Guild Wars 2

I just read this post and began to wonder about it myself.
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/84743-uncategorized-fractal-exploration-team-graveyard/

It would seem that if the mists touched all worlds, realities, and times past, present and future, and the fractals are just places within the mists. So that would mean that the uncatagorized fractal could either be in the future, the past, or a different reality altogether. But do the mists contain all possible futures? or a future based on the current reality of the present?

This fractal does look and feel alot like modern Rata Sum, and the Raving asura seems to be the remaining survivor of something really bad happening to Rata Sum. But that leaves the question of WHO the raving Asura is. It would be purely speculation though as there isn’t much lore around the fractals, that I can find anyway.

And why is the place filled with Harpies? Unless the legends of the Harpies is correct and they were servants of Dwayna and cast down from the heavens, and that event ALSO brought about the destruction of the Asuran city the fractal is set in.

We may never know, but as I’ve said before I enjoy speculation about such things…

A dev stated that in the fractals only the past is showed, never the future.

Gonna dig it up, but we did have a dev do us the honor of dropping in to say that the Uncategorized Fractal is most certainly not Rata Sum, which makes sense when you think about it. The interior floor plan looks eerily similar in layout, but the pan at the end makes it clear that the structure itself is in no way a cube. The same post also explicitly stated that all the Fractals we have so far are in the past, with the possible exception of Uncategorized, depending on how you read the statement.

EDIT:

Scott McGough.6897:

We’re not ready to reveal the whole truth about the Uncategorized Fractal yet, but I can tell you that it does not represent a potential future for Rata Sum. All of the other fractals represent discrete sections of the past, recreated. We have the ancient past, more recent past, and mythic/lost to history past, but there are no futures in there.

The similarities between the two maps cited is more a function of asuran architecture having common elements rather than a story-related easter egg. In other words, the maps look similar because they were designed and built by like-minded builders with similar design aesthetics, not because they represent the same place at different points in history.

Hope this helps,

So all of the other Fractals are set in the past, but Uncategorized is set the Six know where. It definitely isn’t Rata Sum, but it is asuran. I’d argue that it’s set fairly close to the present (relatively speaking), as Dessa’s reaction would seem to indicate that she recognized something about it.

As for the harpies, in addition to the question you asked… who thought it was a good idea to teach the blighters magic?

I found the link, https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/lore/lore/The-Uncategorized-Fractal-is-Rata-Sum/2380457

EDIT: Ninja’d by Aaron’s edit

Basically, every single Fractal takes place in the past. The one with the collosus for example (IIRC) takes place when Tyria as a world was brand new. Urban during the searing, I’d say snowblind during Jormags rise and the Norn heading south.

Hmm VERY interesting, thanks for the link! I know it’s been discussed before, and I’m bringing it back. But it seems the more I look into the history and lore, the more questions I have.

If it’s definetly NOT Rata Sum, then where is it? It doesn’t even look similar to Rata Pten, and it IS above ground. But the Asura have only been fully above ground, that we know of, for around 200 years. If Dessa recognizes it, could it be that it was another hidden city of the Asura, one that was never discovered, or talked about, as what had happened there was so terrible that no Asura would even dare think about it? Something even worse then Primordus awakening and driving them to the surface? And in hiding it away the removed every trace of it so it could never be discovered?

This is a really good question. First we should probably address what the Mists is. My understand it is that it’s just bits of “proto-matter”, floating around in nothingness and occasionally coalescing to create “something”. Within the Mists are worlds, such as Tyria. There are many slightly different versions of Tyria (these are the different servers), and all possible versions of their histories are recorded in the Mists. Some of these appear as “islands”, not-quite-worlds that resemble these histories (these are the PvP maps). The Fractals of the Mists, then, are a (largely) successful project by Dessa, an individual surrounded by plenty of intrigue of her own (which may or may not be related to the Uncategorised Fractal), which have managed to “stabilise” such islands and make them explorable.

As people have said, we have Word of God that all the Fractals we have seen so far have taken place in the past. So when did the Uncategorised Fractal occur? Well, humans were around at that point, cause we have the bandit saboteur. I wanna say that makes it in the last few years, because bandits are a quite recent faction, but it could in this case mean “bandit” in the generic sense.

Other than that, we’ve nothing to place it. The dialogue, which is on the wiki page, is incredibly intriguing, but I won’t reproduce it here because frankly there’s nothing I can get from it, other than that Dessa seems to be aware of whatever disaster the Fractal is depicting. But that doesn’t help us much, because we don’t really know “when” Dessa is from—potentially several decades ago. My first instincts were Quora Sum or Rata Pten, but both of those were underground settlements and this does not appear to be. In fact it appears to be an outdoor settlement that strongly resembles Rata Sum.

Now, Rata Sum is the only above-ground asuran settlement that we know of—this is something I’ve spoken about before. And yet, this is seemingly another, from a past recent enough that Dessa knows what it is (the asura lost a lot of their history when Quora Sum fell, so that isn’t necessarily a given). Another twist comes when you consider that unless it was in the last 250 years or so, harpies were mainly native to Elona and Dzalana.

The only other remark I have is this: the Raving Asura, trapped inside the Fractal (it has been speculated that this may be Dessa’s boyfriend, who she mentions), uses golems who are dressed up as cats. The only other place we see this, iirc, is in the Proxemics Lab jumping puzzle.

The bandit may be the mists screwing around though, like the ‘human’ cultists around the colossus which takes place long before humans appeared on Tyria.

I mean, there is a flame legion guy there as well so…

Actually, I vaguely recall the devs mentioning that the colossus fractal was from the start of human civilization on Tyria. One of the TowerTalk podcasts, I believe.

As for the idea that a Fractal could just be a jumbled mess of ideas- McGough said that each Fractal is a “discrete section of the past”- in other words, everything in a given Fractal is from a given timeframe, separate from the timeframes other Fractals tap into.

Wiki says… “The Cliffside Fractal is one of the Fractals of the Mists. It represents the early history of Tyria, near the beginning of history.”

Source is a podcast but I can’t listen to it right now.

History in Tyria pretty much starts when humans arrive. ‘History’ is just a word for the body of knowledge of the past, and the humans are the only ones that have concrete records of the past beyond the last few hundred years, with the exception of the odd relic the Priory digs up. Besides, as I remember the podcast, he goes on immediately to specify human civilization.

Ah. well, I never have listened to it but that clears things up. Either way, lots of the fractals are in limbo in how long ago they actually were.

Kalavier.1097:

Basically, every single Fractal takes place in the past. The one with the collosus for example (IIRC) takes place when Tyria as a world was brand new. Urban during the searing, I’d say snowblind during Jormags rise and the Norn heading south.

Correction, Cliffside takes place when humans were new on Tyria. As evident by the fact that humans are not native to the world, and are in the fractal. Beginning of human history.

(Edit: noted now this was clarified)

pdavis.8031:

If it’s definetly NOT Rata Sum, then where is it? It doesn’t even look similar to Rata Pten, and it IS above ground. But the Asura have only been fully above ground, that we know of, for around 200 years.

We know of three asuran cities aboveground that’s existed recently (Rata Sum, Thaumanova, and Mrot Boru in southcentral Brisban), but we haven’t been everywhere the asura could be.

pdavis.8031:

If Dessa recognizes it, could it be that it was another hidden city of the Asura, one that was never discovered, or talked about, as what had happened there was so terrible that no Asura would even dare think about it? Something even worse then Primordus awakening and driving them to the surface? And in hiding it away the removed every trace of it so it could never be discovered?

Just because the players don’t know about it, doesn’t mean it’s a well-kept secret.

Tamias.7059:

Now, Rata Sum is the only above-ground asuran settlement that we know of—this is something I’ve spoken about before.

Erm, no it isn’t. Other than Soreen Draa (which is tbh more of a suberbs of Rata Sum) and Thaumanova (which is called a city), there is Mrot Boru. And this doesn’t cover anywhere south of Metrica, or elsewhere off the map.

The meta event “power overwhelming” in metrica from the luminate krewe is interesting here:

PC: What are you guarding?
Krewe Apprentice: Data, equipment,anything that might interest the inquest.This lab contains – or rather, will contain – the core power grid for the contruction of a new city, in the same mold of Rata Sum

I don’t know what keeps Rata Sum in the air, but Goemm’s lab is right above the luminate plant and is floating too.

Since Dessa seems to have some ties to the fractal (her behaviour is obvious) and she is inquest, it might be an inquest city.

Dessa is not Inquest. She used to be on a krewe with asura that later worked on an Inquest krewe, but that doesn’t make her Inquest. It’d be like saying that Snaff was Inquest because his apprentice joined them at some point.

We don’t know exactly where Dessa affliations lie, but we do know she left the college and isn’t inquest, although she had friends there. And as Scott (dev) said, the fractals are in the past. However, that event does point out that there is technology that can be used to make a city based on a previous design. So maybe Rata Sum was built in the same style as the city in the fractal, using the same technology.

I doubt it, simply on account of the fact that Rata Sum has always been the largest asuran surface settlement, since the days of GW1.

Something else to stew over- while the Fractal itself is certainly large, an additional full sized city cube can be seen of in the distance from where you start. So, theoretically anyway, we’re looking for two massive asuran structures in close proximity.

pdavis.8031:

We don’t know exactly where Dessa affliations lie, but we do know she left the college and isn’t inquest, although she had friends there.

Where is stated that she isn’t? How is stated that she isn’t? Everything points more into the direction that she is …

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dessa

Everything points in the direction that she isn’t. She repeatedly calls out the Consortium, Lion’s Arch, and her former krewemates who joined the Inquest as being bad people- a concept no Inquest would be able to grasp- she states that she and her eerily faceless krewe work alone to their own ends, and there’s this bit from the Thauma Fractal: " I knew the reactor was dangerous—doubly so with the Inquest involved—but I wasn’t ready to watch my friends die." “The Inquest”, not “us”. She specifically refers to them as something distinct from her.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Tamias.7059:

Now, Rata Sum is the only above-ground asuran settlement that we know of—this is something I’ve spoken about before.

Erm, no it isn’t. Other than Soreen Draa (which is tbh more of a suberbs of Rata Sum) and Thaumanova (which is called a city), there is Mrot Boru. And this doesn’t cover anywhere south of Metrica, or elsewhere off the map.

Ok, Rata Sum is the only above-ground settlement on the scale of…well, Rata Sum. And it’s a safe assumption that Rata Sum is the only modern asuran city on that scale. The scale is what made me think it was one of the six great lost cities of the asura, but it doesn’t look underground to me.

Horst Hortensie.5420:

The meta event “power overwhelming” in metrica from the luminate krewe is interesting here:

PC: What are you guarding?
Krewe Apprentice: Data, equipment,anything that might interest the inquest.This lab contains – or rather, will contain – the core power grid for the contruction of a new city, in the same mold of Rata Sum

I don’t know what keeps Rata Sum in the air, but Goemm’s lab is right above the luminate plant and is floating too.

Since Dessa seems to have some ties to the fractal (her behaviour is obvious) and she is inquest, it might be an inquest city.

Fun fact: Rata Sum is held aloft by powerstone fields arrayed using the twelvefold equation.

It is also possible that the uncategorized fractal has a stronger connection to Dessa’s lab than it does to a known asura city. We still don’t know how Dessa’s lab came to be in the mists and the uncategorized fractal could have come the same way. We don’t know if the raving asura is aware that he is in a fractal or not.

Could it be possible that the uncategorized fractal is not above ground? When you fall you get teleported in the same way as when you are hit the electic beam created on the stairs on the way to Tom. So for all we know it could just be a structure in a cave that was made to look like a floating fortress/lab/etc, with on the ground generators for those teleports.

The teleport happens in the cliffside fractal, and others with drop offs.

Tim.6450:

Could it be possible that the uncategorized fractal is not above ground? When you fall you get teleported in the same way as when you are hit the electic beam created on the stairs on the way to Tom. So for all we know it could just be a structure in a cave that was made to look like a floating fortress/lab/etc, with on the ground generators for those teleports.

I doubt it. If it was subterranean you’d expect it to be carved out of the surrounding rock, but instead it’s stone blocks fitted together, with balconies that only make sense if they opened onto empty space. The argument might be made that it was built in a very very large cavern, but by that point it starts to seem dubious, especially considering the city cube in the distance.

And besides, Volcanic, Underground Facility, and Aquatic Ruins all plainly show that Fractals are full capable of showing subterranean places as being subterranean.

Oh boy, this will get convoluted.

Let’s start by looking at what we have.

Things Dessa knows of :

-Lion’s Arch
-Thaumanova project
-Consortium

Things Dessa doesn’t know of :

-Sylvari
-Consortium opening a portal to the observatory
-Thaumanova Incident

So, this gives us a rough window of where her interaction with Tyria ended. Her former crew mates were working at the reactor when Scarlet meddled in, shortly before the start of the player time line. But, she had never seen a sylvari, so, she must have cut contact at least 25 years ago. So, she worked with those asura at least 25 years ago, and most likely at least a few more to establish a memory of them. Considering Dessa looks like a rather young asura, I’m willing to set the presumed time of self imposed lab exile ~30 years ago from the current time.

Now, while looking on to this, one line in particular piqued my interest:

“I hate to ask, but I need combat specialists to dispose of the hostile elements we acquired in the fractals during Mistlock. Can you do this?”

During Mistlock. Past tense. The fractals aren’t an ongoing project, they are the result of an experiment called Mistlock, which was observed by Dessa. From there, her equipment allows her to move entities between the various solidified fractals of the mists.

Now, theory time. An asuran krewe studied the mists 30 years ago. They got far on their work, so far in fact, that they managed to detach their whole lab complex from Tyria, sending it as whole to the mists. Not to be daunted, the krewe continued their work, building a separate observatory to run tests from. They devised a method to “boomark” a state of a portion of the mists, “resetting” it to that state when an entity was inserted, until no entity to experience it no longer was present. They named this method “Mistlock”. However, eventually the safeguards of the lab failed, the formerly asuran structure starting to fail, and mistborn monsters appeared. This breach was abrupt, and almost all personnel were annihilated. Desperate to save the lab, their work and perhaps even the krewe, Dessa, in charge of the observatory, made a decision to Mistlock the whole lab. However, this also resulted in the mistlocking of the observatory itself.

So, what would that mean? Both the observatory and the lab would have been preserved at the state they were mistlocked in, that is, Dessa operating the observatory and in denial of what had happened, and the last survivor holed up at the top floor of the lab, surrounded by defense golems as his only companions in the lab. Their entities died a long time ago, or perhaps are still holding on somewhere in the mists, but what we see when we enter the fractals is the Mistlocked state of the observatory… and that of the lab. Because the Mistlocked Dessa is always born in denial of what happened, she hasn’t named the fractal that once was the lab – the uncategorized fractal. When she comes face to face with it’s existence (when a group of adventurer gets inserted into it), she panics.

The events of the Uncategorized Fractal never happened on Tyria – they happened in the mists. And they keep happening, over and over again.

While a weird theory… it does match the fact that when Kiel tries escorting Dessa from the hub area (after the first Reactor fractal story thing), Dessa IMMEDIATELY appears from the gate (well, that’s what I’ve read. I didn’t get a chance to see it personally) and has no idea who Kiel is, implying that she can never leave her little lab there.

When Dessa tried leaving the fractal via the asura gate, she appeared on the cliff (her usual starting spot, just a couple feet from the asura gate), and yeah, doesn’t know anyone or what just happened with the Thaumanova stuff.

Hmm intriguing. But that would mean that the lab is in a structure almost as large as Rata Sum, and within view of Rata Sum, if that is the city we could see in the distance. We do know that it is not Rata Sum (the lab). I dont know if weve ever found Dessas lab ingame or not, id have to explore the outsise of Rata Sum again, but maybe it is the lab and it can be found within sight of Rata Sum, if that is what we are looking at inthe diatance.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/fractured/Theory-Dessa-s-Lab-is-itself-a-Fractal

This is also an interesting discussion about the matter

One thing I keep reading here is that there is another city in the distance from the uncategorized fractal, however I noticed that is not a whole city. It seems to be the other half of the city you are standing on.

So there must have been some sort of catastrophe that split the city in half and that is why the raving Asura keeps mentioning people falling.

More like a third. We only climb up a third of the overall structure.