A bit of a typo, yes. It’s been stated that the Six first appeared in Orr bringing humanity with them. The bit of conjecture that the players figured out is how to get the timeline to work after that, and that’s the Six moving the humans to Cantha right after arrival since Orr was still a corrupted wasteland. Bal and Mel spent the time afterwards terraforming while humanity settled in Cantha, and probably gave the go ahead for the humans to start spreading only after they cleansed the land from most of the remaining corruption.
At first, I was going to say “To get to the other side! HAH!”… then I realized this wasn’t a joke but a real question
To be fair, he did get to the other side.
Speaking of comically evil, Joko is in his favorite spot again! He’s the (ever so slightly) lesser of two evil since his actions don’t threatening all of Tyria (just Elona).
So new trailer and we get Balthazar’s reason for all of his actions.
Balthazar seeks to become the One and Only God of the World thus has begun a campaign to build up his army in Tyria and absorb all Elder Dragon’s Magic so he can become powerful enough to kill the other Gods thus becoming the One and Only God of the World.
This also implies that Balthy becoming this weak is the result of the other Gods banishing him to this state due to his attempt to take control of their domains.
The trailer also shows his main base of Operations is in Elona!
That’s a lot of assumptions there. I don’t remember him saying he was going to kill the other gods. Maybe physical “gods”, since I can see Joko setting himself up as God-Pharaoh in Elona, but has he talked negatively about the Six yet? If they were the mysterious “They” that dimmed his light, all he said was that he was going to make them see him. That isn’t exactly, “I’m going to kill them all and become the one true god! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”.
In fantasy, there is a big difference between “destroyed” and “killed”, especially when there is necromancy in the setting.
This is what I think. He wanted the magic from the Elder Dragons for himself after he lost his godhood. And I didn’t even see one hint of him being afraid of the dragons. They are just a source and he wanted the right tool to get the magic. ( Army and Commander at first but after he noticed the machine he went straight for it )
Considering how ballsy Balthazar was to pull off what happened in the last instance, I would definitely saw there wasn’t any overwhelming fear there. Because let’s list it…
1) He traveled into the burning heart of Primordus’ domain (an active volcano).
2) Had enough time to set up a big piece of machinery and platform.
3) Proceeded to lure an Elder Dragon, possibly one of the strongest ones considering he was active the longest devouring lost Asuran cities, to his location.
4) Put his entire faith ~rimshot~ into a high tech machine created by a teenager that hasn’t even been fully tested, and stepped into a beam of highly concentrated magical energy.
I would label Balthazar as extremely desperate, but definitely not afraid. At least not enough to handicap him in any sense.
One of the new mysteries that interests me comes from Zinn’s 8th recording. It’s mentioned kinda off-handed, even thought it might have dangerous implications, but it would seem Zinn had contact with Joko. I can’t imagine anything good from such a partnership, especially one in which Joko came out ahead on.
“At birth, I was blessed by Balthazaar”. I uh, guess he changed his mind.
My favorite part is talking to the human npcs in DM. They’re like, “Wow. So we’re chasing Balthazar now?”, and right when you walk away they say one of this default farewells, “May Balthazar strengthen you.”
Tinfoil hat theory: Feelings Edition…
Would it be possible that the “corrupt” aspect is actually something that could/has made him a better person in the end of day? We view it as corrupt since it’s something that could weaken him and possibly kill him. They (Laz and the WM) view it as corrupt since it weakens him and makes him lesser than what the Mursaat are suppose to be.
What happens if that’s possibly feelings and a sense of general reasonableness when it comes to “lesser” beings?
Most of the enemy factions are like that: ultimately, they still don’t want to see their race destroyed, so in an all-out war between races, they’re likely to work with their kindred. Sons of Svanir are the biggest exception, while the Flame Legion are something of a wild card in the all-out war scenario.
While still being one of the weaker races, that does put an interesting twist from the Sylvari’s side of these. An all out war would give the Nightmare Court basically a free pass to do whatever they wanted in the name of survival. So, while they would still probably be taken out early, the NC would probably make it costly for whoever goes after them.
With no political ties…
Charr: Aggressively pushing for land control.
Human: Playing defensive, but would actively push out threats and expand.
Norn: Basically play mercenary, following whatever side tickles their fancy for their legend.
Sylvari: Neutral aid, basically Tyria’s Red Cross.
Asura. Neutral war time profiteers.
Full out five way war…
Sylvari are the first to fall.
Charr wouldn’t bother with the Norn unless provoked, because it would just be a waste of resources. They’ll push into Kryta.
Ebonhawke would fall from aerial bombardment from the Charr after a long seige. No chance of escape or reinforcements since the Asura locked down all gates and waypoints.
Asura would cloister themselves to build defenses, amass golems, and upgrade any and all relevant technology.
Surprisingly, at the very end, I think it would be the Asura vs. the Charr. Rata Sum is so secluded and defensible that I don’t think anyone would bother laying siege to it unless they absolutely had too, and the Asura’s non-involvement policies would only help them not draw ire for either the humans or Charr.
That would leave Kryta to take the full brunt of the Charr’s offensive first, especially considering that Blood and Ash Legion would join Iron in the war. Humans are dogged, but I don’t think they could withstand the full force of the Charr war machine. They’d last for awhile, but they’d be scattered within a decade or so.
So, it would be Charr v Asura. Charr would most likely win in a fair fight, since the sheer numbers they can throw at something, but the Asura could easily fight dirty and commit all sort of horrible war crimes if it lead to a path of victory. I’d imagine the Inquest would have ALOT of power during times of war. They get results after all, no matter how horrible they might be.
(edited by Erukk.1408)
I’m definitely not a scientist, but if we’re being scientific about it; wouldn’t “heat” and “cold” magic be the same exact school? Because the manipulation of hot and cold is just controlling the movement of molecules in a given object.
I hate to say it, but when it comes to the fire and ice magic conflict; we could be using the Zhaitan approach. We extract a spectrum wave of magic from each ED, poison and/or enhance it, and then inject it into an ED baring the opposing magic in a way that they can filter it themselves safely to set off a volatile magical reaction.
Press 1 to “Victory!” everyone!
Considering that all the remaining EDs get powered up after one of the others dies, I think it’s safe to say that we should be glad that we got the mind kitten y ED out of the way.
And minus the environmental catastrophe that could led to global extinction across the board on all of them, I think Jormag proposes one of the greater threats now. He’s the tempter of mortals, and the stronger he gets I’d imagine the greater the number of people willing to be a minion to survive might me. All sorts of havoc will come from that.
Very very reachy. The argument could easily be made that there can’t be any strict relations considering how varied the gods personalities and specialties are. Any group of individuals are going to slightly relate to each god because of the general archetypes involved.
Another simplistic answer would be that while Mordy and Primordus did absorb portions of Zhaitan’s death magic, they didn’t inherent Zhaitan’s style of undead/zombie corruption, and both of them are simply using the death magic in different ways.
Mordy was (possibly) using it in minion production to help make better copies of the dead animals and fallen Pact members, and Primordus is simply imbuing some of his minions with it to strengthen them.
The storyline for major games like these is usually set up a year or two in advance.
As Diovid said, the next expansion’s storyline, and probably the following LS as well, is set in stone already. They may be able to change minor things, but there isn’t going to be any major overhauls because it would effect and push back develop. For the expansion after that, there is probably a rough plot and overlying story arc mostly done by this point. The only thing left is fleshing it out, filling in the subplots, and editing it all down to a manageable length.
Well, there was a reason and they saw it as “good enough” – their ‘gods’ told them to.
Though, to be fair, the same excuse could be used for the humans as well. Balthazar, being the human supremacist that he is, basically encouraged humans to impose their dominance over the other races.
Funny how you only use that tiny sentence out of context support your argument. If you read the other tablets it clearly shows they were trying to save Tyria with the other races, but the other races supposedly betrayed/abandoned them and only after that, they said that the world will be theirs.
I’m thinking GW1 supports my argument as well. You know those major events that happened right after those tablets supposedly got carved. Where they manipulated an entire nation and sacrificed thousands of people for their own needs? Those events add a lot of context to the Mursaat situation.
Past good intention are all well and good, but it’s only current intentions that matter in the end of day. The Mursaat might have been a good race once upon a time, but they sure in the hell weren’t during GW1. Lazarus might be trying to turn over a new leaf now, but we simply can’t trust him because some tablets laying on the ground paint out a sob story thousands of years old.
Lazarus was a part of the events that happened in Kryta. There is no refuting that point. His ancestors might have had a harsh deal, he might have had a harsh deal, but doesn’t give him leeway when it comes to organizing the deaths of thousands for your own gain. He has a lot of ground to cover to becoming even remotely trustworthy or “a good guy”.
They also seemingly retconned much of the Mursaat lore with those tablets in Ember’s Bay. Basically the Mursaat are the missunderstood good guys all of a sudden.
X. The Forgotten allied with Glint and ignored the now to focus on the future. We mursaat… we returned and built a base among the Fire Islands, as strong as ever. The world will one day be ours.
Yep. Totally misunderstood good guys…. >.>
They’re still a villainous race. Anet just tried to give them more reasosn on why a whole race might want to kill/enslave/rule everything. In there mind, they were the one’s betrayed. This is just their extended self-preservation/revenge scheme now.
Considering that the Exalted are more than willing to lay down their lives for the cause, I doubt they are afraid of Lazarus possibly killing them as long as their sacrifice meant something. They would be more afraid of the possibly threat Lazarus would pose to their plans for the future, especially now that he’s shown interest in Aurene.
As for the hostility, the Exalted were alive during the time, or at least during the following aftermath, of the Mursaat’s last foray into Kryta. If anyone is more than allowed to be openly hostile to the Mursaat it’s them.
so… sorry if this reads horribly I’m not a great writer but I’ve been getting very nostalgic over GW1 recently….
Primordus, we know, or can be pretty sure, is gonna be the next expansion big boss dragon we have to kill, LWS3 he is announced to have awoken, so lets face it, unless Anet do a U-turn, he’s up next.
Good news everyone! We’re going to back to the Ring of Fire on the 20th!
I believe it was the interview with Angel (need confirmation since it’s been awhile) you were talking about. She compared it to something akin to getting a degree in the subject in college. It’s possibly through a lot of hard work and study to get the second one, but most people usually just stick with what they know and do best.
“The magic might have been released from the Bloodstone by the gods but they did not make it, it’s a natural part of Tyria”
~GW1 wiki says:
“The bloodstones are five shards of a massive stone created by the Gods of Tyria and sealed with the blood of King Doric.”So Gods created magic. This is the fact of Tyria’ History.
It was a supposed fact in human Tyrian History. A fact that we later found out was false in Arah’s exp mode.
I had also noted the psuedo-dragon minion form of those… infected by the blast.
Aside from being magic hungry, Taimi states that they need magic to live. They also are now glowing an odd color and their eyes are red. And when bloodstone shards are impaled on them, you get a Matthias Abomination going.
Which makes me wonder if the Bloodstones and dragon corruption might be related somehow. Or if it’s just the result of heavy magical concentrations.
I know the Bloodstone got its current name from being sealed by Doric’s blood, but I’m kinda wondering if it could be possible that is was made with blood as well. Elder Dragon blood to be exact.
The Seers, knowing that there was nothing they could do themselves to stop them, decided to use the Elder Dragons’ own magical hunger against them. They gathered up the blood from the Elder Dragons to fashion the stone, possibly jailbroke it with enchantments to increase the rate of its magical absorption, maybe added some protection spells to obscure its location, and they simple let it do its thing and slowly drained the world of most of its magic.
They fought fire with fire, and in the end they basically made their own inert ED stand-in device. (And then the Six kittened it all up.)
Anyone else notice how Magic Hungry the corrupted people are when they became powered by the Bloodstone?
makes me wonder if that is how each Elder Dragon started out similar to them being that originally these “Elder Dragons” originally never had hunger for Magical energy until some how they became exposed to a large amount of magic that made them so powerful that they just began to develop a hunger for magic.
The minds of the corrupted also began to deteriorate slowly the more hungry they became to the point all they care about how powerful and hungry they are for that magical power.
I’m kinda wondering if the people are magic hungry because the high concentration of magical energy is like a drug, or if they are becoming magic hungry because they’re absorbing properties of the bloodstone itself, since its been stated that the bloodstone(s) are constantly growing in size by absorbing the magical energy surrounding it. The bloodstones’ function of absorbing magical energy could be “infectious” when creatures are exposed to it in such a raw state, and that could take the form of a “magical hunger” to collect more magic.
Then they should be able to hide themselves from the Titans.
And that’s the $64,000 question. If they’re phasing ability worked against the ED, why didn’t it work against the much weaker Titans?
It’s only my personal opinion, but I’m thinking along the lines of they did flee to another realm in the Mists (or some of more sci-fi out of sync half-world here on Tyria) to escape the EDs, but for whatever reason they were forced to return to Tyria after some time.
Here, they were forced to deal with Glint’s prophecy about release of the Titans, and with the Bloodstone(s) in place; they lacked the sheer amount of magic they had to work with during the last rise of the ED to make their complete reality phasing magic work. Thus, they were stuck with a weaker incomplete version that only partially phased them out of the world but was still susceptible to Titans and those with True Sight.
If they were traveling to the Spirit Realm, I don’t think they could escape the dragon and cut them off along with other races.
It depends on how exactly the realms around Tyria (whether they be spirit, metaphysical, other, or all of the above) were connected back then. Because for all that we know, places like the UW, FoW, and DoA weren’t even connected to Tyria as “spirit realms” like they are now, and that connection only came after the ED fell into hibernation when the Six come to Tyria and reworked everything.
Though, it’s easily possible that they could have snuck off onto a small pocket realm somewhere in the Mists and locked themselves away so no one could find them. Like I said earlier, unless you know where you are going (or you’re following something like a beacon like the Six did to find Tyria) you’re blindly wondering around in literally all of possible existence when you’re travelling in the Mist. If the Mursaat found a secluded enough realm in the Mists, the EDs would never be able to find them unless they got absurdly lucky in their search.
Edit: Hmm… It seems I answered my own question from my first post. Oh well. lol
(edited by Erukk.1408)
I don’t think they were teleporting to the spirit realm.
Scholar Yissa: What legends I have uncovered say they used powerful magic to shift themselves out of phase with this world.
Scholar Yissa: Hmm. Yet the mursaat took their knowledge and fled into a half-world, out of phase with our own.
It depends on their definition of “half-world”. Unless they’re taking a more sci-fi version of that term, any sort of half-world would be in the Mists, and the Mists also contain the spirit realms, alternate realities, parallel universes, alien worlds, and fractals in all its wibbly-wobbly timey-wiminess. The only real big difference between them all is how that plane of existence is governed and separated from the others.
Theoretically, given the resources, if you’re able to travel to one you could also possible get to the others. It all in the matter of if you have the power to get there, if you have the directions, and if you can survive all the matters of beasts in-between.
Also, the mursaat’s ability to “hide themselves from the real world” is heavily implied to be slipping into the spirit realm. Which spirits can do at will. This is why Ascension and Weh no Su (called the same thing by scholars) both allow us to see individuals who slip into the Mists/spirit realm.
I’ve always wondered though, would the Mursaat actually been safe from the Elder Dragons in a spirit realm? While most dragons don’t seem to have the ability, some like Zhaitan and Mordremoth have shown to be able to influence and/or see into the Underworld or metaphysical whatever sort of realm the Dream is. Even Jormag has influence in the Mists now by having the SoS capture havrouns, and I doubt the havrouns are unique beings in history when it comes to being able to into the Mists like they do.
The daughter being a mesmer isn’t the surprising part.
The working for opposing secret orders is. I think the mother would be good and experienced enough to catch that.
And yes, her addition was definitely meant to keep us thinking.
It’s one of the few things I’m enjoying speculating about.
I’m thinking she either is working for her mother, and possibly feeding back information for the OoW, or her joining the WM was an act of rebellion on her part.
Though, I wouldn’t doubt that Lady Wi did know that her daughter was a part of the WM if it was an act of rebellion. The problem would be there wouldn’t be much she could do about the situation if her daughter is so dead set against her. She couldn’t risk exposing her ties to the WM because that would mean she would get jailed (at best) and it would reflect poorly on her husband a minister, and given her daughter’s skill in the mesmer arts; there wouldn’t be much way to keep her under some sort of house arrest because she could just teleport away.
But Out of the Shadows comes with an interesting thing. You know that female mesmer next to Caudecus? The one that made the portal that helped him escape? Her name was Lady Wi (also had first name but didn’t catch that).
I’m more under the impression that the mesmer might turn out to be Lady Wi’s daughter.
From the VA and character models, Minister and Lady Wi are more of an older couple (both with grey/silver hair and most likely pushing 40-50+), but the mesmer shown next to Caudecus looks much younger (by gw2 model comparison) with black hair. Not to mention, the added first name might to be distinguishing fact to separate her from her mother. Because if it was just Lady Wi from the PS, why would the first name be needed at all?
Edit: Ninja’ed by BuddaKeks! =P
Your charisma isn’t high enough to pull off this song and dance SP.
@Randulf
So a mod is treating the lore sub forum as a dumping ground for horrible threads now? That’s nice to now. (/sigh) The only place this needs to be moved to is the trash can.
First, let me be clear: denizens of Divinity’s Reach have nothing to fear.
The Battle of Divinity’s Reach here we come!
The amount of heavy foreshadowing in this article could be used as a blunt force weapon.
Let’s go ahead and lock this now, ya know it is coming soon.
Would you have preferred a Rytlock x Logan x Jenna triangle?
We all know this is already ingame. Rytlock is such a big tsundere for it not to be.
I’m probably reading way too much into it, but assuming the final voice is Caudecus; I found the choice of words a bit peculiar.
“They will carry me all the way to the throne of Krytan.” Emphasis mine.
It almost sounds as if he puts some distance between himself and the WM, almost like he doesn’t consider himself an actual member/fanatic, when talking about them. Not that he isn’t afraid to use them or anything, but rather he sees them mostly as a means to and end (claiming the throne) more than anything else.
What would prevent her – or someone as powerful as her – from just carting a bunch of bloodstone shards into DR?
After all, with the barrels of bloodstone shards being shipped about (or so the raid wings imply), isn’t that what the White Mantle are doing already?
Coming soon to GW2…
The Battle For Divinity’s Reach: The Wrath of the Grand High Sovereign!— err…. I mean, The Wrath of Lazarus!
(Though I would be totally ok if Lazarus tries to turn himself into some sort of god emperor figure.)
Could they sneak in barrels over time? Maybe. But it wasn’t their priority. Xera was doing something very specific in the raid, and all her resources were focused on its completion.
I know it’s probably still a bit of an open secret to a portion of the playerbase, but I think it’s would be safe to say, and the Lore forums at least, that she was just stalling for time. She had to make sure her “god” was off the life support slab, fully rejuvenated, and all hopped up on the sacrificed infused magical bloodstone steroids after all.
(edited by Erukk.1408)
The hinted picture of it had 3 heads if I remember correctly. That might play into its name.
I would not call that picture “hinted at” at all. It’s concept art, and it has never been see officially in-game yet. It’s easily possibly that it could not be used or they might go with a different design altogether.
I’d probably agree with both Euthymias and Urosh, since scariest people to me seen in gw2 so far has been Scarlet and Bria. Though, for different reasons.
Scarlet, minus all the alliances, crazy giant drill ship, and the awakening of Mordy, was a genius, and the level of genius she had was scary. The scariest thing about her, for me, was usually one of the more downplayed accomplishments though, and that was the creations of the steam creatures. She created a race of intelligent self-replicating machines with their own unique technology (which includes stable portals for long distance travel). The steam creatures, if they were allowed to evolve under her watchful eye, could have turned out to be more of a threat than any of the petty alliance she made.
Bria, while not as threatening as Scarlet, is equally as scary since she is an unkillable necromancer of great skill that can easily hide the fact that she’s a ghost. She seems “content” to keep harvesting the souls of Charr cubs, but if she ever decides to venture out beyond her home to cause havoc; she could cause a great deal of it. Just imagine what would happen if she ever got into BC disguised as a regular human. She could cause a lot of death and destruction before being taken down, but she would only reform later to be able to do it all over again.
If we’re counting people we haven’t seen in gw2 yet, I’d probably go with Palawa Joko. He’s used as comic relief, but he’s got to be one of the most dangerous and scariest non-ED beings around at the moment. Like Bria, isn’t basically an unkillable necromancer, but his skills far, FAR, surpasses hers. He can command armies of undead, and he used them to be able to conquer all of Elona. Which in turns gives me ready access to more dead bodies to animate to grow his armies. And last but not least, the ultimate scariest detail about him? He learns from his mistakes. That’s something is usually isn’t present in more villains.
He can learn anything and everything, Not to mention all the secret dealings and blackmail material he can learn just by having an ear in the meetings. For people like him, information is more valuable than gold.
Plus, it all leads up to his final goal of getting…
Still though, isn’t there evidence pointing to the jotun having surviving multiple Dragon rises? If so, either there are more Dragon rises than we know of or the Jotun have an extremely looooooong history reaching back over 10,000 years.
Maybe for the Jotun that are around now, but that could have been possible for the more advanced society that the Jotun use to be. Espeically since they seemed to prefer to carve their history/legends/whatever deep into large runestones instead of items of less durability like paper, cloth, or leather like most people. As long as nothing catastrophic happens to them, those runestones can last for thousands of years.
As far as we know, they still arrived on the world in 1769 AE. Hardly 5,000+ years ago.
More like 3,000+.
The last rise of the Elder Dragons was more than 3000 years ago wasn’kitten As one of the surviving races, I’m pretty sure that would put the Forgotten older than that.
This is pretty logical conclusion.
Yet, it’s still an unsupported one. So unless you have a citation or source backing it up, it still remains either theory or personal headcanon.
In the world with multiple sentient races you cannot spread all over Tyria by being peaceful. Though, I guess they probably repeated (or, to be more correct, did it first time) human invasion scenario, where gods initially gave them power, helped with initial push, and then left Tyria.
Again, where are your sources on this? Because without them, this is all unsupported theory/headcanon on your part.
And yet, they are invaders, brought by human gods to establish control over Tyria, but failed. And after that fail, gods decided to intervene again and brought second “god chosen race” to try again.
I wonder how many real tyrian natives was slaughtered during first gods arrival.
And where is that information coming from? Because other than a few times were they had to actively defend themselves (against the EDs, Charr, and Turai Ossa) or if you desecrated major temple (Margonites), the Forgotten have been an overly peaceful race. There was no “conquering” or “establishing control over Tyria” with them.
Or maybe they just lived for less than one generation in Ascalon after they reconquered it from previous “god chosen race” of divine invaders? Charr are natives for Tyria, Forgotten are not.
Considering the fact that we know the Forgotten are an Elder Race that has been living in Tyria for at least 5,000+ years, it could be easily possible that, even while not native, they have been living on Tyria (and in and around Ascalon) long before the Charr race/culture evolved enough to form any type of society. That’s more than enough time to claim “native” status.
If so that implies that our character is stronger than a god since he killed Mordremoth pretty much single handedly.
Single handedly? It took the Pact forces and all of their allies attacking Mordremoth’s body (Dragon Stand meta) to serve as a distraction so Player and Co. can sneak around to gain access and attack his mind. The player might have gotten the final blow in, but it still took the help of the other Bionics to kill him.
If would be fun each ED is in fact the guardian of a greater power (as seen of The All, each letter is in/near a bigger circle) and by killing them we’re just dooming Tyria \o/
Obviously the Elder Dragons slowly developed as Tyria’s immune system, and once they’re all dead; those angelic/demonic figures that GW2 was originally going to have as antagonists are going to come out of the Mists and destroy the world. The “corrupted” Elder Dragon magic is actually a deterrent.
It all makes sense now….
/Sage Nod
Something which was added after the great amounts of negative feedback.
Doesn’t change the fact that it’s canon on how Ceara got into the colleges though, and that’s really all that matters at the end of the day. Ceara only got into the colleges because a higher ranking asura needed a guinea pig for a grand experiment.
We get it though, Konig. You hate Scarlet’s story with a passion of a thousand burning suns. But please, stop derailing the original thread idea by making us defend the plausibility of some of the segments of Scarlet’s story. No one is arguing that it wasn’t botched with a villain sue who’s story had to be extensively added too to sound remotely possible. I’m pretty sure we’re all in agreement with that.