs a simulation of what would happen if the machine is used since she couldn’t run a small-scale test a second time, and it turns out that Tyria will go bye bye if even one more Elder Dragon is killed.

So we have to stop Not Lazarus from using the machine, and that’s the plot of episode 5!.

Does it explicitly say that? Taimi didn't simulate killing one more dragon, she simulated killing two simulataneously, as you said. So it shows killing both together would destory the planet, but did it really show that killing just one would also destroy the planet?

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Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086

Konig Des Todes.2086

Taimi did explicitly say that, yes. The whole fight at the end was to prevent _one_ Elder Dragon's death, not two.

Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.

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Posted by: OriOri.8724

OriOri.8724

The main thing you’re confused about, OP, is twofold:

Firstly, you think that we’ve been trying to get the two dragons to directly attack each other. This is false – Taimi’s device, as shown in this episode, was to siphon the energies from the Elder Dragons and exchange them, paralyzing and killing the two Elder Dragons.

Secondly, the killing would be simultaneous. If any Elder Dragon were to absorb their magic, it’d be Kralkatorrik and the DSD. Which by Taimi’s theory are opposites so she was just going to use the machine on those two next.

But this wouldn’t work for reasons Taimi brings up in this episode.


Basically, after the machine is stolen by Not Lazarus, she runs a simulation of what would happen if the machine is used since she couldn’t run a small-scale test a second time, and it turns out that Tyria will go bye bye if even one more Elder Dragon is killed.

So we have to stop Not Lazarus from using the machine, and that’s the plot of episode 5!.

Careful there, so far that’s just a theory she has. And iirc at the end of episode 5 she does have 1 line that’s something close to “I might be wrong”. She could be wrong about this, and we will get back to killing the dragons, who knows?

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Posted by: maxwelgm.4315

maxwelgm.4315

Thing is, usually Taimi is never wrong, is she? She’s the walking Deus Ex Asura. I’m pretty sure whenever she says “I have a theory…” the developers are already hinted they want to go there.

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Posted by: OriOri.8724

OriOri.8724

I’m pretty sure that either Taimi has never been wrong, or never second guessed herself before though, right?

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Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086

Konig Des Todes.2086

@OriOri: Her “I might be wrong” line was about Jormag being put to sleep though, wasn’t it? Not about the whole “kill one more Elder Dragon and the world goes bye bye”.

@maxwelgm: Well, she was proven wrong with her “we can safely kill Primordus and Jormag using their energies!” theory in this episode. Yes, they can kill them that way… but not safely.

What’s odd is that she specified that Mordremoth’s weakness was its mind, while Primordus and Jormag’s weakness are each other, when in episode 3 we had Zhaitan’s and Mordremoth’s energy shown to be a weakness to each other… Which is what she was saying as well. So we’re having some massive contradictions going on here.

Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.

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Posted by: Mickey Frogeater.1470

Mickey Frogeater.1470

For all we know Jormag is still active due to not having his actual weakness exploited.

Primordius actually being weak to Ice is not surprising considering he is Fire and Rock with nothing else. Mordremoth is Plants and Mind so his weakness would be connected to his mind.

We know that one of Jormag’s aspects is Ice yet not what the other Aspect is so we have know idea what his actual weakness is. That weakness must be exploited in order to send Jormag into hibernation.

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Posted by: Ider.1276

Ider.1276

For all we know Jormag is still active due to not having his actual weakness exploited.

Jormag’s primary ascept is frost with primaty weakness being fire. Frost is canceled with fire, fire canceled with frost. We don’t need to exploit his secondary aspect (presumably connection to the Mists), because Primordus is still alive and Jormag did not absorb his fire magic (canceling his fire weakness).
We saw it with Mordemoth, who absorbed death magic and gained immunity to his life aspect (so we had to hit his 2nd aspect, the mind).

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Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086

Konig Des Todes.2086

Primordus’ second aspect was never revealed. His body was very rocky, yes, but that was never said to be his aspect.

Jormag’s weakness was, indeed, proven by Taimi’s experiments (and the simulation she showed us) to be Primordus’ energy. They were polar opposites (unlike, it seems, Mordremoth and Zhaitan based on dialogue about dragon weaknesses). And the machine was shooting Primordus’ energy up to the sky, while dragging Jormag’s energy in – basically, while it was right in front of Primordus, it still struck Jormag’s energy.

The story journal, after completing the instance, says that Taimi had confirmed that Jormag was affected too.

@Ider: Taimi explicitly compares Primordus’ weakness being Jormag, and Jormag’s weakness being Primordus to Mordremoth’s weakness being his mind, so it’s not like the Elder Dragons have two weaknesses like you’re saying, they only have one – it’s just that Primordus and Jormag are each others’ weakness. But this isn’t the case for the others.

Which seems contradictory for what we found in Episode 3 with the Unstable Abomination… Furthermore, Mordremoth couldn’t gain immunity to his weakness by exposing himself to it. If Zhaitan’s magic was Mordremoth’s weakness then absorbing it (if he actually did and Taimi isn’t just wrong about that as well as being able to safely kill Jormag and Primordus), then Mordremoth would have weakened himself by absorbing that magic, just as the Unstable Abomination seemed to have.

Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.

(edited by Konig Des Todes.2086)

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Posted by: Stitch.1794

Stitch.1794

Taimi did explicitly say that, yes. The whole fight at the end was to prevent _one_ Elder Dragon's death, not two.

I have to disagree with you here.


Ok, I’ve gone through the story again, and Taimi explicitly says Balthazar is killing the dragons, plural, not dragon, singular:

“We either let Balthazar kill the dragons and absorb the magic or destory the machine…”

And while Taimi does have a line about saving a dragon, her phrasing is quite clearly speculative. What we know for sure is killing both together with destroy Tyria, because that is what shesimulated. Taimi speculates that we’re so close to the brink that one might be enough, but we’re given no basis for her knowing that for a fact.

This might look like I’m nit-picking here, but my thinking is this – what destroys Tyria in the simulation might not be the total amount of magic released by two dragons’ deaths, but the fact that it happens simultaneously, kind of like how in a demolition the placement and timing of the blasts is as important as the strength of each charge. It leaves open the possibility of picking off the dragons one by one, as long as we find a way to replace their magic balancing effect (whether that’s Aurene, new bloodstones, or some other shadowstone-based tech).

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Posted by: RyuDragnier.9476

RyuDragnier.9476

Taimi did explicitly say that, yes. The whole fight at the end was to prevent _one_ Elder Dragon's death, not two.

I have to disagree with you here.


Ok, I’ve gone through the story again, and Taimi explicitly says Balthazar is killing the dragons, plural, not dragon, singular:

“We either let Balthazar kill the dragons and absorb the magic or destory the machine…”

And while Taimi does have a line about saving a dragon, her phrasing is quite clearly speculative. What we know for sure is killing both together with destroy Tyria, because that is what shesimulated. Taimi speculates that we’re so close to the brink that one might be enough, but we’re given no basis for her knowing that for a fact.

This might look like I’m nit-picking here, but my thinking is this – what destroys Tyria in the simulation might not be the total amount of magic released by two dragons’ deaths, but the fact that it happens simultaneously, kind of like how in a demolition the placement and timing of the blasts is as important as the strength of each charge. It leaves open the possibility of picking off the dragons one by one, as long as we find a way to replace their magic balancing effect (whether that’s Aurene, new bloodstones, or some other shadowstone-based tech).


You’re probably right. If you remember when we fought death and plant minions at the same time and they exploded, it also damaged US in the process if we were too close. Those were very tiny minions. Elder Dragon size would be the equivalent of nuclear explosions. If we recall, the Bloodstone shattering was powerful enough to where it would have wiped even Lion’s Arch off the map had Balthazar not absorbed its power. With that kind of radius, 2 ED’s on the opposite sides of the map blowing up would take around 90% of Tyria with them. Doing 1 by 1 may be the only hope, or maybe there’s a balance, and for every ED we take out, we need a replacement ASAP to keep the balance settled else things go crazier than they already have.

[hS]
PvE Main – Zar Poisonclaw – Daredevil
WvW Main – Ghost Mistcaller – Herald

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Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086

Konig Des Todes.2086

@Stitch:


Taimi talked about that a lot, but the line I’m thinking of was just after her simulation run, iirc, during Elder Druid Protection. Unfortunately wiki doesn’t have dialogue up yet and I didn’t bother with screenshotting conversations. But while she does use plural plenty of times, she also makes mention of just one Elder Dragon being enough to tip the scales.

The line I remember did not sound like speculation in the least, either.

@RyuDragnier: I’m not going to bother with a spoiler tag on this since you’re bringing up E1 and E3 stuff, but it’s more than just exposing the two energies on ED scale, it’s the amount of magic that’d be released into the world. With two Elder Dragons dead and some of their magic absorbed by bloodstones, Aurene, Jormag, Primordus, and possibly Kralkatorrik and DSD as well, we’re already getting rifts, overflowing ley lines, and explosive anomalies. What more do we get if we’re at three Elder Dragons dead?

Killing them one at a time isn’t a solution, because we did that and we see symptoms already. Hell, we saw symptoms with one Elder Dragon dead.

Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.

(edited by Konig Des Todes.2086)

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Posted by: castlemanic.3198

castlemanic.3198

@Konig I think a solution to the conundrum that everyone is having with the Mordremoth taking on Zhaitan’s domain actually has something to do with a conversation you had in the ‘all magic is dragon magic’ topic.

Your points in the topic (if I recall correctly) surrounded the idea that dragon magic is only corruptive if it’s actively put in that state by an elder dragon, which is why Orr wasn’t corrupted until after Zhaitan’s rise. If dragon corruption needs to be an active effort, couldn’t the same be extended to the domains absorbed by the other elder dragons? Specifically with Mordremoth, if he could safely absorb Zhaitan’s domain because Zhaitan wasn’t actively using it, it could lead to the situation where Mordremoth can safely activate the domain, while not truly in synergy with it, at least remain protected from it due to his own active control over it. Which could also explain why the grubs we fight while dealing with the Unstable Abomination explode at the slightest touch, because their corruption is now in an active state and can, in turn, react explosively to each other. If we were to make a real life comparison, I’d imagine it akin to holding two reactive substances in each hand. While you actively control both substances at the same time, you can put those substances to use in different areas on the table in front of you. There’s a chance of messing things up, sure, and you could accidentally spill both substances onto the same surface and create a reaction, but you’re at least mostly in control of what you do with the substances themselves and can use them accordingly.

Can’t come up with an explanation of blighting pods unfortunately, that’s the obvious counter to this idea and I’m sure there are plenty of holes that can be shot in this theory too, especially since in Dragon Vigil the destroyers of both types don’t violently explode upon their deaths and destroy other… destroyers.

It’s a conundrum, certainly.

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Posted by: DarcShriek.5829

DarcShriek.5829

So how was Balthazar able to absorb primordus’s magic without becoming corrupted?

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Posted by: castlemanic.3198

castlemanic.3198

Doesn’t Balthazar have a portion of his power? From several discussions on the forums, it seems divine magic in general is immune to dragon corruption, and we have two instances of purifying dragon corruption (glint and the risen chicken). When Balthazar is absorbing dragon energy from,two opposing dragons, he may be purifying them due to his ties to divinity and divine magic in general (which would also explain why Balthazar doesn’t just explode from the clashing draconic energies). This all does rely on Balthazar retaining a portion of his divine power though, but when Lazarus used fire to wipe out the White Mantle back in episode one, so it seems he does retain something from his former status as a god.

Until we see more of him, we won’t know, and there’s a chance, however small, that he could end up corrupted by the dragon energies later on.

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Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086

Konig Des Todes.2086

There’s also the fact that Elder Dragons have to actively corrupt, so siphoning magic doesn’t result in corruption (just as when the Six Gods stole magic from Zhaitan to empower the bloodstones that didn’t result in all that magic turning folks into risen).

Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.

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Posted by: DarcShriek.5829

DarcShriek.5829

Another question that needs to be asked, is when did the human gods learn about the dragons? I had always thought that they didn’t know about the dragons when the built Orr.

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Posted by: The Greyhawk.9107

The Greyhawk.9107

Am I the only one that doesn’t like this “The Elder Dragons are there for a reason and we actually shouldn’t stop them from trying to kill us” deal we’ve been getting the lately. I get that having consequences both good and bad to any actions we take is a good thing for story telling but I can’t help but think that this was a bad direction for Anet to go with. I miss when the dragons were Lovecraftian level eldritch abominations that were going to eat the world rather than being the pillars that support the world that also happen to wipe out all life every few millennia.

Hate is Fuel.

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

I don’t think we’ve been getting any kind of ‘we shouldn’t stop them from trying to kill us’ vibe. We’re just going to need to get smarter about how we stop them.

One of my biggest problems of the Pact was that it essentially took the Vigil method as ‘correct’ and reduced the other two orders to supplementing their strategy. I wouldn’t mind if the story took a break from hitting dragons with a stick to explore putting them back to sleep, like the Whispers wanted, or digging into the past cycle to find out if there’s a smarter way of handling things, like the Priory wanted. And yes, hitting them with a stick when appropriate, but there’s room for other options to be pursued in tandem.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

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Posted by: Bio Flame.4276

Bio Flame.4276

@OP:

Yes, I tend to agree that the story is a mess. Complicated is one thing, complex is another, multi-layered is something else too….none of which applies to this story.
The story is just a mess and overly convoluted without being actually interesting.

I don’t know whose fault it is: the writers, or the quest designers, or the producers…what I know is that the story is poor.

It relies overly on cliffhangers; there’s also waaaaaaaaaay too many mysteries unsolved; too much “tell” and little “show, don’t tell”; chapters feel fragmented and disconnected without a true sense of purpose or guidance.
There’s clearly also way too much ambition and not enough skill to write and/or deliver this story, which having the issues I’ve stated above, only serves to make the story much worse.

The stupidity of trying to have 6 Dragons as opponents to kill, which only managed to “trivialize” the threat of a single Dragon.
There’s also the “story-fatigue” syndrome: maybe at the design meeting, having 6 ED seemed a good idea, but after almost 5 years and only 2 dragons killed, it’s obvious that players are fed up with the Dragon menace; and to make matters worse, the slow-as-snails pace of the story means that it would take roughly +10 years to kill the remaining 4 dragons. How long does it take until players want new stories? How long until players feel “oh, it’s ANOTHER dragon to kill…baah”?

Last but not the least, who thought it would be a good idea to come up with 6 antagonists that we have to kill as players, only to later inform us that we can’t actually kill them. So…why bother designing and conceptualizing threats in the form of 6 EDs?

(edited by Bio Flame.4276)

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Posted by: perilisk.1874

perilisk.1874

Am I the only one that doesn’t like this “The Elder Dragons are there for a reason and we actually shouldn’t stop them from trying to kill us” deal we’ve been getting the lately. I get that having consequences both good and bad to any actions we take is a good thing for story telling but I can’t help but think that this was a bad direction for Anet to go with. I miss when the dragons were Lovecraftian level eldritch abominations that were going to eat the world rather than being the pillars that support the world that also happen to wipe out all life every few millennia.

I thought it was a ham-handed analogy for global warming or something. Don’t destroy ancient reptiles and release the energy they contain, or the environment will go all pear-shaped.

Still, it raises the question — if Tyria is so overloaded with magic that it will asplode without the dragons there to contain it, how exactly did it survive long enough for there to be dragons in the first place? Unless they were there from the creation of the world…

Ceterum censeo Sentim Punicam esse delendam

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Posted by: Bio Flame.4276

Bio Flame.4276

So, it seems Glint was evil afterall, since she wanted to kill Kralkatorik and wanted us to kill the other Elder Dragons.

lol

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Posted by: Mickey Frogeater.1470

Mickey Frogeater.1470

She set up Aurene and Gleam to help her usurp 3 Elder Dragons.

By claiming the full power of 3 Elder Dragons Glint and her offspring could safely kill Jormag and Primordius without threatening Tyria. The reason that killing the Elder Dragons isn’t viable is due to Glint’s death.

Glint’s death ruined all of her planning. We need a substitute for her if we are to save Tyria.

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Posted by: draxynnic.3719

draxynnic.3719

The impression I had was that Glint assumed that she was going to die regardless, but that her legacy would be up and running before it became a major issue (it does seem that she didn’t predict Scarlet or Mordremoth’s early awakening).

I don’t think we’ve been getting any kind of ‘we shouldn’t stop them from trying to kill us’ vibe. We’re just going to need to get smarter about how we stop them.

One of my biggest problems of the Pact was that it essentially took the Vigil method as ‘correct’ and reduced the other two orders to supplementing their strategy. I wouldn’t mind if the story took a break from hitting dragons with a stick to explore putting them back to sleep, like the Whispers wanted, or digging into the past cycle to find out if there’s a smarter way of handling things, like the Priory wanted. And yes, hitting them with a stick when appropriate, but there’s room for other options to be pursued in tandem.

I think part of that was that the Order of Whispers didn’t believe the dragons could be killed, while the Priory thought the answer might be found in researching the dragons… essentially what Taimi was doing. Zhaitan’s and Mordremoth’s deaths were both essentially a combination of the Vigil and Priory approaches, and when they proved to work, the Whispers assumption that killing them was impossible was overturned.

Now that we have evidence that killing too many of them – at once, anyway – might be bad, we may be looking at the Whispers approach again. In fact, depending on how you read the ending of E5, we might have just seen the Whispers approach taken with the two most threatening of the remaining dragons.

To those who think Scarlet hate means she’s succeeded as a villain:
People don’t hate Scarlet like Game of Thrones fans hate Joffrey.
They hate her the way Star Wars fans hate Jar Jar Binks.

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Posted by: Dondarrion.2748

Dondarrion.2748

Am I the only one that doesn’t like this “The Elder Dragons are there for a reason and we actually shouldn’t stop them from trying to kill us” deal we’ve been getting the lately. I get that having consequences both good and bad to any actions we take is a good thing for story telling but I can’t help but think that this was a bad direction for Anet to go with. I miss when the dragons were Lovecraftian level eldritch abominations that were going to eat the world rather than being the pillars that support the world that also happen to wipe out all life every few millennia.

I for one, would appreciate a shift in focus because I’ve never really liked the Elder Dragons as main villains of the GW2 story. Whatever LS1 lacked in storytelling, at least we had a definitive villain (Scarlet) to focus on twarting/defeating, and I feel again the same with LS3; with Caudecus and later Lazarus (the Impostor), we again were matched up against a more “human” villain who had more diverse motives and actions rather than the chaotic nature that the Elder Dragons have shown so far, which basically made GW2 story so far seem like the really mundane Edge of Destiny novel…

“RArrrrrgh, I’m power hungry Elder Dragon, watch me consume and absorb all magic and spread my destruction over Tyria”
thump (sound of heroes killing dragon)
Heroes: “Would the next dragon get in line, please!”

Lord Sazed / Hasla the Huntress / Seaguard Hala
Seamarshal Belit / Initiate Xun Tsu / Mistwarden Roshone
Seafarer’s Rest | Northerner @ Dragon Season

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

I think part of that was that the Order of Whispers didn’t believe the dragons could be killed, while the Priory thought the answer might be found in researching the dragons… essentially what Taimi was doing. Zhaitan’s and Mordremoth’s deaths were both essentially a combination of the Vigil and Priory approaches, and when they proved to work, the Whispers assumption that killing them was impossible was overturned.

I agree, but I feel that makes it worse, not better. They didn’t just put the Vigil approach on the pedestal, they discredited the other two- the Order of Whispers was wrong, and the Priory wasn’t going to pan out on time. (Personally, I didn’t see much Priory in either of the kills. It takes a lot of reading between the lines to figure out what happened with Zhaitan, but it seems to me to have been a result of the Inquest data Zojja liberated from CoE, maybe supplemented by her own study under Snaff, combined with Gorr’s research, which the Priory had no hand in until the later stages. Mordremoth came down to the Commander taking a lucky detour and then experiencing a plot-driven epiphany at the appointed moment. The Priory approach, on the other hand, always felt to me like a careful study of how the elder races survived, and not taking any stupid risks until they figured out what they were facing. The Glint’s legacy subplot seems like a natural continuation of that mindset, but the disaster with the Pact fleet was about as far from it as you can get.)

But yes, E5 feels like a shift in approach. I just hope it manifests into something longer term, and doesn’t end up as a blip in the plot.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

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Posted by: Bio Flame.4276

Bio Flame.4276

“RArrrrrgh, I’m power hungry Elder Dragon, watch me consume and absorb all magic and spread my destruction over Tyria”
thump (sound of heroes killing dragon)
Heroes: “Would the next dragon get in line, please!”

Exactly!
How many Elder Dragons can a player/community kill, before settling into the feeling of “Next dragon, plz!”?

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Posted by: Amadan.9451

Amadan.9451

I am so confused right now…
The more I play the story, the more I read the lore forum and the more I realize there so many huge plot holes that are never filled up.
for example:

- elder dragons death cause the other dragons to absorb their magic:
and yet the more the story goes on, the more room of speculation we have. At the point that somebody pointed out on a lot of posts before me that for example for Jormag to absorb Primordius energy would weaken or kill him.
but I was thinking siphoning power is a different thing than being attacked by the opposite energy, to the point that I assumed that if Primordious would die the other dragons would absorb the power without being armed by it, including Jormag of course becoming capable of using it. And therefore killing dragons would cause us to make the remaining one more powerful.
We don’t have any official answer to that and the more we go on the more things are added to the elder dragons, like weaknesses, domain of powers, magic is absorbed but not really because it can destroy the world…
I don’t even know now if elder dragons are good or bad or just part of a cycle we have to live with.
I am not saying that arenanet doesn’t know it either but it feels like it.

- Omadd’s machine
I am completely lost there what is it showing us? How it relates to dragons and cosmos and how Tyria works?

- The Gods
How can Kasmeer recognize him at first sight? It is said that he is the god the blinds and than we can just “oh yes hi balthy how are you doing, I know it’s you, statues and portraits are pretty accurate even if nobody ever saw you before or at least no one in our generation”
So what’s the deal with the gods? they already felt very far from us in gw1 and completely myth in gw2, the only ones we dealt with in the past where Abbadon and Dhum. All the others where just voices and mirage and one was kittening Kormir. So i really don’t know how they work or exist, but Balthazar felt a little out of the blu for me.
Of all the Lazarus Theory Balthazar was the one I never really thought of because I believed the gods were no longer in this planet.
So how Balthazar came to be? where did he arrive from? did he just appear when the blodstone exploded? did he set the explosion in motion fooling the white mantels?
was he walking among us and we didn’t know? how did he managed a god to pass unnoticed? can gods travels across worlds at will? he was weakened and yet he managed to absorb an entire bloodstone. Do we Know how gods magic and godhood even work? Are they even gods or just powerful beings? Mursat were worshipped as gods but does that make them really godly? and one of the gods was once kittening Kormir she was not a god, she was just a stupid kitten poking around with powers that almost destroyed the world.

I think I am done, I am sure in the maelstrom of my confusion right know there are more question without answers but I am not surely seen them in the story so far.
Feel like I am watching Lost again, entire seasons of kitten ending up in time travel and even more kitten finishing with good vs bad. It’s like the third movie of matrix.
I hate this, if a story just adds crap upon crap of mysteries without giving them context or proper explanation for the sake of cliffhangers you can only get me confused and angry

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Posted by: Sublimatio.6981

Sublimatio.6981

I have an observation. If Balthazar would be allowed to absorb all of Jormags and Primordus’s magic, this magic wouldn’t leak out into the world so there would be no side effects, yet Taimi claims Tyria would still collapse. So that doesn’t make sense.

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Posted by: Stitch.1794

Stitch.1794

I have an observation. If Balthazar would be allowed to absorb all of Jormags and Primordus’s magic, this magic wouldn’t leak out into the world so there would be no side effects, yet Taimi claims Tyria would still collapse. So that doesn’t make sense.

Is he absorbing all their magic though? It looks like the machine was absorbing a portion from one and sending it to the other, then doing the same in reverse. It looks to me like Balthazar was absorbing the magic by sitting in the stream and skimming some off the top, but not absorbing all of it. We see Primordus being hit with beams of blue magic that have come from Jormag, and we see beams of red magic from Jormag being sent up from the machine past Balthazar.

You’re also assuming that it is being drained that kills the dragons, but if it is a blast of the other dragon’s magic that strikes the killing blow, then the dragon would still have some magic left. That would presumably be released in a burst in multiple directions (following ley-lines?), just like with Mordremoth’s death. In that case, Balthazar might not absorb all of the magic released by Primordus’ death, just that sent in his direction, and none released by Jormag’s.

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Posted by: RyuDragnier.9476

RyuDragnier.9476

Am I the only one that doesn’t like this “The Elder Dragons are there for a reason and we actually shouldn’t stop them from trying to kill us” deal we’ve been getting the lately. I get that having consequences both good and bad to any actions we take is a good thing for story telling but I can’t help but think that this was a bad direction for Anet to go with. I miss when the dragons were Lovecraftian level eldritch abominations that were going to eat the world rather than being the pillars that support the world that also happen to wipe out all life every few millennia.

I thought it was a ham-handed analogy for global warming or something. Don’t destroy ancient reptiles and release the energy they contain, or the environment will go all pear-shaped.

Still, it raises the question — if Tyria is so overloaded with magic that it will asplode without the dragons there to contain it, how exactly did it survive long enough for there to be dragons in the first place? Unless they were there from the creation of the world…

I have a feeling they WERE there from the get go. If we recall the Eternal Alchemy from Season 2, it shows all the orbs rotating around what we assume is Tyria. If we assume that the dragons are a force of nature keeping the world in check from destroying itself, then we’ve essentially messed with the balance. We’ve taken out 2/6 of the balancing forces, resulting in 2 energy types going haywire.

Most likely the story is going towards a path where we’re going to have to replace the two ED who are gone and find a “safer” cycle for the world with replacements, of which Aurene will probably replace Mordremoth in control of the Jungle since she absorbed quite a bit of his power.

So, it seems Glint was evil afterall, since she wanted to kill Kralkatorik and wanted us to kill the other Elder Dragons.

lol

We don’t know how much of the future she saw. If it turns out she saw a path that led to the change of the cycle and the salvation of the races, then she sent Tyria on this path knowing full well how it would correct itself.

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Posted by: draxynnic.3719

draxynnic.3719

I think part of that was that the Order of Whispers didn’t believe the dragons could be killed, while the Priory thought the answer might be found in researching the dragons… essentially what Taimi was doing. Zhaitan’s and Mordremoth’s deaths were both essentially a combination of the Vigil and Priory approaches, and when they proved to work, the Whispers assumption that killing them was impossible was overturned.

I agree, but I feel that makes it worse, not better. They didn’t just put the Vigil approach on the pedestal, they discredited the other two- the Order of Whispers was wrong, and the Priory wasn’t going to pan out on time. (Personally, I didn’t see much Priory in either of the kills. It takes a lot of reading between the lines to figure out what happened with Zhaitan, but it seems to me to have been a result of the Inquest data Zojja liberated from CoE, maybe supplemented by her own study under Snaff, combined with Gorr’s research, which the Priory had no hand in until the later stages. Mordremoth came down to the Commander taking a lucky detour and then experiencing a plot-driven epiphany at the appointed moment. The Priory approach, on the other hand, always felt to me like a careful study of how the elder races survived, and not taking any stupid risks until they figured out what they were facing. The Glint’s legacy subplot seems like a natural continuation of that mindset, but the disaster with the Pact fleet was about as far from it as you can get.)

But yes, E5 feels like a shift in approach. I just hope it manifests into something longer term, and doesn’t end up as a blip in the plot.

Essentially, yes. In each case, you needed a bit of the Priory approach for the assault to work – namely, identifying a specific weakness of the dragon. However, in neither case was it the Priory who figured it out – in Zhaitan’s case it’s Professor Gorr, in Mordremoth’s case it’s the PC (which, okay, might be Priory, but is just as likely to be another order, so we can’t really credit the Priory with that).

And we nearly saw Primordus and Jormag taken out using research, to be aborted when additional research revealed it was a bad idea – except that all of that was Taimi, who is not a priory member (as far as we know)

So the Priory’s approach is part of the mix, it’s just that the Priory keeps getting sidelined as somebody else makes the breakthrough.

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Posted by: perilisk.1874

perilisk.1874

I have an observation. If Balthazar would be allowed to absorb all of Jormags and Primordus’s magic, this magic wouldn’t leak out into the world so there would be no side effects, yet Taimi claims Tyria would still collapse. So that doesn’t make sense.

Maybe she thought he was going to use it to kill them, as per the original plan? I don’t remember the exact dialog up to that point. But I think he was only absorbing energy from Primordus, so that would still leave Jormag’s energy to threaten the world.

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Posted by: Lord Trejgon.2809

Lord Trejgon.2809


I’m quite surprised to see no one here having even remotely similar interpretation of those dialoques and the “simulation” cut scene as I had :/

so to answer OPs question – as I understood the whole thing problem was that umadds modified device was not designed to “kill” the dragons in a direct way – but to taple into eternal alchemy, plot their energies against each other and make them cancel each other out – and as far as I understood the similation scene – but then in this case even taimi seems to interpret it differently – it is not the issue of dragons missing, but issue of two countering types of energy being forced into direct confrontation.

aka issue is not with killing dragons per se but with method chosen to kill these specific two – which would be comparable to tapping into universes very belly, grab matter that is somewhere there, grab antimatter that is also there but always away from the matter, and force them into each other in hope to remove both – which would end in shiny explosion that is likely to rip all of it away.

part of our chase after balthazar seems to be following assumption that he wants to use the device in the exact same way as taimi wanted – which also seems be untrue [you could say he have made himself a matter-antimatter reactor to power up himself and randomly dump it once his needs are satisfied]

thing I really don’t get in here is that apparently draining the dragon from energy hae put him back int ohibernation – at least taimi believes so – but all the earlier “research” rather implies that dragons go to sleep after devouring all the magic from the world – AND THEN “bleeds” it out when in sleep.

to reach as far as Eye of the North storyline – central transfer chamber was build up nearly ontop of the chamber where primordus was sleeping and the asura gave you explanation to that – they took the sleeping primordus for a sort of statue and to quote a guy “this is why we have build central transfer chamber here – this statue literaly bleeds magic” [quote may not be precise but the point stays the same]

in which case huge energy drain from both primordus and jormag should not put any of them back to their sleep – it would severly wound them and put them into actually more and hastened effort to eat up as much magic as they can to cover up for this sudden loss.

also as for elder dragons “replacements” – for the moment being I was quite kinda sure that aurene was meant in the glint’s great plan to replace all of them at once – but absorbing energy from all dragons while we are killing them – got kind of late for original share of zhaitan’s energy, but timed perfectly for a mordremoth snack [which may be also reason why primordus felt so eager to attack her as soon as protective shielding dropped to malfunction]

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Posted by: Inc.4753

Inc.4753

thing I really don’t get in here is that apparently draining the dragon from energy hae put him back int ohibernation – at least taimi believes so – but all the earlier “research” rather implies that dragons go to sleep after devouring all the magic from the world – AND THEN “bleeds” it out when in sleep.

to reach as far as Eye of the North storyline – central transfer chamber was build up nearly ontop of the chamber where primordus was sleeping and the asura gave you explanation to that – they took the sleeping primordus for a sort of statue and to quote a guy “this is why we have build central transfer chamber here – this statue literaly bleeds magic” [quote may not be precise but the point stays the same]

in which case huge energy drain from both primordus and jormag should not put any of them back to their sleep – it would severly wound them and put them into actually more and hastened effort to eat up as much magic as they can to cover up for this sudden loss.

Dragons probably need magic to function just as much as we need energy (food) to function. Taking enough magic away (or whatever exactly happened with Taimi’s device) probably took too much magic away from Primordus to keep his body in an ‘awake’ state, needing hem to retreat to a ‘sleep’ state and letting his minions gather magic to restore him.

Also, while we usually only see the dragons in their relation to the balance of magic, I’m not so sure being ‘satiated’ and ‘hungry’ are actually the triggers for them ‘going to sleep’ and ‘waking up’.

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Posted by: Lord Trejgon.2809

Lord Trejgon.2809

thing I really don’t get in here is that apparently draining the dragon from energy hae put him back int ohibernation – at least taimi believes so – but all the earlier “research” rather implies that dragons go to sleep after devouring all the magic from the world – AND THEN “bleeds” it out when in sleep.

to reach as far as Eye of the North storyline – central transfer chamber was build up nearly ontop of the chamber where primordus was sleeping and the asura gave you explanation to that – they took the sleeping primordus for a sort of statue and to quote a guy “this is why we have build central transfer chamber here – this statue literaly bleeds magic” [quote may not be precise but the point stays the same]

in which case huge energy drain from both primordus and jormag should not put any of them back to their sleep – it would severly wound them and put them into actually more and hastened effort to eat up as much magic as they can to cover up for this sudden loss.

Dragons probably need magic to function just as much as we need energy (food) to function. Taking enough magic away (or whatever exactly happened with Taimi’s device) probably took too much magic away from Primordus to keep his body in an ‘awake’ state, needing hem to retreat to a ‘sleep’ state and letting his minions gather magic to restore him.

Also, while we usually only see the dragons in their relation to the balance of magic, I’m not so sure being ‘satiated’ and ‘hungry’ are actually the triggers for them ‘going to sleep’ and ‘waking up’.

well point still stands – when you base analysis of dragons behavioral patterns on pretty much every earlier lore mention of these aspects you get the idea that they are sponges that awakes when dry enought to soak up all magic from the world they can get and then go back to their nap – hence draining itself should not return them to their nap but instead either make them desperate to get more “food” asap or put them into gravely wounded state – unless we are shattering ourselves here over wording again and he didn’t get back to his “sleeping” state but to the state when he was awoken but inactive – in which case I say they should work little bit more on wording of things as afaik there are quite a few of people who have intepreted taimis paniced “primordus is active” as “primordus has awakened” while in all established lore before that point primordus awoke first of all the dragons – and thats why he was called primordus as well

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