They called us TEMPESTs, but we can use our elite to cheat death instead
Tower of Nightmares porpose was???
To develop the toxin she used to attack Lion’s Arch with?
To practice for and to test how we like the destruction of maps.
“Whose Kitten is this?” – “It’s a Charr baby.”
“Whose Charr is this?”- “Ted’s.”
“Who’s Ted?”- “Ted’s dead, baby. Ted’s dead.”
“Whose Charr is this?”- “Ted’s.”
“Who’s Ted?”- “Ted’s dead, baby. Ted’s dead.”
I got the impression that The Dead End: A Study in Scarlet was supposed to be the “a-ha!” instance where everything comes together and we suddenly understand Scarlet’s plans. It has this to say about the Tower of Nightmares:
Marjory Delaqua: “I’ll never forget how close we came to disaster. When I think about those spores spreading their toxins across Tyria, it boils my blood.”
Kasmeer Meade: “The Nightmare Court and krait do make a volatile combination. Scarlet popped some horrifying alchemy there.”
Kasmeer Meade: “I still have nightmares about that tower. I doubt I’m the only one.”
Player: “At least Jory was able to find the antitoxin. Can we test it on this sample?”
Kasmeer Meade: “Scarlet would have spread her toxins all over Tyria if we’d let her. It’s a good thing we found the antidote. She allied with krait and Nightmare Cortiers to do so. Why would she do such a thing?”
Player: “The courtiers grew the plant, and the krait made it toxic. The combination was a poison so powerful…”
Marjory Delaqua: “This sample is resistant to the antitoxin we used against the Nightmare Tower poison.”
Kasmeer Meade: “Jory, we didn’t stop her plan. We just showed her how to make a stronger poison that could wipe out an entire city.”
So the implication is that Scarlet modified her posion to be resistant to Marjory’s antitoxin, and that she could use it against an army. Or a city. I don’t for a moment expect you accept this as a satisfactory explanation as to why Scarlet had to build a giant freaking Tower of Nightmares; a grow-your-own-krait-prohet kit seems like a fairly convoluted plan to create a poison.
I’m not quite ready to write it off as ANet not knowing themselves where the plot was going, though—not yet, at least. The way that miasma was dispersed during the Battle for Lion’s Arch wasn’t similar at all to how the Tower of Nightmares worked, nor did the toxin have remotely similar effects. And iirc there was some dialogue in the Lornar’s Pass refugee camp that hinted that some of the hylek knew how to stop the miasma but seemed reticent to talk about it (the implication, I think, being that the miasma involved hylek alchemy and they were embarrassed to have been linked to Scarlet—remember Scarlet spent some time with the Michotl hylek). So it seems quite likely to me that the miasma isn’t actually anything to do with the Toxic Alliance, and so the Tower of Nightmares was for some other purpose. At least, I hope that’s the case, because otherwise Scarlet’s plan was even more poorly communicated than I first thought.
So if the Tower of Nightmares wasn’t built to test the miasma, then what was it for? Well, short answer is we don’t know. I’m still apprehensive that a “This is what Scarlet’s REAL plan was all along!” reveal is going to inevitably fall flat at this point regardless of how clever it is, but if I had to guess I’d say something to do with Mordremoth. But really, your guess is as good as mine.
Victory Is Life Eternal [VILE]
(…) as to why Scarlet had to build a giant freaking Tower of Nightmares; a grow-your-own-krait-prohet kit seems like a fairly convoluted plan to create a poison.(…)
I file this under awesome/traditional.
Bad people with big bad plans do everything larger than life and when they “defeat” the good guy momentarily they lose their momentum by explaining their genius in detail and thus giving the good guy the chance to escape.
It’s sort of a given.
But honestly my “understanding” at the time was more about distribution. Like an antenna, larger antenna larger signal.
“Whose Kitten is this?” – “It’s a Charr baby.”
“Whose Charr is this?”- “Ted’s.”
“Who’s Ted?”- “Ted’s dead, baby. Ted’s dead.”
“Whose Charr is this?”- “Ted’s.”
“Who’s Ted?”- “Ted’s dead, baby. Ted’s dead.”
Also the giant tower served as a nice distraction.
It goes down, people think threat is over, when it’s really not and is worse.
(…) as to why Scarlet had to build a giant freaking Tower of Nightmares; a grow-your-own-krait-prohet kit seems like a fairly convoluted plan to create a poison.(…)
I file this under awesome/traditional.
Bad people with big bad plans do everything larger than life and when they “defeat” the good guy momentarily they lose their momentum by explaining their genius in detail and thus giving the good guy the chance to escape.
It’s sort of a given.
But honestly my “understanding” at the time was more about distribution. Like an antenna, larger antenna larger signal.
It just frustrates me that the Tower of Nightmares came with the implicit promise that “it’ll all make sense soon…”, along with the attacks on Queen’s Jubilee and to a lesser extent, the Aetherblades. It wasn’t as bad as the Molten Alliance, which didn’t come with either any explanation or the promise of explanation (and the explanation we ended up with wasn’t exactly revelatory—what happened to that slick-talker from the city, and weren’t there hints initially that the Molten Facilities were sort of giant underground computers?), but ToN still feels like it was connected to Scarlet after the fact, even though it definitely wasn’t.
I wouldn’t have so much a problem with it if Scarlet’s dialogue when you beat her at the ToN wasn’t to the effect of “haha, I wanted to be beaten all along! This was all part of my master plan!” when it didn’t really seem to play out that way.
Victory Is Life Eternal [VILE]
Lore and story wise : as a means of introducing a new Alliance, the Toxic Alliance (or the “Britney Spears Fans” as I heard one of my Guild mates call them LOL)
Introduce the toxin that would later be used as the Miasma in Battle of Lions Arch
Sum up Scarlet’s action at the end of the Tower of Nightmares (there was a cool cinematic)
Show that you can biologically engineer in this game (supposedly) as with the Krait Prophet + Plants
Mechanical Point of View:
testing grounds for a radical change in a zone (previously empty zone too, at least in Borlis Pass)
Observe Player feedback of said radical alteration of a map.
- Note these are my assumptions. Lol
Edit to remove redundancy
Sorry for the typos….
I’m usually typing on my phone
I’m usually typing on my phone
@ Tamias – I understand you completely, I guess I simply have more of a laissez-faire attitude when it comes to this medium of story telling.
“Whose Kitten is this?” – “It’s a Charr baby.”
“Whose Charr is this?”- “Ted’s.”
“Who’s Ted?”- “Ted’s dead, baby. Ted’s dead.”
“Whose Charr is this?”- “Ted’s.”
“Who’s Ted?”- “Ted’s dead, baby. Ted’s dead.”
Scarlet was a villain. She acted like a comic villain. She talked like a comic villain. She was for all intents and purposes, a larger than life character that some people loved for the story and some people hated for the same reasons.
Kit
Lady Shade | Lydia Barakov | Tesse Centirum | Quote Nevermore| Axe Bloodclaw | Beta Zee
Lady Shade | Lydia Barakov | Tesse Centirum | Quote Nevermore| Axe Bloodclaw | Beta Zee
There are so many gaps in the living story that there’s no point speculating on anything that isn’t there. All we can do is work with what is there, and in this case there is the explanation from the Dead End. That’s all we are ever likely to have.