Guild Wars 2

Zaxares.5419:

2. Scarlet instructs Mai Trin to approach the Dredge/Flame Legion to form the Molten Alliance

This is where I think your theory fails.

The Flame Legion despise two things: humans, and female charr. In Iron Marches there’s a good number of Flame Legion event dialogues that outright dis humanity – and anyone who doesn’t think humanity should be wiped out, to the Flame Legion, are just as terrible.

So I cannot ever see the Flame Legion working with a human – let alone a female human. Sylvari or norn are far more likely. Or asura.

Hmm, good point. I’m not sure if their sexist attitude would have translated to all females though; the Sons of Svanir certainly don’t think any better of my female human or sylvari when I chat to the ones in Hoelbrak.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Evans.6347:

What exactly is it that she is trying to change? Fate?

What I get is that she saw the fate and purpose of the sylvari, claims to have seen the whole of Eternal Alchemy (but hasn’t), and is now trying to break the sylvari race from the chains of their purpose (aka Wyld Hunts).

I partially agree Konig. It seems to me she is talking on a larger scale than just the Sylvari.

“But I see the flaws in that design. My people don’t have to take what we’re given, or be what we were “born to be.” No people do. We can change the rules…well, I can. And I’m going to.”

So even though clearly the Sylvari are a big part of it, what seems to drive them also drives the other races. And she intends to change it.

I’m also still very interested in the reaction of the Pale Tree. Where she just ignored Caderyn, she flat out declares war against Ceara.

The story pretty much states that even Cadeyrn, Faolain, and the whole Nightmare Court is and always have been part of the design of the sylvari’s fate. While the court may just be strayed children, they are still just children to the Pale Tree. Ceara put herself on the same level as the Pale Tree though. Seeing what she was not supposed to, and worse, intending to change it, and even worse, change it through destruction.

What i find suspect though, is that Ceara didnt see, or didnt even look for her own purpose in this great design. Thats understandable from her point, she never wanted to hear from it at all… but how can one be sure to change her destiny if she doesnt even know what it would be?

Yet she did see her own purpose in a way. She saw herself as the dusty red vines squeezing the life out of the Pale Tree until the Pale Tree herself snapped Ceara out of that vision.

I suppose I’ve answered my own questions here. The Pale Tree declared her a danger because she is a threat to the life of the Pale Tree.

Anybody wondering if, with next month being Super Adventure Box, Scarlet will make an attempt at another piece of technology?

Narcemus.1348:

Anybody wondering if, with next month being Super Adventure Box, Scarlet will make an attempt at another piece of technology?

Well last time the Consortium already made an attempt and got . . . somewhere . . . with it.

“Somewhere” being nowhere.

Maybe they will attempt to buy the idea from Moto once more. But I doubt they will get anywhere with negotations and clean business about it. I hope this update does get connected with the rest of the Living Story, rather than being something completely apart. We still are missing the big secret Jennah was going to give in her speech.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

“Somewhere” being nowhere.

No, a little more than nowhere. They managed to leave an open door to talk with him again, thanks to being more polite and less . . . slimy.

Motto seemed very much uninterested in the Consortium’s offers. Even if they said they’ll always be open, that doesn’t matter if motto doesn’t care for their offers.

Moto didn’t seemed interested in anyone’s offers.

Narcemus.1348:

Moto didn’t seemed interested in anyone’s offers.

I know, but at the same time, one of the “concerned asura” which showed up to rant to him was frankly quite hilarious.

. . . what were we talking about again? Oh right.

Yeah, I don’t think we’ll be seeing Scarlet anywhere near this one.

It would seem very strange if after such an invasion there would be a random blurb like this. I mean not even her showing up, but something to the side where we’re trying to learn more about her or something.

I thought Moto did actually sound tempted by the thought of having a Super Adventure Box “in every home across Tyria”, but he still hesitated out of concern about what the Consortium might actually do with it if he licensed his technology out to them.

Really? The tone of Moto’s voice and his words came off to me as if meaning “please, go away now.” That is, saying polite things but obviously wanting to end the conversation.

Mmm, I may be misremembering. It has been several months since SAB was last here, after all. I’ll go stand in Rata Sum for a while come Sep 3rd and re-listen to what he has to say.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Zaxares.5419:

2. Scarlet instructs Mai Trin to approach the Dredge/Flame Legion to form the Molten Alliance

This is where I think your theory fails.

The Flame Legion despise two things: humans, and female charr. In Iron Marches there’s a good number of Flame Legion event dialogues that outright dis humanity – and anyone who doesn’t think humanity should be wiped out, to the Flame Legion, are just as terrible.

So I cannot ever see the Flame Legion working with a human – let alone a female human. Sylvari or norn are far more likely. Or asura.

Simple, use a liaison or use a potion to change appearance. When talking to the Dredge perhaps go in person because the dredge NPC in FF said there was a lady.

So I just realised a pretty big discrepancy in Sylvari lore with the Malyck Story line and Scarlet’s vision.

According to her, she saw the fate of all Sylvari, which was what ticked her of. But that’s impossible because we now know that Sylvari extend beyond the Pale Tree and have other origins.

ANet pls |:

Which might mean what i have said before, that her vision may not have been the Eternal Alchemy or the Mists as a whole, but the Dream only. Something she had an inborn connection to, rather than an unknowable abstract idea of the universe.

Truth be told, SHE never claims to have seen the Eternal Alchemy. Vorpp says she does. And with all the other subjective “truths” we’re told throughout the game, can we believe Vorpp is right? He may think he is, doesn’t make it so.

When she woke up in the short story, all she claimed to have seen is the fate and purpose of the sylvari. Of course, if she didn’t know there were other sylvari out there, then she wouldn’t be lying, just wrong. And remember that Malyck’s existence was a tightly kept secret.

The setup of the experiment suggests that the goal was the Eternal Alchemy. But the device sounds more like some kind of meditation pod or something, not at all like say, a portal. Seeing the constant travels to the Mists via portal, be it WvWvW or Dessa’s Fractal experiment, i would expect a portal to go with the idea of “seeing the Eternal Alchemy” rather than such a pod.

If i had to throw speculations left and right, i would say that the device was more likely trying to augment the link to whatever concept of a Bigger Whole the subject’s mind is connected to. Thats the Dream, for sylvari. This would also explain why the experiment would have needed a sylvari to yield results: Other races lack such a basic level connection to such a Bigger Whole as the sylvari Dream.

There are some questions though. Scarlet didnt destroy this equipment. Was it found later? If it was not, and Omadd is dead, who knew about it to speculate that Scarlet did in fact see the Eternal Alchemy (and spread this rumor). If it was found, did other experiments happen with it? By who? What were the results?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Truth be told, SHE never claims to have seen the Eternal Alchemy. Vorpp says she does. And with all the other subjective “truths” we’re told throughout the game, can we believe Vorpp is right? He may think he is, doesn’t make it so.

When she woke up in the short story, all she claimed to have seen is the fate and purpose of the sylvari. Of course, if she didn’t know there were other sylvari out there, then she wouldn’t be lying, just wrong. And remember that Malyck’s existence was a tightly kept secret.

Not to mention Malyck’s tree’s existence was unknown to really anyone until after this story was written, from what we can tell.

Well, there’s that then. :v

From that short story, I got the idea that perhaps it was an actual future she saw, her being a tool used by the Nightmare Court to take control of the Pale Tree, but she rejected that future after seeing it, as well as the tree when it tried to dissuade her from looking, not content with how insignificant she saw the other sylvari being. She rejects her sylvari origin and takes a new name, and kills her mentor, decided to carve out a path of her own, not controlled by anyone.

However, where the short story ends doesn’t match what we see in the game – something more happened between. Thorn vines are gone, and her attacks are anywhere but near the Grove and Rata Sum. “There’s something you must understand, your world is built on fog and sand”, as her poem went. The short story gives us no backstory on that line, which I find to be the most curious one.

LeDuc.1436:

Before I had a chance to read this; I simply saw her as this comic book villain essentially much like the joker, but I see now this more grand idea or intention to her that makes for a much more interesting villain and I hope to see more from her.

Odd, after reading this I said “Oh, she is like something out of Lovecraft or The Joker.”

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

So I just realised a pretty big discrepancy in Sylvari lore with the Malyck Story line and Scarlet’s vision.

According to her, she saw the fate of all Sylvari, which was what ticked her of. But that’s impossible because we now know that Sylvari extend beyond the Pale Tree and have other origins.

ANet pls |:

This means Scarlet does not actually understand what she thinks she understands. That is not a contradiction in lore. That is arrogance on the part on a character that has arrogance in spades.

Something I am getting from a lot of these comments: negative commenters seem to assume whatever Scarlet says in canon and she is right about everything. In Scarlet’s view the Arcane Council are fools for calling her thesis “unsubstantiated rubbish” and the commenters assume Scarlet is right and then wonder why she could figure out what the finest Asuran minds never could. What they fail to consider is that maybe the Arcane Council is right, maybe the finest minds of the Asuran colleges who worked for decades in these fields understand them and Scarlet is too arrogant or too in love with her thesis to see its flaws.

Just because a character is talented or intelligent doesn’t mean the character is correct.

No, we negative commenters find what she did as portrayed in the short story – as well as her lack-of-depth characteristics – to be rubbish to lore. Those things are canon; they actually happened. Which is where the problem lies.

What’s rubbish is that Scarlet “excelled” through Dynamics and Statics in about a year each, and then went into Synergatics to excell through that. As well as being taught by all the best of everything. All for the point of making Scarlet some “I can do anything I want to, because I can physically do it” kind of character.

It’s got little to do with what she proclaims, and more about what she did and what the out-of-character short story narration tells us.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

No, we negative commenters find what she did as portrayed in the short story – as well as her lack-of-depth characteristics – to be rubbish to lore. Those things are canon; they actually happened. Which is where the problem lies.

Iakdav (his later posts), Seven Star Stalker, Evans, Thalador (whose second post was directly alluded to in my post) and Eluveitie seem to accept Scarlet’s version of reality as ANets. This was evident from more posters than Mary Sue accusations*

*I almost always ignore MS accusations for reasons summarized in Wikipedia under criticism of the Mary Sue concept. I think Wikipedia was far too kind to the Mary Sue accusers.

I have this theory about Scarlet which I think might be pretty close to the truth (heavy Asuran PS spoilers, read at your own risk).
First we have to take into account the following facts: We don’t know how long ago her short story is, for all we know it could’ve taken place before the Thaumanova Reactor events.
It lines up perfectly with Asuran Personal Storyline, because in the short story, Scarlet and a character that appears in said storylines go tamper with experiments from other competitors for the Snaff Prize. Guess which one was among them. Infinity Ball. She tampered with it so that it'd actually work in showcasing future timelines, probably out of jest at the time. But when she entered Omadd's Isolation module, she probably saw, through the Eternal Alchemy mambojambo, the potential that the Infinity Ball had. The invention could create alternate timelines. We already know, for example, that the Mists are a gateway into the fabric of time itself. That's why in PvP, we can join historical battles like the Battle of Kyhlo. So potentially, with the inner workings of the Mists she now understands from using Omadd's machine, she could tap into that potential and, with a bit of tinkering on her very own Infinity Ball, she managed to pluck out Steam Machines from the alternate universe the asuran characters create (she might even be at fault for the Steam creatures in Lornar's Pass, might be an experiment of hers, I mean, there's even a norn in Hoelbrak who comments on their sudden appearance. Why the need to put a Norn there in shellshock, so much importance given to one simple feature like that? Maybe Anet was foreshadowing these events practically since launch). After figuring out how to pull things out of alternate realities through the Mists, she set about gathering allies. She found them in the Aetherblades, a group of rebels who seek power in the Council of Lion's Arch. Why is she aiding them? Why, because they are means to do what she wants, setting total anarchy over Tyria. The fact that the Molten Alliance appears is a testament to her power. They probably aren't remnants of the defeated Molten Alliance. They most likely are the Molten Alliance you beat, just pulled out of an alternate reality where you didn't. So that's my theory, Scarlet with an Infinity Ball made her way is borderline Godlike. Which leads me to that thing they promised us on the Fractals. The Thaumanova Reactor bit. From what I understand, she might have been the one to cause it. She certainly had the means to, she knew the Inquest headquarters and she's probably sly enough to get inside them, even though she had been cast out. With knowledge that the Thaumanova Reactor has the power to twist the fabric of the Mists itself and could set about the right amount of timelines she needed to set her plans into motion, she caused the Reactor to explode, releasing all that Chaos magic.
Theory still needs a bit of polishing here and there, but it might just be what happened.

As with most theories, the fault lies in the lack of direct evidence. Sounds creative though. And i guess there must be at least some connection between all the Chaos Magic that is being thrown around in nowaday’s Living Story rumors.

On the other hand, the lore community tends to see connection where there are none, just see who we all though Scarlet would be before she actually made a scene. There is still a chance for all of it to make sense though, in the end. Because this is not the end of it. Not every card has been played, not everything has been revealed yet, and little to no happenings reached a definate conclusion. Thats why i for one, would advise against shouting “Bad Writing!” all over the place, and would urge to proceed with the theory-crafting. Discovering where we were right and where we were wrong, altering our theories should be part of the fun. The Lore section of these forums was mired in criticism against the writing for long enough.

I think the Fog and Sand bit of her poem might back up her connection to the Mists. Fog being practically interchangeable with the Mists, as a word. I think that line is meant to say that the Mists is as much part of Tyria as the rest of the world (the “sand”). Could be wrong though.
And I agree with lakdav, before writing her off as a Mary Sue, let the story develop. Just because she managed to breeze through most of the Colleges, doesn’t mean it isn’t feasible. We have real life examples of people who took various degrees in various fields.
The Renaissance Man was known for his ability to learn a bit of everything. Da Vinci is one such example. Da Vinci, despite his fame for his paintings and inventions, was also a pretty good cook (as told to me by my history teacher). He even had what could be considered a precursor to mixers, powered by horsepower (which made the kitchen incredibly stinky as per accounts of the time, but I digress).
My point being, if in a world without magic and mystical races (which the Sylvari are and ) we can learn from multiple fields of knowledge, then in a magical world that applies even more, specially considering we keep forgetting Sylvari are prone to learning fast; Caithe was incredibly good at killing stuff that humans and charr, who have been around for longer, didn’t know how to kill. The bit with the destroyer devourers, where she tells Logan and Rytlock to strike between the tails? Rytlock, being a charr, probably deals with devourers everyday and not even he seemed to know about that.

So lets not pin Scarlet to the Mary Sue board just yet.

JohnLShannonhouse.1820:

Iakdav (his later posts), Seven Star Stalker, Evans, Thalador (whose second post was directly alluded to in my post) and Eluveitie seem to accept Scarlet’s version of reality as ANets. This was evident from more posters than Mary Sue accusations*

I see their posts not as “Ascarlet’s version of reality as Anet’s” But rather “we know a good portion of what Scarlet saw, we know what she is supposed to have seen per the experiment’s intention and its previous failed events, and we know what she claims to have seen as well as what others have claimed for her to have seen and what she has accomplished; the combination of all this makes her very unrealistic”

She claims to have seen just the fate and purpose of the sylvari. We know she saw a representation of the sylvari’s life and the Pale Tree’s own etheric existence. We know the experiment allows people to see the Eternal Alchemy and Scarlet is the sole survivor of experiment test subjects. The claim that she saw Eternal Alchemy just comes from Vorpp and the purpose of the experiment. Nonetheless, Scarlet survived something dozen others died from, and did something no other asura, charr, norn, etc. did. She has far too many “I’m the only one who can do this” contributions to her past.

The question of the matter isn’t “did she really see the fate of the sylvari” but rather “did she interpret it correctly” – which doesn’t remove the problem of the matter at all.

@Insanius.4028: Ugh, too much in the spoiler tag. I’m gonna have to skip on reading the hypothesis/theory for now…