Guild Wars 2

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Malomedies states that he “awakened on the first night of the sylvari race.”
On the wiki at Beneath a Cold Moon but is stated in the first and last instance of Chapter 1 for sylvari Night players.

Each luminary claims something similar – e.g, first to see the sun rise on our race, first to see the sun set on our race, first to awake to the first day of our race (paraphrasing) – the luminary that shows depends on your bio choice. There’s a little bit of flexibility with the dusk/dawn meanings, but not the other two, and that includes Malomedies.

All four lines are on the wiki, though hardly ever on the same page. Again, first and last instance of the first chapter for sylvari PS, and the luminary that shows depends on your bio choice.

If we’re being really pernickety (and I guess we’ll have to be if we want to avoid this here inconsistency), Malomedies saying that he “awakened on the first night of the sylvari race” doesn’t specifically exclude the possibility that Wynne also awoke that night, before him.

You know, the PC Gamer issue that originally announced GW2 described the sylvari as a race of nature spirits, so at least in the very early stages of the race’s development this was very much the intention. I’m not in a position to access my copy at the moment, does anyone have any scans?

If you look at the GW2W page on druids, you see that pre-release there was also a link between sylvari and druids, which was never explored in-game (as far as I can tell anyway, although there might be a couple events in Brisban Wildlands that hold the key to this).

Amaranda the Lonesome: “A distant shore—and darkness. A root, a cave…you. You are the seed. What Ronan knew and never told still lingers in the Dream.”

So we come to the $1,000,000 question: If the sylvari are Mordrem, why don’t they all behave like Mordrem? We’ve only seen two sylvari so far acting as agents of Mordremoth—Ceara and Aerin. Even if they are just waiting for Moredremoth to awaken, why do they feel compelled to fight the dragons? The Pale Tree has suggested that this protection is afforded by her, and those who reject her protection (the Soundless) are susceptible to Mordremoth’s call. But how does the Pale Tree provide protection? Via the Dream? Because it seems to be that the Nightmare is a manifestation of Mordremoth’s power, but if that is the case then Dreamers should be more susceptible, not less. And where does the Pale Tree get this protective ability from?

I can’t answer all of these questions, but I can offer some theories. It is my belief that the sylvari’s freedom from dragon control owes to Forgotten magic, to the same ritual that originally freed Glint from Kralkatorrik’s control. If the Forgotten were somehow able to put up a psychic barrier between Mordremoth and the sylvari while the Mother Trees were still seeds, then this proffers an explanation for why we have free-willed dragon minions, as well as for why Malyck was also uncorrupted. But if the Forgotten had freed the seeds from Mordremoth’s influence, why were they guarded by Mordrem and not simply destroyed?

To what extent is the Ventari Tablet involved in this? We don’t actually know the mechanism by which Ventari influenced the Pale Tree. Cadeyrn attributed it to the actual Ventari Tablet itself, and thought that destroying it would free the sylvari of its influence. But it could equally have been from the fact that the tree absorbed Ventari’s remains after his death, or he could have magically “imprinted” on the tree through nurturing it for so long (in the same way that the player nurtures Mawdrey, in fact). What is clear is that the sylvari are not influenced directly by Ventari’s teachings, rather, they are influenced by the Pale Tree, who is in turn influenced by Ventari.

Were it not for Ventari, what would be the philosophy of the Mother Tree? There seems to be an assumption among some that the sylvari would be simply behave like any other Mordrem, but I’m not so sure. If we want to know how they would behave without Ventari, I think Malyck is a good first place to look.

At this point, reading this, it is starting to become clear how Scarlet fell under Mordremoth’s influence. But what about Aerin? He seemed to be eager to share his voyage with the Zephyrites with the Dream, and yet, at Dry Top we find Soundless mantras among the wreckage of the ships that he sabotaged. This is similar to what we see of the sylvari crew of the Pact fleet in the end cinematic for this release: sudden betrayal in the skies.

What do we know about these sylvari, and what parallels can we draw with Aerin? Is their betrayal spur-of-the-moment, or have they been corrupted for some time? We know that in all of these cases, it is post-dragonrise, and they are in the skies above dragon territory. Nothing else that I can think of. Is it because they are far away from the Pale Tree (sylvari have been much further in the other direction and been fine, though)? Or is it because the Pale Tree is weakened (although she wasn’t when Aerin fell)? Trahearne is among the sylvari in the Pact fleet, is he corrupted as well, or is this handwaved as him being shielded by Caladbolg? Why is the sylvari player character not corrupted—is Mordremoth’s reach limited for now, or is the dragon just waiting for the right moment, as it did with Aerin and the Pact sylvari?

Wynne: “We come from the dragon. We belong to it. We’re meant to serve it.”
The…reluctance of certain forum users to entertain the possibility that the sylvari are dragon minions has meant that the implications of this have not really been explored. But with yesterday’s revelation, now seems to be the time to take another look. This thread isn’t meant to be a debate about whether making the sylvari dragon minions was the right storytelling choice, or whether or not there was any substantive evidence for this twist beforehand—-the other thread has already devolved into that.

This thread is for taking another look at existing sylvari lore within the framework of them being minions of Mordremoth, trying to make sense of it and exploring its implications for the future. Whether or not there was any evidence for this beforehand is only relevant insomuch that any “evidence” might be pertinent to the wider lore. It is no longer necessary to debate whether something constitutes evidence for this. Wynne’s testimony is all the evidence we need.

I suppose, from the top: where do the sylvari come from? We all know the origin story of the sylvari—the human Ronan, separated from his patrol, stumbles across a cavern filled with strange seed pods, guarded by terrible plant monsters, steals a seed and plants it in Arbor Bay, upon the graves of his family (who had been killed by the mursaat).

In light of recent events, this tale raises some questions:

• Is the sealed cavern with Caithe’s memory seed the very same cave? Arbor bay to beneath the Mamnoon Lagoon/Sage Lands is quite a distance. And if so, why does opening it ward off the Mordrem, when the seeds were guarded by Mordrem? Or was that the Forgotten magic, since the Shadow of the Dragon has no problem once inside.
• What happened to the other seeds? This is at least partially answered by the presence of Malyck, answered below.
• What are the golden ruins in the sealed cavern? The cavern was sealed by Forgotten magic, so it would suggest that they are the originators of these structures, but we’ve never seen Forgotten architecture before so we cannot confirm this.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

…

You claim that there has never been any evidence for the “sylvari = dragon minions” theory, and yet you acknowledge that it has been speculated to be the case since release…do you think it’s possible that there have been hints and support for the theory since release, and that you just failed to see them?

Also, you don’t think your rejection of any proposed support for this theory has anything to do with your dislike of it as a story direction? Or is that just a coincidence?

A friend tried to log in today (after the patch had dropped but before she downloaded the patch I believe) and got a crash to desktop with the error "Timed out while creating browser context ". She tried reinstalling but now gets the same error when trying to reinstall the client :s

Although she didn’t download the patch, the game was working fine for her yesterday. Could this be related to the patch?

Gaile Gray.6029:

If you’d like to see the in-game video again, visit the NPC near the entrance to Camp Resolve. He will let you rewatch the final cinematics if you’ve completed the episode.

Is there anywhere online where the cinematics are “officially” posted, for linkage on the wiki and such?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Erm, the Pale Tree explicitly states that the PC will confront Zhaitan. She makes no generalities.

The Pale Tree states that you fought an Elder Dragon in your Dream, and that you will confront Zhaitan. At no point does she say that the Elder Dragon you confronted in your Dream was Zhaitan, nor does she exclude the possibility that it is Mordremoth (which would make sense, since that is the Dragon with the deepest ties to the sylvari race), or even that it is a representation of the Elder Dragons in general (which would also make sense, since it means that the player’s Wyld Hunt does not end until the last Elder Dragon is defeated, i.e. the entire story of Guild Wars 2 concludes).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

And despite your theory, other than shared textures of plant creatures, other than the Nightmare giving the Shadow form, there was no support or reason to believe it but several NPCs’ words against it. Just because it got retconned in your favor, doesn’t mean it wasn’t a retcon.

“Other than this evidence you just gave, there is no evidence that what you are saying is correct” is what I got from that.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Of course by your original reasoning of texture similarities I’m surprised you haven’t gone to say that the charr effigies use Primordus’ power, since it’s fire/heat textures are like the destroyers and Imbued Shaman.

Ok, I’ll humour you, why not? I’ll tell you: we know the origin of the charr effigies, and we know the origin of the Destroyers, and since there’s nothing that links either of those. We know the origin of the Shadow of the Dragon (Mordrem), but we don’t know the origins of the husks. So a similarity in appearance is reason enough to consider a link between the two. What other husks are there? There’s the Evolved Husk, which is almost certainly a Mordremoth minon, and the Mordrem Husks, which are almost identical in appearance to the other husks. And that’s just the appearance; there’s several other reasons to believe that the husks are all Mrordrem.

I’m concerned that your attitude in this thread, and your complaints about Season 2 in general, stem from the fact that the direction that the story is taking is looking to disprove several of your pet theories. Your standard for what constitutes evidence is not only too high, but only seems to apply to ideas that you’re not fond of, which leads to, as someone said above, conducting “mental gymnastics” to keep your theories alive. The thing is, you’re such a prominent figure in the lore community that I think it’s possible that it’s having a toxic effect, confusing people and moving the entire consensus away from what ArenaNet are, at this point, pretty clearly trying to lead us towards. tl;dr I think we know more than you think we know.

I don’t think there’s been any retcon at all. I’ve been saying for months that the Shadow of the Dragon is a champion of Mordremoth. It’s a draconic source of nightmare inside the Dream, that summons Nightmare Hounds and has a glow similar to the Mordremoth minion Evolved Husk in the Crucible of Eternity. These are all things that point towards Mordremoth.

As an aside, I don’t think it was ever said that the player’s Wyld Hunt is to kill Zhaitan. We’re told that Caithe’s is, and that Trahearne’s is to cleanse Orr, but all the dialogue is worded such that it is possible that the player’s Wyld Hunt is to fight the Elder Dragons in general, not just one specific one. If the Shadow of the Dragon had truly been a representation of the player’s Wyld Hunt to kill Zhaitan, it would have been a Risen.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I recently saw a comparison picture of Anise and a certain gw1 character when the locketinfo came about in Episode 2. It was a comparison to the new model for Salma… And it was eerily similar. Would explain why the locket would be hidden away, if it shows Anise aka Salma…

This theory runs into all the same problems that the Anise = Livia theory does, but also a few more. Salma is trained as a monk, for one. And she doesn’t share any of the attributes that Anise does with Livia. Personality-wise, Anise has nothing in common with Salma. And there’s nothing circumstantial to suggest it, either.

Besides, Anise’s appearance alone isn’t a suitable basis for a theory of this nature, since she was disguised as a sylvari during the World Summit. Not that, imo, she particularly looks like Salma to begin with.

I feel that the following exchange from The Dragon’s Reach: Part 2 gives me cause to revive this thread (emphasis mine):

Countess Anise: “This envy of your older siblings ill becomes you. You’d do well to find a way past it.”
Countess Anise: “I think you overestimate the value of being first. A windfallen fruit has never appealed to me as much as one left on the bough to ripen.”
Canach: “You do keep those blades of yours keen, Countess.”
Countess Anise: “Forgive my meddling, petal. It’s just that I see such potential in you.”
Canach: “Petal? I fear you’ve only employed me in order to sharpen your wit—or work on your plant puns. Why not prove me wrong and tell me your true purpose?”
Countess Anise: “All in good time.”
Canach: “Do you treat everyone you encounter like children?”
Countess Anise: (laugh) “You are a delicate flower, aren’t you? So easily bruised…”
Canach: “I have a thick skin. I also learn from my missteps. For example, you fooled me once with your illusions, so now I wonder if you’re truly as young as—”
Countess Anise: “Do not finish that sentence. Not here, not ever.”
Canach: “At last, a substantial response.”
Countess Anise: “Yes, well. You would be wise to remember your place and check that tongue of yours.”
Canach: “When will you tell me why you’ve brought me here?”
Countess Anise: “I’m trying to decide if I can trust you out in the field. I mean, after that nasty business on Southsun. Tsk.”
Canach: “Regardless of what you may believe, I was trying to free those refugees from the Consortium’s exploitation.”
Canach: “I went about it…poorly. Criminally. And I answered for my crimes.”
Countess Anise: “Your intentions in that affair, whether noble or not, aren’t what concern me. It’s your failure to evade capture.”
Canach: “I beg your pardon?”
Countess Anise: “Noble intentions don’t interest me. What I need is a sharp instrument. A knife that can be employed before anyone realizes it’s struck.”
Canach: “Show me where to cut, Countess, and I will be your blade.”

This is the most direct allegation yet that Anise uses magic to mask her true age, and we also get to see her reaction to it.

narwhalsbend.7059:

And what does Secrets/Truth have to do with water? Did Kormir just feel like taking over some of Grenth’s powers one day?

Um, Abaddon was god of secrets, knowledge, and water. After the Ascension of Kormir, she became goddess of truth and knowledge, and water became the domain of Lyssa. Grenth isn’t involved in any way—he has always been god of ice and death.

I had another idea about the orbs, and the order of their awakening: what if they’re the gods? In order of awakening, the orbs are:

• Blue – water – Abaddon
• Red – fire – Balthazar
• White – ice air – Dwayna
• Green – nature – Melandru
• Purple – chaos – Lyssa
• Black – death – Grenth

This almost matches up with a couple of possible ways of ordering the gods. According to the Orrian History Scrolls, the order in which they arrived on Tyria is Dwayna → Balthazar → Melandru → Lyssa → Abaddon → Grenth, and in terms of age, the best guess is Melandru → Abaddon → Dwayna → Balthazar → Lyssa → Grenth.

And of course, no discussion of the Eternal Alchemy is complete without mention of this quest line. This definitely fits into this quite well, but I can’t quite see how yet. With all the images of stars etc. we see in Omadd’s machine, it’s worth remembering the Mystic Telescope and Bahltek.

Poplolita.2638:

Did anyone see Canach?

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

Canach is going to be part of the Shining Blade

This is really, really interesting.

Where is this in-game?! Looks like we could be getting a White Mantle side-story after all!

There was no alliance between centaurs and Kournans, only slavery. In fact, this was the entire plotline between centaurs and Kournans. So it is impossible to allude to it without talking about the slavery aspect.

While there have been problems communicating what is exposition and what is NPC perspectives in the past, this is a clear-cut example of the latter. Why would Varesh admit to slavery herself?

Ulyssean.1709:

Belzebu.3912:

Those are the words of Ossa, not the developers.

Bobby Stein said last week that the words of the developers are ‘malleable’ ie ‘subject to change’ ie ‘unreliable’.

This is a barefaced lie.

The way I saw it, Mordremoth’s name was revealed “in-universe” sometime in the last two weeks; it’d be silly if our PC just happened to be present for every major discovery. Still, it was momentarily disconcerting for me as well.

webtoehobbit.4201:

This is unacceptable from a lore perspective, this is worse than anything Scarlet ever did. I hope they hotfix this and have us get the name via a book or note in Scarlets room, that would be bearable, but this? Just unacceptable.

Do you think you might be being a little hyperbolic there?

jheryn.8390:

I have learned from you, konig and others in many different posts that the wiki is often unreliable. Instead of just letting ANYONE change articles, couldn’t there be a page where contributors would post lore that could be fact checked by wiki managers and approved contributors? Then those same managers and approved contributors could add (or ignore) pages/content?

The trouble with this is that the main problem with wiki is not, as some here would have you believe, one of accuracy, but of number of contributors. There simply aren’t enough active users to keep on top of documenting the game at release along with the biweekly update schedule. So having a two-step process vastly increases the amount of work necessary to get stuff onto the wiki, but does nothing about finding more volunteers to do that work.

For simply documenting what is in the game exactly as it appears in-game, which is actually what the bulk of wiki editing is, there should be no concerns about accuracy or reliability. For writing lore articles, having a firm policy of citing all sources automatically resolves those concerns.

draxynnic.3719:

A lot of us don’t have faith that the wiki administrators care enough about the lore to be worth our time and effort. To be fair, this is based on past events and this impression may no longer be accurate, but the thing about an image is that it’s a lot harder to clean than it is to get it tarnished in the first place.

For better or worse, Konig is definitely the one of us that has the most time and energy to put into this sort of thing nowadays (I try, but I’ve been reeling from crisis to significant personal event to crisis since before GW2 released). This included trying to keep the wiki up to date as new things are found and keeping a limit on cases of editors putting dubious information on the wiki.

And this second part got him in trouble. I don’t recall who the editor in question was precisely, but there was one that apparently had so much ego invested in his or her interpretation of the lore in a particular page that when Konig tried to separate out the speculation-presented-as-fact from the actual fact, this editor kept reverting it. Push came to shove, the resulting revert-war lead to both parties getting a several-month ban. Now, I’m sure there are complexities in the situation, and Konig isn’t the most diplomatic person at the best of times, but the impression that those of us that heard about this came away with was that the administrators didn’t actually care about who was in the right on the matter – they just wanted to make the problem go away.

Okay, well, this is a little strange but that editor is me. On the wiki I go by Santax (my GW1 character name, since I’ve been editing since way back in 2007). The incident you’re referring to is this one, and for obvious reasons I don’t really want to comment on it further except to say that the version of events that you have heard is misrepresentative, and to direct you to the discussion on the conflict when it arose again, and its conclusion (1) (2) (3) (4).

And FWIW, although permanently blocked from editing GWW, Konig’s 3-month block has now expired on GW2W and he has chosen to resume active editing.

draxynnic.3719:

Suffice it to say, this hasn’t given the rest of us much confidence that the wiki is worth investing our own time and effort into. In fact, we’ve pretty much written it off as only reliable as a resource for quotes directly out of the game and for the transcriptions of official articles, while reminding anyone who quotes from wiki articles apart from the above of how a wiki isn’t a reliable resource.

And the thing I’m finding really ironic here? If the wiki administrators had been serious about maintaining the integrity of the lore articles such that people could trust the wiki (or at least trust that speculation and other dubious information would be removed or at least marked as such, barring the occasional piece of vandalism that would hopefully be promptly removed) then it’s possible we may not have found ourselves in the situation we have in this thread.

If speculation is the concern, then increased referencing is the obvious solution. Something cannot be said to be speculative if it cites an official source. But I think this forum in particular has a preoccuptation with speculation which can, as we have seen in this thread, cause people to overreact to minor lore-related things. But this is besides the point: in this particular case, it was actually Konig who removed the source that stated when the Secondborn were born, and had he not done so this situation would certainly not have happened. That, I think, is ironic.

Sytherek.7689:

People who are passionate about lore tend to be very tech-adverse, in my experience, Slapping together a good gaming PC is pretty easy compare to the eccentricities if wiki editing.

You’d be surprised, I think. The basics are different, but no more difficult than BBCode. More complicated stuff like tables or certain templates can be a pain, but like it says on the page I linked in a previous post, most wiki editors get a feel for the software by making minor edits or corrections here and there, and then become more confident and build up to the bigger stuff when they realise that it isn’t that bad. While I’m open to suggestions, in my experience the best way to learn is by doing, or by seeing how others have done, rather than by reading some guide.

There are also templates for creating new page, which means that you can create pages of certain types with little-to-no knowledge of wiki markup. An example, for NPC pages, can be found here.

Sytherek.7689:

I don’t contribute to any wiki anymore. The political hassles just aren’t worth the time.

This is another complaint I hear quite often, although rarely in any detail. Do you mind being a bit more specific (no need to name names, though)?

ElysianEternity.6215:

I’m neither interested in coding, nor policies, nor debates about what goes on there and what doesn’t, nor do I really have the time – tho for that I can suggest you a small idea as well. Not an absolute solution, but a bandaid.
If there’s so many people away shunning away from editing for similar reasons as me, why not separate the work?
I assume there’s 2 issues here: Editing the wiki itself with formatting and finding the sources and content. (example PS-steps)
For the latter, people like me could help. Post a separate forum-post, update the top post with bulletpoints of where citations or information is needed and all the editors need to do is copy paste and to the formatting we shun so much. Tho anyways, that belongs into a new thread. A noteworthy problem, tho its own. If you make one maybe someone comes up with a better solution. :P

You’re sort of there. Lore-wise, there are two kinds of edits that you make. The first is what I suppose you could call “primary-source” editing, when you simply document content as it appears in-game somewhere on the wiki, consistent with the wiki’s own guidelines on doing do. An example might be documenting the dialogue in a location, event chain, personal story mission, or when interacting with an NPC. There isn’t any kind of referencing involved or needed here, because all the information can be found in-game and is easily verifiable.

The other kind of lore-related edit you’ll make is more difficult. It involves pulling together the primary sources I mentioned above and turning them into an encyclopedic-style article, such as this, or this, or this. These do require references, because, as others have said, how do we know that content that has been added to them is true is they are not referenced? And the wiki currently has a huge problem with this, because certain editors (and I am guilty of this myself at times) will update lore articles without sufficient referencing because they know that they are right and they are allowed to do so because they are established wiki users and trusted not to lie about lore, but then if (for example) ArenaNet want to check the D.O.B. of the Secondborn but it is not on their own internal wiki and the GW2W claim of “six or seven years” after the Firstborn is unreferenced, they cannot. This leads to a lack of transparency and, I believe, contributes to the feeling that people have that they do not know enough to edit the wiki.

In terms of volume, though, the importance of bringing new editors to the wiki is in the first kind of edit, rather than the second. Because there are huge amounts of NPC, event, and ambient dialogues that have been present since release but have gone completely undocumented. There’s a lot of lore that’s out there, but completely undocumented. And how can we tie all the primary sources together with the second kind of edit if that is the case?

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Just speaking for myself, my aversion to wiki editing is largely an aversion to the formatting aspect. I can alter or add to plain text just fine, and I have on occasion, but anything more complex, like, say, a footnote, is more than I know how to do… and if truth be told, more than I care to learn. That last bit is probably specific to me, but I think the fact that being able to make substantial contributions requires wading through sidebars and this does constitute something of a barrier to entry.

I know that you weren’t after specific advice, but just for future reference (heh) the process is to enclose the thing you want to appear as a reference in between <ref></ref> tags, and then placing <references /> in the place where you want to automatically generate a list of references. So it could work something a bit like this:

== Trivia ==
* Scarlet was born in 1304.<ref>
[https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/lore/lore/Interesting-things-in-Scarlet-s-Room-Spoilers/4194939
Guild Wars 2 Forum - Lore & Story - Interesting things in Scarlet's Room [Spoilers]]</ref>

== References ==
<references />

or this:

Niamh helped Cadeyrn to his feet,<ref>Niamh is [[Luminary]] of the Cycle of Noon.</ref> and...

== Footnotes ==
<references />

The wiki’s own guideline on references was actually updated fairly recently, as well. All that said, is there anything that you can think of that the wiki can do to make the entry process easier? Would a sticky in the lore forum with an FAQ similar to this help at all, perhaps oriented toward the sort of edits that lore forum users are likely to make (i.e. referencing)?

In fact, for all reading, if you’re interested Stephane has asked for any ideas as to attracting more editors onto the wiki. So any suggestions, I can bring to him (of course, this being a wiki, it would be very simple also to do so yourselves).

CureForLiving.5360:

We as player only have access to so much lore, unfortunately the issue we saw here was a lore inconsistency. Perfectly understandable (from my perspective at least, there’s a lot of lore so a few mistakes will crop up from time to time) but as a player we have no access to canon info. We can only at best put onto the wiki what we experience in game, and if there are problems in-game we do not have the means or the necessary perspective to know what is and isn’t correct.

I think this is why it is important to have citations. The “perspective” you speak of is interpreting the evidence that we encounter in-game to determine whether, for example, a continuity error has been made or story is being led in a particular direction. But the wiki’s function isn’t to do that—the purpose of the wiki is merely to document the evidence. The interpretation—well, that’s something we do here on the lore forums! But the reason having lots of wiki editors is so important is that evidence cannot be interpreted if it hasn’t been documented anywhere first! This is something that I have spoken about before.

CureForLiving.5360:

As for why people aren’t editing the wiki… well I can only speak for myself… I suck at wiki maintenance. I’d probably end up breaking something

You may be only speaking for yourself, but this is something which I hear incredibly commonly! I’ve heard it said before that it’s almost impossible to break the wiki (but please don’t try!), so feel free to give her a whirl. You may find this page useful.

Shiren.9532:

Honestly, that’s a dangerous line to tow though. The wiki already struggles to attract accurate and comprehensive editors in large enough numbers to properly document the game without requiring them to heavily source everything they document. If anything that’s not sourced becomes unreliable and changeable (assuming it’s not documented in the internal wiki – which in this case was less reliable than the external wiki) then the value of the wiki is undermined (as it is when editors post incorrect or speculatory information).

Nobody has said here that wiki users should be required to heavily source everything that they document. However, removing sources have, in this case, led to (a somewhat minor) disaster, and I don’t see it unreasonable that wiki users be expected to source anything that is not stated in-game, or is otherwise “obscure” or difficult to find—for this exact reason. The beauty of a wiki is that anyone can add anything, but the danger is that…well, anyone could add anything. Wikipedia has a policy page explaining why this sort of thing is necessary.

ElysianEternity.6215:

Tho for general inconsistencies between our wiki and yours as lore develops with the LS, IMO the best idea to keep them from happening would be… bring back race blogs. You can easily work that into the living world, although on its own it might be a bit of work. You see from our POV, the only 100% reliable lore is ‘Word of God’ and if interviews are not the best way to inform us due to reasons like stress, etc, we need another way or else the lore gets rather foggy for players.

CureForLiving.5360:

I do think implementing an in-game lore mechanic (as I’ve been going on about for a while now… oh say 2 years) could be a useful. Something like the system Mass Effect has, the codex-thing. A fairly straight forward but detailed collection of lore, presented in-game that can be treated as being canon. When need be ANet can make changes, and it can act as a means of more effective lore referencing (so ANet has a reliable mechanism for knowing what has been or has not been provided to the users).

I disagree that these would be better solutions than simply building up the wiki more! This thread makes it obvious that there are a lot of people in the community who are very passionate about lore, so the question is: why aren’t they editing the wiki?

Astral Projections.7320:

Upcoming plot twist! (That I pulled out of nowhere and is based on nothing besides idle speculation).

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

His name is Stonehealer and the dwarves are made of stone now. He will be the one to reverse this condition, bringing the dwarves back to Guild Wars 2 as a playable race!

I will be very impressed if that happened, if only because it means that such blatant foreshadowing was hidden in plain sight for so many years. Still, you never know if something like this could be planned for when the Living World finally gets around to Primordus.

Honestly, and I don’t expect this to be a popular opinion or anything, but I hope the waypoint system is removed or otherwise rendered unusable. And again, I fully do not expect that this will happen, since the system is so entrenched that there would be outcry. But hear me out nonetheless.

I remember Prince Rurik being exiled from Ascalon. I remember preparing for the harrowing trek across the Shiverpeaks to the “promised land” of Kryta, knowing that whatever is on the other side would be better than the terrifying experience of running a gauntlet of charr stalkers with screechy arrows, or venturing through the breach in the Great Northern Wall in the post-Searing Kingdom of Ascalon. And I remember stepping out onto the sands of Kryta for the first time with Jeremy Soule’s magical score playing, and feeling a genuine sense of relief and exhaustion at the journey.

This is a sense of journey and exploration that I feel should be present not only in every MMO, but in every RPG. But this is killed by the idea of being able to teleport anywhere in the world at any time. It’s almost never mentioned by NPC’s and ignored whenever it becomes inconvenient, and that really makes it feel disconnected from the lore. But if it wasn’t disconnected from the lore, the entire story would have to be contorted around it (for example, why can’t Seraph Belinda Delaqua just teleport back to Fort Salma and waypoint a contingent of soldiers to Tangle Root instead of running all the way back). Waypoints are never referred to in the novels or earlier promotional material either, and it really feels like they were added because for whatever reason it was decided that there weren’t enough asura gates. And come on, for something that is supposedly so core to the game’s lore, who seriously uses an asura gate? The only advantage to them is that they are free, and that is something that is completely at odds with the lore, by the way.

I have a number of other immersion-based complaints about waypoints, such as the fact that they completely remove tension from combat—you’d be a lot more careful if faced with the prospect of dying alone out in the wilderness with the knowledge that you’d be sent much further back. It’d add tension to even the many “easy” battles in vanilla zones, and it’d make you consider bringing an adventurer buddy with you. It’s also, of course, responsible for one of the more immersion-breaking styles of play that is seemingly promoted by ArenaNet, which is the hundreds-strong zerg teleporting around the world killing dragon champions like clockwork. The sense of a huge Vigil force massing and organising to take on Tequatl the Sunless isn’t really there when the army spontaneously appears, slays the beast, and then spontaneously disappears to autoattack the Shatterer to death on the other side of the planet.

But yeah, these are just my personal feelings on waypoints, and I recognise that they’re an integral enough part of the gameplay that it’d be basically impossible to completely overhaul them without causing some serious upset. I don’t expect them to be disabled in favour of asura gates whatsoever. I’d just like that to be the case.

Actually, all indications point to Malyck’s tree having a Dream of its own, it’s just that it’s not connected to our own Dream. The thing that would make our Pale Tree unique would be the Ventari Tablet, but I can’t see how that would factor into any of these considerations.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

…I’m starting to believe that the 1316 comment was a typo for 1326.

If you make this assumption, the rest of the timeline starts to make a lot more sense. Kind of frustrating, given that presumably the new content was introduced to help clarify the confusion on the forums and now it has added to it. But yeah, Scarlet’s holo-recording can be cast in a completely new light if you work on the basis that “the ley line hub is real” line was actually at some point in 1326. Except, that would mean that Ceara became Scarlet actually at some point between Flame and Frost and Dragon Bash. If it were 1323 or 1324, her being called Scarlet during the Thaumanova Reactor Fractal makes more sense. But it also means that you can’t line up her dismissing the steam creature prototypes in the holo-recording with her phasing the steam creatures out of her forces during her invasions.

At this point, I think we just need an official timeline. Things like the inclusion of dates in her journal and these most recent books are clearly an attempt to help clarify the situation for us, but clearly there’s been some kind of a retcon, or some of the old sources are incorrect, or (incredibly) some of the new sources are incorrect. And without being told what those changes are, working out a sensible timeline just isn’t possible without time travel (wat).

Honestly, I don’t see the big deal here. Sure, it’s an inconsistency, but it’s hardly the first retcon we’ve seen, and it’s definitely far from the biggest. And I don’t see how it’s saying that novels and blog posts are no longer valid sources of lore either; in this particular case the source was an interview in which a question was put to Ree, and an answer was given. What would the alternative be? Refusal to answer the question, on the off-chance the dating might need to be tweaked later on? Because that’s what I’m worried might happen in future—no more lore in interviews—given the reaction here.

All this tells us is that there is a hierarchy of sources, which is something that should have really been common sense to begin with. Things like interviews in which answers have to be given on the spot, and where, as Bobby said, no content was actually built around the lore in question, are perfectly mutable. It would have been nice to have been told so at the time, sure, but other than that I don’t get the fuss. For some reason we’ve developed quite an idiosyncratic view of what ‘canon’ should constitute, and I don’t see the need to take it so personally when that is upset.

ElysianEternity.6215:

Woah were they crates full of krait obelisk shards before in Fort Salma? I can’t remember them and they’re just in front of the waypoint and around it.

This raises some really interesting possibilities. Krait obelisk shards are obviously very magical, but truthfully we don’t know much more about them. We don’t know anything about the krait prophets, either. What we do know is that they have been in possession of artefacts that are resistant to dragon corruption.

Very brief since I haven’t much time. But feel free to add!

• First we see what appears to be the Mysterious Figure blowing a warhorn and rallying a centaur force. Could be wrong but the ominous music suggests that these guys aren’t friendly. But then what of their banners, which apparently show the Pale Tree? My suspicion is that these are an as-of-yet unseen centaur tribe, and I don’t think I’ll be shocking anyone by guessing they’re somehow related to Ventari. So we’ll be getting more sylvari lore, it seems.
• Next: the B-iconics walking through a more lush looking area, with some huge, magical-looking shell of some sort in the background. It looks artificial.
• Same lush region, an earth elemental is visible, and there is a broken cylinder floating above them, its parts held in place. It reminds me of the Vigil Megalaser, but it is obviously much older. Perhaps a weapon against the Elder Dragons from the last cycle?
• A glimpse of what appears to be a miniature Rata Sum, with holographic lines surrounding it. The thing in front of it may be a hologram projector (looks like Scarlet built it). It looks exactly like this thing.
• Next, a shot of Concordia destroyed by jungle vines. Condordia is on the other side of Tyria, so the jungle dragon’s corruption seems to be spreading fast. It is also a Pact fortification (and it is where the Pact was founded), so this could be a tactical move on Mordremoth’s part. It would also mean that the Pact’s involvement in what’s coming is inevitable.
• A lone, scared looking Vigil soldier being killed by a vine. Not much to say here.
• An adventurer getting smashed by a giant; Zephyr Sanctum wreckage is visible in the background. We still know barely anything about the giants, but since the ones we’ve met already haven’t told us much about the species, I’m not too hopeful here.
• The trailer ends with a shot of the town of Prosperity, destroyed by vines. If Mordremoth is attacking tactically, then what is the importance of Prosperity? Proximity to ley lines? Or could it be that Scarlet really was trying to work against the Elder Dragon? If that’s the case, it raises huge questions about who she and Aerin were really working for. It could also mean that we’re not getting a side-arc about the bandits and White Mantle this season after all (but then where is the island we’re visiting in November, if not Janthir?)

The trailer can be found here. Again, sorry about the brevity, it was more a recap than analysis but it’s still worth doing, I think!

1304: Ceara is born. She is immediately dismissive of Mender Serimon and the Pale Tree.

1312: After 8 years of study in the Grove, Ceara leaves to study smithing under Beigarth in Hoelbrak.

1313: Ceara leaves Hoelbrak to study firearms and explosives with Asagai.

1315—1320: Ceara leaves Asagai to Rata Sum. She completes completes Dynamics and Statics coursework each in under a year, then Synergetics (which takes longer), spends some time with the Inquest, and spends several months wandering.

1316: Scarlet finds proof of ley lines, in Prosperity. This would have been her first exposure to ley lines.

1318 (approx): Ceara is with the Michotl tribe studying alchemy. She is found by Omadd.

1319 (approx): Ceara ceases writing her diary longhand. She begins clumsily building steam minotaurs, and is offered a position as Omadd’s lab assistant.

1320: Ceara begins experiments with steam portals.

1320 (approx): Ceara enters Omadd’s Isolation Module, and emerges as Scarlet Briar (N.B. at this point she hasn’t heard the Pale Tree’s voice in “years”, making her effectively Soundless for this time). She kills Omadd, and purchases a room in Prosperity with Omadd’s gold. The steam creatures, no longer necessary, are sent to Lornar’s Pass and Brisban Wildlands.

1321 (Season of the Colossus): “I wake from nightmares—screaming, confused, and scared. It’s getting wOrse. I’ve decided to talk to a mender. I’ve probably just been working too hard.”

1322 (Season of the Zephyr): “Every night, the same terrors. It never changes. The mender was unable to help Me, and I feel like I’m losing control of myself. Dated Season of the Zephyr, 1322.”

1322 (Season of the Phoenix): “When the nightmare starts, an entity calls to me. I run—run into a seA of darkness. But no matter how hard I try to escape, it keeps calling me.”

1322 (Season of the Scion): “I’m trying not to sleep—too scareD to even close my eyes… So scared. Whispers come from the forest all night long, calling me, taunting me, possessing me.”

1322 (Season of the Colossus): “Tonight, I saw it. I started into the abyss, anD it stared back at me. So much power. I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t anymore.”

1323 (Season of the Zephyr): “Control of my world—of myself—is slipping through my hands. And yet, I’m no longer scared.”

1323 (Season of the Scion): “It communicated with me through images of death, destruction, and destiny. I must know more. I must confront it and put an end to this madness.”

1324: Thaumanova Reactor disaster.

1327: Battle for Lion’s Arch; Mordremoth awakens.

Notes:

• The timeline currently says that Scarlet sends the steam creatures to Lornar’s Pass in 1320, but Priory scholars near the Lake of Lamentation suggest that it was closer to 1324 or 1325 that they began appearing there. This would make more sense, because it would mean Ceara became Scarlet after her encounters with the entity, and it would not be necessary to have to explain why Scarlet Briar was going to a mender for help with her nightmares. However, Short Story: What Scarlet Saw and the holo-recording in her room in Prosperity put Ceara becoming Scarlet much earlier.
• I believe that Scarlet’s time with the Inquest was originally supposed to be five years to a decade later than the timeline currently says, since the suggestion that she interfered with some of the Snaff Prize entries seems like it was supposed to be a hint toward certain events in the personal story. Not to mention the fact that the Snaff Prize didn’t even exist until after 1320, since it was named in his honour. But in the current timeline, it would seem that her tampering was over a decade before our player character becomes the Snaff Savant.
• The Thaumanova Reactor event is implied to not take place until just before the events of the game, and yet according to the fractal it is where Scarlet first got confirmation of ley lines (and yes, at this point she was Scarlet). She was also working with the Inquest, which must be a second stint with them since she was Ceara the first time around.

I wonder…

When ley lines are explained, the analogy that is normally used is the one of them being the river or stream through which magic (the “water”) flows. I guess, then, that would make Mordremoth the greedy monster at the end of our river, drinking all the water for himself. But what does Nochtli’s story tell us about what will happen when we kill Mordremoth?

Christ, what do you want? Five different storylines, depending on your race? Or 5 × 3 = 15 different ones, depending on your race/order combination? Or 5 × 3 × 8 = 120 different ones, depending on race, order, and class combination, every two weeks?

Content is being delivered here every two weeks, and in any RPG each branch in the storyline increases the amount of work required geometrically. Even single-player RPG’s that take years to make, which tout player choice and storyline divergence above all, usually have large portions of the game the same for every player. You could argue “oh, a character dies and they’re not in my squad any more, but that’s just a cutscene. It changes dialogue for the rest of the game, but that’s just lip service”.

“Personal story” doesn’t mean that you, personally, get to tell professional writers how to write their story. And it’s a good job, since nobody can agree on what they want.

Actually, to link to yet another one of my own posts, it seems that while she didn’t rent her room in Prosperity until she was Scarlet Briar, from the tone of the “What could it be?” note it seems that the initial discovery was made while she was still Ceara. The way that Toska talks about her, as well, seems to suggest that the conversation happened with a much less dark incarnation of her character.

Actually, I thought the Scarlet Prime fight was one of the highlights of Season 1. It’s an MMO, not a single player game, so it felt like the only fitting way to end a storyline would be with a large, open-world boss-fight. Like the Twisted Marionette, Tequatl, and Triple Trouble boss fights before it, it made your character feel like a real, plausible part of the world. And I hope the final battle against Mordremoth is something similar, in contrast to the now-infamous Zhaitan battle.

Of course, this is episode 1. I’m sure there’ll be more to come in the future

As others have said, Dry Top is part of a new Maguuma Wastes region rather than the old Maguuma Jungle region (none of the explorable zones of which, by the way, are actually located inside the Maguuma Jungle).

This should help you out

From the Points of Interest Livestream:

Kate: “So, there was one thing I wanted to…um, Angel, you mentioned earlier that you had a, uh, a, it was related to the dying Zephyrite…”
Angel: “Mmhmm.”
Kate: “…and it was about Kasmeer.”
Angel: “Yes…”
Kate: “That was something you wanted to talk about.”
Angel: “Uh, yeah. So, um. I wanted to talk a little bit about Kasmeer’s gift. Uh, it’s, it’s been with her since uh, the Tower of Nightmares, um, and it is…it seems to be growing in power, or she’s just beginning to understand what it is and is able to use it, and we see it in this release with the dying Zephyrite who is lying. She, she mentions again that she, she can tell sometimes—not always—she can tell sometimes if someone is lying. Um, that…that is going to be an important…piece for Kasmeer’s story. And, uh, and so I just wanted to point it out for those of you who hadn’t noticed. This is one of those things that we, we shine the spotlight on that, that you really probably should pay attention to.”
Kate: “You know if Angel’s sayin’ it, by the way, you know it’s legit. You know that’s, that’s some good stuff.”
Angel: “Mmhmm.”
Theo: “It’s really nice when people notice, uh, these little things…”
Angel: (laugh) “Yeah.”
Theo: “…‘cause they…we, we don’t put these in here, like, for no reason…”
Angel: “Right.”
Theo: “…uh, they do pay off, so pay attention!”
Angel: “Yeah, yeah.”

So, yeah, not much else to say about this. Is this something that anyone else has noticed throughout the Living World releases?

I think the purpose of Snaff’s paper in Scarlet’s room was to hint that exposure to high amounts of magic could potentially effect the mind, and to in turn hint that Scarlet’s intelligence came from exposure to the ley line. See here.

Sure you got a positive experience by doing something “right” without knowing it there, but the far more common scenario will be that people simply look up the achievements on dulfy or whatever beforehand, and spoil the story for themselves.

I saw this on the front page of reddit today. I don’t think it’s actually a real Henry Ford quote, but the spirit applies here.

Finally, Scarlet’s holo-recording:

Taimi: “Scruffy, I need my supplies.”
Taimi: “Ooh ooh ooh ooh! Look!”
Ceara: “Holomagic is amazing. I’ll use it to record my life, my failures, and my successes. Scholars of the future will study them. Are you out there, scholars?” (laugh)
Taimi: “I’m here, Scarlet. I’m here.”
Ceara: “My black-market dredge contacts continue to prove useful. For a little gold, they sell me their scrap iron so I can build my steam minotaurs.”
Ceara: “I’ve landed a lab assistant position with Omadd, an intelligent but overly gentle asura. I should be able to wrap him around my little finger.”
Ceara: “Today I am sixteen cycles old, and to celebrate, I’ve been testing my first steam portal with steam minotaurs. The last batch actually made it in one piece.”
Taimi: “Can it be? My goodness.”
Ceara: “I noted the tiniest hint of intelligence in a steam brain today as it studied one of the portals. Fascinating.”
Taimi: “So that’s how it works.”
Ceara: “One in three steam creatures is being destroyed by my portals. I must find a solution.”
Ceara: “I have not yet had the courage to travel through one of my portals myself. I need to strengthen the form resonator first.”
Ceara: “I may have created a new sentient being. My steam brains are mimicking my building techniques, designing their own version of the steam portal.”
Taimi: “Hm.”
Ceara: “Omadd agrees that I’m ready for the mind-opening device. Tomorrow is the day.”
Scarlet Briar: “I saw it all. I saw the Eternal Alchemy.”
Scarlet Briar: (breathes) “I killed Omadd, my mentor. I am no one’s lab rat.”
Taimi: “Oh, Scarlet. What happened to you?”
Scarlet Briar: “The ley line hub is real. I found it, and I’m making preparations to study it. I’ve purchased a room in Prosperity with some of Omadd’s gold.
Taimi: “Interesting!"
Scarlet Briar: “The steam brains have shown ingenuity. When threatened, they build steam minotaurs from whatever materials they can find.”
Scarlet Briar: “I’ve used a portal to send most of my steam creature prototypes into Lornar’s Pass and Brisban Wildlands. I no longer need them.”
Taimi: “Scruffy, log entry.”

That’s all I saw in there, although I’m sure it’s possible I missed something.

I asked that_shaman to pull the blueprint texture from the gw2.dat; I’ve attached it below. The text is quite small but it may be possible to translate it yet. I have screenshots of everything else I found in Scarlet’s room, so I’ll transcribe them here.

“The Nature of Dragons” by Ogden Stonehealer
Or, should I say the “Dragons of Nature”? Yes. Dragons have long been thought to be as much a part of Tyria as the sun, moon, land, and seas. No one, not even the dwarves, know how long they’ve been here. The jotun and the norn both have lingering stories passed down through the generations about the last rise of the dragons. Most scholars give these tales little credit, unfortunately, kitten much time has passed. It was over ten thousand years ago that the dragons last returned to their slumber. The very existence of these tales, however, indicates that the dragons have awakened at least twice in history. Ancient documents, found now in the Durmand Priory’s collection, reveal accounts passed down by other races such as the powerful Seers and even the human gods themselves.

“A Treatise on the Mental Puppeteering of Golems” by Snaff
Some scholars theorize that magic flows through all things, that we swim in magic as fish swim in water, or as we ourselves live in air. This magic is said to ebb and flow via currents called ley lines. Magic infuses everything in the world. The building blocks of reality are held together by magic. With the right connectors, manipulating magical elements with the mind becomes possible.The mind is a powerful and fragile quantity in the world equation and the Eternal Alchemy. It came move mountains, or it can be shattered like glass. My research has found a thread between magic and the mind. The two are linked. Where there is one, there must also be the other. The igniter is belief.

This scrap of paper has handwriting on it. It says, “Note to self: Explore the idea of a mobile waypoint. Can travel happen at my whim?”

An official certificate indicates that Ceara has received honorary student status with the College of Dynamics. This permits her to audit classes in a non-degree capacity.

This sheet of paper says, “What could it be?” followed by a list of thoughts.

1. “An ancient pool of magic trapped beneath the surface of the world? Like those believed to infuse the waters at Bergen with healing properties?”
2. “A tear in the veil between here and the Mists? Perhaps the abundance of magic there is leaking into our world?”
3. “Ley lines? Could it be that they truly do exist? If so, this is where my life truly begins. Right here. Right now.”

Dear diary. Writing longhand is for the birds. I’ve discovered a device of asuran origin that will allow me to record my journal from this point forward. Do not think that I am ungrateful to you. But, I must continue to evolve at every moment. The future awaits us all, and I plan to be amazing when it comes. This will be my last entry as an ink-splattering student. Starting tomorrow, I am a researcher, an engineer, and a visionary. I confess to a mixture of fear and excitement. I believe I’ve found one of these mythical ley lines, and if I can study it, well…my understanding of Tyria’s inner workings will increase in leaps and bounds! Who knows what the future will hold?

A partially disassembled steam minotaur.

(see attached):

This set of blueprints appears to have been redrawn several times. A coffin-like device has tentacles coming off it, in all directions.

This handwritten notebook bears the stamp of Omadd, Scarlet’s last mentor.
“The device works on the principle that the mind is connected to magic, and therefore, if properly opened, one should be able to grasp the entire Eternal Alchemy as a bird views the landscape far below. My sylvari assistant will try it next. I am hopeful that she, with her innate connection to the sylvari Dream, will be a better subject than those who’ve gone before. I’ve grown rather fond of her and would hate to have her mind broken as well. I’ve tweaked and twiddled the settings as described below. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

The “Realm of Torment” image:

This hand-drawn image is more symbolic than literal. It shows the world as a machine with various moving parts. The Pale Tree sits at its heart.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

If you weren’t so apparently caught up in being a petty rival with me, you’d realize that I wasn’t talking about the wiki’s documentation but the actual dialogue in-game.

And if you had actually read my post in full and not just to a point where you can logically deduce a false outcome of my post as you always do whenever you argue with me in said petty rivalry, you’d realize that I mentioned the event you used as an example of one of the very few event chains that do provide lore.

I am well aware of each bit you mention, but so few of those are in actual events! MOST events’ voiced lines don’t provide any lore. There are some, but a significantly insignificant amount of events in the grand scale of things. There is lore in them, but not in the lines themselves, and you can easily replace the current lines with generic lines and not lose a single thing for most events.

Your obvious lack of reading my post in full is downright insulting. And it is further insulting to insinuate that I know nothing or little of wiki documentation and the game’s lore, despite the fact that you so obviously do as we’ve had not-too-friendly interactions over the years regarding such topics. You know that I know this, and you know that I know that you know this. To say otherwise either proves you’re incredibly forgetful, or you’re being an kitten through feigning ignorance.

I did read your (first) post in full; you just hadn’t posted your second reply at the time I started writing mine. I also wasn’t insinuating that you didn’t know anything about wiki documentation; I was addressing Bobby (or whoever cared to read my post) at that point. But yeah, every response where I’m not sagely agreeing with you is probably due to petty rivalry (on my part, of course). Gosh, how embarrassing for me to have gotten so riled up in my reply.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Already the system you have up forces lore related dialogue in events to be in text boxes. For example, most Orr events just talk about “finding a relic” but we never find out what the relic is or anything of the like. Only the beginning and ending voiced lines really need to be unique – and this is only to provide lore. And even then, not all have to be 100% unique. But that’s what you do. And like I said, it’s great for immersion, but then you lose your ability to go after the more story-focused lines. You lose your ability to actually let the players hear the lore of the game, and instead you force them to talk to the NPC in the middle of an event to read about the lore. And in sadly most cases, very little at that.

This just isn’t true. The problem isn’t that there’s no lore in events. The problem is just that it’s all gone undocumented. Look at this wiki page. If you looked at that, you’d think that there’s no dialogue worth documenting associated with that event; there isn’t even a dialogue section on that page. But in fact, dialogue for this event does exist, and what’s more, it contains a fair amount of lore. We learn about the Festival of Lights and a little more about Doric, and in subsequent events we finally learn more about Malchor, and we see him somehow staving off dragon corruption (these dialogues are on the wiki now, but for the first year and a half since launch they weren’t).

There’s a lot of ambient dialogue that contains lore that just hasn’t been documented, because it triggers unreliably and, more importantly, doesn’t appear in the chat box. Nearly all of the ambient dialogue in the Labyrinthine Cliffs was like this, and as a wiki editor I can tell you it made it extremely difficult to document :P In fact, it was only with the help of Project Eavesdrop that I didn’t go crazy trying to get all of the pre-Festival of the Four Winds dialogue onto the wiki! Another example is Kessex Haven; more dialogue that has been in the game since release but has only just made it onto the wiki. There’s some incredibly intriguing stuff in there, such as rumours of mountains in Giant’s Passage mysteriously rumbling, and tense centaur relations with Lion’s Arch (which hasn’t been documented yet). These are just the two examples that I’ve gone out of my way to look for, but I’m sure there are many more locations with just as much depth.

As a wiki editor and a lore fiend my request would be to turn whatever switch prevents these from being in the chat box off! They’re so easy to miss, and they require line of sight and quick screenshotting reflexes. The wiki is suffering a dearth of editors, and it’s still quite taxing to transcribe hundreds of screenshots, but I’m sure it’d still help a great deal! I’ve noticed all the ambient dialogue added with Festival of the Four Winds and Gates of Maguuma shows up in the chat box, which has been a boon to me. And once I added the ambient scenes I saw to the Prospect Valley page, other people started taking the initiative and doing so as well.

Thalador.4218:

BobbyStein.2315:

The best is yet to come.

So more massacres, mayhem, and destruction in your words. Why is that since the start of this Living World (although I may risk saying that there were signs of this in the vanilla game as well) the only way you guys seem to be able to drive the story forward is through mass killings and calamities (that often draw parallels with real life modern attacks on innocents)?

Remember this picture attached to the Story Journal reveal page? I can’t decide whether it’s hilarious, ridiculous, or outrageously imbecile and depressing that it’s a spot-on summary of your entire storytelling to date…

Aren’t you a nice guy.

Mister Midnight.9837:

Well it’d be really cool if the PC could talk again like the Personal Story, but that’s not really what I’m getting at myself. Apologies if my thoughts are coming across as jumbled or rambling.

The point I’m making here outside of all of this, is that I do not feel like the PCs are being brought to the forefront as the main protagonist. Maybe we’re not meant to be the main protagonist, but it still feels like we’re not even particularly important. Like I said, I feel like we’re the sidekick characters on The Superfriends being dragged around.

I didn’t feel like that at all. In fact, for the first time since the Battle for Claw Island mission, I’ve really actually felt a part of the story. I play a sylvari, and when I played through my character had to make it clear to Marjory that Aerin was Soundless. My choice of race was not only taken into account, but actually made important to the story! I’m sure the same thing would have happened had I played a different race, but what counts is the fact that it felt important that I was a sylvari. I really felt like I was adding an extra perspective to the group. There were numerous other moments like this in the new release, such as Kasmeer having to explain the human class system, and given that guildies who play asura engineers have told me that that race/class combo get unique dialogue with Taimi later on, I feel like it’s not just me.

I’ve already spoken my thoughts on this, but reading that thread should tell you that not everybody wants to be at the forefront. In fact, according to this poll, only 14% of players seem to want what you want. The trouble is, there doesn’t appear to be much agreement between anyone.

The poll I linked above tells us that if you go into the game with an expectation that ArenaNet build the game that you want, not only will they fail to please everyone, but they will fail to please anyone. At some point in the last few months, the community has collectively decided that because ANet is a company that listens and gives the community a voice, that the community is entitled to the game that they demand. Except, as the threads about jumping puzzles in Dry Top will tell you, nobody can agree on what the community is demanding. So rather than telling ArenaNet how they should develop their own game, let’s just all stop, take a step back, and let them create their own vision.

It’s going to be a gem store item. The fact that it’s called “Iron Greatsword” tells us that its a skin, since items currently retain the names of their original models. And the precedent has been set for a main character having a “signature weapon”, that is available via gem store.

Yeah, Evennia’s death is an unsolved mystery to be sure, but don’t think we’ll find out anything about it during Season 2. Although she was Shining Blade, I think her disappearance was probably more involved in the plot surrounding the founding of Ebonhawke.

I’m not sure I understand the reasoning here; Mordremoth’s influence causing increased intelligence is no less likely than the mursaat doing it. We’ve certainly never seen the mursaat doing it in the past. It seems that Scarlet became corrupted after exposure to the ley line beneath Prosperity. But something in that instance struck me as interesting:

Some scholars theorize that magic flows through all things, that we swim in magic as fish swim in water, or as we ourselves live in air. This magic is said to ebb and flow via currents called ley lines.

Magic infuses everything in the world. The building blocks of reality are held together by magic. With the right connectors, manipulating magical elements with the mind becomes possible.

The mind is a powerful and fragile quantity in the world equation and the Eternal Alchemy. It can move mountains or it can be shattered like glass.

My research has found a thread between magic and the mind. The two are linked. Where there is one, there must also be the other. The igniter is belief.

We’ve known for a while that Elder Dragon minions that are exposed to high levels of magic are stronger, and have more intelligence and initiative to carry out their master’s objectives. Could it be that this was what happened to Scarlet, upon discovering that ley line? Then her intelligence wouldn’t come from Mordremoth per se, but from exposure to the ley line.

Then the question becomes: how did Aerin become corrupted? Three things seem to have happened: him abandoning, or otherwise losing the protection of the Dream, him losing his mind, and him (possibly) gaining the intelligence to become an engineer. We need to find an explanation for each one, and work out what order they happened in.

Possibilities for the first include:

• Him being too far from the Pale Tree, à la Malyck. I don’t buy this one, since Dry Top may be further west than any sylvari has gone before, but it is still much closer than, say, the Labyrinthine Cliffs or the Iron Marches.
• He intentionally separated himself from the Dream. This seems more likely, especially given the Soundless mantra. But why? He expressed his wish to share his joy at being allowed aboard the Zephyr Sanctum via the Dream when that happened, why abandon it?
• He was forced to abandon the Dream. One possibility is that the Zephyrites asked him to “leave all baggage behind” on the first voyage, and that included his connection to the Dream, which I think is possible, although we should remain open-minded. Other possibilities…I don’t know if we have enough information yet to say.

Him losing his mind is unquestionably Mordremoth. But why Aerin? Was it just that the circumstances made him susceptible, as we have been assuming, or was this a deliberate and targeted thing by Mordremoth or an agent or Mordremoth? Or could it be both? It seems that Mordremoth required something aboard the Zephyr Sanctum (something to do with Glint, perhaps?). The Master of Peace says that Aerin wanted him to grant him “great power”, could it be as simple as Mordremoth wanting to consume the power of the Aspects? Whatever it is that Aerin, and by extension Mordremoth wants, we last saw it in the Master of Peace’s glowing rucksack, being carried further into the wastes.

As for how Aerin obtained his engineering capabilities…we don’t really know that they weren’t present before. But it does seem clear that his intelligence and determination were massively boosted. Unless Aerin was corrupted before boarding the Zephyr Sanctum and was faking, he isn’t a trained assassin, and yet he managed to take out Zephyrite elite guards, many Zephyrites, and rig and plant explosives. You get the impression that you’re dealing with someone who is extremely dangerous. But Aerin wasn’t directly exposed to a ley line, like Scarlet, so where could this increased capability have come from? Could it be from the Aspects themselves? Those are the only highly magical objects that I can think of that Aerin would have been exposed to recently, but we should remain open-minded on this as well.

I don’t like JP’s. I am bad at them. But I don’t understand the complaint here. No difficult jumping was required for me to fully enjoy the content. There are a couple of hard JP’s, sure, but those are totally optional.

Wow, this is a really good find! I wonder if it’s a coincidence. It’d be a big swerve from where most of us were expecting the story to go, but you never know. That picture does strongly resemble the Realm of Torment, and the steam creature head does resemble Abaddon. I’m sure that wasn’t intentional on Scarlet’s part, but if the devs are hinting at something to do with the RoT it could be intentional on theirs.

To whoever was drawing comparisons between Mordremoth’s thorn vines and the insect legs in the Realm of Torment: those were originally intended to belong to Arachnia, but it seems like any canon reference to that god was scrapped, and it is left unexplained whose they are. If the comparison is a valid one, it’s possible that Arachnia’s storyline is going to be resurrected, so to speak.

His dialogue during FotFW suggests that at the time he was, in fact, connected to the Dream. Specifically, “I shall record every moment in my journal so that even those who can’t access the Dream know the joy I’m experiencing.”

Could it be that he decided to become Soundless after joining the Zephyrites?