Guild Wars 2

Fyi, Bobby Stein posted a nice lengthy reply in the thread. Great read, restores a little faith.

For those of you, like me, who rarely poke their heads out of this hole, I’d like to bring this to your attention. The devs have asked for our input regarding the Living World, and have promised to chime in and discuss it with us.

In this here lore forum, there has been much… shall we say, critique of that very aspect. I encourage all of you who’ve been active in past discussions here to make yourself heard on this new thread and reiterate your points. It’s very rare that an opportunity arises where the devs promise to pay attention to our concerns; don’t let it go to waste!

In this case its using the meaning Distinct smell as a bad kinda Distinctly offensive scent. English language is terrible for making words have different meansing depending how its used

I created a Living World survey so that we can have a more quantifiable assessment of what the community thinks (I hope this works):

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JJ7C32L

The survey consists of one question with five multiple-choice options. There is also one optional “other” text box where you can provide other comments. The survey should take you no more than 30 seconds to complete.

I will post the results at some point.

Edit: Here are the results as of 11/12/2013:

Graph

Proeliator.4158:

I don`t play,I don`t care anymore…guild wars 2 is ruined!!!

And yet here you still are.

Gnat.9405:

Yes I know I was making fun of all the X NPC = Livia speculations.

“Livia = Zhaitan” won anyway

Mr E is a man. >_<

There is still the mysterious “Mr E” from the Dragon Bash storyline who has been largely forgotten. Evon is probably the best candidate. This mystery person is likely to reappear again at some point, that time can’t be too far off or else everyone will stop caring, and it is presumably someone we have seen already in the story.

Ever since Cutthroat Politics, I have wondered about the implications of Evon taking interest in Abaddon. Even though he didn’t win, there must have been some intent from ArenaNet to explore this realm of lore, and I have a hard time believing that it would just be an “oh by the way, here’s a fractal” kind of thing. I assume that we will get some living story soon based on the Thaumanova Reactor, and that’s exciting, but the fact that it could have gone the route of exploring Abaddon’s fall, that would imply that Abaddon almost made his way into our current story (right?)

Now of course this is all based on the assumption that Kiel’s research will have some relevance to the living story beyond the addition of a fractal.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

We don’t know that the witches are religious leaders, or even leaders, do we? They’re the most powerful krait in the vicinity, but I don’t recall any examples of other krait following them. Even their sacrifices don’t seem religious- they’re usually said to be to control sharks or the like.

Edit: 50 gold is a bit beyond my means, but I’ll put up 35.

A few things:

1) http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Krait_Altar and http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadows_in_the_Water_%E2%80%93_The_Krait clearly state the sacrificing is religious.
2) At least one of these witches – the Blood Witch – does this sacrificing; another, within Caledon, I believe is said to be infiltrating the hylek village in order to capture the hylek for sacrificing.

zwierz.9012:

Gotta agree, it’s very likely they construct an obelisk in there, but I think there is more to it.

I doubt it’s an obelisk – those things are ancient, single blocks of smooth stone (not wood), and extremely religious. I would think they’d view it as blasphemous to try and recreate something that marks the rise of their prophets into the other world that they’re building an army within.

So the betting pool:

Those who think Scarlet’s involved:
Thalador: 50g per capita
Myself: 50g per capita
therapite: 20g per capita

total being put down: 120g per capita

Those who think Scarlet is not involved:
Narcemus: 20g per capita
Aaron: 35g per capita
zwierzL 50g per capita
Draxynnic: 45g per capita
Eluviete: 50g per capita
Maethor: 20g per capita

Total being put down: 220g per capita

The funny thing is that the group betting for Scarlet’s return will be loosing more individually if wrong. :P I can handle losing 300g (though I’ll have to buy gems to get the money, heh.)

Maybe the Krait are trying to pull a Baelfire and get one of their priests to ascend? We know the pillars supposedly mark locations where Krait prophets ascended. Maybe they found some funky boo-boo-matic wheeze calculator or whatever that makes them think they could ascend another prophet? Those earlier ones have been gone for ages, after all, and the whole Krait race is kinda waiting on them to come back with that army. Seems plausible they’d want to send someone up (or down or whatever direction Krait deem favourable) there and see what the hold up is.

Supposing this is their endgame for this construction site:

• The location makes sense, they don’t have the orb anymore and this is as far as they can get from Orr. Zhaitan’s minions do have a thing for strong magic since that’s what the boss eats, it makes sense to do all the crazy powerful magic as far away from them as possible now that simply killing the minions doesn’t work.

• If they’re not worried about Zhaitan and/or his crew, that’s still about as far from Orr and all those pesky Pact fellows with their submarines and whole freakin invasion force as they could hope to get without needing a new zone somewhere silly.

• What if some Krait hatchling put on a Krait fedora and felt euphoric not because of some false prophets’ blessing, but because he’s englightened by his own intelligence? Surely, after promptly gutting him, the priesthood would want to demonstrate that Krait religion is legit by making a brand-spankin-new prophet?

• What if it doesn’t work? We kill whoever the head honcho is or the ritual goes wrong and the whole thing blows up in his face, then what? If we’re responsible, that’d surely lead to massive Krait retribution. If it simply doesn’t work, it could lead to civil war.

• What if it does work? We show up, try to stop the bad guy, but alas, his ritual is successful and he ascends, vanishing. That would be quite the twist, since we’d have definitive proof Krait religion is actually more than a bunch of stories the priests come up with to stay in control. We’d have a (presumably very powerful) evil entity on the loose somewhere we can’t get to or even know anything about.

I just hope this isn’t more Scarlet.

I noticed as well as many other people, that krait in Kessex Hills are up to something, deforesting the shoreline and gathering large amounts of lumber in Viathan Lake.

I was thinking about what can they possibly want to prepare for, obviously an offensive of sorts, right?

And then when I was thinking about potential targets nearby, it hit me!

There is a water connection between Viathan Lake and Viathan’s Arm. Siege engines can easily be transported underwater between them and then it’s a short stretch to take down the wall of Dominion of winds!

Why that thought?

Well, they would have to build the engines further away from Viathan’s Arm simply because there is not enough lumber availbale on Arm’s shores plus there is a Lionguard haven nearby.

AND there already are underground tunnels where destroyers emerge between the shore line and Dominion’s wall.

What do you think?

Attached is a map of Kessex, look at segments 6 and 7:

http://guides.gamepressure.com/guildwars2/guide.asp?ID=16609

Is it too far of a stretch?

EDIT: The other viable strategic target could be Fort Salma I guess, but how would they transport siege engines up the Halacon Cataracts? Well, it’s also a possibility, so I post it as well.

Justdeifyme.9387:

I thought she died at Claw Island o.O

Nope. You managed to save her. She returns in The Source of Orr for unexplained reasons.

@OP: Same question can be asked for the racial sympathy members who go into your home instance – despite in Orr them saying they found a new home (I guess it’s YOUR home they found…).

Soo.. why she still is in my home instance? Even after year of personal story end. Didn’t she have any home? Or duty in Lion’s Arch?

Given that the Nightmare Court working with the krait are a splinter faction that don’t use the nobility titles of the main Nightmare Court group, it seems highly unlikely Faolain is involved.

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

Inb4 Faolain is in the tower working for Scarlet.

I wondered about that earlier, in a different thread, but with the NC having so many powerful mesmers; its hard to make an accurate guess. With the events of Twilight Assault, Faolain could be a good candidate, depending on what information Scarlet has on Caithe, but it’s still hard to tell at this point.

Though, I would never say Faolain would ever work for Scarlet. Work with her? Maybe.

To be fair, most enemies in GW1 were spellcasters. And like I said, the new krait are sufficiently disconnected to the old krait to make comparisons. And just because they’re led by spellcasters, doesn’t mean those spellcasters are remarkable compared to other races.

The word used in the Aquatic Fractal is “morphological properties” which suggests it is either non-magical or ornate, rather than some sort of spell. Furthermore, that Fractal is already suspected to be a mish-mash of unrelated things, and cannot be considered an accurate representation.

The Nonmoa krait does seem to have some sort of control over the weather (however, I’d argue that she’s less casting and more invoking) however this control does not extend beyond making an overcast drizzle and inspiring the nearby krait. When you actually fight the witches, they’re indistinguishable from champ hypnosses (hypnoi?)- that is, they use standard necromantic spells and summon more krait/barracuda. To paraphrase what you said on a different thread, necromancers != mesmers.

The witches appear to be high ranked individuals. There was a priestess in a personal story who was similarly a spellcaster, as well as the Head Slaver Nymphassa (sp?). Even the Oratuss are spellcasters. All their known high ranking individuals are spellcasters.

Even in GW1, most of them were spellcasters. And the krait are known for their strong shapeshifting magic (see Aquatic Ruins Fractal). And there’s the Nonmoa Lake witch which as Narcemus said, summons a large storm (attempting to turn it into a Maelstrom – while she’s up the area gets cloudy and rains).

The tower’s cloaking was likely done by the krait since they’re known for spellcasting. Though the courtiers do too to a lesser extent. Depends on who’s in on that splinter faction of the Nightmare Court.

Who says Scarlet went to them as Scarlet? If she’s got access to illusions like the one that cloaked the tower, she could probably just pretend to be the ancient spirit of a Krait prophet or something. I doubt the Nightmare Court are going to rat on her, since they’ve probably been led to believe that the Krait will be disposed of once their usefulness expires. The Krait’s prophet may have told them roughly the opposite. Just speculating, of course.

Scarlet’s Aetherblades already stole some of the Pact’s airships. I wouldn’t be all that surprised if they stole a submarine as well. She would then only need to either modify it or use it as a blueprint for her own enhanced deep-sea sub. All she would need afterwards, is some type of magical sensing device, most likely something like the Asura PS’s VOED.

As for how they Krait handled Scarlet having Obelisk pieces, we have no idea as of yet. I’m personally guessing that Scarlet went above the Krait’s head on the matter, and she personally went to their leadership first, the Oratuss. The Oratuss might have been enraged as well, but, as it has been said in the Krait’s lore article, they can be quite power hungry and manipulative. Even going as far to subtly change the words of their holy “texts” to twist their meaning to suit their own cause.

If Scarlet was able to get them to hear her out, most likely by making them hear her out, and she offered a good enough deal; the Oratuss would be able to twist their own religion’s holy text to bring the rest of the Krait in line. The Krait are fanatically devoted to their religion, since they were raised to be fanatically devoted. If the Oratuss, the sole arbiters of their faith, said that their religion supports this, for whatever rhyme/reason/cause, the Krait automatically would believe it.

how did she get a piece(s) of a krait obelisk? I would have thought the Krait would’ve been more enraged that a nonbeliever/lesser race dared to even touch their most sacred of artifacts much less deal with said person. If it is a piece of an obelisk does this mean the obelisk this piece is from was broken and if so what broke it?

Orrians were naturally powerful spellcasters though, and being an even more powerful one seems to have been a requirement of Orrian Viziers (per Under Siege as Trahearne automatically suspects a vizier when powerful magic is shown). So I wouldn’t list what Khilbron can do – pre or post mortem – as something “common” for necromancers or liches, or even wielders of the Scepter of Orr (especially given his ties to Abaddon as well).

Using Khilbron as a base for non-Orrians seems full of folly to me.

I mean, Vizier can teleport large distances and is constantly floating (though this latter may be part of whatever illusion keeps him looking human-like). Neither are typical necromancy.

I actually think that Livia, Evennia and Anise is a 3 women witch team that dedicated their lives to protect Kryta. All 3 of them are hundreds of years old.

Livia=Necromancer
Evennia=Monk and Guardian
Anise=Mesmer

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Evans.6347:

What exactly is it that she is trying to change? Fate?

What I get is that she saw the fate and purpose of the sylvari, claims to have seen the whole of Eternal Alchemy (but hasn’t), and is now trying to break the sylvari race from the chains of their purpose (aka Wyld Hunts).

I partially agree Konig. It seems to me she is talking on a larger scale than just the Sylvari.

“But I see the flaws in that design. My people don’t have to take what we’re given, or be what we were “born to be.” No people do. We can change the rules…well, I can. And I’m going to.”

So even though clearly the Sylvari are a big part of it, what seems to drive them also drives the other races. And she intends to change it.

I’m also still very interested in the reaction of the Pale Tree. Where she just ignored Caderyn, she flat out declares war against Ceara.

The story pretty much states that even Cadeyrn, Faolain, and the whole Nightmare Court is and always have been part of the design of the sylvari’s fate. While the court may just be strayed children, they are still just children to the Pale Tree. Ceara put herself on the same level as the Pale Tree though. Seeing what she was not supposed to, and worse, intending to change it, and even worse, change it through destruction.

What i find suspect though, is that Ceara didnt see, or didnt even look for her own purpose in this great design. Thats understandable from her point, she never wanted to hear from it at all… but how can one be sure to change her destiny if she doesnt even know what it would be?

Yet she did see her own purpose in a way. She saw herself as the dusty red vines squeezing the life out of the Pale Tree until the Pale Tree herself snapped Ceara out of that vision.

I suppose I’ve answered my own questions here. The Pale Tree declared her a danger because she is a threat to the life of the Pale Tree.