Guild Wars 2

Durzlla.6295:

One Theory i had seen being discussed in my Guild Chat was that Scarlet was planning on “rupturing” a point where multiple leylines intersect so the magic would erupt from the ground sort of like a fountain to attract the elder dragons there (who feast on magic) in hopes of getting them to fight themselves and essentially wipe each other out.

An interesting take on it. But like Konig already mentioned, we don’t know if leylines actually work that way, and if the Elder Dragons feast on the leylines. I’m not sure if magic can erupt from a leyline at all. I don’t view them as veins that can be severed.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

One more spoiler tag, for what I think Scarlet's master plan is

hide spoiler

My bet is that it is Mordremoth, and he’s using the Dream somehow – no I don’t support the theory that sylvari are his minions because the Dream is not unique to sylvari – to spread the Nightmare and though Scarlet isn’t of the Nightmare Court, I think she’s influenced by the Nightmare – but on a more direct level.

Going against the Konig, but here goes…

Is it possible that the Pale Tree has two entities, something like ying and yang, and that something went wrong when the Pale Tree embraced the Ventari Tablet and one entity outweighed the other. And that other is now talking to Scarlet?
But not sure how attacking Lion’s Arch would have anything to do with it…

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Durzlla.6295:

One Theory i had seen being discussed in my Guild Chat was that Scarlet was planning on “rupturing” a point where multiple leylines intersect so the magic would erupt from the ground sort of like a fountain to attract the elder dragons there (who feast on magic) in hopes of getting them to fight themselves and essentially wipe each other out.

An interesting take on it. But like Konig already mentioned, we don’t know if leylines actually work that way, and if the Elder Dragons feast on the leylines. I’m not sure if magic can erupt from a leyline at all. I don’t view them as veins that can be severed.

Yeah that’s my view on it too, I mean Taimi may say they flow like ocean currents, but I don’t think she means it LITERALLY. I have the same theory as Konig, aka Thaumanova 2.0

I still don’t get why destroy Lions Arch? It seems unnecessary at this time. If all she wants is access to the ley lines to destroy some big bad, why would the people of Lions Arch want to stop her?

DarcShriek.5829:

I still don’t get why destroy Lions Arch? It seems unnecessary at this time. If all she wants is access to the ley lines to destroy some big bad, why would the people of Lions Arch want to stop her?

Because she’s cruel and uncaring and would willingly sacrifice everyone in the city to achieve her goals? You’ve seen how she treats her alliances, what makes you think she’d treat people ontop of the thing she wants?

A good example of this would be Avatar (blue people), she’s after the unobtainium and Lions Arch is the tree growing ontop of it, gotta make room for her prize and she’s not an idiot, she knows kitten well LA wouldn’t just uproot and move so a lunatic can do whatever it is she’s wanting to do there.

I think any attack on LA will prove to be a mistake and will unleash precisely what she is looking to destroy. I suspect something is using her to get free by making her think she is going to destroy it.

moomooo.9357:

Gnat.9405:

I wonder if the uncommon correct theory is the Fractal one lol

What theory was that, sorry?

Tyria is a fractal, Scarlet knows, other ridiculous things. I was just being funny after reading the CJ interview with Eurogamer.

BrunoBRS.5178:

“before my awakening”. her dream was full of nightmare, then she woke up on the grove and felt out of place. she wasn’t born straight from nightmare, her dream was just corrupted. there’s a difference.

… That argument makes less sense then a strawman argument.

Her dream was full of nightmares would mean that she’s experienced nothing but nightmare which in turn would mean that she awoke touched by Nightmare, would which in turn mean that she awoke from nightmare.

If all she had to come from was Nightmare when she awoke, then she awoke from Nightmare.

Her Dream being corrupted means that she was born from Nightmare. There is not a difference.

Uruz Six.6594:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

My bet is that it is Mordremoth, and he’s using the Dream somehow – no I don’t support the theory that sylvari are his minions because the Dream is not unique to sylvari – to spread the Nightmare and though Scarlet isn’t of the Nightmare Court, I think she’s influenced by the Nightmare – but on a more direct level.

Going against the Konig, but here goes…

That would require a dragon being able to breach into a metaphysical location like the Dream, and so far we haven’t quite seen them capable of doing so. I don’t recall seeing any dragon minions within the Mists, but I could be wrong. If we were to believe that the Dream is a part of Mordremoth, then that goes into the question of just why a jungle dragon would have something like that, and how the sylvari are able to not only access it but believe they draw their Wyld Hunts from it.

So I’m not entirely convinced its Mordremoth or any of the other dragons. The big question is ‘what exactly is the Dream’. A part of Mordremoth? A part of the Mists? Something else entirely?

Removed the spoiler tags, as I don’t think they’re necessary. Two things thought:

• Firstly, we have multiple cases of Jormag’s minions in and/or coming from the Mists. The norn storyline “Defend the Mists” deals entirely with this, the Frozen Portal in Drakkar Spurs includes this, as do the Portals to the Mists in The Frozen Maw meta and even the Snowblind Fractal (weak argument in the last one).
• Secondly, as I said, the Dream seems to be tied to the location and two beings of strong magic (Pale Tree and White Stag) are part of the Dream while others of one of the two’s kinds (Malyck’s Tree) seems to lack the Dream. Mordremoth has been said to be in the Maguuma or at least related to it, indicating a possibility that Mordremoth could have a tie to the Dream simply due to being 1) highly magical and 2) in the Maguuma.
  *For the record, I do not believe the Dream is part of Mordremoth in any way; rather, I think the Dream is akin to the Mists if not part of it. On a side, given A Light in the Darkness, the Dream may not be solely linked to the Maguuma – Zhaitan’s presence near a place where the Dream has a physical representation of may be why so many Wyld Hunts deal with Zhaitan and its minions (a threat to the Dream due to proximity) compared to Primordus, Jormag, and Kralkatorrik. In turn, I think Mordremoth and/or Zhaitan may simply have a coincidental link to the Dream due to their physical location and the fact that, being Elder Dragons, they are highly magical. I believe the two are the requirements for being “half in the Dream, half in reality” like the Pale Tree and White Stag.

It’s conjecture, but still possible.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

I’m going to go on record to reiterate that people are probably reading too much into the injector. We know that Scarlet’s was after the anti-toxin. The anti-toxin would’ve been obtained while inside the injector. Also, iirc, the different fluids inside the injector were different colors, implying that they were different chemicals that had to remain separate until it was time to inject them. It would make no sense for Scarlet to not take the injector, since that would require transferring those fluids from an already perfectly adequate receptacle into another, and there is no reason to believe the injector or the technology used in its making are at all remarkable.

You guys are saying that a supervillainess who has mastered teleportation and the hacking of clockwork robots would have been unable to grasp the complexities of a hypodermic needle. You do realize how ridiculous that sounds, right?

Sorry, this is rapidly becoming a pet peeve of mine. I know I’m overreacting, but… grr.

And you’re saying that she couldn’t develop an anti-toxin on her own. It seems highly unlikely that she’d bet her plan on the chance of someone developing an antitoxin that she couldn’t make herself. In addition, the antitoxin is now useless against the latest version of the toxin. If anything, she used the anti-toxin just to make her toxin stronger.

DaShi.1368:

Aaron Ansari.1604:

I’m going to go on record to reiterate that people are probably reading too much into the injector. We know that Scarlet’s was after the anti-toxin. The anti-toxin would’ve been obtained while inside the injector. Also, iirc, the different fluids inside the injector were different colors, implying that they were different chemicals that had to remain separate until it was time to inject them. It would make no sense for Scarlet to not take the injector, since that would require transferring those fluids from an already perfectly adequate receptacle into another, and there is no reason to believe the injector or the technology used in its making are at all remarkable.

You guys are saying that a supervillainess who has mastered teleportation and the hacking of clockwork robots would have been unable to grasp the complexities of a hypodermic needle. You do realize how ridiculous that sounds, right?

Sorry, this is rapidly becoming a pet peeve of mine. I know I’m overreacting, but… grr.

And you’re saying that she couldn’t develop an anti-toxin on her own. It seems highly unlikely that she’d bet her plan on the chance of someone developing an antitoxin that she couldn’t make herself. In addition, the antitoxin is now useless against the latest version of the toxin. If anything, she used the anti-toxin just to make her toxin stronger.

I hope you don’t mind me chirping in here, but if I may share my thoughts:
I think she wasn’t after an anti-toxin in general because she could do that herself – she was after the anti-toxin /we/ would use.
There’s possibly multiple ways to make an anti-toxin to the spores but she wanted to make it resistant to the only approach we figured out.
Figuring out a completely new way would take us a lot of time and during this time we’d be completely defenseless against her improved toxin. At least that’s how I saw it.

ElysianEternity.6215:

I hope you don’t mind me chirping in here, but if I may share my thoughts:
I think she wasn’t after an anti-toxin in general because she could do that herself – she was after the anti-toxin /we/ would use.
There’s possibly multiple ways to make an anti-toxin to the spores but she wanted to make it resistant to the only approach we figured out.
Figuring out a completely new way would take us a lot of time and during this time we’d be completely defenseless against her improved toxin. At least that’s how I saw it.

Which seems to imply that she means to use this poison against us. First she lets us find a cure, and then she makes the poison resistant to that cure. Makes perfect sense.

I’m still of the opinion that the toxin is meant to be used on something other than us though. I doubt it’ll be used to poison the ley-lines as some have suggested, because how would one poison magic with a physical toxin? I still think that there’s something deep under Lion’s Arch that Scarlet wants to dig up, poison it to weaken it, then kill it.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Which seems to imply that she means to use this poison against us. First she lets us find a cure, and then she makes the poison resistant to that cure. Makes perfect sense.[/quote]

Which makes perfect sense, we though we found the cure and now that she’s changed it to be immune to our own cure we powerless to stop her from correcting whatever she injects.

Is it possible that the toxin she created is associated with Mordremoth in a way? After all, we knew of Mordremoth from the CoE dungeon and outside of that there’s the green zone which has 2 things associated with it: Jungle plantlife and poison. Also, if Mordremoth was really in the Maguuma Jungle AND he was the reason behind Nightmare (assuming he’s the corruption that would cause the Nightmare) wouldn’t that mean that Malyck’s tree (and anyone in that area) would be corrupted first? We don’t see that at all apparently.

Hmm. I guess I’m hoping that about half the NPCs suppositions in the Dead End are about the same level of ‘bunk’ as Scarlet having attended all 3 colleges is being made out to be.

I still hope the entire point of the Nightmare Tower was to force the heroes to come up with something that kills massive, poisonous plants – so that Scarlet could make off with it (we see the injector in her office). Her plan isn’t to use her toxin, its to use the anti-Toxin to KILL MORDREMOTH. Lion’s Arch isn’t the target, it’s collateral damage. Its Mordremoth’s box of hostages/living shield to dissuade heroes from doing anything rash if they ever did find him, and Scarlet couldn’t care less.

She needed the Molten Alliance to give herself subterranean expertise – both tunneling ability and the probes. She needs the Aether Blades to get her assets airborne because when the Dragon of Blight’s vines and wurms come boiling out of the ground, the air is the only safe place to stash your army and weapons. Its no accident her drill FLIES.

The Watchknights are indeed useful because they are poison-proof… making them great against Mordremoth’s blight! …And so much scrap metal in a face-off with Primordius. Hell, Primordious would probably convert them into his own molten-gooey army in even less time than it took Scarlet to seize them.

And while she’s tracing magical currents beneath the ground, that’s not something you need to do to find Primordius – He’s got minions popping up all over the place. He’s comparatively easy to find if you’re of a mind to. No, she’s tracing Moredremoth’s roots to find an Elder Dragon that has been very hard to find indeed, and who has a very direct interest in a race of sapient plants.

She has no motive to pursue Primordius. She has EVERY REASON to try and kill the puppetmaster of the plant kingdom. “If you knew what I have seen you’d wake screaming from the Dream!”

Hmm. Maybe the probe in Lion’s Arch started flashing green not because of our standards of “green means go” but because it got a solid lock on green energy…

And now that I think about it, her drill really does look like a scaled up version of Jory’s injector – multiple bulbs, spiral drill/needle, and all.

Nike.2631:

I still hope the entire point of the Nightmare Tower was to force the heroes to come up with something that kills massive, poisonous plants – so that Scarlet could make off with it (we see the injector in her office). Her plan isn’t to use her toxin, its to use the anti-Toxin to KILL MORDREMOTH. Lion’s Arch isn’t the target, it’s collateral damage. Its Mordremoth’s box of hostages/living shield to dissuade heroes from doing anything rash if they ever did find him, and Scarlet couldn’t care less.

She needed the Molten Alliance to give herself subterranean expertise – both tunneling ability and the probes. She needs the Aether Blades to get her assets airborne because when the Dragon of Blight’s vines and wurms come boiling out of the ground, the air is the only safe place to stash your army and weapons. Its no accident her drill FLIES.

The Watchknights are indeed useful because they are poison-proof… making them great against Mordremoth’s blight! …And so much scrap metal in a face-off with Primordius. Hell, Primordious would probably convert them into his own molten-gooey army in even less time than it took Scarlet to seize them.

… Mind. Blown. This makes so much sense.

Nike.2631:

She has no motive to pursue Primordius. She has EVERY REASON to try and kill the puppetmaster of the plant kingdom. “If you knew what I have seen you’d wake screaming from the Dream!”

‘Scarlet didn’t see what she thought she saw.’

I stand by believing that the endgame isn’t to destroy Mordremoth as much as it is to control it.

I stated it in spoiler tags, but I’ll state it outside of them. Marjory and Kasmeer continually question if whether Scarlet is deceiving us (although, given, they don’t explicitly state it). Scarlet has left loads of clues with really nice big and red cross-hairs directly over LA.

I definitely think that, while it will likely be a victim, LA is not the primary target.

DaShi.1368:

Scarlet has created a ridiculously strong toxin. If her plans just involve blowing up or invading Lion’s Arch, then there is no need for such a potent toxin.

There are two targets. Either the crosshairs over LA are an outright misdirection and she is attacking two other cities; or LA will be targetted in order to dilute defensive forces.

So here are some conflicting theories if you want food for thought.

Scenario 1:

Scarlet is after LA and LA alone (current lead theory on this thread). I originally didn’t like this idea because it lacks strong motive. DaShi has given me yet another reason to dislike it. If it is the actual plan: yuck – foo on the lore writers.

Scenario 2:

Scarlet is actually after Pale Tree – attacking The Grove with the poison would make perfect sense considering how the poison was conceived. What cannot be explained is the attack on LA except for the logical “dilute the forces.”

Scenario 3:

Scarlet is not after any city at all. Certain cities may be attacked in order to create diversions (LA), acquire equipment (Rata Sum) or make a statement (The Grove). Scarlet, as expected, will be far from the fight attempting to raise/manipulate/generally-fiddle-with an ED – or something (<cough> Dhuum <cough>).

Scenario 4:

Count the equipment. ley line manipulation, poison, armies, what remains of the drill (I think we only kill the marionette?), stuff I have likely forgotten. Is it possible that she will be attacking all the cities at the same time? For example, LA and the ley lines – it would be logical to ‘nuke’ LA to quell one of the best defensive forces. The poison could be used on the Grove. She could distribute her armies between the other cities; while, again, she is somewhere completely different executing her actual plan.

Maybe she wants to absorb Mordremoths power with her UFO the way she absorbed the clockwork minions power at the weapon test encounter.

Uruz Six.6594:

‘Scarlet didn’t see what she thought she saw.’

Consider the options:

An Elder Dragon that ignores living creatures as potential minions except as loose templates, and in its entire history has created one sessile minion type that may be based on a plant.

An Elder Dragon that has remained almost entirely hidden, that has made itself known only by infecting plants and taking them over from within to create “husks”.

Are we really taking bets on which one of these has literally ‘planted a seed’ in a Sylvari mind ?

Also:
Her drill flies. That may just be to get it into place, but if you were expecting irate dragon minions at your job-site, would you really consider being airborne a sound defensive strategy against an Elder Dragon that farts Destroyer Harpies? Now compare that to being aloft when dealing with a pack of Husks and Jungle Wurms. Sure, they spit, but you don’t have to put up with boarding parties…

Nike.2631:

if you were expecting irate dragon minions at your job-site

Did you just call us dragon minions? :P

Nike.2631:

Uruz Six.6594:

‘Scarlet didn’t see what she thought she saw.’

Consider the options:

An Elder Dragon that ignores living creatures as potential minions except as loose templates, and in its entire history has created one sessile minion type that may be based on a plant.

An Elder Dragon that has remained almost entirely hidden, that has made itself known only by infecting plants and taking them over from within to create “husks”.

Are we really taking bets on which one of these has literally ‘planted a seed’ in a Sylvari mind ?

Well, there’s always the third option that the voice in Scarlet’s head and/or source of the Nightmare isn’t dragon-related at all. Just someone or something that wants Mordremoth’s power for itself.

I mean, it is possible that Mordremoth is using the Nightmare to wean its way into the anti-dragon weapon we know as the sylvari race. However, the splintering and civil wars within the Court just don’t espouse the coherent unity one would expect from corrupted dragon minions. There’s too much free will among the Court, one could even say there’s far too much free will among the Court.

Found within 15 feet of each other in Scarlet’s office.

Coincidence, I’m sure…

zamalek.2154:

Nike.2631:

if you were expecting irate dragon minions at your job-site

Did you just call us dragon minions? :P

Depends. Are you a Sylvari ?

The thing is Scarlet CAN’T have been planning an attack on Lion’s Arch all this time – even if a certain ditzy blonde – I’ll call her “Kasmeer” – blurts it out and totally derails the investigation.

You don’t need a transcontinental network of energy probes to find Lion’s Arch. And you sure as heck don’t need a drill to attack it. She built the drill while she was still mapping. That says “ready to go wherever the map takes me” not “build it and hope there’s a magic current I can exploit when I get there.”

It’s not a coincidence whatever she’s after is under Lion’s Arch – her target chose to make its lair there. But the battleground is of her enemy’s choosing, not hers.

Nike.2631:

Found within 15 feet of each other in Scarlet’s office.

Coincidence, I’m sure…

don’t really see the similarities, though sure, she could use it as a giant injector.

but thing is, she used our anti-toxin to create another toxin, immune to our current antitoxin. why would she do that, if her plan was to “antitoxin” the dragon?

BrunoBRS.5178:

but thing is, she used our anti-toxin to create another toxin, immune to our current antitoxin. why would she do that, if her plan was to “antitoxin” the dragon?

Ok, this is more roundabout than I like, but here goes:

Scarlet has a problem. She’s got a dragon in her head that thinks its the boss of her. Yeah, no. Not putting up with that. No, no, no, die, die, die, die…

So she builds her very own baby Mordremoth-Champion (wave your fronds at the audience, little nightmare blossom. Isn’t it cute?) and dares the whole world to come kill it. I’m sorry, did I say kill it? I meant solve her problem for her.

The thing is most of the world have never seen just how incredibly nasty Mordremoth’s blight/toxin really is. In fact, if she uses it at full potency she’ll win. Did I say win? I mean lose. Because dead heroes are absolutely no fun at all and won’t solve. my. problem. now will they?

So she dilutes it. The heroes get all sorts of whacky, wonderful visions but they survive to run the maze to its end and what a lovely solution they’ve cooked up. Scarlet’s a master of oh so many things, but this ‘Jory’ creature really knows her anti-toxins. Did I say her anti-toxin? Sorry, I meant MY ANTI-TOXIN NOW.

What Jory’s laid hands on isn’t Scarlet’s new and improved batch 13. Its the real stuff. Pure, undiluted Blight-in-a-Jar. Thank goodness Scarlet borrowed that human queen What’s-her-name’s little mechanical protectors, since they’re quite immune to the stuff. And won’t there be a lot of it around when Scarlet plunges her 12-story tall needle into that nasty dragon’s eye.

Did I say eye? I meant die, die, die, die, ,die, die, die…

Konig Des Todes.2086:

To me it is more of “she doesn’t care” rather than “she wanted us to do that” – her personality is that of not caring, of indifference. Just read through the “What Scarlet Saw” short story and that’s shown plain as day – anytime she was attacked she just left without a care in the world.

New evidence makes it look like Scarlet wanted us to destroy the tower.

Nothing I’ve seen points at that Darc. By all accounts I’ve seen, she wanted the antitoxin, and she easily could have gotten that without leaving the stuff in her lab there (as she got it and left before we got to her lab). Beyond that I’d say she still had a “didn’t care about the tower” mentality.

Though us destroying the tower could be a tool to ensure the krait continue working with her, rather than taking their new “prophets” and fighting her.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Nothing I’ve seen points at that Darc. By all accounts I’ve seen, she wanted the antitoxin, and she easily could have gotten that without leaving the stuff in her lab there (as she got it and left before we got to her lab). Beyond that I’d say she still had a “didn’t care about the tower” mentality.

Though us destroying the tower could be a tool to ensure the krait continue working with her, rather than taking their new “prophets” and fighting her.

Which sounds like an additional reason for her to want us to destroy the tower. The first reason is to help her to create a more powerful toxin and now you’ve added destroying the tower as a means to keep the krait under control.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Nothing I’ve seen points at that Darc. By all accounts I’ve seen, she wanted the antitoxin, and she easily could have gotten that without leaving the stuff in her lab there (as she got it and left before we got to her lab). Beyond that I’d say she still had a “didn’t care about the tower” mentality.

Though us destroying the tower could be a tool to ensure the krait continue working with her, rather than taking their new “prophets” and fighting her.

she brewed the toughest poison she could and “beta-tested” it with tyria. then she grabbed the method we used to counter it, and made her new version immune to that.

she didn’t care about the tower itself, but she needed it to be a dangerous enough threat that we wouldn’t settle for anything but our best counter. after she got the antitoxin though, she couldn’t care less. she abandoned the tower months before we took it down.

My personal opinion: based on the evidence and actually not reading most of this thread (so I haven’t been influenced by other ideas here yet…I do plan on going back and reading, just haven’t yet)

Scarlet wants “to be free”, free of the influences of the Pale Tree as well as the Nightmare (she stated this), but also to be free of the “whispers from the forest” that appeared after her trip in Omadd’s cube. I do think that the whispers are that of Mordremoth….and that the sylvari (including the pale tree) were meant to be minions of his but broke away (making the pale tree a Glint-like figure in GW2). The Nightmare court have just drifted slightly back towards their roots (pun intended).

I don’t think Mordremoth is anywhere near Lion’s Arch. The “probe” going green in Lions arch just means she found a major conjunction of the ley-lines. Remember, she was having to sacrifice watchknights to power her Marionette. If she can find a serious source of power (Theaumanova reactor was trying to tap the power of ley-lines) she could power the marionette. The only point to the attack on Lions arch will be to tap into this Ley-line and power up her marionette so that she can cut the strings (litterally) and it can go stomping on its own towards Mordremoth.

I think she means to kill both mordremoth and the pale tree to truly “free” herself from all outside influences. I think the drill is merely a mechanism to tap into the ley-line to power the Marrionette and that the Marrionette is what she hopes to do battle with once it is fully “unchained”.

I think the new and improved poison that she developed is to kill the Pale Tree. Possibly even using nightmare court infiltrators to do the job (would be an adventure for us to go into the grove and defend the pale tree from infiltrators)

We may well defeat the Marionette on its way to fight mordremoth, which will leave an expansion to our personal story to then go and take down the second Elder Dragon….or possibly season 2.

I think Mordremoth lives in the Meguma wastes to the north west of Brisbane wildlands…which will open up as the last part of this whole campaign…giving us “expansion level content” as part of the LS.

Nike.2631:

Hmm. I guess I’m hoping that about half the NPCs suppositions in the Dead End are about the same level of ‘bunk’ as Scarlet having attended all 3 colleges is being made out to be.

I still hope the entire point of the Nightmare Tower was to force the heroes to come up with something that kills massive, poisonous plants – so that Scarlet could make off with it (we see the injector in her office). Her plan isn’t to use her toxin, its to use the anti-Toxin to KILL MORDREMOTH. Lion’s Arch isn’t the target, it’s collateral damage. Its Mordremoth’s box of hostages/living shield to dissuade heroes from doing anything rash if they ever did find him, and Scarlet couldn’t care less.

She needed the Molten Alliance to give herself subterranean expertise – both tunneling ability and the probes. She needs the Aether Blades to get her assets airborne because when the Dragon of Blight’s vines and wurms come boiling out of the ground, the air is the only safe place to stash your army and weapons. Its no accident her drill FLIES.

The Watchknights are indeed useful because they are poison-proof… making them great against Mordremoth’s blight! …And so much scrap metal in a face-off with Primordius. Hell, Primordious would probably convert them into his own molten-gooey army in even less time than it took Scarlet to seize them.

And while she’s tracing magical currents beneath the ground, that’s not something you need to do to find Primordius – He’s got minions popping up all over the place. He’s comparatively easy to find if you’re of a mind to. No, she’s tracing Moredremoth’s roots to find an Elder Dragon that has been very hard to find indeed, and who has a very direct interest in a race of sapient plants.

She has no motive to pursue Primordius. She has EVERY REASON to try and kill the puppetmaster of the plant kingdom. “If you knew what I have seen you’d wake screaming from the Dream!”

And the last piece of the puzzle suddenly hit me. Thaumanova. And maybe even the Fall of Abaddon.

@Darc: Wanting others to create an anti-toxin is not the same as wanting us to destroy the tower. The toxin was prevalent throughout the area, and an anti-toxin’s usage did not require entering the tower (rather, the anti-toxin was needed to enter the tower). As I see it, she didn’t care about the tower’s fate, but introduced it to get the antit-toxin.

@Bruno: Which is pretty much exactly what I said. But it wasn’t abandoned “months before” – she was there and left as we arrived.

@Uruz Six: What the “Anomaly” was is still unknown but it’s highly similar to the Diamond Djinn (air attuned djinn) from Nightfall – even down to using a spear. Even then, one has to remember that the Fractals are “imperfect” copies. One has to wonder: was there a Thaumanova Anomaly in Tyria? If so, where did it go/what happened to it? If not, why one in the Fractal?

And nothing says Scarlet’s battling Mordremoth. And she took the anti-toxin to apparently create a stronger poison, not duplicate the anti-toxin. If she wanted to use anti-toxin, then she’d have made more anti-toxin, and not even bother with making a stronger poison which she did.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

@Bruno: Which is pretty much exactly what I said. But it wasn’t abandoned “months before” – she was there and left as we arrived.

i wasn’t disagreeing, i was expanding on it.

and we only successfully destroyed the tower over a month after we started pumping antitoxin on it.

Fair point, still isn’t “months” though but that’s me nitpicking. :P

What I still don’t get is the attack on the council in Lion’s Arch, combined with the probe in Lion’s Arch. If she planned to weaken the defenses of Lion’s Arch, what for? Her probe shows that she was still looking for something (the strongest leyline). So how did she know in advance that Lion’s Arch needed to be weakened? Is this perhaps two different plans at work at the same time?

When she entered the chamber, they say Ceara brought something in with her. Perhaps one of the Elder Dragons managed to sneak inside her mind, after she had rejected the Pale Tree. And the experiment lowered the Pale Tree’s defenses over her mind (if such a thing exists), and lowered Ceara’s own mental defenses. Perhaps this allowed the draconic entity to take hold of Ceara’s mind, and exist as Scarlet Briar. Two entities in the same mind.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

And nothing says Scarlet’s battling Mordremoth. And she took the anti-toxin to apparently create a stronger poison, not duplicate the anti-toxin. If she wanted to use anti-toxin, then she’d have made more anti-toxin, and not even bother with making a stronger poison which she did.

This is also my understanding of the anti-toxin. It was a means to an end. The end being a stronger toxin.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

What I still don’t get is the attack on the council in Lion’s Arch, combined with the probe in Lion’s Arch. If she planned to weaken the defenses of Lion’s Arch, what for? Her probe shows that she was still looking for something (the strongest leyline). So how did she know in advance that Lion’s Arch needed to be weakened? Is this perhaps two different plans at work at the same time?

When she entered the chamber, they say Ceara brought something in with her. Perhaps one of the Elder Dragons managed to sneak inside her mind, after she had rejected the Pale Tree. And the experiment lowered the Pale Tree’s defenses over her mind (if such a thing exists), and lowered Ceara’s own mental defenses. Perhaps this allowed the draconic entity to take hold of Ceara’s mind, and exist as Scarlet Briar. Two entities in the same mind.

Perhaps the probes weren’t actually probes at all. Their purpose could be to “prime the pump” so to speak. The green probe in LA could indicate that the ley lines are ready.

The first we see of Scarlet’s plan are the weapon test facilities and everything else she did may have been just more weapon testing with the aim of finding weapons to battle with/for/against her entity. We can apply the testing idea to the toxin as well and consider the whole nightmare tower to be another test facility with live subjects. This supports Marjory’s conclusion that Scarlet will have left the tower with even more potent venom weapons.

I think it is worth remembering that the toxins were hallucinogens. I don’t see that being the sort of weapon you’d want to use on a dragon, especially one that was interfering with your own mind. Again, we might as well stick to the Dead End script since if we question the conclusions we can tear most of it to shreds, to be honest.

DarcShriek.5829:

I still don’t get why destroy Lions Arch? It seems unnecessary at this time. If all she wants is access to the ley lines to destroy some big bad, why would the people of Lions Arch want to stop her?

Well, it’s possible that “access” is a euphemism for "put a city-sized hole on the map, and render the surrounding lands uninhabitable for miles due to the unleashed chaos energy.

And since they would rather not A) die, and have a giant hole where their city used to be, they will probably attempt to intervene. Which is why they have to be exterminated first.

perilisk.1874:

And since they would rather not A) die, and have a giant hole where their city used to be, they will probably attempt to intervene. Which is why they have to be exterminated first.

The New Lion’s Arch

Uruz Six.6594:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

One more spoiler tag, for what I think Scarlet's master plan is

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My bet is that it is Mordremoth, and he’s using the Dream somehow – no I don’t support the theory that sylvari are his minions because the Dream is not unique to sylvari – to spread the Nightmare and though Scarlet isn’t of the Nightmare Court, I think she’s influenced by the Nightmare – but on a more direct level.

Going against the Konig, but here goes…

Sure, I'll spoiler too.

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That would require a dragon being able to breach into a metaphysical location like the Dream, and so far we haven’t quite seen them capable of doing so. I don’t recall seeing any dragon minions within the Mists, but I could be wrong. If we were to believe that the Dream is a part of Mordremoth, then that goes into the question of just why a jungle dragon would have something like that, and how the sylvari are able to not only access it but believe they draw their Wyld Hunts from it.

So I’m not entirely convinced its Mordremoth or any of the other dragons. The big question is ‘what exactly is the Dream’. A part of Mordremoth? A part of the Mists? Something else entirely?

Hmm. A solution for that.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

perilisk.1874:

And since they would rather not A) die, and have a giant hole where their city used to be, they will probably attempt to intervene. Which is why they have to be exterminated first.

The New Lion’s Arch

If they can find some way to get around the Personal Story issue that could be very awesome. I remember when I first played Guild Wars being blown away when the Searing happened and the landscape and city you had been playing in was suddenly turned into a desolate wasteland.

yayuuu.9420:

I think that few sentences from the LW instance need to be mentioned here:

Show Spoiler

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- Lion’s Arch needs softening up first, so we infiltrate its halls of power and neuter its defenses from the inside
/Scarlet’s Hologram/

Show Spoiler

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- With Trin in place on the council, she could have weakened the city’s defenses from the inside. That plan backfired, but Trin escaped to the Mists to prepare for something.
/Marjory Delaqua/

So Scarlet wanted to weaken defenses of the Lions Arch by putting some puppet in the council. Everyone thinks that Mai Trin was going to be that puppet. She was arrested, yet she escaped (important prisoner closed in the cage with easy access to it? whose decision was that?). What if Mai Trin was a scapegoat, to put Ellen Kiel on the seat?

Show Spoiler

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- Now she has an kitten nal of advanced weapons and an air fleet to deliver them. No city is prepared to defend against an aerial attack. Not even Lion’s Arch.
/Kasmeer Meade/

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- Kiel’s been pushing to build up the air defenses around Lion’s Arch, but the rest of the Captain’s Council won’t get on board. They say Scarlet isn’t their problem – that she wouldn’t strike the Arch again so soon after Dragon Bash, or that they’ve already withstood one of her attacks and don’t need additional resources to withstand another.
/Marjory Delaqua/

So Lion’s Arch is not prepared, even if they know about Scarlet’s plans of attacking the city. Ellen Kiel is not taking any actions even after telling her, that the probe under LA have turned green. Also Marjory sends a player letter after completing instance, that Lion’s Arch is not preparing for the defense (Ellen Kiel tells her, that it’s the whole council’s decision, not her, but did she talked with the council about it?).

Were you an Evon supporter by any chance?

It’s quite clear from Marjory’s lines that the reason why Lion’s Arch is not prepared is because the other councilors are ignoring Ellen when she recommends improved defenses against Scarlet’s main forces – the lack of defenses is despite Ellen doing all in her power to do something about it, not because of her. Only way she could be a plant is if Scarlet is actually intending to use the possibility of an air attack as a feint while planning to attack from another vector – and that’s something that would be indistinguishable from making a reasonable judgement call under the circumstances and simply getting it wrong. I know people like to think the worst of Kormir Syndrome characters, but seriously…

If anything, it looks like Scarlet’s plan backfired there – instead of getting a plant, she got someone who’s actively working against her. If the other councilors weren’t so complacent, that might have been a significant setback for her.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

My bet is that it is Mordremoth, and he’s using the Dream somehow – no I don’t support the theory that sylvari are his minions because the Dream is not unique to sylvari – to spread the Nightmare and though Scarlet isn’t of the Nightmare Court, I think she’s influenced by the Nightmare – but on a more direct level.

I think this hypothesis still could be spot on.

However, there’s one line from What Scarlet Saw that still puzzles me:

“Please: go no further. In seeking to comprehend the forces that shape us, you will unleash them. Society cannot withstand that.”

The forces that shape us. What could she mean by that? We are told that:

• The forces that shape her were some how unleashed.
• What ever took hold of Ceara, was something she brought in with her.
• Ceara ignored the Pale Tree’s warnings and went her own way.
• The isolation module temporarily liberated her mind, and blocked it off from outside influences.

It could be that Mordremoth is some how involved with injecting Nightmares into the Dream (something Konig already suggested a long time ago), and that she brought something of that Nightmare with her into the isolation chamber. Without the calling of the Pale Tree to suppress this force, it may have taken hold of her mind, and formed an alter ego.

I find it a bit fascinating that the Pale Tree used plural nouns in that sentence.

“In seeking to comprehend the forces that shape us, you will unleash them.”

If something is possibly “shaping” the Nightmare, is it possibly that something in “shaping” the Dream as well. It would fit the duality that most of the Sylvari, and Scarlet herself have.

The Dream / Nightmare
Wild Hunts / Dark Hunts
Dreamers / Nightmare Court
Caithe / Faolain
Ceara / Scarlet

hmm… “forces that shape us” makes me think of the ley lines. in seeking to understand them, she’ll unleash them, and, well, we’ve seen what happened last time she did that.

Part of me has to wonder if Vorpp was wrong in his assumption that she brought something that was already within her, or alternatively if the Dream isn’t much more vast and connected to the Sylvari than we know. I mean, it sounds like something more than a Dragon in my mind when the Pale Tree’s talking about those forces.

This is why we need those short stories back. Even now, we’re picking out little details to spin theories out of. What Scarlet Saw seems to be holding all sorts of little details and foreshadowing we’re only seeing now.

NEED MOER SHROT STOREIS!!!!

“What Scarlet Saw seems to be holding all sorts of little details and foreshadowing we’re only seeing now.”

I always though this was going to properly retold in game. There could have been quite a neat little instance where we fight into Omadd’s deserted lab, force the golems to replay the research journals, and so on. It turns out however that the Living Story has far less breadth than the speculation about it and we should probably take more things at face value, so since Scarlet saw Caithe, Faolin, the Pale Tree, and the Nightmare Court in the web story then that’s it. That’s what we’ve been told in the web story and that’s all we supposedly need to know.