The wiki “wall of text” is actually a succinct synopsis. But I’ll try to whittle it down further to just the stuff germane to LS2.
Attacks in Ascalon and the Shiverpeaks drove refugees south to LA. The attacks turned out to be from a “Molten Alliance” of Flame Legion and Dredge (who should not have gotten along). One homestead attacked was Braham’s; he went for help but wasn’t believed by charr or norn. He had to do it himself (with players). Tyrian forces moved against the Alliance, rescued prisoners, and wrecked its base.
Earlier, the very capitalist Consortium had opened up Southsun, albeit causing many karka issues for LA in the process. Now they offered their “resort” island as a home for refugees. Then they turned those refugees into an indentured labor force. Matters were volatile. Ellen Kiel was sent to maintain the peace and protect noble tourists such as Kasmeer and Faren. Wildlife began to attack the settlements. It turned out terrorist/vigilante Canach was behind that (see wiki page for his motivations). Kiel used the situation as a cover for destroying the labor contracts, freeing the refugees.
A while later it was time for Dragon Bash, a celebration of Zhaitan’s death. In the ceremonial opening, one of the LA Captain’s Council (Theo Ashford) was killed in an attack on the Council. A woman who’d offered to heal the injured turned out to be the killer, Mai Trin, who escaped with the aid of her Aetherblades.
Somehow (sorry, about to do an editorial rant) this massive force of pirates with skyships at their command had grown, trained, and flown about without even the slightest rumor of their existence. Even though their massive stronghold containing Inquest tech was behind a waterfall in LA itself. Raiding that got some intel, including the name of “Scarlet.” Kiel had led the assault on the base. She was given control of an airship by Magnus of the Council, making her a Captain and eligible for the vacant seat left by Ashford.
She went up against Evon Gnashblade (the TP magnate). They competed for the trading license with the newly arrived Zephyrites, a trading group with windships and magic crystals. This group proved to be hereditary protectors of Glint’s heritage. After a lot of politicking, Kiel won the election.
Over in Kryta, Queen Jennah held a Jubilee to celebrate ten years on the throne. She had the Collapse in DR re-engineered into a pavilion/arena and deployed new tech, the Watchknights, to safeguard the ceremonies. Aetherblades attacked the opening.
That attack beaten, the Queen refused to cancel the ceremony. The Jubilee went on while authorities investigated the situation. At the closing ceremony, Scarlet Briar arrived and took over the Watchknights, turning them into clockwork monsters to assault the crowds. She had bombs ready to go off throughout the Pavilion as a distraction while she shot at Jennah. Jennah fell as her speech platform crumbled. Faren lunged to save her, only to overbalance when she vanished into purple butterflies. He fell into the pit.
This became a dungeon run for players to go deep into the pavilion, rescue Faren, and beat up Scarlet’s monsters, though Scarlet herself escapes.
Info came out about Scarlet. Some in game, some in stories. Very short version: Podded as Ceara, Scarlet didn’t like the limited choice given by the Dream. She wandered the world studying and learning pretty much everything, being amazingly brilliant and talented. She worked with an asura named Omadd to build a device to apprehend the Eternal Alchemy, used it, had her mind blown, and killed him. Then she set out on her path that led to this assault.
The next unholy alliance proved to be krait and Nightmare Court. They built a huge tower in the big lake in Kessex, concealing it magically until Kasmeer stripped the illusion off. Tyrian forces assaulted the poisonous tower and the powerful beings inside until a small force made it into a central chamber to inject antitoxin into the tower’s heart and blow it up.
Meanwhile Kiel was using the fractals to investigate the Thaumanova Reactor explosion. It turned out Scarlet had triggered it as part of her own research into ley lines.
Scarlet set up probes all over Tyria to track the ley lines. She also built a giant marionette in Lornar’s Pass to menace LA (very fun open world fight for a map full of players).
In all this the biconics were introduced, met each other, and became friends. Their investigative efforts uncovered more of Scarlet’s past and actions. They also learned that the antitoxin used to destroy the Tower had helped Scarlet make a more potent poison.
Which she then used as a gas cloud, the miasma, in an all out assault on LA starting with airship bombardment and continuing with dredge, krait, Court, and flame legion razing the city to the ground as the miasma choked the life out of the inhabitants. This was all just a distraction for the giant floating drill tunneling into the bottom of the harbor. Rescue efforts got civilians out of the city but the death toll was tremendous (I believe devs at the time commented that 40K of the 45K inhabitants perished, but I do not have a citation). Makeshift hospital camps were set up outside the city for the injured and the miasma-ravaged.
The Lionguard regrouped and re-entered the city once the wind blew the miasma away. With coordinated action the forces were able to board the giant drill, the Breachmaker, and the biconics used the battle as cover to press into Scarlet’s operations center where they killed her just before the Breachmaker finished drilling into the ley hub under LA and sending a massive ley pulse out west to wake up Mordremoth (not that anyone knew about Mordy yet).
You can read the wiki page start for details on who the biconics are.
I hope that this all helps you understand the story enough to go into LS2, which starts with the investigation into where that ley pulse went. I’ll mention that between LS1 and LS2, a sylvari named Aerin who had been a keen student of the Zephyrites went nuts and blew up their flagship, scattering it over Dry Top. So LS2 starts in the wake of that tragedy.
