Guild Wars 2

A somewhat Scarlet unrelated and probably short thread, this quote has been bugging and confusing me for a while.
It’s a non-chatbox scripted quote by the Toxic Hybrid, so it was VERY easy to miss.
But thankfully it’s also on the wiki. (Yay!)

So simple and quick question, what’s it referring to. Just what does it meaaaaaan.

This guy is a TOTAL mystery to me, honestly. This is hardly the most mysterious one.

This guy is physically looking like a krait-shaped sylvari (rather than the common thought of a krait-turned-plant akin to druids). It evolves very fast, and all but to me, THIS is the most interesting line from it:

“No! I cannot be the last of my kind.”

One would think him to be the first of his kind… but he’s the last? So then… who came before him, that are now dead? This line even shows for your first appearance into the instance, so it isn’t a case of the repeat entrances holding lore value as “there were many Hybrids and they think they’re the last of them”.

But anyways. For your quote. I see it as us being a gift of sacrifice (“present”) to the krait’s prophet’s arrival (“becoming”). The krait are big on sacrificing to their prophets to build an army in some other world, so I see this line as being evolved from this.

But that “last of my kind” bit still confuddles me…

Is that a weird way of saying killing/eating us is his birthday present?

Isn’t it possible both to be the first and last of your kind? I don’t think they are mutually exclusive.

That part makes sense, especially if he is the first and only one of his kind. Perhaps he was the prototype for an entire production line of the things, or even the intended progenitor (less likely, if he is more sylvari than krait). Either way, he wants there to be more like him, but since he’s going to die, he’s actually the last as well as the first. It’s just a matter of emphasis.

He REALLY is a big mystery. Just like the tower’s own awareness that was probably linked to his consciousness. I really hope that they will do more with this and not just drop the plot-thread. Asidefromlookingcool,IfoundtheHybridreallyinteresting.

And I was pondering whether it could link to sacrifice (simply because krait and sacrifice) but was the Hybrid aware that the krait saw him as prophet? Or did their collective magic feeding not only give him their shape but also actually created something based on their wishes? Or did he simply feed off their knowledge and used it, posing as prophet? His few lines give so little information…

I suppose us being his sacrifice is an acceptable answer, hm. P:

And I’m pretty sure he was the very first but maybe he hoped there would be more. If you looked around in the room with the Hybrid, you saw DOZEN of pots of various sizes like the one the hybrid emerged from. So this hope probably died with our rag-tag band of heroes storming in. Or at least that’s the way I interpreted it.

(Actually when I first did the puzzle in the Nightmare ends with the toxic spore I was afraid a small hybrid would pop out when it opened. But then it was just a spore. Hahaha.)

Shiren.9532:

Isn’t it possible both to be the first and last of your kind? I don’t think they are mutually exclusive.

No, it isn’t. But he was just born, with more pods like that which the hybrid came from are in the Tower. And the way he said it is in a denial like … only a slightly dialed down version of when Luke Skywalker found out Darth Vadar was his father.

Olvendred.3027:

That part makes sense, especially if he is the first and only one of his kind. Perhaps he was the prototype for an entire production line of the things, or even the intended progenitor (less likely, if he is more sylvari than krait). Either way, he wants there to be more like him, but since he’s going to die, he’s actually the last as well as the first. It’s just a matter of emphasis.

And it’s that matter of emphasis which makes him strange.

He says it as if he knows there were predecessors and that it’s just simply unreasonable for him to be the last.

Personally interpreted as -if he dies then there won’t be any more after him because the tower would suddenly be defenceless and would probably get destroyed before any more toxic hybrids could be created? Hence “I cannot be the last”, as in ‘I am determined not to be defeated by you in order to ensure that more of my kind can come into being’

Actually Konig that gave me a thought.

/equips tinfoil hat

What if it’s not the first hybrid after all? What if Scarlet created something on a smaller scale like him before? After all, somehow she got those mysterious seeds from (current plothole) and /knew/ the result would be something krait-shaped and living coming out of the plant.

/puts tinfoil hat on tinfoil hat

Or what if she obtained the seeds from a location Modremoth showed her and the stalk was pretty much a means to create champions and she’s convinced it was her own plan to make the poison and yet the voices in may make her believe she was just doing his bidding. Angry Scarlet is angry. Cough, cough. /tinfoil-mode over

What if he is plain a sylvari plant demon krait thing body which got fused with a actual krait prophet mind… you know the body fusion thing which happens like 5 times in GW2 and 15+ times in GW1.

Andele.1306:

What if he is plain a sylvari plant demon krait thing body which got fused with a actual krait prophet mind… you know the body fusion thing which happens like 5 times in GW2 and 15+ times in GW1.

Their “prophets” were confirmed to be made up in the blog-post about the krait. Anet wanted to disperse any fears and assumptions about people thinking krait-religion is based on any real-life religions with prophets. (kinda lame that it’s confirmed for outside the game reasons, but yanno the deal with controversial topics)

So it can’t be an ‘actual krait prophet’ because ‘krait prophets’ don’t exist in canon. The krait are worshipping hot air. Their priesthood made them up at some point to control the krait people and over time the priesthood started to believe they were real themselves. Which leads us to the current mess.

Besides if it was a Krait with Sylvari parts, that’d be a modification on an adult.
But we pretty much witness its birth, so it’s not cyborg-ish like the Molten-Alliance bosses. :P

@FlamingFox: But it wouldn’t be defenseless. It’s not like there were no more Toxic Alliance foes there. I mean, the next instance – The Nightmare Ends – has waves of Toxic Alliance. On top of that, there’s also the barrier that prevented the anti-toxin from affecting the tower’s heart.

@Elysian: Possible, but I’m doubtful that Scarlet made it… I’ve always thought that the seed was from the cave Ronan found – since it creates sylvari-like creatures and seems to be sapient. Though that would mean… normal sylvari would be of its kind thus it wouldn’t be the last (nor the first) if it meant that wide. On the other hand, Scarlet mentions it being the grand unveil of the prophet (nor word for word), implying it’s the first of the Tower of Nightmares…

@Andele: Body fusion thing? Two creatures have never combined into one in all of the GW franchise. So I’m not sure what you refer to as ‘body fusion’ would imply taking two beings and combining them into one.

@Elysian: Er, no. Nothing says the prophets are made up. I believe you’re mistaking this line:

“Furthermore, unknown to the krait people, the priests ensure the continuation of their power by subtly changing the words of the massive memorized texts, ensuring that whatever interpretation they require is upheld somewhere in the canon.”

Link to blog post.

Nothing says there’s no such thing as krait prophets, just that the Oratuss are known – unknown to the krait population though – to alter the religious oral “texts” to keep them in power regardless the circumstances.

Edit: Or perhaps:

“Land-based historians and scholars theorize that the obelisks on the sea floor are not mystical, but are ancient monuments to religious figures and societal governors of the krait. Because the krait memorize their lore, some information has been lost over the centuries. The krait race has forgotten the obelisks’ true purpose and has invented instead a mystic reverence for the monuments and those they represent.”

This isn’t making up the prophets, but making up the origins/purpose of the obelisks, which to the krait is being markers of where the prophets ascended and will be how they return.

Errr no Konig. Heh. Scroll down to behind the scenes. ;P

The krait have always been an unapologetically evil race. While we take pains in many instances to provide two sides to any story and to show that even evil races, cultures, and characters have good reasons for their actions, the krait were designed to be straightforwardly “black hat.” We approached their focus on religion very cautiously, knowing that the word “prophets” would bring to mind modern religious references. It is important to note that we in no way want to compare krait fanaticism to any real-world faith. The prophets of the krait are false religious figures invented by a ruling priest caste to maintain their control. No part of the krait culture or religion is based on, or intended to resemble, any real-world parallel.

So yeah they’re made up. It’s confirmed from behind the scenes, hence why I said it’s kinda lame that it’s been confirmed for out-of-game reasons.

Read the context, Elysian.

She’s comparing the krait to real religions, stating that there’s no rl religious figures the krait prophets are based from.

That’s what I get from it, at least.

ElysianEternity.6215:

Andele.1306:

What if he is plain a sylvari plant demon krait thing body which got fused with a actual krait prophet mind… you know the body fusion thing which happens like 5 times in GW2 and 15+ times in GW1.

Their “prophets” were confirmed to be made up in the blog-post about the krait. Anet wanted to disperse any fears and assumptions about people thinking krait-religion is based on any real-life religions with prophets. (kinda lame that it’s confirmed for outside the game reasons, but yanno the deal with controversial topics)

So it can’t be an ‘actual krait prophet’ because ‘krait prophets’ don’t exist in canon. The krait are worshipping hot air. Their priesthood made them up at some point to control the krait people and over time the priesthood started to believe they were real themselves. Which leads us to the current mess.

Besides if it was a Krait with Sylvari parts, that’d be a modification on an adult.
But we pretty much witness its birth, so it’s not cyborg-ish like the Molten-Alliance bosses. :P

You know that all races can achieve connection to the mists… and krait are kinda the race which perfected natural illusion control/chaos energy manipulation (outside mesmer training)… you know the whole evolution/adaptation part of their biology…

Konig Des Todes.2086:

@Andele: Body fusion thing? Two creatures have never combined into one in all of the GW franchise. So I’m not sure what you refer to as ‘body fusion’ would imply taking two beings and combining them into one.

Ok wording might be off but still, lets look at the asura personal story… oh look asura got their mind fused into golems! Lets look back a bit, tell me how again did Snaff learn about elder dragons, it couldnt be by placing his mind into that of one of them, or even 250 years before that how did the margonites/lil ossa girl get to their full demon forms, its not like abbadon could have used his influence to transform and bend them to his will, nooo…

@Konig des Todes

Yeah and the bolded part outright says the prophets were invented by the Oratuss.
To me the context is that this was stated to further defuse the potential association to rl religions by saying “btw their prophets aren’t even real but none of them knows so don’t worry.”

Tho I feel that we’d start hairsplitting by going any further with that.

Trust me, I’d really love it if there actually were Krait prophets (Outside of Koda it feels atm like only some of the player races are allowed anything on the level of God-like entities… Zintl is what.) but to me the sentence in bold is pretty clear. I wished they didn’t add it because IMO an artist or writer shouldn’t have to restrict themselves because someone might get upset. Saying “Krait religion =/= rl religion” should suffice. But a company wanting to ensure their jacket’s clean is understandable and I can’t really blame them.

Andele.1306:

Ok wording might be off but still, lets look at the asura personal story… oh look asura got their mind fused into golems! Lets look back a bit, tell me how again did Snaff learn about elder dragons, it couldnt be by placing his mind into that of one of them, or even 250 years before that how did the margonites/lil ossa girl get to their full demon forms, its not like abbadon could have used his influence to transform and bend them to his will, nooo…

Okay, you’re talking about three different things here.

The Dynamics asura storyline is a case of using one’s mind to control a golem which stems in the same direction as Inquest research of infusing a golem with a soul as its energy source. It didn’t fuse with the golem, but instead the issue was that the AI programming of the golem was threatening to mix in with the pilot’s own mind because said pilot was mentally controlling the AI.

Snaff diving into Kralkatorrik’s mind was a form of mind reading, a common mesmer act and nothing like Abaddon or what it seems the Toxic Hybrid is (as a sylvari mind going into a krait body wouldn’t make the krait body plant-like; nor would vice versa make the sylvari body krait-shaped).

Abaddon did not alter one’s mind nor did he cause any form of fusion. What he did was outright turn human beings’ bodies into etheric demonic beings – somewhat similar to dragon corruption except that it didn’t seem to alter their mentality, unlike dragon corruption.

None of this seems to be what the Hyrbid is. The first two wouldn’t alter a body, the latter was only capable because Abaddon was a god. That’s not something even Scarlet could work on par to.

ElysianEternity.6215:

Yeah and the bolded part outright says the prophets were invented by the Oratuss.
To me the context is that this was stated to further defuse the potential association to rl religions by saying “btw their prophets aren’t even real but none of them knows so don’t worry.”

Saying that would actually, arguably, make it more like rl religions. Becuase honestly, who can prove their highest religious figures (what their “Prophets” are) were really? Sure you can prove rl prophets were, but could you what they’re prophets of? Nope.

So it sounds counter-productive to me.

ElysianEternity.6215:

Trust me, I’d really love it if there actually were Krait prophets (Outside of Koda it feels atm like only some of the player races are allowed anything on the level of God-like entities… Zintl is what.) but to me the sentence in bold is pretty clear. I wished they didn’t add it because IMO an artist or writer shouldn’t have to restrict themselves because someone might get upset. Saying “Krait religion =/= rl religion” should suffice. But a company wanting to ensure their jacket’s clean is understandable and I can’t really blame them.

Even if that was the case, it seems to have been retconned. Because the Oratuss, when alone, spouts out about the prophets being real.

@Konig des Todes

1. S i g h. It’s PR shoved into lore, for a lack of better terms. The possible implication that the Oratuss are doing anything like real-world religious institutions might do is less obvious and offensive than having the ‘prophet’ of a race associated with pure evil descending from the heavens as boss-enemy to beat up. It’s also an excuse to show how manipulative the Oratuss are.
It’s just Anet making double-sure to not step on any egg-shells.

IMO, it’s really, really redundant and I also say that it makes no sense. We’re on the same wave on that sentiment I think. Think about it, where ingame does it ever give us the “no association to rl”-disclaimer? I am very certain that the majority of the playerbase doesn’t know about that blog-post but that a lot came by krait ingame.
I’ve yet to come across a single person who felt deeply offended by the mention of prophets.

2. It’s likely but not directly a confirmation. I know the two Oratuss from the Tower-of-Nightmare storyline were deeply convinced of their prophet’s return.
It could be that they eventually began to believe their own lies which isn’t completely out of question since we’re talking about hundreds of years at least (or whatever ancient is supposed to mean in Tyria nowadays) and have to keep their oral tradition and complete lack of written language in mind.

It also could be retconned. I mean, we also don’t see them doing much shape-shifting. The blog states that they’re capable of it and it was their defining feature in GW1. And we never got a confirmation either to my knowledge. So yeah…

Okay, crazy hypothesis here, but what if he really was a Krait Prophet, rather than just one of Scarlet’s experiments? I know that he’s basically a Sylvari/Krait hybrid, but what if Scarlet actually succeeded in recreating one of the Krait’s prophets?

Could it be that the Krait Prophets are an extinct sub-race of the Krait, and that he really was the last of his kind?

In this case, I think it’d be a serpent-looking plant race…

Wait a minute…

In a bit more serious though, if it was a recreation of an extinct race then perhaps the “true form” of sylvari is akin to that? I doubt it though.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Okay, crazy hypothesis here, but what if he really was a Krait Prophet, rather than just one of Scarlet’s experiments? I know that he’s basically a Sylvari/Krait hybrid, but what if Scarlet actually succeeded in recreating one of the Krait’s prophets?

Could it be that the Krait Prophets are an extinct sub-race of the Krait, and that he really was the last of his kind?

Then he forgot to bring his army of sacrificed quaggans to drown and take over the world! :c

Konig Des Todes.2086:

In this case, I think it’d be a serpentine plant race…

Wait a minut…

Oh shi-

Edit: Hm. What if he was simply the result of an Anti-Pale Tree? Like one of complete nightmare, with the sentient ‘thing’ we sensed being it’s caretaker? P:

Tho I like the subspecies theory as idea, even it’s just crazy hypothesis.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Okay, crazy hypothesis here, but what if he really was a Krait Prophet, rather than just one of Scarlet’s experiments? I know that he’s basically a Sylvari/Krait hybrid, but what if Scarlet actually succeeded in recreating one of the Krait’s prophets?

Could it be that the Krait Prophets are an extinct sub-race of the Krait, and that he really was the last of his kind?

Since the Krait Prophets are supposedly “ascended” beings, I would go with the theory that it’s possible it was a prophet, but the Toxic Hybrid was simply a vessel for it.

Though with how many loose ends Scarlet’s storyline is leaving, I wouldn’t be surprised is Anet picks them up and uses them later down the time.

Sorry for the necro, but I didn’t want to make a new hybrid thread when there was an old one gathering dust, and this was the first one I found.

So, for those who don’t keep tabs on such things, a German podcast called TowerTalk does semi-frequent lore interviews with the devs. They’ve recently posted a two-part recap of the Living World Season 1 with Scott McGough, Angel McCoy, and Bobby Stein. Most of it was just going over things we already know. (Although it is fascinating how different it was from the developer perspective, compared to the disjointed impression we had.) Very notable, however is that in the second part (about the 10 minute mark)they explain just what the hybrid was.

In Angel’s words “[Scarlet] has created this hybrid of krait and nightmare that, that is really nightmarish, if you’ll pardon my using the same word again. Um, so, she’s telling everyone that this is, this is the prophet. The krait believe her. She’s basically incubated a normal krait inside the, a pod on the, on the plant, and as it has become infused with the toxins from this plant, uh, in, in great quantity, it has evolved, and it comes out, and, um, you fight it.”

A couple other interesting things from that section: Scarlet found the plant, so it wasn’t, as some (myself included) theorized, provided by the nightmare court. She also said that if the pollen had been allowed to spread, it would have meant “nightmare everywhere.” Again, nightmare as a singular term, not the plural “nightmares” that might have been used to describe the hallucinations. The same term that was used to describe the make-up of the hybrid. More on that later.

On the last new note, she says the toxic krait were “infected by the plant, and changed by it”. She touches on what she’s already said here, that these changes mean the other krait won’t take them back and so they have nowhere else to turn but Scarlet… but also that “there’s also a certain amount of mental control that Scarlet has over them.”

That’s where Angel leaves off, the end of the Word of Dev fact of this post. However, I feel like wading into the kiddie end of the speculation pool and resurrecting the theory that the toxins of the Tower were, or at the very least communicated, Mordremoth’s corruption. I don’t remember if it was debunked or just forgotten, but it’s certainly fallen by the wayside. It does have some problems, but nothing insurmountable, but there is a lot going for it. It would account for why the krait changed physically but the sylvari only got a glowy aura. It would explain why Angel talked about it turning things into nightmare, the Nightmare being popularly theorized to be tainted by Mordremoth. It, combined with the popular theory that Scarlet was acting as an agent of Mordremoth and by proxy the Nightmare, would explain how Scarlet kept the loyalty of the Toxic Alliance, the most dubious of the three, and also account for this new mention of mental control. The final piece of evidence, while dubious, is why I wanted to bring this up- apparently, a little while back, this image was posted on Naomi Baker’s site as “Naomi_Baker_Concept_Art_Illustration_Guild_Wars_2_ka_brisban.jpg”, and then quickly taken down. Full story here. The rampant overgrowth of thorny roots veined through with glowing purple energy? We’ve seen that before. The Tower of Nightmares might serve as a useful starting place for speculation on what we’ll encounter out west.

Anyway, maybe most of my “theories” will be more of “no kitten” to you guys, but I did feel the hybrid explanation deserved attention, since it was such a compelling mystery. Really wish ANet would have some sort okittennowledgement of these interviews instead of making us stumble upon them weeks after the fact, but it’s a pointless complaint. Enjoy my stumbling.

Bwahaha I was a little surprised to see my old thread back here, but no worries Aaron. It’s still an interesting topic and theory! And we’ve gotten a few more bits to play with, so there’s at least that.

I also don’t think the theory was ever debunked, there were merely too many plotholes (where did Scarlet find the seed in the first place and such) and questions left unanswered about the whole thing, so best we could do is guessing.
I mean the theory that the that the Hybrid was a krait-shaped sylvari-like creature (I think Konig’s?) had a good amount of believable points that supported it although there have been only a few to begin with. And still it turned out to be ‘completely wrong’. (Tho in all honesty I still like the theory better than the canon thing we’ve got <_< kudos)
So it’s not much of a ‘debunked and forgotten’ as much as it is “Anet’s so secretive about their story that there’s too little to build solid theories with so why even bother.”

But anyways. Some possible food (to be taken with a grain of salt) for thoughts to add to the idea that the tower was linked to Mordremoth.

1) The Toxic Alchemist event. There’s one event-pointing Hylek that informs us that the toxic Hylek are not the same anymore and have to be taken down. (something along these lines) Beside the toxic krait, these hylek are the only intelligent other sentient species to have been changed by the toxin completely, mentally and physically. That we’re talking about an ‘irreversible corruption’ does sound like it’s probably a dragon’s work.

2.) The Toxic Oratuss/Warlock. Okay, this one’s gonna be a bit of a stretch, bear with me. If we assume that the ancient creature from Thaumanova and the Nightmare-corrupted Mosshearts both link to Mordremoth, then lets take a look at these krait. They have the exact same mint-green glow and both the Mossheart’s and the Oratuss’/Warlock’s model glow looks like it’s shining through cracks of their bark or scales.

This post reminded me of another interview that may ahve gone unnoticed with GuildMag, over here.

They didn’t go into much detail there, but did say that the Toxic Hybrid was a standard krait that was transformed.

My outcome of this is that the tower was just spreading the Nightmare outside of the Dream – to the other races as well. It being a spreading of Mordremoth’s corruption is an alternative, but I’m questionable on if they’re both the same thing still. But this may be my biasness in hoping that the “sylvari = dragon minions” don’t come to pass.

To the whole “Scarlet is an agent of Mordremoth” with this theory of “the Tower spreads Mordremoth’s corruption” – there’s two issues that I see:

1) The Toxic Pollen has an antidote. Dragon corruption does not (not even slow acting dragon corruption seems to have a counter, as seen with the guy who sells the Icy Lodestones).

2) Why would Scarlet or the Toxic Alliance, if dragon minions of some variety, stop spreading the corruption and go for something that kills rather than corrupt (the miasma used in Lion’s Arch).

Aaron Ansari.1604:

The final piece of evidence, while dubious, is why I wanted to bring this up- apparently, a little while back, this image was posted on Naomi Baker’s site as “Naomi_Baker_Concept_Art_Illustration_Guild_Wars_2_ka_brisban.jpg”, and then quickly taken down. Full story here. The rampant overgrowth of thorny roots veined through with glowing purple energy? We’ve seen that before. The Tower of Nightmares might serve as a useful starting place for speculation on what we’ll encounter out west.

I disagree. There was actually very little purple glow with the Tower of Nightmares, and its roots definitely weren’t glowing any color. Most of the Toxic stuff’s glow was in fact light blue and black (very similar to the ice of Jormag, in fact), like the Aetherized Nightmare weapons.

The concept art looks more like the normal Nightmare Court aesthetic to me. We already know that the NC is active in Brisban and it makes sense that Mordremoth’s awakening would spur them into action. (Whether or not they have something to do with Mordy)

Not that this is bad, necessarily, the NC is one of the few evil faction that actually had a bit of development and some characters that aren’t “MUAHAHAHR EVVVVIL”, despite that explicitly being the NCs agenda anyway. Funny how that works out.
(As far as I know, at least. I’m not familiar with all the personal story paths)

ElysianEternity.6215:

He REALLY is a big mystery. Just like the tower’s own awareness that was probably linked to his consciousness. I really hope that they will do more with this and not just drop the plot-thread. Asidefromlookingcool,IfoundtheHybridreallyinteresting.

Also liked it’s design. I had always assumed that the tower was a imitation / mock Mother Tree, able to produce its own type of Sylvari. Something that the nightmare court would obviously be very interested in (seeing as how they’re current means of increasing there ranks are rather slow). Although that theory itself brings up a number of questions.

ElysianEternity.6215:

Actually Konig that gave me a thought.
/equips tinfoil hat

What if it’s not the first hybrid after all? What if Scarlet created something on a smaller scale like him before? After all, somehow she got those mysterious seeds from (current plothole) and /knew/ the result would be something krait-shaped and living coming out of the plant.

/puts tinfoil hat on tinfoil hat

As any good scientists she’d probably do a couple of experiments, at the very least to ensure the viability. Also a prototype-profit would have gone a long way in helping convince the krait to join her alliance. But sadly no lore to support it.

ElysianEternity.6215:

Or what if she obtained the seeds from a location Modremoth showed her and the stalk was pretty much a means to create champions and she’s convinced it was her own plan to make the poison and yet the voices in may make her believe she was just doing his bidding. Angry Scarlet is angry. Cough, cough. /tinfoil-mode over

Going back to my corrupted Mother Tree theory, maybe she got her hand on one of the other Mother Tree seeds?

Aaron Ansari.1604:

In Angel’s words “[Scarlet] has created this hybrid of krait and nightmare that, that is really nightmarish, if you’ll pardon my using the same word again. Um, so, she’s telling everyone that this is, this is the prophet. The krait believe her. She’s basically incubated a normal krait inside the, a pod on the, on the plant, and as it has become infused with the toxins from this plant, uh, in, in great quantity, it has evolved, and it comes out, and, um, you fight it.”

Well there goes the corrupted Mother Tree theory, since it would only hold up if the Hybrid was a krait shaped plant (in the same way that Sylvari are human shaped and fern hounds dog shaped). However interesting enough, if the speculation holds, we might have a good idea what Mordies corruption looks like.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Champion_Toxic_Hybrid.jpg

ElysianEternity.6215:

So it’s not much of a ‘debunked and forgotten’ as much as it is “Anet’s so secretive about their story that there’s too little to build solid theories with so why even bother.”

Yeah… ANet really really should top doing that.

Or, you know, it might mean nothing at all. Living Story isn’t exactly a deep and thought out story. And has plenty of loose ends and plot holes too.

Do you work at ArenaNet, Windu? Have you seen their offices? Read their scripts?

How do you know that their story and lore isn’t deep and thought out, and not just poorly delivered? The fact is that you don’t. Even in GW1 – for all the praises of how much better it was in story – was pretty terrible in delivery outright as well. It just had better NPC AI (allied and foe) so it felt like it flowed better.

So don’t go saying “there’s nothing to think about” when there very well may be. And even if there isn’t, since it isn’t told, they could change their minds and alter the untold story by being inspired by us.

So basically what you are saying is that anet may very well have a thought out and deep story, they are just not delivering it well.

I guess that’s one way of putting it. Living Story does indeed drag stories out way too long (in my opinion at least).

It is indeed possible – I won’t say which is more likely, but it’s possible they do have a well thought out story but delivered it poorly (that’s been my opinion the entire time tbh). And really I think it feels dragged out because we’re used to game stories being available all at once, rather than released slowly over time like tv series, webcomics, etc.

What about a well thought story with an intended disturbed delivery. The first living story showed a lot disconnected places, but they seem to provide to the whole plot. Even the first story which we all know (the dragon in Orr) is … erm … different and there was a lot effort put into the story to show oddities while hiding the truth.

AsgarZigel.4530:

The concept art looks more like the normal Nightmare Court aesthetic to me. We already know that the NC is active in Brisban and it makes sense that Mordremoth’s awakening would spur them into action. (Whether or not they have something to do with Mordy)

Not that this is bad, necessarily, the NC is one of the few evil faction that actually had a bit of development and some characters that aren’t “MUAHAHAHR EVVVVIL”, despite that explicitly being the NCs agenda anyway. Funny how that works out.
(As far as I know, at least. I’m not familiar with all the personal story paths)

I think that most of the evil factions in the game have some sort of character development. The dredge, the flame legion, the bandits, the inquest, the sons of svanir, have some sympathetic motives. Even the Krait have an understandable, if detestable, motive for what they do.

It’s only the dragon minions that are devoid of any morality or sympathetic motive and seem bent on pure malignancy.

“What about a well thought story with an intended disturbed delivery. The first living story showed a lot disconnected places, but they seem to provide to the whole plot.”

Not really. I’m guessing that the Dead End investigation explained the season 1 plot and that’s all the explanation we’re going to get (for anything that isn’t going to be in season 2). Unfortunately there were massive gaps. More gap than plot. A lot of it was implausible even when the ‘evidence’ was presented. If you were to start asking “why didn’t that happen?” I’m afraid you’d never be able to stop.

@Horst: That’s actually exactly what they said they were doing when Flame and Frost was ending (and again, when Last Stand at Southsun was ending) – that they were providing hints and clues that culmnivate into the the overarching plot so while it sounds disorderly, it isn’t.

The thing is, that they gave too little too slowly. Each update held so little story to it, that players were not satisfied. They prefer bursts of story, so they don’t have to remember obscure things from months ago – like when Twilight Assault came out, we finally got the answer of why the Aetherblades were stealing holoprojectors during DragonBash. This is why in terms of story, except for the repetitive nature of wiping out the Afflicted in Part 1, the Winds of Change update was well received – it was 3 large updates of content. In a similar light, after the immediate “omg we’re finally getting content again!” of War in Kryta died down, there was complaints when the updates hit a ~4 week hiatus after very frequent update schedule of little over time.

That’s the delivery issue – well, half of the issue – with Season 1. We got too little of a plot in too long of a timespan. It would be like we only got 1-3 Personal Story steps released to us every 2 weeks. That’d be nearly a year from the tutorial to killing Zhaitan at long last. I doubt many people would have liked that (though it wouldn’t be so disliked since it is setting the precedent rather than having something before it like Season 1 did (having the personal story)).

The other half of the issue is that we didn’t get nearly enough to properly understand all that we were given. So we’re wading through stuff we’ve got going in the completely wrong direction – and this is why the Dead End investigation that Stooperdale mentioned was needed to be put in. Not only as a recap, but to explain the many things we misunderstood due to poor delivery.

Wait a minute! Were the Krait around during the last rise of the dragons?

bullyrook.2165:

Wait a minute! Were the Krait around during the last rise of the dragons?

We don’t know. There’s no evidence for it, but some theories are based off of the parallels drawn between krait obelisks and the seer bloodstone, or figure that the krait prophets, who are supposed to herald a flooding of the entire world, may have been agents of Bubbles. At the moment both are just ideas- there isn’t enough to build anything solid off of.

Stooperdale.3560:

“What about a well thought story with an intended disturbed delivery. The first living story showed a lot disconnected places, but they seem to provide to the whole plot.”

Not really. I’m guessing that the Dead End investigation explained the season 1 plot and that’s all the explanation we’re going to get (for anything that isn’t going to be in season 2). Unfortunately there were massive gaps. More gap than plot. A lot of it was implausible even when the ‘evidence’ was presented. If you were to start asking “why didn’t that happen?” I’m afraid you’d never be able to stop.

Imo, this is an issue with the core game as well. Some of the gaps and inconsistencies are intentional to create the sense that there are multiple interpretations of history or that cultural biases may get in the way of objectivity, but these aren’t signposted clearly enough. If you take it too far, you end up assuming that nothing that anyone says is reliable, and the concept of lore in general becomes quite fuzzy.

Another issue is the assumptions of what the players would and wouldn’t be interested in. I’ve seen a couple of interviews now when people ask who leads, say, the Molten or Toxic Alliance, or who is in charge of the Inquest working with the Aetherblades, and I was surprised to learn that these characters exist and have names, but the writers simply assumed that people wouldn’t be interesting in knowing them. Of course we would! We don’t know what motivates any of these factions! The Nightmare Court using their tower to spread nightmare I can buy, as well as the krait wanting to reach their prophets (this was the most controversial member of an alliance due to their established xenophobic nature, but their motivation makes the most sense out of all of them to me—but had not this been explained, it would have been very confusing indeed). But how do the Aetherblades contribute to the Inquest’s greater goal of controlling the world’s knowledge? How does the Molten Alliance help the Flame Legion dominate the rest of the charr once again (beyond “oh, they get weapons from the dredge”)? What can it tell us about how dredge society is structured, with its competing revolutionary factions? I believe that all of these answers exist and are known, just not to the players.

More disappointingly, I wouldn’t be surprised if anyone ever really planned to explain them to the players. There are six named Aetherblades, and no named members that I can think of belonging to either the Toxic Alliance or the Molten Alliance. Our interactions with them rarely go beyond smashing them with a hammer (an exception to this was the interrogation at the end of Flame and Frost, which is something that never really happened again for some reason—how are players supposed to put the pieces together like that?). This is why people complain about the soullessness of the Living World—where’s the texture, the details that turn broad outlines into actual stories? What’s more frustrating is discovering that these exist, but just aren’t being presented to players.

Just for fun: at a glance, the following is a quick list of characters I could find who are never mentioned in-game, who had minis in the betas, which were removed and then later restored in later mini sets:

• Yaotl the Fierce – green (friendly) hylek tlamatini
• Eelob Poisonfang – some sort of spider boss(?)
• Frost Fang – possible ice drake boss(?)
• High Inquisitor Maut – personal suspicion that he is the leader of the Inquest, mentioned in flavour text of this item, which was added post-release
• Ragar Shardhammer – club-wielding icebrood hunter
• Skarn Darkhoof – could be way off the mark here but seems to have a unique model (indicating some importance?), which wasn’t seen in-game until Kuraii the Cruel was added for the Queen’s Jubilee release

The optimist in me wants to say that between the mention of Maut as flavour text and the inclusion of a Tsuru Whitewing mini (who was not one of the minis removed before release), these are hints at future characters or major players who we haven’t met yet (although if they’re that major, I hope there’s a good reason we haven’t heard their names). But given what we’ve heard about the Scarlet’s Alliance leaders, I’m not so sure.

bullyrook.2165:

Wait a minute! Were the Krait around during the last rise of the dragons?

Like with the tengu and kodan, there are theories for it – which Aaron pointed out the basics of them all – but no solid confirmation nor solid support.

@Tamias: For once, I completely agree.

ArenaNet brought forth the possibility that the Toxic Hybrid may or may not have been an actual Krait Prophet.

Considering that the Prophets were officially confirmed to be fabricated by the Oratuss one could say that the Toxic Hybrid is the first Prophet(it ascended in the tower like the ones in the legends) and depending one whether or not Toxic Alliance make more Towers of Nightmare it may be the last.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

So basically what you are saying is that anet may very well have a thought out and deep story, they are just not delivering it well.

I guess that’s one way of putting it. Living Story does indeed drag stories out way too long (in my opinion at least).

The mechanism of conveying a story differs between different mediums. For example: “It was a wonder to behold, awe inspiring beauty radiated forth from it”. Try converting that into a video game, since frankly whatever it is I didn’t provide a single actually credible explanation of what it looks like. The writers might be very good writers, but the narrative medium relies a lot on the imagination of the reader, thus more poetic speech is common place. In a video game someone need to model and script it (so your description needs to be tangible to an extent), audio needs to be recorded, effects need to be implemented etc. and some thing the game engine isn’t able to do easily (as the case with GW2 giving player characters voices).

This is something video games in general are struggling with, how to tell a proper story. Games like MGS have overly long cutscenes which wrestles control away from players, some FPSes like Half Life 2 do something similar but they don’t remove control from the players so while fun stuff is going on you could be looking at the floor and miss all of it. Other games attempt to tell a story via the mechanics itself (although this is a bit hit and miss at the moment).
Usually audio and video in video games need to pull a dual role, telling players what to do while also conveying narrative. It’s not uncommon to see dialogue like: "Oh no! You must help us hero, fight those evil insert creature here ", which does a good job of conveying what to do but a poor job of narrative. Increasing the length adding some flavour text might increase narrative potential but having to listen to a person telling their life story for 5 minutes and somewhere in their throwing in the business about the thing you’re suppose to kill isn’t good either.

Mickey Frogeater.1470:

ArenaNet brought forth the possibility that the Toxic Hybrid may or may not have been an actual Krait Prophet.

Considering that the Prophets were officially confirmed to be fabricated by the Oratuss one could say that the Toxic Hybrid is the first Prophet(it ascended in the tower like the ones in the legends) and depending one whether or not Toxic Alliance make more Towers of Nightmare it may be the last.

How do we know their prophets are definitely false? I may have missed something here.

Read in the thread before the necro’ing posts. The old blog posts says

The krait have always been an unapologetically evil race. While we take pains in many instances to provide two sides to any story and to show that even evil races, cultures, and characters have good reasons for their actions, the krait were designed to be straightforwardly “black hat.” We approached their focus on religion very cautiously, knowing that the word “prophets” would bring to mind modern religious references. It is important to note that we in no way want to compare krait fanaticism to any real-world faith. The prophets of the krait are false religious figures invented by a ruling priest caste to maintain their control. No part of the krait culture or religion is based on, or intended to resemble, any real-world parallel.

There was a discussion on the interpretation of it – and one was that they’re not real in Tyria’s setting, the other being that they’re not comparable to a real religion.

Either way though, Angel McCoy had already stated elsewhere that since the blog post was written, some things were changed, since it was pre-release stuff.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Read in the thread before the necro’ing posts. The old blog posts says

The krait have always been an unapologetically evil race. While we take pains in many instances to provide two sides to any story and to show that even evil races, cultures, and characters have good reasons for their actions, the krait were designed to be straightforwardly “black hat.” We approached their focus on religion very cautiously, knowing that the word “prophets” would bring to mind modern religious references. It is important to note that we in no way want to compare krait fanaticism to any real-world faith. The prophets of the krait are false religious figures invented by a ruling priest caste to maintain their control. No part of the krait culture or religion is based on, or intended to resemble, any real-world parallel.

There was a discussion on the interpretation of it – and one was that they’re not real in Tyria’s setting, the other being that they’re not comparable to a real religion.

Either way though, Angel McCoy had already stated elsewhere that since the blog post was written, some things were changed, since it was pre-release stuff.

Ah, I was going to say. Because that same post said that the obelisks had no mystical properties, now they are being compared to the bloodstone. I think they changed their mind on their direction.

Well, actually it says that land-based historians and scholars theorize that they aren’t mystical. ANet may well have always planned on them being magical, and just included that passage was just to give another perspective and perhaps a religious reason for the krait to find the surfacers intolerable.

Or maybe they opted to retcon every other sentence in that article. It’s truly unfortunate that we cannot say for sure.